Day 17

For the past few days, I've been concentration on collecting markers, with a few side trips. It's turning out to be easier that I anticipated (it's easier than collecting the first 30 anyway). The ability to see the markers from a distance more than offsets that the KI cannot detect them.

One frustrating thing happened, though. I've been talking about my search for a new neighbourhood, but I don't think I mentioned that I deleted my Bevin book to my old neighbourhood, pretty much permanently cutting myself off from it. Marker set six and seven are set completely in Bevin. At first I simply used one of the many empty neighbourhoods but three of the markers can only be accessed from high locations that you can only get to through Bahro stones. When you use a Bahro stone, a page is added to the appropriate book so that you don't have to hunt down that Bahro stone again to access that location subsequent times. The two stones that link to Bevin are found in Gahreesen and Eder Gira. I had found them long ago and the pages were added to my Bevin book. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, I had deleted my Bevin book. I created a new Bevin (an easy process), and then went to get the Bahro stones which, fortunately, are easy to get to.

Marker On Bevin Balcony

I collected the final the final three Bevin markers but then made another unfortunate discovery - my Great Zero link has disappeared from my Nexus! It took some asking around to discover this, but it seems that this link is connected to the neighbourhood you belong to. The link will not appear until someone in your neighbourhood has collected the first fifteen markers and upload them at the Great Zero Antichamber. The only way I had of setting my KI to detect the original set of markers was to reset my Ae'gura linking book, which means I would lose not only all the progress I had made calibrating the Great Zero, but also the dozen or so Bahro stone links to various locations in Ae'gura. Fortunately, after describing my plight at the Guild of Greeters, someone volunteered to help me out. Corbin created a fresh avatar while I made my new neighbourhood public. He then linked to it and I made him a member of HCIsland's Bevin. He then was kind enough (or bored enough) to collect the required 15 markers and upload them, thus updating my Nexus with the Great Zero link. Thank you, Corbin!

Here are the other highlights from the past few days.

• Meet a nice explorer named D'Annika during marker set three. It turned out we were going after the same set of markers, so we kept running into each other. One of the markers from this set required a tricky drop off a cliff and two people certainly helped in lining up the jump. It seems like D'Annika and I have about the same schedule because we keep seeming to be in the Cavern at the same time.


• Revisited the various pod Ages and found that the power had finally died in all but Tetsonot. It was night in most places so the power wouldn't reset for any length of time. The next convenient day start isn't until Sunday afternoon, so it may be a bit before I restore power. One interesting thing I noticed is that in Payiferen, the a grunting sound that is emitted from one of the sound buttons I had left on was still going despite the power now being off. I could get the power on briefly, but found I couldn't turn the sound off. Perhaps the sound was the actual animal now? Perhaps I had caught something? This is definitely worth further investigation, but I have to come back during the day.


• A new Bahro stone appeared yesterday. It is near the cliff by the Tokotah Alley, just down the stairs from the central Ae'gura courtyard. I only discovered it because of the crowd of people that had gathered there. The stone linked to a small resting place in the Great Shaft - a huge verticle chamber connecting D'ni to the surface. There was the journal of Dr. Watson, the original founder of the DRC, dated around 2004/05. He writes of his depression over the failure of the restoration. He talks of the death of Phil (as mentioned in Sharper's journal) and his own, final, decision to follow Yeesha's path. The journal strongly hints that you should jump into the Great Shaft (which for me caused the game to crash >:( ). This used to be part of the To D'ni expansion pack of the solo game. You used to be able to catch a glimpse of the bottom of the Great Shaft (which is featured prominently in Myst V). I should try again sometime to make sure things are not any different.

The Great Shaft

• Things are changing. The central games room in Gahreesen seems to be coming to life - at least the control panels for the room are now lighting up, though interaction with them is impossible. Also, I swear, there is a pillar in Eder Gira that wasn't there before!


• I used the time while Corbin was collecting markers for me to put a welcome message in my new neighbourhood. Who knows, maybe some folks will join. I also signed up for a regular news report of Cavern happenings through my KI. I need to get more in the loop of what is going on.

HC