Beneath

It’s been difficult juggling the various projects and studies I have on the go. I’m still sifting through all the information and Ages the DRC sent us trying to make sense of it all and compile various documents that will be required when the Ages are opened to the public.

I have managed to locate specimens of the beetles the D’ni used for the ink making process on one of the Ages passed over to our group. These specimens have been rehoused on Fahets in an enclosed environment as I do not wish to introduce a foreign entity into the Fahets wilderness as it could be disastrous. If I have learned anything from past issues it is that the Ages are about balance and harmony, it does not take much to cause disruption.
Sadly my luck with Korteenea and the properties that make up the books has not been so successful. There are still Ages to visit and perhaps I will find the answers I seek there.

The last few days have found me back upon Fahets overseeing the installation of a new area. It continues to amaze me the changes wrought within the Age, when I compare what sits before me with the photos from when I first Linked to Fahets…
Everywhere wildlife is growing without restraint, helped along by the continued stability that the Garohertee provided. I have even discovered new plants and animals that I had not seen before, all waiting to be studied.
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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 has been a while since I had last stepped foot upon Fahets. My last visited had showed me the upheaval that was wrought by the last series of earthquakes. The basin wall has been cracked and a section fallen away. The basin floor itself has shifted with one area dropping down and splitting the pond into two area, an upper pond and a lower pond. For a while it seemed as if things had quietened down so I started to venture out into the surrounding area taking stock of what damage there was. The tall stone columns seemed stable, but the ground showed signs of trouble with several pits that had opened up to reveal lava at the bottom of it. It is clear that this Age has stability issues…

The apparently stability did not last of course. I was down near the swamp area when the tremors started again, this time they were significantly more violent that any we had previously encountered. Several times we were thrown to the floor.
The others felt it prudent to leave, I stayed, longer than perhaps I should. But in doing so I witnessed a prelude of 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.

The rumble of the earth and the thunder above grew ever louder until the point it was almost deafening, at that point I felt it best to leave before I ended up hurt or worse.