Uru Blogs

Thanks to Dr. Watson and JWPlatt, statistics on the number of pellets dropped are once again available in the Pellet Points neighbourhood. The return of so many explorers becomes even more clear in those statistics! That is why I decided to graph the data, like I used to do. I present to you, the pellet graph for February:

Like on all my previous graphs, the pellet points are calculated relative to November 5th, 2007. Why? That was simply the first day of which Dr. Watson shared his data. The 100% mark corresponds to the 299 pellet points reached on that day. (For your information, the record is 882 points, reached in one of the very first days Er’cana was released.)

Some notable things:

• In the beginning of the month, there was just a hand full of pellets dropped by the explorers that had stayed in the cavern.
• When the news spread of the DRC’s visit to the Cavern and explorers returned to D’ni, pellet points increased tremendously.
• The daily average almost reaches 100%.  As you can see on my last graph, the daily average has been below 100% since February, 2008. I assume that the 100% mark was reached somewhere in the past few days after two years.
• The total average does not seem to take the pellets dropped in 2007 and 2008 into account.

Met up with the transport guy yesterday. Took some effort to get to him, apparently he’s afraid that the DRC would have problems with his actions so he prefers to stay unknown. I don’t know for sure if they would, but I understand his decision. We talked about the kind of things that he can deliver, prices, etc. He gets the solar-panel stuff from a company called Modern Outpost. Seems pretty reliable, but they’re expensive… Add to that the compensation for his efforts. It’s going to take a pretty large bite out of my savings, but I think it will be worth it. I sure wish now that I had a lighter laptop though, power-consumption-wise.

Apparently he’s going to Link the stuff over. Normally it would take two weeks to get the stuff down here, so that’s good. Still, he says the process can take anywhere between 3 days and a week. Guess I’ll be hanging around in Tom’s hood some more until then.

Arthur showed up again, out of the blue. I talked to him for a while. He seems a lot more together than he was last time, but he’s still obviously been affected by his journey. “The Breaker is coming. The Devil is coming.” were the two things he says he’s seen in his dreams.

Location: The Cleft. Eddy County, New Mexico USA.

Today has been an interesting day. I have so far Linked to a strange Island in the sky then linked back to Earth but thousands of miles from where I began, I met a Mr. Zandi (nice bloke by the way) who sent me on a road to a quest and now I have been appointed to take a Journey, a type of pilgrimage I believe by Yeesha herself. Well, an exceptionally well crafted Imager avatar of her ( I suppose the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, when it comes to crafting imager tech.) At any rate I am going to take this Journey, I know some back at Headquarters are against this idea but I believe it is important. I’ve convinced Mr. Zandi to mail this to you (He was quite understanding seeing as how I only had Chinese currency to reimburse him with.) I do not know how long this will take to reach you but I will attempt to contact you shortly. I should be able to meet with any ’handlers’ as soon as the read the desert using the Cleft Book in the pillar. Now it is time to, as Zandi said,  ”Enter the Tree”.

Sweet zombie zombie!

Plenty more explorers down in D’ni now. Some familiar faces… some of them I’d kinda hoped I wouldn’t see again, though. Its not nearly as peaceful as it used to be, sadly. But, you’ve got to take the bad with the good.

The real question, is, I guess, “Is the tree growing again?” Or, is the Tree being rebuilt? As WORDs says, only a dead tree is built.

As far as I’m concerned, only the gathered, the called, can make the Tree grow again. And, if anything, it will be the Art that will cause it to grow, again. The writing of Books sustains the Tree, as far as I’m concerned, for the links that the Art creates (By “creates” I mean the Links, not the Ages) tends and encourages new growth on the branches of the Tree. We, the gathered, the called, tend the Tree by our Writing, our explorations. It is a pity some see our Writing as killing the Tree.

I have not yet Written my first age, my korfah, the concept has not grown in my mind, the Words have not begun to flow onto the pages of the kor’nee-ah, but, in time, I believe they will. I will contribute to the tending of the Tree, in time.

EDIT: I think it should be noted, that only a small, select, few I’ve seen that I’d have preferred not to have seen. If you’re not sure if you’re among those people: You’re most likely not among them.

Far from triumph and huge successes, though. Surface life has kept me extremely busy, and I barely managed to visit Payiferen in time to get my last pod portal.

I came back yesterday with a feeling of “did I leave the gas on?” and found that, in fact, I had forgotten to turn the main power off. I expected the battery to be depleted but the pod windows were clear and there was still enough power to turn the lights on, as well as sounds. Either the windows do not consume as much power as I remembered or this pod is getting some extra juice from its solar panels.

It was night outside, and the sky was glittering with minuscule lights as usual. Some say it’s the starlight passing through the sand storms, other that it’s the sand itself sparkling with silver in the air. I pondered about that for a moment, then just sighed and basked in the view for a while before heading reluctantly back home.

I Linked onto a strange Mystlike Island but instead of being surrounded by water it was surrounded by mist suggesting it was at the very peak of a very high mountain range. It was also considerably smaller, and rather barren. I was very surprised that the Book came with me in the Link. As far as I had known that was simply impossible, yet here it was. I was able to fasten it to my belt and then I explored the place for a bit. Finding a small pillar I walked around it and noticed a hand symbol. I reached out and touched it. The symbol glowed and noise issued forth. The pillar opened to reveal a book inside opening it up I could see what appeared to be a volcano in the middle of the desert. Without a second thought I touched the panel and Linked…

Here’s the footage from the D’ni Musicological Research ‘hood that I promised. The opportunity: the inauguration of the neighbourhood. Turjan Aylahn (the main guy on the D’ni music scene) had hooked up his equipment to the sound system in the community room, using it to play recordings of his pieces. The piece that I witnessed (and recorded) is called rehlehmok reveelai (‘the ink of the soul’). The recording quality isn’t great, my apologies for that, I’ll try to fiddle with the settings on my camera before I use it again.

Here’s some links about D’ni music research, for those interested. There’s a lot of French, but also cool music, pictures and info.

Cool stuff! Keep it up, D’ni music people!

Hey all,

Sorry for taking so long to post again, it took some effort to get to some power/internet. I’m in Tom’s hood right now (he says hi). He’s got a charger set up here, he gets power from the Er’cana factory or something. He’s pretty good with this stuff; he copied the DRC’s methods of using the lattice for internet. I don’t know how he does it…

Anyway, it’s really good to be back. When I got to Relto I just put down my bag and relaxed… It felt like coming home after a long time. Everything was still there, just as I had left it.

After unpacking a bit I thought I’d look for some people with similar sleeping rhythms, so I started making my way to the Dutch neighbourhood. On my way there I came through the D’ni Musicological Research ‘hood, where a demonstration of D’ni music was going on! It’s great to see that explorers are still researching on such a wide spectrum of subjects. Although I only came in for the final piece, I took some footage of it which I’ll be posting soon (uploading to YouTube from here is taking FOR EVER).

After the demonstration had ended, I went on to find my fellow countrypeople, chatting in the ‘hood when I arrived. It was a great reunion. We talked about old times, new people…

When our group dispersed I met Tess, Tom and Umgenni at the pub, where we had a few drinks (too many?), courtesy of Tom’s smuggling skills. I was informed that there’s a guy who imports stuff from the surface at a small price, and apparently he’s done some laptop power set-ups before. I’ll have to try and seek him out, see what the details are.

As for today, I’ve mostly been reacquainting myself with the cavern, finding out who’s distributing food, and so on. Hopefully I’ll get a permanent power/internet source soon, and then I can start thinking about Writing.

Almost ready, going to pack my laptop just after posting this and then I’ll link. Hope to post again soon.

See you on the flip-side! :)

Shorah and welcome!

It’s been almost two years since I last visited the cavern. Since then I’ve occupied myself mostly with my studies on the surface, though I kept in touch with cavern acquaintances. Apparently, there’s been a recent return/influx of explorers to the cavern after reports from the DRC about a security device having been set off… I’m taking this is a sign that I should heed the Call again, too, and see what’s going on down there. In any case it will be nice to meet old friends again.

Since this will be already my third era of cavern exploration, I decided to make things interesting (and my repeated absence from my surface-dwelling friends and family a bit more bearable :) ) by creating this site to document my adventures. I’ll try to post here frequently with pictures, experiences, musings, and other hopefully interesting material.

As some of the D’ni-knowledgeable among you may have guessed, the title of the site doesn’t refer to its textual contents, but is rather a reference to the D’ni term gahrohevtee – the language used to write Linking Books. The fact is that I’ve set myself to start learning the Art of Writing when I get to D’ni. Quite ambitious, I know, but I’ve dreamed of becoming a Writer for a very long time, and now is as good a time as any to start learning. So, next to a general blog, this website will document my progress in becoming a Writer, and hopefully at some point the Ages I Write. We’ll see how that all goes.

Anyway, today I retrieved the wooden box where I kept my Relto Book, and tomorrow I’ll be packing up my stuff and heading off. I’ll bring my laptop, though I’m not sure yet about how to get power and internet access… I’ll have to ask around when I get there.

Oh, I also heard the Bahro are back? I’m somewhat worried about that since I don’t know what happened between them and Yeesha in the past two years, but we’ll see. Well, despite my excitement I’m going to try and get some sleep (that reminds me, the weird day/night conditions in the cavern and the Ages will take some getting used to… ugh). See you all down there! :)

PS: There are still a couple of small graphical problems with some areas of the site, hopefully I’ll get a chance to work those out soon.

DRAEC Productions is proud to present…

Cavern Watch! Cavern Watch is a show about the cavern, and all current events that AREN’T involved with the DRAEC. Our first episode aired yesterday.

Ah, sweet serenade of Relient K in the background. Wait, there isn’t any foreground sounds. Oh well! The Fun Run doesn’t have a set date yet, but I assure you, it will be coming soon! I thank the organizers of the Fun Run for helping me get this video running!

    I took another trip to Teledahn yesterday. Amazingly, I only go down there every other day.  I take a few pictures, get them developed on the surface, (OOC: Exchange them into a usable file form) and go into D’ni to write a report. That’s about it. I plan to try and find out about the inner workings of Ahnonay as a back project as well, but I have to get someone to help me finish the age… I’m having a tough time figuring out what some broken mechanisms in Teledahn were used for, because it seems unusable, even in a good state of repair. Sadly, I don’t have the equipment or the skills to get up to the broken item, so I will have to rely on my own KI photos and some surface technology to see it’s workings.

     Here’s some new photos I took for my report on Teledahn’s walkways:

     You’ll have to come to my meetings to find out the importance of these photos! When I visited Teledahn for the first time in years, my mouth fell open. I forgot the wonderful age’s beauty, I forgot how amazing the world is where Shroomie lives, and how amazing Shroomie is in general! The flappers kept on flapping, and the bird things, of which the names escape me, kept on flying. It bothers me how annoying it will be to snap a photo of those flying buggers. At least there is a method to getting Shroomie to come close. I tried to get the old girl up close and personal last week, but with no avail. this is the best I could manage.

     I truly, truly love Teledahn, I could never enjoy the D’ni or Bahro more without it.

     I also have more information on who will be attending the meetings this weekend! I have news the the Guild of Messengers will have a few people in attendance, as well as a probable appearance by the CCN. I think I will be filming the meeting for YouTube, so that is good news for people in odd time zones (Hawaii? Australia?)

     I have heard of an idea for a D’ni based University, and I like the idea. I hope I can make the meeting, so I can get an opportunity to teach current D’ni sciences! Phew, that’s a long entry… Hopefully I’ll see you in my meetings!

Sorry for taking up uber amount of space on URUBlogs!

Oh Ahnonay, how much I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.
Well, not many actually, but it’s extremely annoying when you find you missed one cloth and have to go through the whole thing again. Aargh.

On other news, I was in Negilahn waiting for the portal to appear and decided to pass the time by writing a short review of a steampunk YA book I read recently. So here you go:

“Thomas Riley”, by Nick Valentino

Plot recap: Thomas Riley and his assistant Cynthia Bassett are alchemists and weapon makers for the country of West Canvia, in the middle of a decennial war with the bordering country of Lemuria. When Cynthia becomes the unintentional receptacle of the soul of the Duke’s sister, she and Thomas will have to cross the Lemurian border and find the only person who can help them – their enemy counterpart. Of course things don’t go as planned, and adventure ensues. And oh, did I mention there are sky pirates?

Review: I quite liked this book. The first few pages didn’t quite grip me but I liked how the story developed from there, and the plot is a simple, straightforward romp which makes for good, lighthearted reading.
I really loved the attention to details and the inclusion of nice scenes like the mechanical bear or the ghost people – background touches that work both as world building and possible hooks for sequels, without burdening the story with dangling subplots.
Thomas and Cynthia also work very well as a duo, and you can easily believe they have been working together for some time. Cynthia in particular, while being absent for a good while in the second part of the novel, leaves a remarkable impression as a strong-willed capable woman with distinct shades of Emma Peel – especially in her attention to a comfortable yet stylish wardrobe!

There are however a few things that didn’t work for me: the obsession on describing characters and their clothing bring to the occasional halt in the narration, and there are also some typos (‘decent’ for ‘descent’ over all, since it was a repeated offense) and some things that look like leftovers from a rewriting, which a stronger editing before publication could have taken care of.
I was also confused by the use of some terms, like ‘Gatling’, which hint back to our real world, since there wasn’t any clear hint in the story about how much the world in the book differs from our own (or if there were any, I missed them). To use an example: Girl Genius, while using fictional countries like Thomas Riley, also uses real ones like England and states several times that the background for the action is the European continent.

Overall a very nice YA book, good for young and not-so-young readers. Here’s to hoping for a sequel!

Location: Inner Asia, A few Thousand miles above sea level.

  Returning to civilization after the Shambhala mission. Sven our 78 years young linguist came up to the entrance of my tent carrying a package from below.  Apparently even in Asia those hearing the name Thelonius Higginsbottom think of a frail Ivy League Professor out on a lark. Not a demolitions expert/ self-taught archeologist in the prime of life.  Opening the small package which of course was from work, I found a letter and a small brown book.  The letter indicated that the DRC had reopened the Cave. The door to an ancient and incredibly advanced civilization that could travel to different worlds, it was open again and Manifest Destiny and Co wasn’t going to miss another opportunity.  I then opened the Book , looked at the Linking panel amazed, then the pages inside. I was surprised how different it was from the Books I had read about. Along with D’ni script there were pictograms, which I had never heard of in the books by Cyan. Leafing through pages I found a small folded not inside in English script.  

“The storm has come. The rain has passed. The tree… remains.

But far in the distance, a new storm builds with dry, titian clouds of dust and destruction.

They are free; they are gathering.

And now, choices abound. Some simple, some deep.

Even now, decide. Here explore alone – the place where all journeys begin. There are no others in the Cleft. It is empty desert. Yet there is wisdom on that path. Or here,  explore together – the cavern  lives, and grows. There are friends. And enemies. Laughing and waiting.

Alone or together, destruction is coming. Alone or together, find a way. Alone or together, make a home. 

They come. He comes. And I will come as well.”

That was the spur. I would not wait any longer. I gathered all the supplies I could carry that would not hurt the rest of the expedition and touched the linking panel. A tingle ran up my arm and darkness swept over me and in a few moments it was Day 1 on a new world.

Thank goodness I don’t look like one.

Something happened today that has depressed me to the point of no return. Return to doing anything to help the community. Well not entirely true in the sense I may help in other ways, I just haven’t decided yet. At least there is symmetry. It was the explorers that breathed life back into me, not the cavern, D’ni or Yeesha but the people. They opened my eyes to the possibilities within me for which I will be forever grateful for. But some of that community have now pushed me further away.

As long I as I can remember I have helped others not for money or a pat on the back but because it is the right thing to do. Also I get great satisfaction from helping others more than helping myself. But when the intent is pure and clear, to get is thrown back at you twisted and distorted I had to ask is it all worth it. The answer I came up with is NO.

(spoilers for Ahnonay follow)

Dnì has now given up trying to find a variation of his name that the Nexus won’t block out, and is now going by the alias of Lancaster Drew.

We spent last night working through his Ahnonay; since it was his first time there I let him work out how the puzzle worked, nudging him here and there when he missed some important clue (I didn’t really want to spend a week there). In the end we managed to get to maintenance, where I got him to understand how the whole thing works by the clever use of bad sexual innuendo. Good times.

Next goal: linking to sphere 4.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

- John Lennon

I’ve been a bit swamped lately, what with making myself at home in City and with the Journey and all the other events that have been taking place of late, so pardon me for recapping events that took place over the weekend. Friday night after revisiting Teledahn and Gahreesen I stopped by the Karaoke ‘hood to attend the “D’ni Cocktail Party”; no singing (at least while I was there), just a fun little shindig with some music and some dancing and a whole bunch of meeting new folks. The event was DJed by Donahoo, and everybody had a great time (even if the playlist was all 80s music ). I got to hang out with Zuri and just socialize with the others for a while, and it was a lot of fun. There’s a Karaoke night there every other Friday, and I’m not much one for karaoke but I might stop by some time just to hang out.

In contrast to the levity of Friday night, Saturday was a more solemn occasion. Ghaelen of the Guild of Healers hosted a Memorial and Welcome Home event at the Kahlo Pub. There were two sessions; I attended the morning one, and it was very moving. Dozens of Explorers made it, honoring those who have passed away since we were first Called to the Cavern. There were plenty of those who, like me, were just experiencing the community for the first time in person, and had never met any of these incredible people… but it seemed everyone who had had a story to share. By the end of the memorial I felt that even though I’d never met them, I had a real sense for what they had meant to the community. It was an incredibly heartfelt occasion, and served to remind me of how close-knit the Called are, and it filled me with a sense of pride to realize that I too belong in the amazing group of people.

Afterward a few of us met atop the Great Stairs to get to know one another, and there was more than one familiar face in the crowd. Eventually Zuri and I made our way to Jalak for a few rounds of Quick Cubes, but despite the laughter and the good-natured banter, it was a more subdued occasion than it normally is. I can’t speak for Zuri, but I was definitely thinking of those Explorers I’d never had the chance to meet, but was glad I’d gotten to have a sense of them through the Memorial.

Oh, and as an aside, there’s been some buzz on the internet about the return of the Assemblee de Restauration de la Musique D’ni (ARMD) to the Cavern. Turjan has established the D’ni Musicoligical Research ‘hood, and I’m very interested in the work they’ve been doing. Their goal is to understand and recreate the music of the D’ni, and the music they’ve posted so far has been absolutely GORGEOUS (a musical group, D’marnah, has put their research into practice, and you can listen to their work here). I’m particularly enamored with the ahnomeprad, their reconstruction of a D’ni bowed crystal harp; it sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before. I’ve got absolutely no musical talent of my own, but Turjan says they’re looking for writers, historians and linguists to assist them as well as musicians, so hopefully I’ll be able to contribute in some small way.

Explorers,

SR is reevaluating the projects we have. Many areas are dangerous or require too great an investment of resources to achieve. As such, expect existing projects to be removed or have their current restoration phase reduced. Also expect some of our new projects to appear. This process will take some time.

Kingsley