How did the D'ni get the pods to the planet they're on? I mean, they had laws about writing man-made stuff into Ages. Also, to establish the link inside each one, someone had to write a linking book from inside each pod.

My theory is that they dropped them from orbit with a Writer inside. That way, when it landed, the Writer could Write his link and leave. But then that begs the question of how did they get in orbit to drop the pods?

Maybe the descriptive book was written differently than most, and was written from a point of view in orbit looking down. That would explain how they have such detailed maps of the Age, and how precise the time measurements are.

I'm getting sleepy waiting for portals. I think I'm rambling.

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I'd like to know where this particular law came from. The only reference I recall to it is Atrus saying he tried it and it didn't work in Stoneship (which was a very early Age for him), and Atrus saying he tried it and it worked in Haven. I don't remember any reference to a law against it.

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Zander

MOULagain KI 1090046

"What you still don't understand I have either forgotten to tell you or don't know myself."

I too recall reading about a law against writing man(D'ni)-made items into an Age. I think it was mentioned somewhere in relation to the huge stone daggers in Riven (?). But surely many of the amazing buildings we see in the various Ages (e.g. Kadish Tolesa and Gahreesen) would be explainable much more easily that way.

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Simone - KI#1001138
Please avoid drinking the lake water.

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Ian A. Pertwee in Cavern - KI# 374362
Ahnotahm - Il quartiere
Not talking as a mod unless I say so

I'm just boggled by the amount of infrastructure Atrus would have needed to call on to make the stuff in Myst, let alone J'nanin and the others. Iron mining and smelting, stone quarrying, precision engineering, biogenetics to create the puzzles in Edanna...after the Fall and with most of the D'ni's Ages depopulated or inaccessible, with two women and two small boys as assistants, I just don't believe it.

But if anyone can find an actual reference in (gasp) canon to such a D'ni law, I'll believe it. They had the resources and manpower to make anything they needed, after all, and the pods could have been brought through in sections and put together in situ, I suppose. I just won't necessarily believe Atrus followed it all his life.

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Zander

MOULagain KI 1090046

"What you still don't understand I have either forgotten to tell you or don't know myself."

I can't remember a law either, but there are a couple of things.

1.) Many of the ages had or have native populations.
2.) The D'ni used a LOT of slaves.
3.) Gehn, Sirrus and Achenar enslaved and tortured the natives of their ages.

I couldn't see Atrus using slavery, but I bet he would have no problem employing or befriending the natives to get them to do his construction for him. Remember, he's a long lived D'ni. He probably wouldn't think twice about spending 5-10 years training a population to build his projects.

If they weren't written into the age, the pod's, machinery and buildings were probably constructed with slave labor.

Edit: Hopped up on pain killers for my back and I apparently can't spell.

Zander_the_Heretic wrote:

But if anyone can find an actual reference in (gasp) canon to such a D'ni law, I'll believe it. They had the resources and manpower to make anything they needed, after all, and the pods could have been brought through in sections and put together in situ, I suppose. I just won't necessarily believe Atrus followed it all his life.

Well, the DRC site does have a rather comprehensive paper on what the D'ni believed about Writing and linking. The mention of D'ni experiments and then a restriction on Writing man-made objects into an Age is down at the bottom of the "Descriptive Book" section. Obviously Atrus and family did not feel beholden to such restrictions, or were unaware of them, but there you have it.

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Calmiche wrote:

2.) The D'ni used a LOT of slaves.

And the basis for that statement is...?

There may have been individuals or small groups that used slaves secretly, but I have seen no evidence that the D'ni, as a society, used slaves, let alone a LOT of slaves. That was the whole reason Ri'neref brought the D'ni to Earth, he was against enslaving the natives of the Ages they wrote.

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Frisky Badger
Guild of Maintainers
My opinions are my own and not necessarily those of the Guild of Maintainers.
KI# 00140468

If it is to be taken as canon Esher said in Todelmer, while standing in what is clearly a pod "look around. Without the power of the Tablet this would be left solely to your dreams!"

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MOUL KI# 10281985
MOULa KI# 1492059

Fear is the mind-killer

That can have multiple meanings:
1. They used Bahro to make the Pod(s).
2. Dr. Watson used the tablet to go there. Without it, he couldn't -- that would be left only to his dreams.

I took it as the second meaning.

At that point the Tablet was still locked away in the keep

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MOUL KI# 10281985
MOULa KI# 1492059

Fear is the mind-killer

Wow.. Declaring that the D'ni didn't use slaves is... weird. I mean, it's fairly clear that the D'ni felt ashamed about doing so, and that the DRC tried to conceal a lot of the signs, but a close inspection of D'ni history shows that slavery was commonplace. It might not be what you think of with traditional North American slavery to harvest cotton, but a dark-age European serf or an indentures servant was just as much a slave as a D'ni "Least". "Least" being a class below Low and a word that the D'ni used interchangeably with slave.

I'll even go so far as to say that the majority of upper class D'ni probably didn't know about any outright slavery and didn't consider the lower class of D'ni to be slaves. I'm sure the European aristocracy felt the same way. It doesn't make it any less slavery.

There even seems to have been a backlash against slavery with the advent of the religion of Yahvo that may have erased some of the signs in the final 1,000 years or so before the fall of D'ni. However, I'd take Yeesha's statement that the entire D'ni civilization was built on the backs of the Least at face value.

History time:

Yes, Ri'neref brought the D'ni to the cavern. It's assumed that he was kicked out of the guild of writers for refusing to do something that he thought morally reprehensible and again, it's assumed that it was something to do with slavery. However, that is never expressly stated. And even then, it's apparent that very quickly, the D'ni culture divided itself into classes, one of which was the Least. It's never stated that D'ni was founded to be against slavery. In fact, it was a splinter group that wanted to get away from some of the excesses and abuses of the Ronay people. He and his followers wanted to revert to a simpler time with deliberately introduced hardships.

Yeesha stated in EoA that the the Bahro have been enslaved for 10,000 years. That's actually a couple hundred years longer than the cavern has been occupied. She deliberately showed us Teledahn, with it's slave caves containing humanoid bones. (Bahro are insectoids. Their exoskeletons would be very different.) Rebek was an age where high class D'ni hunted slaves for sport.

Both Douglas Sharper and Nick White spoke at various times about the slave trade, which Richard Watson seems to have deliberately concealed.

Who do you think gathered food for tens or even hundreds of thousands of people living in a cave with no way of growing food? How else would have some of the giant structures in various ages have been built? I can't see rich and powerful guild members, or even lower class guild apprentices building structures like that by themselves. It would have had to have been on the backs of serfs or slaves.

I've also deliberately avoided mentioning the slavery found in the Book of D'ni. That happened with a different culture on Terahnee. However, there are interesting parallels, including calling their slaves Bahro. They called the natives of different ages who weren't of Roney descent relyimah or "the unseen". They also used the term "ahrotantee" or Book-worlders. We might say natives.

Just as another point of confusion, the D'ni in the cavern used the word relyimah to refer to a sort of secret police. That is completely unrelated to slavery.

I wouldn't take any statement of Yeesha's at face value.

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Zander

MOULagain KI 1090046

"What you still don't understand I have either forgotten to tell you or don't know myself."

My theory on Ri'neref and the Bahro is that Garternay enslaved the Bahro. Ri'neref was against slavery and decadence so he stole the Tablet and the Bahro, but either couldn't free them, or to some degree was afraid of freeing them because of their awesome power so just sought to keep them 'safe' but still bound. The kings after him were good and very bad. Some of them would have no issue using slaves, others would find it abomitable. The Guild Era D'ni I am fairly positive was against slavery completely. So when we think about slaves and D'ni we have to keep in mind 'when was this?' and 'who was in charge?' just like Human history.I don't know when the Pod Age was made but that may be a key to whether slaves were used or not.

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Thelonius "Prof" Higginsbottom

member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent

"I invented the term the Bevin Generation do I get a spot in Mystlore?"

jadawin12, that's certainly ingenious, even if it does make the Magic Tablet of Pholderol even more like the One Ring. "No, no, I must free you...but somehow I can't seem to do it...but I must...but I can't...oh, I'll probably do it tomorrow...in the meantime, bring me another mint julep and do my toenails for me, slave." (Sorry.)

My theory is less complicated; not all of what we hear from Yeesha is true.

I need to go through the notebooks in the city again and see how many of them mention slaves or slavery. (And of course if none of them do, then that proves it. ) I'm prepared to believe that it happened, but not necessarily to the bahro, who strike me on the face of it as being good slave material the way I think supermodels would be good sumo wrestlers. And the idea that the slavery of the bahro (i.e. the possession of the aforesaid magical McGuffin) could be essential to the Writing of Ages is just...well. No.

Getting back to the restriction on Writing man-made objects...if there was such a restriction (assuming the DRC aren't simply working from the Stoneship journal) it would, of course, be quite understandable, because the acknowledged fact that you can Write man-made objects into an Age at all, no matter how unsuccessfully or unpredictably, blows the link-only hypothesis right out of the water in a very visible manner*. So the Guilds in D'ni would have to be united in saying "no you can't," in order to prop up the shaky edifice of belief. And as with every rule human beings have ever created, there would be ways round and special authorisations and people who just didn't care, and most non-Writing D'ni would simply assume that the pods were built and placed the hard way, just as we used to assume our governments were run on principles of probity and decency.

*"Well, erm, over millions of years colonies of microscopic creatures evolved which deposited metal molecules in a spherical shell which grew over time into this remarkably regular shape, and then some of them mutated to make glass instead of metal, and there was air inside despite it being underwater because, erm, well, Great Maker, is that the time?" You can do it, but it's really cumbersome and happenstancical, and simply assuming that the pods were either conventionally built and shipped in, or created along with the planet, is easier. And I know which I prefer.

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Zander

MOULagain KI 1090046

"What you still don't understand I have either forgotten to tell you or don't know myself."