I will have my own opinions. Some of them will be expressed. But I do not wish the expression of my own opinions to prevent others from expressing their own to me. My personal feelings as an explorer of D’ni may occasionally conflict with my professional instincts to support no side and to merely observe. I acknowledge this in advance.

Yet I wish it to be clear that no matter what position you take, whether or not it opposes my own personal one, if you wish to speak with me, you may. If you wish to share your story, your experience, your position, then I am interested in hearing it.

My goal, if one could call it that, is to gain an understanding of the new D’ni, of the restorers and explorers who inhabit the Cavern, whether they be new or old, regardless of their intentions, and to share this understanding with any who ask. I hope to hear from explorers about their experiences, to gather stories of past events, or essays on a person’s position on a current Cavern event or discussion, and more. Fundamentally, I am a story-gatherer, a listener to tales of others; to a lesser extent, I am a story-teller, the kind that shares the stories I have been given with others. This is my calling.

But to do this I need stories and contacts. My hope is that my membership in the Unbound Hearts provides me with this opportunity, that by being in an neutral and open public location I can make myself accessible who want their stories told and shared. I am here to hear you and your story, regardless of who you are and what you support. I am unaligned. I am open. I am an Unbound Heart.

-Renata Jael

I was thinking, I don’t know… fireworks? Pretty sparks? Anything with fire floats my boat (and usually doesn’t sink it!) Maybe we could have a nice display in Bevin to celebrate the return to the cavern.

Kaelri caught up to me in Ae’gura of course. He’s usually so painfully polite, and still was… you could only tell he was angry based on the deadpan factor when he called my name across the courtyard.

First words as I walked up weren’t a surprise at all. “You blew up a silo.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back to feeding, and loving, and calling algae George soon enough.”

“You blew up a silo, dear.”

“There’s how many more of them around the outer edge of the lake? A bunch are wrecked. One more won’t make much difference, and I know to avoid THAT recipe now…” I’d already found another book to place in the Er’cana factory I’d taken up care of, and told him as much.

“You blew. Up. A silo.”

“It was a small explosion! No one even felt it. It’s just a crack really, and a few fallen stones. You make it sound like I blew the far wall half way to K’veer!”

It appears repair work is going to be my penance. Upon failing to find any heavy equipment the DRC may have abandoned, I’ve taken to using one of the “heavy” Maintainer’s suits. Going is slow, not least of all because I’ve next to no bloody clue how to use the thing. It’s more or less a rolling tank and survey machine, and if it had a mouth I’m sure it’d be telling me how perturbed it is to be put to this use instead of examining new ages. If anyone knows where the Guild of Miners stored equipment, I’d appreciate you dropping me a line. In particular, I’ve had my heart set on one of those devices that concentrates stone into liquid Nara. Not only could I use it to clear the rubble, I could then reinforce any of my repairs (which are sure to be amateur) with the Nara. Maybe stone that strong could even withstand a few more booms…

~ Clyde Craft

Let me be clear: when someone you thought was dead turns out not to be, it’s wonderful news. I had mostly left the cavern after Sydney Austin’s apparently-fatal accident in May of 2007, but before her reappearance the following July. As a result, I have spent the last three years believing that Sydney was dead.

You can imagine my disquiet, then, when I first heard of the Ranting Thespian.

I knew immediately that he was more than a rumor. I learned about the incident through Cactus Wren, a new explorer who joined the restoration through the MYSTcommunity sponsorship program. She saw it with her own two eyes. He was hysterical, it seems, and claimed to have seen Sydney. Recently.

(05/08 16:06:25) Kaelri: Hrm. What was his name again? RT something?
(05/08 16:06:46) Cactus Wren: Ranting Thespian? Something like that. “Thespian”, anyway.
(05/08 16:09:10) Cactus Wren: Some in this conversation last night were advocating a complete re-abandonment of exploration… if the D’ni had abandoned the City, we had no right to occupy or explore it.
(05/08 16:14:33) Kaelri: I’d like to meet this man.

I immediately contacted Chloe Rhodes. If anyone could confirm a Sydney sighting, it was her. Unfortunately, I received no response; she must have been on her way out of the cavern. So, I proceeded to Ae’gura on foot.

It was a surprisingly cold afternoon in the cavern today. I immediately found myself wishing I’d brought my good coat, but my wardrobe hasn’t been much of a priority on this trip. Nonetheless, I pressed on, all along the Tokotah, asking everyone I met about the bizarre reports of the Thespian. Not a single one of them – neither fchall, whom I was pleased to see, nor the German marker runners on the Great Stair – could tell me anything.

Feeling discouraged, I found my way back to a Nexus book; after linking, I sat in the terminal for a while, thinking. (In retrospect, my careful strategizing is a little embarrassing.) I didn’t want to stray from the cavern, but the idea of a warmer district was appealing, and on the terminal console, I noticed that a decent crowd was forming in the Guild of Robots’ Bevin. Where there are people, there is information. So, deciding to play the moth to their flame, I linked.

And there she was.

She was standing at the top of the auditorium, where the gathered were gawking at OHB’s robotic marvel. The Thespian was there, as well, and – still unaware that her “death” had been debunked years before – I was momentarily thrown by her neighbors’ relative indifference. Intensely curious, I decided to hang back and observe. I even took a photograph, just to prove to myself that I wasn’t mistaking another woman’s face for hers. But then she spotted me, and I learned that I wasn’t the only one who had shown my interest:

(05/08 19:50:27) *Sydney Austin*: oh. Hey Kaelri
(05/08 19:50:36) Kaelri: Shorah.
(05/08 19:50:50) Kaelri: I must admit, I’m rather startled to see you here.
(05/08 19:51:04) *Sydney Austin*: Why is that?
(05/08 19:51:17) Kaelri: Well. Reports of your death were greatly exaggerated, eh?
(05/08 19:51:47) *Sydney Austin*: haha. yes, let’s all laugh.
(05/08 19:53:10) *Sydney Austin*: kaelri, in answer to your question yes. And to make something more clear to everyone this night is about OhBot, I’m just here to listen and ask questions just like everyone else.
(05/08 19:53:59) Kaelri: I assure you, I have no desire to make a scene. It’s good to see you alive; I’ll leave it at that for now.
(05/08 19:55:05) *Sydney Austin*: hehe.

The event began a few minutes later. And that – up to now – is that.

My history with Sydney is a contentious one.

While she was founding the Anti-DRC Movement, I was taking over diplomatic duties in the Unbound Hearts. After their inaugural event – a loud, riotous, partisan town hall meeting, a black mark on the cavern’s record – I invited the ADM leadership back to my ‘hood in the hopes of a smaller, more productive dialog. They came. All except for Sydney. That was when my friendship with Chloe Rhodes began. It’s also the moment that made it clear to me how much the cavern needs stable institutions like The Meeting Place, the Guild of Greeters, and the Unbound Hearts to keep the river flowing where it must flow. The relationships I formed that night – with Chloe, and to a lesser extent with Ethan and Professor Ovesen – would later play a role, if a small one, in the collapse and dispersion of the ADM.

Not long after that night, my friend and predecessor, Vormaen, became embroiled in a public war of words with Sydney. Vormaen is a man of peace, not war; the bad blood and ill will which seeped into the community during those days was deeply upsetting to him. The result, as you already know, was Vormaen’s departure from the cavern, and the beginning of my leadership of the Unbound Hearts. The delicate trials we faced in the following months, not least of which was the ultimate defeat of the ADM, are what have prepared us for the role we play now.

Sydney Austin has now returned to D’ni. I wish her well, and I’m sure that we have both grown a great deal in the last three years. However, I am prepared for a future as adversarial as the past. Past, as always, is prologue. So I can assure you that I will be keeping a close eye on Sidney, and what she may yet have to say – and do.

I know the URL is a lot less friendly. That’s the only reason I hesitated to do this. Fortunately, until I can get proper forwarding on my server, there are now homepage links to the Unbound Hearts on two websites:

• Go to Lore (lore.gilgarn.org)
• Go to Uru Blogs (urublogs.com)

If you want to send new people our way, just give them one of those addresses and tell them to click “Unbound Hearts.” Or, better yet, bookmark us.

Beyond that, I hope the benefits will be obvious. The Picasa thumbnails are now working – in all browsers. Our ability to upload pictures, media and HTML content is now unrestricted. I can also open registration for other members of the UH to post on the front page. And as you can see, the importation process was absolutely seamless, so all of the original blog’s posts and comments have been completely preserved.

Feel free to comment. Feedback is important.

If anyone’s interested, I’ve uploaded my entire library of KI photographs, from ’05 to present. It’s separated into two albums. The first, Expeditions, contains the raw images dumped from my KI. The second, Portfolio, holds the select few shots which have undergone careful CS4 processing.

As you can probably see, I also added a gadget to display the image feed on the right side of this blog. It’s a bit limited, though; it doesn’t allow me to specify the album, nor the picture order. If there are any other Picasa users out there, I’d be grateful for any advice.

Update: Apparently the display gadget fails dramatically in Webkit browsers. I’ll keep working on it.

Last night, Clyde and I guided Araxia through her Ahnonay journey. Araxia has turned out to be a hell of a quick study, and it took her only a few hours – putting my first time to shame, I must say. And of course, her face and giddy laughter when she finally pressed that last button were beyond priceless. Another day, another convert.

However, we were especially eager to get Araxia’s perspective on the Age because of one of its enduring mysteries: gravity. Where we stand, both inside the mobile structure, and out at the edge, in Kadish’s office, the force of gravity is obviously downward and Earth-like. Yet the raging water column curves away, both above and below, suggesting a torus structure, much like Catherine’s infamous Age. The puzzle was this: at the very center of such a structure, where its mass is pulling equally from all sides, the net gravitational force is supposed to be zero. The water accelerates as it comes in from above, and picks up enough momentum to carry on through the center and out into space. But we, already at the center and standing still, should be more or less weightless.

My first theory was that a larger mass was situated below us, providing direct downward gravity even when the net force of the torus is zero. But this presented all kinds of other problems: how would the water maintain its cycle without being caught in the parent body’s field? Why doesn’t the torus itself fall and collide with it? Is it in some kind of orbit, and if so, why doesn’t its velocity skew the water column to one side? The concept was convoluted at best, and would have been hell to Write. A simpler solution had to exist.

That’s when we realized our obvious mistake. Of course, we must be centered horizontally, which is why we weren’t drifting towards the inner walls of the torus. But there was no reason why we had to be centered vertically. The structure is simply built closer to the top of the inner column – the torus’s center of mass is still below us, and, with the right distribution of volume, produces a normal Earth-like g-force at this spot. Meanwhile, the water column surges on downward (or rather, inward), regardless of the mobile structure’s minor interference.

Some curiosities remain. We still have no idea how to account for Ahnonay’s constant and uniform light source. Clyde is also preoccupied with the water column itself, which seems to display two overlapping spiral currents; a spiral pattern is to be expected with a draining system of this nature, but to have two discrete and opposing layers is extremely peculiar. One day, I suppose, we’ll tackle these challenges. Until then, Ahnonay shall remain the Age that keeps on giving.

By the way, for readers of Uru Blogs and other syndications, I apologize for flooding the feed with all these self-serving diatribes. I’m pretty sure this is the last of the current salvo.

I know that quite a few don’t always see eye to eye with me and my opinions. I also know that many have their groups that they are a part of.

I created the Unbound Hearts of D’ni years ago to try and stop the shifting of too much power going to one side or the other. I know that some of you might think I am jumping the gun, but it is still a possiblity here. We dwell in an unknown world where power is relatively untapped, and can be harnessed for good or evil. Many times in the past there were attempts to force feed us the need to choose sides. If there’s one thing I learned from Cyan and their interpretations of the journals, is that when given the choice between one or the other, the truly unbound can go beyond such choices, and find another.

Perfect example. In Cyan’s Myst V, it was presented to the player that they could either choose Yeesha, or Escher. Things were too black and white, and neither was the right choice. The player stepped out of the bounds of right or wrong, and made a choice that resolved so much. Breaking boundries and making compromises can solve more than splitting our community. There are only a handful of us in the group now, but we are just looking for people that want to think outside of the box. I cherish this community as much as any of you, and I feel with the combined effort of others, we can achieve so much, without wars or conflict, no matter how unavoidable they may be.

Don’t mistaken this hood as my hood, because it is not. It belongs to all that join. It has full access the the Great Zero, Tsogal, and to our own city instance, so the need for solice is available and held in high regard. The group is also there to assist ANYONE that comes asking for help, be it with ages or questions about their surroundings or the D’ni history. Anyone that would like to join can contact myself, Halcyon, or Kaelri.

Please, I do ask for no harsh criticism. I am just openly inviting people to join, and I will not question why this hood or this hood was created, and I’d hope that respect will be returned. I hope to hear from you folks soon. Take care.

(An OOC version is also available.)