HarveyMidnight wrote:
Well, bear in mind that, according to Yeesha, Gahreesen dates back to the time of King Kerath... who was coronated in the D'ni year of 6731.
You're thinking of the Guild Hall. Gahreesen was in 8500 DE. Long after Kerath.
Ainia wrote:
Gahreesen looks to me like they were after at least two things. They rifled through only some of the books in the holding area, so I am thinking they were after something specific and thus stopped when they found it. And the dramatic damage we see farther on looks like they were heading exactly where we ourselves had to go, to the middle floor control room. Access there obviously was highly restricted (and I still am not clear how the Maintainers got in there since they obviously couldn't link there). The intruders blew open several walls in order to bypass the security doorways, blew a hole into the flooring in one place, the ceiling in another place, and an outer wall on the middle floor.
The damage done to this age was not done by any one person or group. Gahreesen's documentation makes it very clear, that a bomb wasn't going to get anyone anywhere within Gahreesen. Even with all the damage it's taken the age is structurally one of the best buildings around. The damage done to Gahreesen is a result of physics. Since Gahreesen constantly rotates it's always under stress from it's movement. With the majority of it's damage located at it's middle floor, it's center of gravity. After 243 years of constant movement without any maintenance to the structure to repair cracks and stresses caused by this movement, the damage would be about consistent with what it is now.
In fact, most if not all of the ages would fall into this category. Remember there's a 243 gap from when D'ni and it's ages were no longer habituated till the discovery of D'ni in 1987. So in all that time no one was around to clean up ages, repair machinery, patch mortar and stone etc. The elements and nature had 240 years to do damage without people around to fix that damage.
I'd suggest watching this video and others like it to get an idea of what would happen to any world with man made structures that suddenly became inhabitable. The video documents some of what would happen to earth between 150-300 years after people. The show itself is a humbling to say the least, so I'd suggest to everyone to check it out if you ever have the chance.
Granted, Gahreesen is built much better than our own human buildings, but, the idea that it and other D'ni built areas like it are not subject to the same laws that govern our own buildings is a fallacy. With no one their to maintain them, D'ni's structures would have eventually collapsed just like our own would. It was the human discovery of D'ni that saved it from fading away into oblivion after it's fall.