Uru Blogs

Our meeting went well. Besides Dr. Forberg, I met again the curly, bulky man, who introduced himself as Shane Kennett. Dr. Forberg told me, he was a longtime friend of him and an engineer and IT specialist.
Then there was an elderly woman, Dr. Krista Haugaard from Danmark, who is a botanist, and Alex, whom I had met before, the red haired woman. Her full name is Dr. Alexandra Rebman-Bartos, and she´s an anthropologist.
First of all, Forberg asked me to just call him B.P., like everyone else did. Then the others made their reports of the week. Kennett explained his progress on some energy conduct in Asheten mansion and some computer problems.
Dr. Haugaard reported her newest findings about the plants of Risoahl – didn´t understand much, but one thing that stayed in my mind was, that the giant bamboo of that age (which we were right sitting in at the time) were unusual in some ways (other than the size). For example, they were extremly adaptable to conditions like a high concentration of salts – the water of Risoahl seems to be quite brackish – and standing right in the deep water of  the lake filling most of the area doesn´t harm them either.
Alex told us some interesting stuff about the Yagi people they had met on one of the ages they had found. I haven´t met any non-humans except some Bahro yet, so I´m especially excited about them. I asked Alex, if I could join her next time she visits them, and she agreed.
Then the reports were done, and B.P. turned to me. He asked me, if I would like to help to do restoration work in Risoahl – especially tidying up the place a bit, cutting a path through the giant bamboo-forest and such things. I happily agreed – doesn´t sound to hard to do for me, no special skills needed
B.P. told me about their plans for the age – they would like to use it as an example and as  a test in restoration. As I´ve posted before, they usually just do their research. Restoration is something new for them.
Their ultimate goal is to open the age for all explorers – but there is a lot of work to do first.

Well, today I wasted my first kor´nea. I don´t know, what exactly went wrong – I was writing gahrohevtee into my book, thought, I was making progress – and then it happend. Without a warning, a linking panel appeared on the first page, and it instantly went black. I had read about that possibility, and knew, all work was all lost.

I have yet to analyze my mistakes, and when I´ll find out, I´ll have to start over again.

But I have pleasant news as well: I´ve thought about Dr. Forbergs offer, and have decided to accept it. How could I have declined it? It opens so much possibilites for me, I just had to say yes!

I sent a KI-mail to Dr. Forberg, and received an answer a few minutes ago. Seems we´ll be meeting again this evening to talk about our first conjoint tasks.
This time we´ll meet in Risoahl again, which I personally like a lot, I find it to be a relaxing place.

Continueing my report about what happened yesterday:

After I made my preparations, I linked back to the Kurat neighborhood and met with Dr. Forberg. He had an interesting, portable D´ni-device with him: some kind of KI-encoder/decoder. He told me to put my hand with my KI into the device, programmed it, and it loaded a new Nexus-link into my KI (better said: the clearance for a new area.)
We then moved on to the Nexus, and from there to the expedition´s headquarters, a mansion at a lower part of city proper, which lies directly at the lakeshore.

By the way: In the meantime I´ve asked Dr. Forberg about the name “Kurat” meaning derogative things in some languages, and he answered, this was purely coincidental, as it was a D´ni name. So, all Estonians who read this, this name is not meant as an offense to you

It was quite impressive. The mansion was in exceptional good condition, and Dr. Forberg told me later, that they had been cleaning up and restoring it for nearly 2 years now. It once had belonged to a D´ni guildmaster namend Asheten, who had been a rich and influential individual.
The three ages who had been in Ashetens possession now are in the hands of the expedition, Risoahl being one of them.

I was introduced to some members of the expedition, was given a tour through the mansion – the architecture of that place is astounding – and then we sat down in the dining room with four other people to discuss things out.
A redhaired young woman, wo intruced herself as Alex, a certain Dr. Stejskal, two guys whos names I can´t remember, and another, curly haired, bulky man, who nearly squashed my hand when shaking it. We had a long, interesting conversation about the goals of the expedition and their achievements of the past two years, and of my possible role.
I found out, that the main purpose of Dr. Foremans expedition was research, not restoration, though they of course had to do some cleaning up to be able to do their work.
After talking a lot, Dr. Foreman asked me, what I thought about the offer. I said, I had to think it over – but if I would work with them, then not as a part of the expedition, but as an outsider – but with full access to their ressources and manpower.
Dr. Foreman smiled, and after giving me a thoughtfull look, agreed.
In return, he said, the expedition would like to have the right to examine and research each of the ages, I would write. I stated, that I would allow that, but only on my terms. If anyone did something with/ in my ages, I didn´t like, I would withdraw my allowance at once.
We talked at least two hours more, and then said goodbye to each other.

After the meeting, a lot of thoughts went through my head, and I decided to make another visit in Tufolehn. It is a calm, peaceful place, and really good if you need some time for yourself.

I had brought a backpack with me, with my kor´nea I had begun to write in. When I was slowly walking along the beach of my small island, I watched the greenish sea, and suddenly saw something, aproximately twenty meters away from the shore, in the sea. It drift closer to the beach, and I recognized it being some sort of big jellyfish, two meters in diameter, with long, thin tentacles. It was shining in dark blue and bright red – it seems, like many of the creatures in Tufolehn are quite colorful.
It was washed to the beach finally, by the surf. I stayed away from it – didn´t know, if the nettles were dangerous – and admired it´s beautiful colors.
I think, I will have to name the creatures I discover – I don´t have a good name for this one, maybe one of my blog readers can help me out with that?

Today I was sitting in my Relto, shivering (I got me a cold, it´s really not the best place to work…) and writing into my first kor´nea. My gahrohevtee become better, but my progress is slow.

Anyway, so I was sitting there, writing, when I suddenly got a KI-mail. It was from a guy who called himself Dr. Forberg. He wrote, he was the leader of an independent expedition, and had heard of my projects from a fellow explorer. He asked for a meeting to discuss my possible involvement with said expedition. He mentioned their capacious funds and the possibilities resulting from those.

I was suspicious at first, but my curiosity made me writing back almost instantly. I agreed to meet him, and asked where and when. He answered quickly, and we agreed to meet in Ae´Gura, in front of the guild hall.

When I arrived there, a bunch of people were standing around and talking, as usual – and one guy stood a little backwards, looking around, as if he waited for someone. I approached him, and it was said Dr. Forberg. We talked a little, and then he asked me to come to a more secluded place so we could talk in privacy. He lead me through the Nexus into a hood named Kurat (which had a very interesting design, by the way – never saw anything like that in other neighbourhoods). There we used a linking book, and stood in an age Dr. Forberg called Risoahl. It was warm and damp, and a lot of birds sang. We stood inmidst a forest of giant bamboo – up to six feet in diameter, and dozens of meters high.

We talked for nearly two hours. Dr. Forberg told me a lot about their expedition, that it was privately financed by an explorer who wanted to stay anonymous and that there were more than 40 people involved, most of them scientists of different fields.

The more I heard about this group, the more I got interested – they would provide solutions to a lot of my concerns about not being able to restore or at least secure my ages and areas – they had the means which I hadn´t.
The next thing that came into my mind was – why would they need me?
Dr. Forberg seemed to know what I was thinking and told me, that they had no one able to write, at least until now. They did not find enough information on age writing, and hoped to learn it from someone, who knew it already. I told him, I was only beginning, but he seemed to be satisfied with that. If I would like to come with him, he would introduce me to the rest of the staff. I agreed, just said I had to prepare some things.
We agreed to meet some hours later in said ´hood, and I linked to my Relto.

Just came back from my first trip to Tufolehn. Well, it is an interesting age, at the same time it is very minimalist.
If I understood the book of commentary correctly, this is the typical style which Anesh wrote in, and it was appreciated by many (including Tumak).
I put on my maintainer suit (don´t ask me, where I got it from) and laid my hand on the linking panel.
The area I linked in to was a small, flat island amidst a vast, green ocean. The sky and the sun looked quite similar to those on earth.

In the shallow water around the island, there were strange, round creatures – maybe invertebrates – formed like little, green balls with red spots in various sizes. At least think those are animals, can´t tell for sure. Other than that, I didn´t see any animals or plant life. I heard no other sounds than the ocean surf.

There is another, bigger island in the near vicinity of the first one, but I chose not to swim over to it before the basic tests – maybe the water is acidic or poisonous, I´d rather find that out the comfortable way.

I´ve taken some samples of soil and water and plan on coming back soon. For now, I´ve got a lot of preparations to make for my first book, my first age.

(edited to give more details on my visit)

I´ve returned to the general area where I´d found the book of commentary. The house, where it had laid in, was in good condition, and so I searched it inch for inch.

I found some notebooks, appearantly written by Tumak, so I suppose, the house must have belonged to him.

I quickly read through the notebooks – most of the stuff was not very interesting – but then I found a part, where Tumak mentioned a secret room, where he had the descriptive books he had researched! I suddenly felt exhilarated, and looked for an entrance.

Finally, after two hours of examination, I found a secret lever, which opened a door behind a bookshelf. There I found the aforementioned secret book room – and a leatherbound tome, with the name “Tufolehn” written on it in D´ni letters.
A descriptive book!
My hands trembled, when I took the book from the place it had rested for hundreds of years.

I opened it slowly, and there it was, the linking panel, showing a bright, amazing panorama.

Now I´ll have to visit this age – see it for myself!

I´m just a single person. Obviously, I know, but that is what came into my mind today, when I thought about restoring places written or built by the D´ni.

It´s a great task to do all the restoration work – I´m not very good in handcraft, technology or translation. So when it comes to tidy up a place, so that explorers can visit it without a wall collapsing on them (there, I told you I would bear that in my mind for some time!), I feel overstrained with all the work needed to accomplish that.

So I fear, I´ll have to stick to writing my own, new ages until I have a solution for that.
On the opposite, I won´t be able to do much restoration on my own ages as well, if needed… this is really concerning me. How could I open an area, which I couldn´t make safe enough for people not getting hurt?

I´ll have to think this over.

Finally! Today I made another trip to the city proper (still a little dizzy, so I took it slow).

I tried my luck in a district which is in a much better state than the other ones I´d visited before.
After a short time looking around, I found a house with the symbol of the guild of ink makers over the door – jackpot!
It seems to have been a storage for this guild. The door, which was very big and made of a heavy, stable stone (maybe even nara?) was broken, probably during the fall.

I went inside, always looking for falling walls (I´ll do that for some time, I fear …), and found a room filled with shelves. On each shelve there were dozens of big vessels, sealed, each with the symbol of the guild of ink makers on the front.

I decided to open one – and it was filled with a dark liquid – ink! And not any ink, if I´m right, but relehm!

Some of the seals of the vessels were broken, and the ink dried, some of the vessels were empty – but nevertheless I´ve now a really big supply for my work.

I´ve been at a doctor today, and guess what he told me: I´ve a slight concussion. Well, that explains the headaches and why I´m feeling dizzy sometimes.
He looked at me very sternly and said: “No stress!”

As if he knew I wouldn´t take his advice. Well, call me unreasonable, but I don´t have time to waste laying around in my bed and recovering.
Just have to make sure I don´t climb or jump when being dizzy.
Don´t tell my mother.

I sat in my Relto in the morning and counted my kortee´nea, my blank books. I have 14 of them, enough for the time being, I suppose.

Then I started to translate the book of commentary on my own (still don´t have a translator yet).

Progress is really slow, my D´ni isn´t very good, and many words I don´t know.

I´ve managed to find out the name of the age the book was written about, though: Tufolehn.
The book is quite interesting: not only did the author – a member of the guild of writers, but not the writer of the age itself – write about the age itself, but also – and this is even more interesting – how it was written. This is more valuable then I´ve first thought!

The name of the writer of the age seems to habe been Anesh, and the way the other guy, Tumak, writes about him, makes me think, he was quite respected in the writers guild.

Well, the trip to city proper didn´t go well. On my search for ink I stumbled into a house which was quite unstable… I didn´t see it coming, until a whole wall came down on me.

Fortunately I´m always wearing a hard hat when venturing into ruined districts… otherwise this could have ended badly for me. A big chunk of wall hit me on the head – it chopped a big scratch into my helmet. Another one touched on my arm, but only lightly.

I´m not hurt badly, except for a biiig headache… maybe I should see a doctor, just to be sure.

Besides from the headache, I brought nothing of value with me… the place is very much devastated. Not much left there.

After that I went to my Relto and once again examined the burnt linking book. From the looks of it, I more and more come to think it IS a descriptive book – so this age, Afelahn, is essentially defunct now. (or at least the link to it.)

I think, I´ll stay with the name for my own, very first written age – if all goes well, I´d like to set up a “base camp” or an office or something like that in the age … Relto is a nice place, but space is limited, and it can be quite cold sometimes, even with the fireplace activated.

But… without ink, I´m not even ready to start writing, which is really annoying right now.

If someone knows a place, where one can find ink, please let me know!

I still didn´t manage to get ink… the few houses of ink makers I found (only 2, in one of the higher districts) were empty, no signs of “relehm” there.

But I found another thing which will hopefully help me a lot learning the Art: a book of commentary, 200+ pages, all written in D´ni, of course. The age it belongs to I couldn´t find, though.

I´ll need the help of a really skilled translator now – any volunteers? No payment, but the warm feeling of having helped a promising young writer?

I´ll go for another “treasure hunt” today in the afternoon. If anyone looks for me, I´ll be in the city proper.

Ever since I heard the first explorers were able to learn how to use the Art, I´ve been eager to do so myself.

Now, after months of reading, learning, watching, I think, I´m ready to try and write my first age.

Last week I had ventured into one of the more devastated districts of the city proper. On this little expedition, I broke into… err, entered a house, that seems to once have belonged to a member of the original guild of writers. I searched the house for anything helpful, and actually found a pile of kortee´nea, blank books, waiting for someone to write into them!

The second discovery I made was the burnt remain of a linking book. On the cover, barely noticable, a D´ni word was written.

I managed to transcribe it, and it says “Afelahn”. I guess, this was the name of the age. The book has no maintainers stamp (at least, as far as I can tell, it really is badly burnt) and of course has ceased to work. If this is a descriptive book, then it seems to have been rejected by the maintainers… a failed work of the late owner of this house perhaps?

I´ve tinkered with the idea of using the name for my first age… would this be appropriate?

I´ve just started to learn how to admin this blog. I think, I´ll keep the default theme for now, I actually like it… the picture strangely fits how I´m feeling right now… walking down a beautiful road, with no clue where it´ll lead me…

Well, my first blog ever. So it begins. (This is what you write, when you don´t know what you should write first …)

Greetings, fellow explorers!

The Subterranean Restorations group is holding a Q&A this Saturday, August 28rd, at 5pm GMT in Seret. Our projects have been progressing nicely and we are hoping to release soon (barring complications).

(Correction: The event is on the 28th, not today.)

(OOC: This event will take place on the GoW’s Deep Island shard. Information here.)

Professor Clarke

After my meeting with Jilen and sampling some of his home-made wine I had been entertaining the idea of experimenting with something similar, perhaps using the Norapods from Fahets.

With Rob’s help I was able to acquire some equipment to add to Sul so that I could start my experiments, Sul has the best source of heat needed for the process so it seemed logical that I should set up the gear there.

Took us a day or so to get the equipment set up and the heat right. But we eventually got the Norapods processing. Given my fondness for harder alcohol like whiskey and brandy, I figured I’d try with a Norapod Brandy, fruit brandies are not unheard of after all.
The first attempt was a disaster, I’m still not exactly sure what happened, but the result was a mess and tasted highly unpleasant.
It took us a few more tries, experimenting as we went to get a formula that worked right.

Last night, we celebrated the success by testing the first bottle of 40% Norapod brandy that doesn’t taste like something served up in the depths of hell. The bitter after taste of the Norapod seems to be a little more pronounced in the brandy, I think I may have to look into finding a way to scale that back if possible, but it’s not a bad taste, I if mixing it would help.
I was fully prepared that the Norapods wouldn’t be suitable for the process, little surprised they worked.

Once some extra fine tuning is complete I think I shall process some bottles for aging and see how those taste in the future. I need to send a bottle off to Blake to try to see if he wants some for the pub he’s restoring.

After restoring Sholek’s Temple, I’m tackling something substantially larger. I haven’t made it much past Fasek’s waiting room (the building is badly damaged) but the designs for this place seem massive. I’d imagine they could have fit twice the population of the D’ni empire in this place (not sure why they’d need so much space). As far as I can tell, the building is underground. The plans I have show fifty floors, but the document isn’t complete. This place doesn’t seem to have always been on the up-and-up, so I’m not surprised I can’t find much on it. This place’ll take some time. I’m spending my days squeezing through tight spaces between the rubble so I can see what’s up ahead. As for right now, I think I found one of the rooms marked “warden’s office” (warden being a modification of “protector” and “maintainer”).

I’ve been following the restoration of Tosholek closely, Whilyam has been talking about it frequently, along with the troublesome issues that arose during the restoration cycle.

It was only this morning that I had a chance to check it out. I sat at my desk in Sul, drinking my morning cup of English Breakfast looking at the Book he had left me. So I decided I should go take a look finally, I had been anticipating venturing into the area.

I linked into a long walkway which sat above the D’ni lake water, and was enclosed by cliffs. I noticed the water here was a lot brighter than elsewhere in the cavern and wondered if Whil had been experimenting with pellets there. But that wasn’t the only thing I noticed.

As I had Linked right in behind Diafero and Blake.

Not long after I arrived a young lady Linked in, Ri’ana, who was Blake’s fiancé.

We wondered around for a bit, looking over the work Whil had done, checking out the damaged areas. The walkway leads up some stairs to a balcony, which contains a notebook regarding Sholek and the location we were in. The balcony lead off in two directions, one of which was blocked off the other lead to an auditorium. In the auditorium was a balcony, which I am guessing is where Sholek spoke from to his followers (that or played Julliet).

I spoke to Diafero for a while as I read the notebook, Blake and Ri’ana wandered off to explore the lower levels, eventually ‘Fero left me to go join them.
I was half way through the book when I could hear laughter coming from below, I glanced over the balcony wondering if I could see the others, when I noticed they had all decided to go for a dip in the Lake.

I figured I could leave the book for now, I plan to come back and transcribe it for the Archive anyway. So I decided to go down and join them, it’s been a while since I last ended up in the lake (thanks to a damaged Linking Book).

Wonder if I can get this glow out of my clothes…