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Obduction Backer |
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 11:06 am Posts: 639 Location: UK: Now with added Magic
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Ainia wrote
I'm pretty sure this is doable. Although it's both tedious and time-consuming, my own measurements between fixed locations in Minkata have been consistent; so I see no reason to expect others won't have the same experience.
With respect to your alignment investigations, I've a technique which may help. If you know this one already, just bear with me while I describe it anyway.
[spoiler]Go to the first landmark. Find the position that gives you the best alignment with the second (maybe behind both and aligning them or back up to it and aim directly for the second, though this is not as accurate). Now sidestep a few paces so that your path ahead is clear. You retain the alignment, simply shifted sideways that few paces. Walk or run using the cursor keys to avoid disturbing the alignment. I've used this off the top of the bonehenge to avoid the ladder or inconvenient bone ribs.[/spoiler]
Ainia wrote
I've been wondering if the Minkata lesson book in the Library is a Yeesha artifact (after all, it sports no DRC stamp of approval). It seems to me she altered the Age to show us about the Bahro war and to send us on yet *another* of her Journeys, this time to show us the star patterns (walking the star patterns in day in order to find each kiva) and to demonstrate the realized star patterns at night (along with Bahro "magic"), all to drive home her message "find your path in the stars". Since this was all originally happening in the later times of the DRC restoration work, I'm wondering if Yeesha was trying to prepare us for her final message "find a way, make a home". Maybe her point is that we have to head for the stars to make a home... I wonder if the Bahro "magic" is supposed to play a part in that too. If I'm remembering events correctly, this was pretty much the last Yeesha lesson we were given (apart from her final speech in K'veer).
I've had thoughts along those lines. From what I've read the final message was essentially
Destruction is coming
Find a way
Make a home
with the implication that she had little hope of ending the Bahro conflict and that it would be back to deal destruction upon us. There are multiple options open to us even after that final message.
Find a way. We need to find a way to communicate with the Bahro, not just scratching on stones, but the way that Yeesha uses, a way that allows us clear unambiguous direct communication. Without that we have no hope of negotiation, and no hope of collaborating fruitfully with the white-hat Bahro should they return.
Find a way. Make a Home Find a way to write new ages that can be used to evacuate the planet should we be unable to convince the black-hat Bahro that their revenge will not make things better for them. We need to find a way to make these ages hidden from Bahro. They represent a last resort, but could be our new home.
Find a way. Find a way to make amends. Make a Home. Perhaps some advance in the Art, to write a special new home age or ages for the Bahro, as a gift to partially express our regret at what was done to them without our knowledge or approval.
Find a way. A way to make a new kind of trap book, one that can suck in the many evil Bahro and banish them to an age they can't get out of. (this one doesn't sit well with me, but may be needed as a last resort)
Find a way. Find a way to get off the planet by physical means: new engines and materials to allow viable ground-to-orbit spacecraft and interstellar craft to be built, or more exotically, a beanstalk, a space elevator, which is the best solution I've seen described for solving the problem of getting out of the gravity well. Make a Home. Spread out to the stars using spacecraft, a method that might well be more Bahro-proof. Spread the human race so widely that no natural catastrophe, not even a supernova, not even revenge-hungry Bahro can wipe us out.
Find a way. Cultivate the Far Look; don't let your vision be limited by the horizon, look beyond it.
The need to spread ourselves wider than just this little blue marble is something of a passion of mine anyway.
"Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars." Commander Jeffrey Sinclair of Babylon 5.
Goodness me, I do go on a bit.
Ainia wrote
If all this is true, then these alignments would have been original to the Age, before Yeesha made her changes (those changes being the stone monuments in the kivas and bonehenge, the night/future version and "magic" we see there, plus her cluebook in the Ae'gura Library next to the Age linking book). And so the D'ni students would have been learning their surveying skills from the alignments I've been trying to map.
I have a theory (no it doesn't involve dinosaurs, keep it quiet at the back you Monty Python fans). The training age did originally have a night side. It makes sense for there to be some objectives for the student Surveyors to look for. The book may have been one way to find the solution, and if the candidate chose to run the course as described they may have got less marks than the ones who drew it out first. Or not, we don't know what the D'ni valued in Surveyors. Alignments between landmarks is another way to find the kivas, and we don't know if the flags were placed by the students or not.
My idea is that the kivas and the bonehenge originally contained linking books, so the only way back out of the age was to find a kiva, link to the night side, find the opened bonehenge and link out. Yeesha replaced the linking books with the stones and the glyphs, since she knew that we already had Relto books and could get home without needing a linking book in the age.
_________________ KI numbers: 11981 AlanD 12305 AlanDJ
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