Beneath

Well what a couple of entertaining days it has been.

I decided to get Beneath a domain name, unfortunately beneath.com was taken so I opted for dniexplorer.com.

I put a splash page up with some numbers referencing some lines in Words, whilst I worked on moving the site over and implementing the new layout just in case someone discovered it, I figured they’d transcribe the numbers and read the messages.

Word spread out into the community, and I watched as some people got close to figuring it out but not actually doing so, until someone finally did.

So I figured I’d continue and add some more puzzles, watching people solve them. I’m not really a puzzle person myself, I like Professor Layton but that’s about as far as it goes. But I thought I’d continue a narrative of sorts, on a certain subject leading up to a final puzzle and solution with a few red herrings thrown in.

There have been better puzzles in the community, but I enjoyed setting them up and I hope people enjoyed solving them.

To the people in the various, threads, around, I tip my hat.

Marein has posted a nice summery of the puzzle.

So to the old, welcome back to Beneath, to those new, welcome to Beneath, my journal of my explorations and discoveries in D’ni.

It was quite a shock Linking into Fahets once again, had grown accustom to the silence that greeted me, or the near silence. Sometimes a breeze would rustle the grass, or the slight creaking of the Norapods.

Today it was different, in contrast it was almost a cacophony of sound. In our absence the wildlife in Fahets has continued to grow, expand and flourish, the air was buzzing with activity from insects and the sounds of birds.

My desire to catalog the wildlife has me thinking about climbing out of the basin and exploring the surrounding area.

Not sure how long this will continue for, as thick clouds have gathered in the sky above and I can hear the rumble of thunder, sounds like it’s going to be a bad one. Hopefully the pump will continue working nicely until we install the new, less botched together, version.

Need to remove the book of commentary for now so it doesn’t get ruined. Perhaps it is also time to look into protecting the Link in point and books with a structure or something to shield from the rain.

The Christmas holidays saw the majority of us heading up to the surface to spend the season with family and friends.

For us it was a double new, it was the first Christmas of me being a US resident and the first Christmas in our own place. Despite some issues in November and the chaos of organizing it went well, the kids seem to certainly enjoy themselves.

With the holidays over I returned to the cavern to continue the work we are doing, one project was Kehrahn. Upon seeing Cass my wife expressed an interest in having a Linking Book to a similar location albeit purple instead of blue. So for our one year anniversary that is coming up at the end of the month I thought I would Write a small Age for her, I may not be able to give her the world, but I can give her a world (sappy I know but I adore my wife).

Work has been progressing nicely over the course of time, I based the design heavily on Cass with some changes (the Kehrahn Book is almost a copy of the Cass Book), I don’t plan to get into the habit of duplicating Books I feel it belittles the specialness of the Ages contained within, almost like mass production of a classing painting or something, not that I could deem any of my Ages to be classical, they simply are what they are.

Thankfully the project hasn’t been as much of a disaster as Winterbloom, which still hasn’t reached phase 5.

I have completed the changes finally, I would have been finished yesterday had I not taken time out to work on that small side project, but it was worth it.

We’ve been going over the Book making sure all is in order, from what I can tell it should be right.

We will soon be getting ready to return to see if things have worked out as I hope.