“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”
-C. S. Lewis
Alright, technically, no, it wasn’t my first night in the Cavern, true. I’d spent countless nights and days there the last couple of times I’d been there. But this was the first time I’ve ever spent a night in the Cavern while there were others present. I was anxiously awaiting the opportunity to meet my fellow Explorers, but a part of me was nervous, wondering whether they’d live up to my expectations, and whether I’d live up to theirs. Like I’ve said before, I’ve only ever known these people through the DRC boards and other Explorer hotspots. I’ve been a lurker, mostly, but I’ve followed them eagerly, developed a real fondness for the community, come to consider myself one of them. The last thing I want is to be disappointed, or to disappoint. I was excited, but definitely nervous.
Linking from my Relto to the Nexus, I was comforted by the familiar clanking of gears and machinery that powered the linking library. A quick swipe of my KI and the machine activated, showing me the public areas of the city. I was thrilled to see there were already some forty-odd people in Ae’gura, and linked to the Ferry Terminal to seek them out. When I arrived, however, the place looked deserted. Wondering if I was just out of luck, or if the Nexus had been wrong on the number of people in the area, I started for the Great Stairs. Halfway up I heard the sound of someone linking in, and eagerly ran back down to check it out.
The linker’s name was DaVinci, and we stopped and chatted on the stairs for a while about how much we’d missed the Cavern, until the urge to see the rest of the island overpowered me and I excused myself to go wander. The crowd at the top of the Great Stairs truly blew my mind. I’d never expected to see so many people in one place! More arrived in all the time, and others would link out periodically, either alone or in groups when enough people decided they wanted to visit an Age together. A fellow named Ifsa helped me figure out how to use my KI’s new messaging feature, and I had such a surreal experience seeing people walk by whose names I recognized from the forums; Mystdee, Su’san, Tai’lahr… It was amazing.
Everyone was warm and kind. I’d been nervous for nothing; not only did the community live up to my expectations, they’d exceeded them, immensely. I’ve never felt such a welcoming environment before. The buzzes of a half dozen conversation going on at once, waves and smiles everywhere, impromptu dances… the atmosphere was simply indescribable.
One guy invited me to visit his Relto before we’d even introduced ourselves. Before I could even respond (I was thinking up a clever line), his finger slipped and he accidentally linked out (I ended up announcing “Aren’t you going to buy me a drink first?” to the empty air, and got a bunch of amused looks from the crowd). His name was Zuri, and he came back a minute or two later, asking if I was interested in exploring Ahnonay with him and a friend. I was eager to visit one of the Ages with company, so I took him up on his offer and linked to his Relto, where his friend, Tehlrov, was waiting. As it turned out, Zuri was missing his books, too, so we had to link to Tehlrov’s Relto, where he had reacquired most of his already.
This version of Ahnonay has always been my favorite. It's the crabs!
Once the three of us linked from Tehlrov’s Relto to the Ahnonay Cathedral to Ahnonay itself, we began to explore this version of the infamous fake Age. Tehlrov played with the crabs for a while while I followed Zuri’s lead and tried jumping of some large rocks past the powerful current surrounding the island. The idea is to jump from the big island to a large rock jutting out of the water, then to a smaller one, then to jump into the water and swim so the current carries you to a smaller tower island.
That’s how it was supposed to work in theory, anyway. I must have missed that stupid tower four or five times! Each time the current would carry me back down the little waterfalls into the main island’s central lagoon and I was severely beginning to lose my patience. Zuri, for his part, seemed more amused than anything else and shouted what advice to me he could from the tower, before deciding I was hopeless and jumping into the water again to show me how to do it in person. This time of course, I made it and Zuri was swept past by the current. The student has indeed now become the master!
Tehlrov followed Zuri back and after a few more tries all three of us were finally standing on the tower island. Of course, there was nothing to do there, so instead we ended up returning to Relto, then back to Ahnonay to see the “time shifts”. We’d forgotten to knock a crab into the water, though, so we got returned to the same exact version we’d left. Once we’d found the crab (or it jumped into the water itself, I’m not sure which), we linked back to the Cathedral and from there to the eerie, stormy “future” Ahnonay. We ran around like a bunch of little kids, smashing the bizarre crystal trees that grew there to trigger the next time jump. Tehlrov nailed the most impressive tree atop a rock formation Zuri and I had thought impossible to get to, and then the three of us linked to the “distant future” Ahnonay, the one that looked like a broken up planetoid floating in space. (I always wondered what Kadish was thinking with that last one; surely the D’ni knew its impossible to breathe in outer space, right?)
The three of us got separated then, and met up again at the top of the Great Stairs. Zuri mentioned he had to go, so we bid him good night and Tehlrov and I decided to mess around some more with Ahnonay. There wasn’t much left to explore, there, though, and just then I noticed a small group trying to recruit a gang to do a “garden run”, which I didn’t understand. They sounded like they were having trouble getting enough people though, and when the guy making the announcements, Ski, said he only needed two more, Tehlrov and I decided to join up with them. One by one we linked out to our Reltos, then used the Nexus to meet up in one of the public neighborhoods, one claimed by a guy named Nagao. Altogether there were six of us: me, Tehlrov, Ski, Nagao, Branan and Marty. Ski kept trying the herd people to the classroom, but I got lost and was trying to orient myself by following the sounds of their voices; I ran into them again just as the group met by the linking book to Eder Delin. As a consequence I hadn’t really heard their instructions and was only vaguely aware of what we were trying to do.
This beautiful snowy Age: Not Eder Gira
The first thing that surprised me was that I’d gotten Eder Delin confused with Eder Gera; I’d never been to this Age before. The second thing was that it was snowing! The foliage all around indicated that it was fall in Eder Delin, but light flurries were falling and was beginning to accumulate on the ground. I could even see my breath. Despite all that, it didn’t actually feel that cold out, and the long sleeve shirt I had on kept me plenty warm.
Ski disappeared almost immediately. We assumed he’d accidentally linked out or had forgotten something, but after a few minutes Nagao informed us that Ski had something to deal with somewhere else and wouldn’t be able to participate (presumably he’d contacted him via KI). This was disheartening for the group, because apparently for whatever we were going to be doing, we needed at least six people, and Ski’s disappearance left us with only five.
Nagao started explaining things to the group again. There was a Journey Door here, and it would only open after seven cloths scattered around the nearby gardens were presses in a specific order. The order that the clothes needed to be pushed in was generated by pressing the symbol on the door; from that point on, it would flash the symbols of the cloths in a random order and begin a countdown. This means we needed at least a half dozen people to collaborate on cloth pushing, one of home had to watch the door and shout out which symbols needed to be pressed. Fortunately, Tehlrov stepped up and arranged for a friend of his to stop by Nagao’s Bevin and join us in Eder Delin. While we waited for her to arrive, Nagao went over our assignments. He really had the whole system down; he’d assigned each symbol a number, and assigned us to various posts based on that number. Originally, I was going to take Cloth Number Six, but after no one wanted the arduous task of covering two different cloths, running between them to make sure both got pressed, I volunteered, and was assigned Cloths 4 and 5; one on the back of a tree, the other around a nearby corner, behind the gazebo.
Tehlrov’s friend Chakra arrived, and we all took up our positions. To say things were frustrating is a bit of an understatement. Actually, our first couple attempts did pretty well, despite us not entering the code before the countdown ran out. The problems started when I would have to press one Cloth while I was nearby the other. I’d race from 5 to 4, wasting precious time, then have to race back to 5, wasting even more time. It really came down to luck. One time I even pressed the wrong cloth because I’d been distracted by the calls of some nearby geese (when I tried to explain how weird I found it that geese existed in this Age as well as our own, Nagao tried to console me. “Don’t worry,” he said, “those are probably some OTHER geese. They’ve probably got gills or something.”)
To complicate things further, sometimes the door wouldn’t register our entries even if we’d pressed the cloths correctly. Those mistakes were the most frustrating of all, and Chakra threw more than one snowball that evening. We almost gave up entirely. We persevered, however, and in the end we entered the combination correctly. Unfortunately, not all of us made it to the door in time! Me, Chakra and Tehlrov ended up being stuck outside while Marty, Nagao and Branan got into the cave beyond (I got there just as the door was halfway closed, to see the three of them looking back at me bemusedly; the door rose from the bottom to close, rather than lowering from the top, or else I totally would’ve Indiana Jones’d my way under it).
The three of us griped for a while, but the other were good sports and agreed to come back and try again so we could all enter the cave. Unfortunately, due to a variety of problems, the never happened; Nagao’s neighborhood had reverted from public to private, meaning the others couldn’t get to our Instance of Eder Delin without him there to let them in; KI communication was going all screwy; and members of our group were starting to call it a night and begging out. That said, I feel fine about the whole thing–I had a heck of a lot of fun with everybody, made some great new friends and I know I’ll get to see what’s in the cave eventually. I met Nagao for a bit at the Ferry Landing when all was said and done, and he offered me a place of my own in his neighborhood if I wanted. Unfortunately, the Nexus/KI system was having some trouble just then and wouldn’t process things through. Which is a shame, because as much as I like Relto, it’s never really felt like a home to me. The City’s always felt that way, though, and if I’m going to live my dream I want to spend my nights in a neighborhood, not in a sparse hut on Relto. I’m not worried, though; I’ve added everyone from the group to my KI’s Buddies List, and next time I see Nagao around the City, I’ll get to hit him up and see if we can have me formally added to his neighborhood. Until then, I can spend another night camped out in Relto, maybe get another campfire going, enjoy the stars (I’m a native Chicagoland-ian, I’ve never seen so many stars in my entire life). Speaking of which, it is way t00 late… I need to catch some shuteye if I’m going to do any exploring tomorrow.
Sweet dreams.
