Beneath - An Uru Explorers Journey Through D'ni and its Ages

I find more and more of my time is spent away from the cavern and the Ages. Life has slowly been pulling me in another direction and I find myself pondering if it is actually possible to leave the cavern behind. All the things I’ve seen, all the things I’ve done, all the things I have accomplished with Ages like Fahets and Cass.

Is it possible to leave it all behind and move on?

My focus returned to the cavern today with Leo from the Guild of Messengers contacting me regarding the cover I had said I would do for the Go magazine. Given that I promised to do it before I closed myself off from the rest of the explorer community I figured I should make it.

I also realized that I needed to make the wallpaper for September and get that posted.

Whilst my mind was set to cavern related activities I figured I should check in with Fahets and see how things are progressing.
It was raining as I Linked in, as annoying as the rain used to be I found myself missing it. I am guessing it has been raining for some time as the dry cracked earth that was in the basin was now a shallow pool of water.
It was also refreshing to see that some of the old wildlife was returning with the water to feed it.

It will take some time, but the Age will flourish again. The Age seems to have stabilized nicely.

The plan was to release the new portions of Cass in stages. Starting with the Link in area then the 4 wings.

But like most plans, these changed. In the end it was decided that we’d work on the other wings then release it all in one. In the past we made a large effort to be transparent, to share information about how the work was going, like we had to answer to the explorer community.

We once modeled ourselves on the DRC, watching them with their communication silence and thinking “we can do better than that”. But as the years have moved on, I find myself really not giving a damn anymore. We’re not the DRC, never have been. We don’t answer to the community, never will do. So to hell with doing things the way of others instead of the way we want to do things.
So Cass will be released when we damn well please, we’re not going to waste time approving development and restoration logs for publication when that can be better spent working on other stuff.

That said, I took some images of progress of Cass today. The Harbingers wing is pretty much finished at this point, just awaiting some documentation to be added.

So focus has moved to the Restorers Wing which is also coming along nicely, although moving one of the Ahyoheek tables from Tehren to the wing was a pain in the neck, those things are really damn heavy.

It’s been a while since I had last stepped foot on Fahets. My last visit showed me the upheaval that was wrought by the last series of tremors. The basin walls had been shattered into splinters of rock, as a result the surrounding mass of water had rushed in and flooded the area.

For a while things seemed to quieten down, I had even started constructing wooden walkways spanning the new watery areas linking the new islands with others, even constructing a dock and a boat so I could venture out further.

Of course it didn’t last.

We were constructing the hut when the tremors started again, this time they were significantly more violent than before. Several times we were thrown to the floor.

The others left, I stayed, longer than perhaps I should. But I at least got to see a prelude to what was to come.
The sky was darkening, loud thunder rumbled the rock beneath my feet. As I looked out over the swamp I noticed that patches of water were beginning to steam, and boil, the wildlife in the water floating to the surface dead as they were boiled alive.

At that point I felt it best to leave the Age for now, before I was harmed myself.

Today however, I decided to return, with a suit of course.

Such changes…

The Link in point survived, but the surrounding area did not fare so well. In the middle of Fahets that was, a giant fissure has pushed up out of the rock below, from it comes a vibrant orange glow from the magma at its bottom.
The walkways have been rendered useless and in some cases have been destroyed. The formation of the surrounding rock has shifted drastically. The once walls of the basin are jutting spires of rock, it’s hard to tell there once was a basin. The surrounding rock has pushed up or sunk, I can’t tell but the area of Fahets that was is now in a large sunken recess. The fissure has dried up the surrounding water, its is now no longer a swampy area but a barren plane of cracked mud. A lot of the plant-life has died (like the Norapods) but some grass and the Glowcaps have managed to hold on.

Outside of the recess it’s worse. Everywhere I can see the water has vanished, cracked earth spreads out meeting blackened rock where more fissures riddle the surface. The area out there is too dangerous for people to venture out in, I think we’re going to have to block access off to those portions.

The sky still rumbles with thunder, the tremors are faint but still happen frequently, but I’m not fooled this time, it’s just a calm before another storm.

And yet I am helpless, I cannot seem to locate what the problem is with the Age, why it continues this decay.
And honestly, at this point, I’m sorely tempted to throw my hands up and say to hell with it, let it succumb to its fate and be done with it.

I’ve been so worn out lately. Cass is requiring a lot of input from me, given that I’m the chief historian most of the books being placed in the Age fall to me to either be written/compiled or to be checked out. Then I have my experiments with Fahets to keep an eye on.

I’m about ready to lie down under a tree and sleep for a few weeks.

Kez and I have taken to spending more time on Kehrahn, both of us are under considerable stress at the moment and it’s nice to get away and just relax somewhat.
So we’ve been cataloging some of the wildlife around the lake, a pretty diverse selection.
Kez likes the little starburst flowers personally my favorites are what we call the Ghostcap mushrooms, tiny little white mushrooms that seem to glow with brightness.

We did, however, discover some odd berries, some very odd berries. The remind me greatly of acorns, they have a hard lower cup which cradles the actual fruit. I picked on of the smaller ones to study and to eventually try.
They’re pretty tasty, nice and sweet and kind of safe to eat. I say kind of because whilst they didn’t poison me or anything of the sort, they did make me trip the heck out.
Turns out the Todah Berries as we called them are hallucinogenic in nature.

I’ve taken a few more samples to take back with me to Sul for further study, probably not the best idea to go around eating them though.

Progress on Cass has been coming along nicely, I’ve been trying to give the Age my attention when I’m not working on my experiments relating to Fahets.

We have been having some discussion as to whether we should release all the museum wings at once or bit by bit. In the end we have decided to open it up one wing at a time, we won’t feel so inclined to rush it that way.

So the Harbingers Wing will be the first opened, not sure when yet. Whilst the artifacts are easy to install, it’s actually the information books that will take the time as they need to be written and approved.

Yesterday I worked on the new floor plan, originally we were going to have a Guild of Maintainers helmet from one of their suits on the display, but then a team discovered an in tact suit that was on display elsewhere. Amazingly it was in pretty good condition given the state of the building it was in, so we have been cleaning it up to move to Cass instead.

Hopefully people will enjoy what we’ve found to display there.