Well, the one in teledahn wasn't for Winged Ones type bahro. It's possible BOTH were for "bahro" but as in "non-D'ni people".

See, that's the problem we're up against.


The D'ni had problems all over. What it seems to me is the Winged Ones were the least of their faults.. but the D'ni had this weird guild led oligarchy system in power, so maybe they hadn't finished getting it out of their system yet. I think if they hadn't fallen, by now we'd have met them in person because they'd opened trade with the surface and such. But just a guess.

And the Winged Ones? Who knows? Until we know *how* they were "enslaved" we can't say much.

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If you read Sharper's Journal in the Gahreesen building you jump to, it says the builing has 3 floors. The first being mainly the Maintainer and Conference rooms, the second I can't recall at this moment but it was highly secret, and the third being a cleverly planned bunch of prison cells. I think the journal implied the cells were for people, certainly not the Bahro. The journal said that linking at specifc times of the day will bring you to a specific room.

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Well, we could get to the top level by another route.. it seemed to just be defenses and observatory, along with cell access underneath. The cells were indeed for people. They tended to use prison ages for incarceration, but they still had trials etc so they needed somewhere to put the prisoners in the meantime. They also likely had more prison space than that.. they weren't big as far as civilizations went but there were nowhere near enough cells in that building.

The one I'm talking about is Teledahn, with the manacles and bones. The bones aren't human, but they're not winged-one either. And if bahro are generally humanish then they're not those either. Probably discarded food remains or something.


None of the places seemed designed to stop anyone who could self-link, and even if that was generally inhibited while the D'ni were in power, then we still have a dozen problems with how to hide that sort of thing from the general knowledge. We quite frankly just don't have enough knowledge about all this stuff, and it seems we never will.

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You know, I wish we would learn Atrus loved the 1812 overture, and in turn we had a copy for our relto.
That's right, a canon canen cannon!

MOULa KI: #00027582
Welcome back all!

Well, we may know something about the people who made places where book-linking wouldn't work. They were either Yeesha, or the bahro. What we don't know is that the D'ni had any control at all over where self-linking would or wouldn't work.

In fact, these recent discussions have stimulated my brain to entirely new levels of scepticism. Is there anyone here who can recall a time before this supposed war business when you couldn't hear bahro noises in the city and Ages? is it possible that what Yeesha was manipulating us into doing was not releasing all bahro, but only some bahro? Maybe some bahro that even other bahro would have preferred to stay locked up? Who were actually locked up by the bahro???

Wouldn't it be amusing if we were actually accessories to a jail break?

Or perhaps not so much...

(EDIT: remember that moment when you looked back across the plain to the caldera, and the bahro you had just freed spread its arms and screeched and lightning struck? Given what we now know about what they can do, does that still seem like a dramatic coincidence, or does it seem more like an augury of things to come?)

Frisky Badger wrote:

Gehn, lord of ages wrote:

Frisky Badger wrote:

Where did the idea that Maintainers kept Bahro imprisoned in Gahreesen come from? I don't remember hearing anything about that. If they condoned that, then why did the cells in Teledahn need to be hidden from them?

I think people mention the second part of Gahreeson (the part you get to from Teledahn) as a sort of holding prison for Bahro. I'm not sure what part exactly...

As for the condoning - they didn't officially condone it. It was officially illegal. The just *wink wink* had a few hidden cells themselves...

So it's pure rumor/conjecture. I thought maybe I had overlooked something fairly significant.

It's not pure conjecture. The Bahroglyphs in Eder Kemo clearly depict the Bahro in chains underneath the fortresses of Gahreesen. In fact, it is the most iconic image of Bahro slavery we've seen so far within their art, with the exception of Teledahn. There is also the discussion that the slave cages of Teledahn weren't visible to the Maintainers, but I have serious doubts about that. First of all, there is an active Maintainer's Mark near the dock, which implies that the Maintainers had been back there. We don't necessarily know when they were there-- it may have been placed before the slave operation began-- but the fact that they knew there was an access point to the caves is disturbing.

Remember that in modern times, the bridge leading to the dock from the generator area is broken, so we had to go running all over the place in order to get to the dock, whereas for the D'ni it would have been an easy route. The only other block to the cages themselves is the wooden bridge, but something tells me the Maintainers wouldn't have been put off from fully inspecting the Age just because a bridge is up. So the conclusion is that they Maintainers who inspected Teledahn knew about the docks, the rather illegal-looking lab on top of the mushroom back there, and probably the pathway to the cages.


Really though, in my opinion, the whole Bahro thing always felt like a weak link in the story. We only ever heard one side of the tale, and it seemed like there should have been another side given. Not enough clues were ever present to formulate any credible hypothesis about what the Bahro really were or how Yeesha is capable of doing what she does. The whole impression is that the aura of mysticism and magic that surrounded both Yeesha and the Bahro was eventually going to be cleared up, one way or the other. Unfortunately it never was.

And this is a real problem, because Cyan is usually pretty good about leaving lots of subtle clues and letting the player piece together the story, or at least a theory about what might have happened. The real substantial clues we have about the Bahro all come from a biased source; either from Yeesha or from the Bahroglyphs, which were written by the Bahro. There is even still some debate about whether or not the D'ni had enslaved the Bahro at all. We know they had slaves, but we have no true evidence to prove they were the Bahro creatures that we know.

But really, any theories are really sort of pointless, because again, there is so little to base them on. I think Cyan did poorly with that portion of the story.

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I'm having problems with "the bahroglyphs in Eder Kemo clearly depict..." They don't clearly depict anything to me, except a person with a rather impressive handlebar moustache whom I've been told is supposed to represent Yeesha. I don't mean to disparage those who have invested their time and scholarship in the decoding of these images, but as far as I know symbolism plays a large part in bahro imagery, and it may be a mistake to interpret such things as "bahro in chains" too literally.

I'm reminded of the earnest seeker after truth of the von Daniken school who excitedly revealed a photograph of (I think it was) a Polynesian fertility idol, with, on its chest...two modern doorbells!!

Ok, I went back and looked at some of the bahroglyphs-- you're right, I seem to remember one of the images depicting Bahro in chains under Gahreesen. There appear to be Bahro present at Gahreesen, but there is no obvious indication of chains or slavery, as there are with the glyphs of Teledahn.

But it still doesn't defeat the issue of the evidence of Maintainer involvement in Teledahn.

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I still doubt teledahn, unless the tablet somehow stopped bahro from self-linking. Those cages won't hold any winged-one bahro.. but they WOULD hold the human-like slaves it seems the D'ni had. Although that age always made me wonder.. it's really not a terribly good prison in any regards. It just doesn't work at all as an age either. Not once you stop and think about it. If someone got me the rough radius of the teledahn water-bowl in the tree and the time it takes to drain, I could work out the fluid flow rate. Then knowing the rough diameter of the water pipe, work out how many times unlikely it is it'd manage on something with a BIG GAPING HOLE.



What I wanted though is what we looked like we were going to get but never did, the other sides of the story. You said "side" Calam, but that's wrong. We never got more than one. We got what Yeesha told us, and she's hardly reliable. The D'ni never said a thing, being kinda dead, Nick said they're mentioned in D'ni writing but we've never seen anything of this (and I still think he meant "bahro slaves" as in non-D'ni in general).
And then the third group.. the winged ones themselves. Yeesha appointed herself their spokeswoman, but it seemed they're good at getting some points across though not all the details (mostly that they're intelligent and dangerous, but nothing more about motives etc). Minkata had some stuff that apparently is bahro translations, but we don't know who translated the rock, who carved it, what the meaning is, or anything. We just did the puzzles.

It looked like we would see more, but we never did. My hope is one day Cyan will put out something, a story game thing for whatever, that involves my little april fool's joke but more real. An actual game taking place directly about the winged-one bahro, either as one or involving them. Myst 5 doesn't count. We saw what the D'ni had built and had the morality shoved on us, but the only real bahro sightings were when we used them like a tool.
I want to know their thoughts, their feelings, their mythology, their culture. Their themness.


And maybe then we'll have enough answers to give you a good answer in this topic.

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You know, I wish we would learn Atrus loved the 1812 overture, and in turn we had a copy for our relto.
That's right, a canon canen cannon!

MOULa KI: #00027582
Welcome back all!

Who are these 'Winged Ones'? Are they another kind of intelligent creature like the Bahro? How do they fit into the picture?

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I think the term is intended to mean the bahro themselves. There was a discussion a while back on the IC forums about whether it was appropriate to carry on calling them a word which meant "beast-people." I and some others opted for "vahkro" for a time (="linking-people") but it didn't catch on.

I probably should. The thing is that "bahro" in D'ni usage apparently meant all non-D'ni people. Sort of a catch-all. We're bahro to them, so would be the Riveneese, so would be the bahro/vahkro/etc. I call them "Winged Ones" because I like the term, and because it gives a decent idea what you mean without having to give a translation. Assuming of course you've seen them fly.
(and if you'd seen them flying right overhead at the Great Stair you wouldn't forget. Eep.)
It comes from a little thing in SWN50.. I needed a good term to call them, and 'bahro' didn't seem right in this case, particularly as they take themselves rather seriously. So LATTIS calls them "Winged Ones" and it stuck in my mind.
Personally I like my interpretation a little better than what Yeesha gives us.. they're mostly unsure and as scared of us as we are of them, but intelligent and inquisitive, and just as ready to break the rules for a cause they see as right as we can be. Makes them seem more like people than this mob of winged linking beetle-ant-demons.

The entire question of this thread *presumably* is abuout the vahkro Winged Ones and how they fit. Just *how* they do I dunno. They seemed to be designed into Uru's story from the beginning (since the caves were there), but the actual implementation apparently has changed a few times over the years/games.

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You know, I wish we would learn Atrus loved the 1812 overture, and in turn we had a copy for our relto.
That's right, a canon canen cannon!

MOULa KI: #00027582
Welcome back all!

Thanks for clearing that up, I personally like the term Vahkro the best. I actually like how the Vahkro fit into the story. The mystery of how we've only seen a rare glimpse of them and yet hardly know anything just makes the game more interesting in my opinion. Although, sometimes I do wish there was something added to the plot to make them flow together with the plot more effortlessly.

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Yeah... it's hard to fit the bahros into the story... maybe the best will be to do some retcon (or whatever it's called) and do the bahros as the ones in MTBOD: people from other ages. It's interesting (people from other ages, after all), it's mysterious (you never know what strange person you will come into, you never know what age he comes from), and it flows well with the story (it's works great with MTBOD).

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