More on Museum Ages (or why i haven’t gotten the pie slices yet)

With a busy Surface life, I find it difficult to be in the right time at the right place to enter the portals for Negilahn and Dereno.  I rely on the Negilahn Calendar to see when the next portal will open.  Dereno’s, I’m told is a few hours later.  Unfortunately, my times to be in the Cavern and the portals have not aligned yet.  I’m glad that I have the books on my shelf, as I can reach them anytime.  Getting 8 people together and coordinating them is easy compared to waiting around for those portals, so I’m not ashamed that I haven’t already gotten these slices.  In due time.  And since the only thing that seems to not be permanent is the Calendar Stones (and to a lesser extent, access to Eder Delin), I’m not too worried about it.

By the way, my Bevin (Monkeyboy’s) has a Delin book.  Contact me if you’d like an invite, as I understand it is hard to find a Delin that is not being used in the Public Hoods listing.  Perhaps hoods with the Delin book could arrange a reservation system.  They meet with a hood representative at the appointed time, and after 8 people entered their book room, the hood member could close the doors to the book room, so they could have it to themselves.  If the doors could be opened by anyone on the inside, even better, because the hood rep wouldn’t need to wait for them to finish to let them out.  Some of us Explorers are Managers, and so I’m sure this idea would appeal to them, and give people the peace and quiet (i.e. no need to shout) to solve the Delin Age.

Thoughts on the Museum Age and Calendar Stone Discoveries

Cate brought down a map that explains the arbitrariness of the Pods and the “Portals” that are appearing.  The first surprise is that the pods are all links to the same planet.   I thought they were linking to entirely disparate worlds at first.  All we’ve seen of the D’ni’s Writing capability (besides the City itself) are just small playgrounds, but this map tells us they can describe entire worlds with Writing, complete with geographical features, flora, fauna, an ecosystem, and more.  Naturally, the D’ni would want to explore different parts of the planet, hence the Museum Ages.  Ages are not just disposable, one-hit wonders; they exist within an even larger matrix of reality.  Just like Earth, you could spend a lifetime there documenting even just a small corner.

About the portals: The pod locations are nicely numbered on the map, and looking at them explains the disparate times that the portal appears – it is related to the time of day, or the passing of a particular point on the planet’s surface across some exciter or trigger… I remember reading somewhere that the Cartographers liked to build a calibrating machine like the Great Zero in Ages where they wanted accurate measurements…. Perhaps the portal is the Pod interacting with the neutrino beam of this Surveyor’s Machine as it sweeps across the entire globe?  Or maybe it’s an atmospheric phenomenon, like the Aurora Borealis.  Both possibilities intrigue me.

I also stuck around tonight at Eder Gira, to see if I could see the sprite/sparklies move to another location (it seems to move on the 1st of every month — oddly enough, in our month system, not in D’ni’s! – perhaps indication of Bahro observing us in our own culture?  Or… evidence that the DRC is behind the calendar stones?), but it stayed there past “midnight” on the surface.  However, I had trouble linking out – getting back to my relto took an unusually long time, so perhaps the Sprites link to other location using the same methods that we do?

Looking forward to checking out the next Pod, this one might be the key to everything else.  And perhaps we’ll finally get the GZ working.  Maybe the GZ’s hypothetical sister emitter will interact with it somehow.  Who knows?  I can’t wait to find out.

Back after a long break…

I’ve been out of the Cavern for about a month, and coming back I was only able to find three things that were different than when I last visited. The DRC added Dereno, another Museum Age to the Museum. The Great Zero’s imager Relto page has been rediscovered. And probably most important of all, a link to the view of Kerath’s Arch has appeared in the neighborhood book room. The most fascinating part of this story is the fact that it was actually delivered to the neighborhood by an actual Bahro.

Everyone says “The bahro made this change or that change,” but this is the first time that people have actually had photographic evidence of this happening. I wish I could have been there for that event, but it still says something about the Cavern that there was no easy way for me to find out about the Barho’s pre-appearance and creation of the Arch Link, except by reading message boards, blogs, or actually visiting the Cavern. Being away for so long, I didn’t want to read any message boards or blogs because I didn’t want anyone to spoil solutions or revelations.

Now, a month later, I feel lost again. Things are the same, but things are different. Apparently Sharper is back. He’s doing his thing, accessing parts of Ages that regular explorers can’t (ever) reach. And I suppose we’re supposed to fall in line and make him a leader again? I’ll keep news of him on my periphery. Until his actions directly affect events in the cavern, he’s just a nice news story right now. The Bahro appearances are fascinating to me, but I don’t see them happening often.

The biggest issue I have right now is there are new links, etc. but nothing actually seems to make much of a difference. There’s not a payoff for finding them. Top of Kadish’s pyramid? Great! no special level, switch, or even Relto Page up there: What’s the point?

Maybe I’m missing something, but the Museum Ages don’t seem to do much of anything. I turn the pod on, I can press the buttons and get sounds or lights, but there’s no indication that anything I do actually affects the environment.

Ever get that feeling that everybody’s going to a party and nobody told you about it? Yeah, that’s how I feel right now.

Yeesha’s appearance – Prayer Vigil or Curtain Call?

I just read that Yeesha appeared in the Cavern, in holographic form, in sil_oh_wet’s bevin. I don’t know what to think about this. After reading Sosiqui’s post about the event, I am feeling vaguely disturbed. This vigil could have been mistaken for a religious ceremony.

We tried a lot of things to try and get Yeesha’s attention! Many people came wearing their Journey shirts, myself included. One of the first things we did was to get into a spiral symbol – not the spiral hand of the first Journey, but the mark of the second Journey, the same symbol as in Eder Delin and Eder Tsogal. We started from the fountain, using the center as the dot-and-circle in the spiral, and moved out from there… here’s a KI shot of the spiral at its height, though I’m not sure who took this image.

First, participants wore special clothes, and formed themselves into a symbol of meaning. A standard starting point for many human activities – football, posing for a picture, marching band, etc. Not alarming, in and of itself, but then it gets interesting:

[one explorer] tried talking back to the Bahro of the Cavern. A group went to the Egg Room to meditate. We all tried several rounds of calling Yeesha’s name combined with beckoning motions, and even did waves of movement like leaning to one side and cheering that swept down our human spiral.

One woman is speaking out to unseen creatures in the Cavern. Another group meditates (prays). The gathered group shouts “Yeesha! Yeesha! Yeesha!” in unison, complete with beckoning motions. They also perform other crowd-participation motions, such as leaning/swaying back and forth, and cheering. Change the location, the name being shouted, and you have an ecstatic religious ceremony, analagous to certain cultures’ calling out to their gods. But the strangest part is that Yeesha answered their call:

It seemed unbelievable, but those still present in the ‘hood reported that Yeesha, or a hologram representation of her, had appeared in a series of odd circumstances – not wearing a KI as their KIs did not detect her, but she appeared briefly at the link-in point before vanishing. A cloud of static then moved around the ‘hood for a few minutes before Yeesha appeared on the fountain top – precisely in the center of the human spiral from the vigil! She did not speak and remained there for only a short time before vanishing once more…

Not only did Yeesha appear, she recognized the importance of the spiral and placed herself in the focal point of it, where everyone had been looking expectantly.

I do not know what this means, only that our call was heard…

I can’t get past the religious implications of this meeting. It’s almost as if Yeesha were a god, and Yeesha’s appearance seems to confirm that that’s what she thinks of herself as well. Yeesha is not a god. She is a powerful individual, but she is not all-powerful nor omniscient, and arguably not stable – just look at her rantings in Myst V to know that she’s not stable, and that she harbors somewhat of a god complex.

I have always considered Yeesha to be a friend of the Explorers, a helper with mysterious resources. As such, I would never think to attempt to “summon” her. To me, shouting out to Yeesha would be like shouting out to my wife or my best friend, hoping they will appear – completely unthinkable. If I were there, in sil_oh_wet’s Bevin, would I be able to participate, even if it meant I get a glimpse of Yeesha? No, I will have to say I couldn’t do it. I worship one God, and I can’t even give the appearance of worshiping another.  I would have had to bow out of that event.  After this, I will still consider Yeesha a friend, but I will tread more carefully now, since apparently her delusions of grandeur are becoming obvious and influencing other explorers

I hope I’m wrong. I really do. I hope that I have misinterpreted the actions described. I hope that the event was not religious in nature and was more akin to a theater or sports thing, where fans begin to chant the name of the lead part or their favorite player in a sports event. I hope that Yeesha’s appearance was not a confirmation of a god complex, but instead was the equivalent of a curtain call, an acknowledgment of the people that support her. In short, I hope that this meeting was rational, and my fellow explorers weren’t carried away by emotion and then saw the visit as a mystical experience.

I hope this is an isolated incident, and that mysticism and ecstatic rituals do not become the norm in the Cavern. I came here to explore D’ni, to learn what I could from all of it, including Yeesha and the Journey, to make friends, and to discover deeper parts of myself. I cannot bring myself to call to Yeesha, even if only in the Cavern. That’s not why I’m here, that’s not who I am. That being said, is there a place in the Cavern for me now, or do I have to be complicit in this apparent Yeesha worship in order to enjoy my stay here? If it is the latter, I will most assuredly walk away.  That’s not the kind of Cavern I want to live in.

Laxman’s Forecast for Delin: Chance of Snow!

I noticed Victor Laxman was on, in a particular Delin. Robert Caine told those of us in the GoG bevin that only two or three Delin hoods exist… One of those being the Great Tree. I went to TGT’s bevin, linked into their Delin, and nearly bumped into Victor Laxman as I was linking in!

I managed to get a log of the last part of the conversation :

(02/16 17:24:02) Kestr’l: Dr Laxman, You mentioned that there may be snow in Delin, is that correct?

…

(02/16 17:24:53) Victor Laxman: I’m not predicting the weather necessarily. Just watching the pressure change.

(02/16 17:25:10) Victor Laxman: But there could be changes.

(02/16 17:26:04) Victor Laxman: I’ve got to leave. I’m afraid I’m on call. I’ll try and get back later. Cheers!

This is great news in and of itself. But then I talked with Monkeyboy, and he said Nick had visited and exchanged our Tsogahl book for Delin. He said that maybe 1% of the bevins will get this change, and we are #7. So it’s a small honor has been bestowed on our humble Bevin – I predict there will be many explorers traveling to see the snow in our Delin!

In other things, Laxman confirmed that the journey cloths “are not DRC related” -no surprise there, but nice to get official confirmation.

Laxman actually answered one of my questions, too:

(02/16 17:21:37) Kestr’l: Dr. Laxman, explorers like myself have so many questions to ask you… would it be possible for you to give a guided lecture on a particular age someday?

…

(02/16 17:22:22) Victor Laxman: I’d enjoy that at some point. Cate would prefer us to get the kinks out before we take such a break.

There you have it, folks – the future possibility of a guided tour by the expert himself! I think he answered my question because I didn’t drill him with the “Cavern scandal of the day.” I would love to see some fruit from his response in the future.

Right after that, as I was typing this up, Nick White showed up, and everyone began asking him questions. Nick displayed his personality, but didn’t give up new information except that yes, Sharper is coming, and no, things won’t be the same. This probably means no cool jackets for TGT, but who knows. He did confirm what Laxman was saying about the snow coming to Delin soon. Lastly, Nick informed us he was single and tried chatting with Heaven, but she was too absorbed in accessing her KI to notice him. After many jokes about being ‘d’nied’, Nick left us to visit another location.

Almost right after he left, someone pinpointed Wheely (Engbergs’ niece) as being in a Delin. I’m about to go see if I can meet her too.

Amazing: I met two DRC members tonight! Wohba!!

Return from the Surface

School’s been kicking me hard for the past two weeks, so I was glad to finally be able to visit the cavern again. I picked up the dock for my Relto (The place is finally starting to look like home!) and I even found a never-seen-before Relto page, the bench! Now, if I could only get the moon/stars page that Phil Henderson (godspeed, wherever you are) gave to us, it would be a perfect place to consider the duality of life. Looks like two people can sit comfortably on the bench, so my visitors will have a nice place to sit and chat the next time I have people over. Which reminds me, I miss talking to Ian, I’ll have to invite him over sometime soon…

In Teledahn, I found the alcove where Sharper kept his spy room, but it’s long since been taken away. With rumors of Sharper coming back, I’m sure it will be re-used sometime soon. What kinds of new choices and alternatives will Sharper’s presence lend to the Explorers? Only time can tell. I would personally like to meet him once and shake his hand. His past is checkered, yes, but I believe he is a greater force for good than people give him credit for being.

I also discovered a new Sprite in Kadish. It was in the Pillar Room – I didn’t press the reset buttons on any of the puzzles, so I think I may be able to run all the way back through it the next time I visit.

The Sprite sings! If you stand close to it, it plays a haunting multi-note melody that sounds like a water harp or crystal. When I touched it, I felt the familiar warmth and my Relto glowed once again. This one’s shell has the stylized/primitive D’ni 2 on it. I feel bad for the people who are just starting their journeys to the Cavern, since the first one has since disappeared, and it looks like they’ll have to wait until next January to get it again!

Once again, I’m glad I have arranged extended funding for the long-term commitment the the Cavern requires. This time next year, I wonder what I’ll be talking about here… who knows what this year will bring? The DRC are releasing another Age this Thursday (or soon afterwards) which will hopefully fill the other half of my second set of stone rings. I can’t wait!

The public Library is open now, but no books are there yet. Some interesting notebooks, but that’s it. Good luck trying to get in, though, as there seem to be several “instancing” dimensional effects there – people are disappearing, reappearing; some people witness the doors as being closed and others see them being opened, and people are even seen floating in the middle of the central shaft! I’m not a superstitious guy, but maybe someone needs to do an exorcism on the Library? Or perhaps Engberg could do a calibration of whatever causes the instantiation phenomenon?

Tweek, et. al. had a sit-in to demand the DRC Forums be brought back. I wanted to be there, but alas, with everthing in surface life, I was unable to reach the cavern at the appointed time. Even though initial reports seem to indicate it was much less successful than hoped, the sit-in and Engberg’s petitioning did, ultimately, end in victory, and the forums were restored. Congratulations, guys! The DRC history should be preserved. We lost Uru once, let’s not lose a single piece of it again.

Expedition to Eder Delin: No Explorer Left Behind

(Continued from Exploration of Eder Delin)

My next step was to visit the Uru Obsession Hood – they always know what’s up. I went directly to their Delin to see what was going on. After chatting with Ian, who has been an invaluable resource in learning even more about the Cavern, I realized that Eder Delin was an exclusively multi-Explorer age, a first in the Ages we’ve been permitted to explore (a dedicated explorer could “solve” the other Ages solo, but exploration was much easier with fellow Explorers). They had their hands full in the UO Delin – there were so many people that they had to shout to be heard, which threw off their coordination efforts. As I was just one more person adding to the clamor, I returned to the UO Bevin, but not before I got a good sense of how to unlock the Age. Now all I needed was to get 7 more people interested in working together.

I visited the Guild of Greeters Bevin next, where I ran into LegoAddict. I asked if anyone was interested in going on a Delin run, and he said they had just spent six hours solving the Age and he was exhausted. He suggested that I visit the city and recruit some people from there.

I linked into the city and shouted, “Anyone who wants to see what’s behind the doors in Eder Delin, meet me at the docks!” and waited for people to show up. Amazingly, it only took about 5 minutes to recruit 7 people. My group was: Cross, Calpurnia, maziac, rupert, Tiger, Intrepid, and Aussie. During the course of our expedition, Nanouk, Bobo, wewi and Shiloh all ended up helping us out. I told the group to put me in their Ki buddy list in case they got lost, and to meet me in the D’ni Museum of Art’s Bevin (again, because it was easy to remember). We met up there, and our sudden spike in the Bevin population attracted some more people as we prepared to link into Delin.

A little side note here: It wasn’t until later that I realized DMoA was a German-language special group Bevin, not a general public Bevin, and a little while after that that I thought perhaps the sudden appearance of a dozen or so American explorers who promptly ran to their book room and linked to their Eder Delin book without permission might have the potential to offend the Bevin members… Suffice it to say, the next time I lead an expedition, even to a public Bevin, I will be sure to get permission (or at least attempt to) before using their books. I sent an apology to wewi once I realized this. I haven’t heard anything back, so I think everything’s okay.

On with our expedition…

Interviewed by TCT

A few weeks ago, Dalken Starbyne was in the Cavern, requesting interviews from explorers. I was lucky enough to be interviewed, and the majority of my comments can be heard in Dalken’s piece in The Cavern Today’s latest podcast. Dalken refers to me as an “Independent” explorer, which I think has a nice ring to it… at least until I can determine which Bevin best suits me. In the interview, some of my more prescient comments were about Cate needing to handle the issue with the DRC liasions, or there will be problems… as you know, the Liasions no longer exist. The podcast is pretty good, much better than others that I have heard. I would call TCT “the NPR of the Cavern”. Check it out, add it to your podcast repertoire, and enjoy.

Exploration of Eder Delin

Yesterday, I checked out what was going on in the Cavern and I was excited to see a Ki-mail from the DRC saying the Eder Delin book had been distributed to all the neighborhoods. I picked a Bevin at random to check it out – I chose the D’ni Museum of Art because it’s such a catchy name. Seeing a new Age in so long was exciting to me, so I wanted to tell you all my impressions.

Eder Delin is a small rest age, with several architectural features in common with Eder Kemo. The covered structures are the same, as is the floating sculpture. There is even an obelisk in an intersection, but without Yeesha’s symbol carved into it. In fact, I couldn’t find Yeesha’s symbol to be prominent in Delin at all. Descending a flight of stairs leads to a beautiful fountain, an original feature in this Age. Combine the fountain and the dusky atmosphere, and you have a rest Age that is sure to become popular with paramours and romantics alike. While the man-made (D’ni-made?) structures are similar to Kemo, the flora is completely different – bushes, shrubs, and some tall, thin trees that may have some relation to the behemoths in Kadish. It looks like it is continually autumn in this age, with red leaves drifting down to the verdant ground. The stone of which this Age consists is quite fascinating in and of itself – the rock seems to have been carved by wind or water, creating cantilevered, unattached buttresses arcing out like a version of Hokusai’s famous wave, frozen in time and worn smooth by the ceaseless weathering of natural forces. There didn’t seem to be any fauna of any kind, which makes me wonder if Shomat demanded the xenocide of more than one rest age, and a reminder of the violent origins of some of these ages prefixed by the D’ni word for rest.

In various places in Delin I found blue, diamond-shaped cloths with a shell symbol on them. They lit up entirely when pressed, unlike the Journey Cloths most explorers have come to know and understand. I found the blue cloth’s coloring to be at times difficult to distinguish from the shade of the stone walls. Eventually, I found 7 cloths in all, along with a mysterious door. An Explorer, wewi, was there in Delin too, and I didn’t notice him sooner because he had been staring at this door the whole time. He told me that when I pressed the cloths, different symbols appeared on the door. After some experimentation, we discovered that each cloth creates a unique door glyph. He also said it seems to make a sequence when he touched the door. We tried touching the door and entering the cloth sequence with me running around Delin, touching the appropriate cloths. Nothing happened. After several trials, wewi had to leave, and so I too left Delin for the time, returning to the Nexus, where I contemplated my next step.

Lots of great things happening in the Cavern

I visited the cavern yesterday and discovered a book to the Great Zero Observation Room in my Bevin. I checked it out immediately, and started searching for the calibration markers. I got so caught up in it, I almost forgot some of my appointments on the surface. I have one more initial marker to go!

Laxman must have been busy, because in addition, I got the Cavern News Network bevin to be recognized as a public Bevin. I typed up a welcome screen, along with information about the opening of the Great Zero, and something else I will discuss later in this post. I realized I called the GZ Observation Room the Antechamber in my news post… a rookie mistake that I should have checked on before I wrote it… Blame it on my recent 16-hour days. If the imager had better editing features, I wouldn’t even be mentioning this mistake. Hopefully, people will visit the News bevin and send news along to me to be posted. We’ll see how it goes. I want to give enough information for people to know what’s going on, but not so much as to ruin the joy of discovery. but perhaps even mentioning the events spoils it for someone… There has to be a balance of information and mystery here. In this sense, I guess it’s not always about news, but is also a nudge to people in an “interesting” direction.

Additionally, I read about some discovery in Gahreesen… (read more for some possible spoilers)