Today I take off on my trip to explore the garden Age I found in the DRC tent all those months ago. I don't expect this expedition to last more than a day or two. I'll be posting back-dated daily reports once I get back to the City. Hopefully nothing there will kill me, since I still haven't found a link to Gahreesen that I can use to "borrow" a Maintainer's suit for this purpose.
Updates later!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Resurfacing
Mid-day update today.
It turns out that the guy who's been working in the DRC office is in fact a native Carlsbad resident, so I don't really have to worry about him vanishing on me in the future. I think he's gone on to other employment at this point though, because the DRC surely don't have the money to keep paying him. In any case, I'm glad he's willing to help drive me back and forth for a supply run. I've got enough funds for another couple of months, but I'm seriously approaching the point where I may have to take up a job in town to cover expenses. I really don't want to have to do that, because it'll slow my plans down considerably, but life being what it is, I probably don't have a choice.
I'll re-evaluate in the new year; my supplies should last me until then.
Anyway, I'm writing this while I wait at the edge of Zandi's property for my ride to get here. I still haven't made an excursion into the garden Age; I've spent most of my time since my last update trying to figure out what I need and how much it'll cost. I ultimately decided to save the trip until I get back to D'ni tomorrow so it's not rushed.
It turns out that the guy who's been working in the DRC office is in fact a native Carlsbad resident, so I don't really have to worry about him vanishing on me in the future. I think he's gone on to other employment at this point though, because the DRC surely don't have the money to keep paying him. In any case, I'm glad he's willing to help drive me back and forth for a supply run. I've got enough funds for another couple of months, but I'm seriously approaching the point where I may have to take up a job in town to cover expenses. I really don't want to have to do that, because it'll slow my plans down considerably, but life being what it is, I probably don't have a choice.
I'll re-evaluate in the new year; my supplies should last me until then.
Anyway, I'm writing this while I wait at the edge of Zandi's property for my ride to get here. I still haven't made an excursion into the garden Age; I've spent most of my time since my last update trying to figure out what I need and how much it'll cost. I ultimately decided to save the trip until I get back to D'ni tomorrow so it's not rushed.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Colonizing
Oy, quick update before I collapse.
It's been a hectic three days since I got back from my hike in Er'tsuda. The trip exhausted a large portion of my supplies without really getting me much of anything in return, so I've been re-rationing the remaining gear until I can make a return trip to the Surface and do some more shopping in Carlsbad. Should be able to make that happen in a few days; coordinating anything with the last straggling employees of a virtually non-existent organization is really difficult (in less bizarre terms, I have to get a hold of a DRC lackey who can come pick me up at the Cleft). Aside from that, I've been pouring over both the DRC's notes and my own looking for information about the DRC-stamped garden Age I found a while back at the research tent. Other concerns and my then-plentiful supplies made the Age a low priority on my list, but now it's moved up the ranks a bit, as my supply of cash has been getting low, and coordinating these Surface trips gets more and more difficult each time they're necessary. I think this will be the last for a while, and will refresh my stores of non-perishables like canned goods and jerky, which I can supplement with fresh food from the garden Age if all goes well.
I still need to locate another spare Nexus Book to take with me, in case the DRC's own way back was again lost in the intervening years since their last expedition. I've been contemplating trying to find a Gahreesen Book as well, so I can steal a Maintainer's Suit for these initial trips just to make sure nothing nasty happens to me. Bacteria, viruses, chemicals, and even plants and animals can all be potentially deadly out in the Ages. Having an extra layer of protection is always a good idea, I think. The trick is just getting a hold of one. I guess I'll burn that bridge while I'm crossing it, as Dr. Watson was fond of saying.
In other news, the tavern is looking more and more like home now. I've probably reorganized the main dining area five times since I first moved in and got it all straightened up, trying to keep my growing piles of paperwork – as well as the copious volumes of material I've found from the DRC – properly categorized and uncluttered. I think I've finally hit upon a layout that does so without breaking up the flow of the room itself, so it's still easy to get around. In the past couple of days I've also been tinkering with one of the wall-mounted holographic projectors to see if I can get it working again. Nothing so far but a few unpleasant shocks from the circuitry, unfortunately. Did I mention that I'm better at orienteering than engineering? I don't think "Restoration Engineer" was ever really a very good summary of my talents, heh. I'm usually pretty good with electronics, though, but working without schematics or even a frame of reference, it's really rough going.
Okay, it's late and I'm exhausted. Hopefully I'll have more exploration-oriented updates in the next few days.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Er'tsuda Expedition, Day 14
Wow, what a hike.
The past eight days have been long and largely dull, though I did cover a lot of ground and get a much better handle on how the whole harvesting operation must have worked back in D'ni's heyday.
About 20 minutes from the factory, the canyon split into four sub-canyons, with a harvester track leading into each. Determined to get an idea of what to expect if my harvester ever starts working again, I continued to follow its track into the unknown. Beside me, the irrigation canal forged an angular path along the base of the canyon.
Eventually, the walls of the canyon widened a bit, and I entered what can only be described as a forest. Plants not dissimilar to those in Er'cana towered above me, thick as a pine tree forest back on Earth and in some cases just as tall. The irrigation canal apparently still functioned well enough to provide a regular flow of water to these plants, and they thrived after the Fall. Some seem to have infiltrated the canal itself, so some repair work will no doubt be necessary once this initial overgrowth is dealt with. Assuming the harvester blades are capable of cutting through growth this substantial, it might be a good idea to clearcut some of this for future use and replant it with seeds or spores (or whatever) from these now-ancient specimens.
Interestingly, the walls of the canyon themselves gave me a pretty solid idea of just how overgrown the plantlife here had gotten. In some of the naturally narrower parts of the canyon, the walls had been widened at the height where the harvester blades once passed, creating an odd and distinctive shape that served as a handy benchmark for roughly how tall the plants needed to be to be harvested efficiently. This benchmark was easily forty feet over my head, and in some cases the plants stretched thirty feet above that. Hardly what I would call optimal harvesting conditions now.
It would also seem that at least some of these plants had seen the last days of the D'ni empire, as the growth above the harvest line was considerably thinner than that below it, indicating that the plants can be cropped off at the top and still continue to grow. To what extent this may still be true in this now-forested mess is unclear. I'll have to remember to get a hold of a botanist at some point now as well to try and get some answers.
After walking for eight days through dense, inhospitable forestry to find little of ultimate interest besides the fact that the harvester tracks are at least fundamentally intact for several miles despite the overgrowth of the plants, I'm ready to get back to the cavern and do some more exploring in the city. Funny how fast my interests can change, but I've had enough of this dry and dusty place for now. Hopefully I can come back in the future with more assistance and get this place up and running again. It'll take more than what I have at my disposal right now to make that happen though, so for now, it's back to D'ni.
The past eight days have been long and largely dull, though I did cover a lot of ground and get a much better handle on how the whole harvesting operation must have worked back in D'ni's heyday.
About 20 minutes from the factory, the canyon split into four sub-canyons, with a harvester track leading into each. Determined to get an idea of what to expect if my harvester ever starts working again, I continued to follow its track into the unknown. Beside me, the irrigation canal forged an angular path along the base of the canyon.
Eventually, the walls of the canyon widened a bit, and I entered what can only be described as a forest. Plants not dissimilar to those in Er'cana towered above me, thick as a pine tree forest back on Earth and in some cases just as tall. The irrigation canal apparently still functioned well enough to provide a regular flow of water to these plants, and they thrived after the Fall. Some seem to have infiltrated the canal itself, so some repair work will no doubt be necessary once this initial overgrowth is dealt with. Assuming the harvester blades are capable of cutting through growth this substantial, it might be a good idea to clearcut some of this for future use and replant it with seeds or spores (or whatever) from these now-ancient specimens.
Interestingly, the walls of the canyon themselves gave me a pretty solid idea of just how overgrown the plantlife here had gotten. In some of the naturally narrower parts of the canyon, the walls had been widened at the height where the harvester blades once passed, creating an odd and distinctive shape that served as a handy benchmark for roughly how tall the plants needed to be to be harvested efficiently. This benchmark was easily forty feet over my head, and in some cases the plants stretched thirty feet above that. Hardly what I would call optimal harvesting conditions now.
It would also seem that at least some of these plants had seen the last days of the D'ni empire, as the growth above the harvest line was considerably thinner than that below it, indicating that the plants can be cropped off at the top and still continue to grow. To what extent this may still be true in this now-forested mess is unclear. I'll have to remember to get a hold of a botanist at some point now as well to try and get some answers.
After walking for eight days through dense, inhospitable forestry to find little of ultimate interest besides the fact that the harvester tracks are at least fundamentally intact for several miles despite the overgrowth of the plants, I'm ready to get back to the cavern and do some more exploring in the city. Funny how fast my interests can change, but I've had enough of this dry and dusty place for now. Hopefully I can come back in the future with more assistance and get this place up and running again. It'll take more than what I have at my disposal right now to make that happen though, so for now, it's back to D'ni.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Er'tsuda Expedition, Day 6
Early update today. Still no success getting the harvester going. I think that it, along with most of the rest of the machinery in this Age, will need to wait until I can get a few more folks "down here" to assist me, since mechanical engineering is not my forte; I'm more into orienteering. On the bright side, I have plenty of documents and manuals to show to whatever linguists and mechanics I eventually manage to con into taking over for the DRC...
Rather than spin my wheels – no pun intended – any longer I've decided to pack up and hike along the track for this harvester to see if I can get a better lay of the land outside of the factory. I spent most of the morning breaking down camp and assessing my supplies. I figure I can be gone for 10 days at the most if I take it easy and ration my food and water well. The weather has so far been fairly favorable, so hydration shouldn't be a huge problem, even in a desert-ish environment like this one.
Assuming the rest of this Age is anything like Er'cana, I have a reasonable idea of what to expect along my hike, but I'm still likely to be surprised along the way. Will probably not have an update until I get back from the hike, though since these entries are all being back-dated anyway, it won't really matter in the long run.
Rather than spin my wheels – no pun intended – any longer I've decided to pack up and hike along the track for this harvester to see if I can get a better lay of the land outside of the factory. I spent most of the morning breaking down camp and assessing my supplies. I figure I can be gone for 10 days at the most if I take it easy and ration my food and water well. The weather has so far been fairly favorable, so hydration shouldn't be a huge problem, even in a desert-ish environment like this one.
Assuming the rest of this Age is anything like Er'cana, I have a reasonable idea of what to expect along my hike, but I'm still likely to be surprised along the way. Will probably not have an update until I get back from the hike, though since these entries are all being back-dated anyway, it won't really matter in the long run.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Er'tsuda Expedition: Day 5
I've got a rudimentary shelter built in the shanty town for the Nexus Book. While I was salvaging materials from some of the collapsed shacks, I came across a few bleached skeletons. I wouldn't be surprised if Veovis and A'Gaeris linked a plague-ridden body into this Age, landing it smack in the middle of town. Nobody who lived here would have stood a chance, and anyone who fled back to D'ni would have been equally doomed. I found a place off to one corner of the village where the ground was soft enough to dig, and gave them as proper a burial as I could manage before returning to the task at hand. Within a couple of hours, I had a lean-to and a basic pedestal put together to shelter the Book from the wind and dust blowing around.
I returned to the factory afterwards and continued to rifle through stacks of moldy or disintegrating papers to see if I could find anything that might help me get the harvester back online, or even just have it start. I think the thing runs on powermarbles, much like the ones Gehn used on Riven to power his firemarble domes, but with a lower yield and a more controlled output. There are still a few boxes in the maintenance room I uncovered with cautionary labels on them that look like they might be what I'm after, so now all I need is a diagram of what the engine is supposed to look like so I can make sure it matches. Little success on that score, though there are a couple of hard-bound books with voluminous amounts of D'ni text in them. God help me if that's the only user manual the thing came with...
If I can't get anything accomplished with this thing within a couple of hours tomorrow, I'm going to leave it for later when I have more skilled hands at my disposal, and go on a hike to see what lies along one of the irrigation canals. I'll probably follow the one that runs beneath the track my broken harvester is sitting on, so that if it ever does start working again, I'll have some idea of what to expect when I take it for a spin.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Er'tsuda Expedition: Day 4
I'm honestly starting to get a little frustrated by how inoperative a lot of this equipment is. I don't know if any of the factory machinery still works, and it's going to take a long time with a haz-mat suit to clean out the crap that's grown in the harvester hoppers. On top of that, there's the one inoperable harvester in the factory, and the seven other harvesters that are lost out in the fields somewhere, which could very well be totally unsalvageable.
On a bright note, I did finally find the Linking Book back to D'ni. Unsurprisingly, it goes somewhere that the DRC probably haven't investigated, as there is no stamp on the Book. I suspect their original expedition to this Age used a Nexus Book to get back to the known areas of D'ni, and it's been blown away or buried or something else. It looks like I'm going to need to build a shelter of some kind up in the shanty town and make sure that the Nexus Book I brought with me is well protected so that I don't need to worry about losing it in the future.
No further progress on finding spare parts or replacement lube for the harvester engine. I'm not a mechanic, unfortunately, so I really have no idea what's going on in there. It seems relatively straightforward, as most D'ni machinery is (their electronics are a different story, but machines are all pretty basic), but lacking even so much as a blueprint, I'm not sure where to begin with tinkering. Let it be known that the D'ni built everything to last, but they did so with the assumption that they'd be there to maintain it. Grr...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)