The Gardens of the Empire

The week-long celebrations of Foundation day came to a close. For me, they ended yesterday in a grand finale - a tour of the "Gardens of the Empire", hosted by Lunarisse.

The gardens are inside a luxurious yacht, docked in Amarr. I had no idea our Directrix had a taste for such luxury vessels. Or maybe she hasn't, and the yacht is just an excellent place to house a mobile botanical exhibit.

To be honest, it is much more than a botanical garden or an arboretum. Each hall is an exquisitely composed biosphere, reproducing also the atmosphere of a place, and telling a story. There were foreigners and new capsuleers on our tour, and I think through these immersive life-size dioramas they learnt about our customs and our history.

The gardens bear a very personal touch. I was moved by the colonist's storm planet garden depicting life on Anath V, the planet where Lunarisse lived as a child with her parents until the fateful Blooder attack. And the oasis garden, it was modeled on the oases of Mishi IV, where Luna's family is from. 

So, while for the outsider the tour is glance into the Empire, for those that know Lunarisse they also offer a view into the places of her past. It is nice to know that there are some new gardens in the making, I think they will offer a view of her hopes for the future.

God's name

Elsebeth Rhiannon told a tale at the Inter-Galactic Summit that is very much intra-galactic. 

Ms. Rhiannon is not merely a terrorist but she is also a wonderful storyteller, and offers an insight into the mind of the apostate Minmatar. They believe in spirits that have names and live with us in this world, and God for them is merely one of these spirits, albeit a very powerful one. Of course, they see it as a malevolent spirit. To them, it is an angry spirit, cut off from the original world of spirits, and the only  nameless spirit. Their animistic religion mirrors the cruelty and violence of their society.

Nevertheless, the story of God's namelessness reminded me of a beautiful prayer of St. Gregory of Nahyeen:

God beyond all things earthly,
By no other name could I call You!
You are beyond words,
when all words stem from You.

You who name all names,
You are the only unnameable one.
How could I call you other than
God beyond all things earthly.

You see, our theologians agree that God does not have a name like John or Lisa. But rather than seeing this as a weakness or a punishment, it is a characteristic of strength, or rather of God's transcendent nature. He from who all names stem is beyond naming, as the Saint points out. 

 

((ooc attribution: this paraphrased short piece is part of a longer prayer on the trancendent nature of God by St. Gregory of Nazianzen, a fourth century archbishop of Constantinople who was clearly an Amarrian))

Tour guide

For Foundation day, tours of monuments and historic places in the Empire had been organised. I had the pleasure of being a tour guide for capsuleers, for a tour in space around Amarr. 

There are many additional things to see in lowsec space nearby, but we stuck to highsec, so we could get newly graduated capsuleers to join us. The tour brought us from Doriam's reign to Jamyl's reign to the current day. 

There were many places of wonder, such as the monument for one of the first miner tycoons and the fortified monastery of the Order of Tetrimon. There were also places that bring strong emotions - the Elder war memorial, the wreck of Jamyl's titan, and the space cemetery in Molea. I am amazed that there are so many wonders to see within a few jumps from Amarr, and I even left out some, like the conserved experimental construction site of the first Upwell astrahus.

I haven't been in space during many momentous events, such as the Elder war or the attack on saint Jamyl. Luna, and lord-consort Newelle were there, and while we visited these place I could sense how strongly it still affects them. The monument that evokes the strongest emotion in me is the Molea cemetary. It has this immense number of graves, the vastness of which you can only appreciate if you fully zoom out on the grid, each of which bears a message for a lost loved one. It reminds me how interconnected we are as capsuleers, how much we form our own community in between the stars.

Moon drill archeology

I read about a remarkable archeology incident that happened just a few days ago.

The idea appears lunatic to start with. Using a moon drill for archeology. Yes, a moon drill, that excavates a chunk of moon about a hundred kilometers across and drags it into orbit where it can be exploded into a moon ore belt.

As tools for planetside (or moonside) archeology, I am more used to the artifact chip brush for carefully removing dust from precious findings. If really necessary, a small hand shovel or an excavation knife can be used. If you are a real brute, you can add a rock hammer and a chisel to your toolkit. But a moon drill?

Reading more into the details, the idea becomes a bit less crazy (just a tiny bit). As the head of the project, ms. Lauralite Anne Brezia explains, the moon drill actually does not hit the center of the region that it excavates, it digs around it. It is a bit like moving a precious plant to a new spot in the garden, you use the shovel and keep a clod of earth around its roots intact. Yet as every gardener knows, the plant does suffer. At the center of the region that is extracted by the moon drill, there will be extremely strong seismic activity. So, you will need a lot of inertial stabilizers to keep any structure from collapsing. 

Also, buildings are constructed with gravity in mind, and often it is the weight of stone on stone which provides the structural stability of the construction. Bringing it off the moon into weightlessness requires special consolidation techniques. All this effort makes me think it is easier to disassemble the ruins stone by stone and reassemble them elsewhere.

Now for this ruin, disassembly may not have been possible. It is an underground structure, several kilometers wide and half a kilometer below the surface of Umai, the first moon of Eugales V. Indeed this is not something you can transport without a huge clod of earth around it. I do not know why it cannot be investigated in situ, though. 

There is also some mystery surrounding the particular relics that were in the ruins - they may be advanced AI's. This brings its own problems: it is a bit like thawing a virus from a chunck of ancient ice and hoping it isn't a lethal pathogen. It also of course brings its own opportunities - the AI could hold immensely valuable historical data.

Unfortunately, we will probably not know. The moon drill technique went wrong: the tractor beam failed and dropped the chunk back onto the moon. The crash was more than any intertial stabilizer can handle...

Foundation Day celebrations

Foundation day celebrations are in full swing. SFRIM and PIE organised a memorable parade fleet and fireworks display, and on Sunday I'm helping out with historical tours along the sights of highsec Amarr.

The Empress addressed her subjects, and reminded us of our destiny in a rousing speech. As a result I've seen there are many new capsuleers lining up to join SFRIM and I guess also PIE, to show their loyalty and the desire to serve, which burns strongly in their hart now. Ah on days like these I am full of confidence in the glorious future of our Empire!

Happy Foundation Day celebrations, all!

Riddles

A new mystery is always enjoyable. Yesterday, mr. Jason Statesman came to the library. He'd been there before, for books on Amarr customs. He is born in the Federation, but it is unmistakable: his noble face betrays Amarrian descent. His mother confessed on her deathbed that his father is indeed from our Empire, but he does not know the identity of his father.

Yesterday, he brought his heritage: a puzzle-box which appears (to me) to be made by Jin-Mei artisans. It contains three items: a book that has become wet so the pages fused, a small fist made of noble metals, and a badge with blast damage. I kept the book and the ornate fist for further investigations. 

I'm comparing the fist to existing depictions, used in family crests and corporation logos. Meanwhile, I have the book examined, planetside, with an X-ray fluorescence scanner (we don't have this type of equipment at the library). 

The mould has fused the pages together but this imaging technique allows to scan layer by layer without the need of opening the book. It shows where the chemical elements used for  pigments are located. Doing so, it reveals the text or print below another one, even if the text would have been overwritten. The microscopic three-dimensional reconstruction allows to reconstitute the text. A full restoration this way takes years and a dedicated research student so that will not be possible here. Nevertheless, in the span of a few days we should be able to identify the book by getting a glimpse of its first page.

I hope this reveals clues as to the identity of Jason's father - it would be so nice if they can be re-united.

A new challenge

I'm back in Mehatoor, at my familiar library. A bunch of mail was waiting for me, and a couple of surprises. 

The first one is that Lunarisse is expecting a baby. God has not waited long to bless her marriage, this is a good sign! Come to think of it, I did note a distinct uptick in motherhood books and baby-care books, in her library loans, but I didn't quite connect the dots till I saw her again.

The second surprise is a job offer. A new challenge! Gottin's Lamp chapel in Mehatoor is short-handed. Lord Baracca, the official chaplain, has been gone for Empire duties now for quite a while. From time to time, I provided a bit of spiritual help to people who would ask for it in the library, on those moments that it was too busy in the chapel.

Now, Lunarisse offered me the job of co-chaplain. I gladly accepted. It lies closer to my calling, and to my training. Although I am ordained, I might be a bit rusty since I haven't had to perform rites at the monastery. But in the past months I've been doing some: taking confessions, funeral rites, and of course a high-profile capsuleer wedding.

Of course that doesn't mean my quest ends, nor does my academic work at the library end. But I will be glad to let mr. Jensen handle administrative duties for the library. Oh, and I must get back in touch with Arne Maleto, Ishta's brother. He was looking for a job as a helper in the library, and extra hands there will be needed now.

Economic measures

As I return back from the remote corner of Achura where the monastery was, the contrast with the regular Caldari society strikes me again. I seem to reconnect with modernity and the busy daily worries of the capsuleer. Also my communications devices reconnected to galnet in full force, flooding my mind with news of the past weeks while the bullet train brings me back to the Saisio's central hub for interstellar travel. 

The most striking news is that the SCC central banking commissions are enacting a massive monetary operation, pumping trillions of ISK in the cluster's economy, mostly via direct grants to capsuleers. Some of this has already been plundered by the Gurista's! At the same time, the tax rates for market transactions have been strongly reduced. 

These are measures directed at reviving a stagnating economy, where income from mining has dropped, production is down, and prices are still going up. I hope the measures work - and I expect at least on the short term to see a boost in trading on the markets. With incentives to sell industrial stockpiles and flush money for capsuleers to buy ships, this is bound to happen. But if the measures overshoot the mark, on the long run this could lead to a serious inflation problem.

Goodbyes

I said goodbye to the friendly monks of the monastery of the Seeing Blind. It has been a nice and productive stay, I feel I learned a lot. I got the see a shard of the Rod of the Creator and get data on its composition and dating, so I can call my visit a success. Yet I feel that the monks always kept a certain polite distance in their interactions, and that is a bit a pity. I guess two weeks is not long enough to get to know people, but still. If anything, it makes me want to return and continue our discussions at some point.

White Song

My last couple of days in Saisio III. I feel that I've finally adapted to the temple routines. How typical for travel - just as you start getting the hang of a place you have to leave again. 

Don't get me wrong: I'm looking forward to returning to the library, I've missed it. But I have to admit that in Mehatoor it seems there is always some sort of emergency at hand. Here I enjoy the fact that there is nothing special to do - prayer and contemplation. I enjoy the rest and the quietness of this monastery, its mild-mannered monks, the interesting polite discussions on theology and the patient explanations of rites and customs. It is nice to pray and meditate while resting my eyes on the views of the lake from the mountain.

As a parting gift, and because master Drellken noticed that I like to go for a walk in the forests surrounding the monastery, he has fixed me a guide who could bring me to see Achuran White Song birds. They are beautiful creatures, completely white as their name suggests. Around dawn and around dusk they sing their songs, in always new enchanting variations. 

They are rare, and indeed I had not spotted a single one during any of my walks. They are also quite famous in the history of Achura. Long ago, when Achura was an independent empire, the White Song was a symbol of imperial power and purity. Commoners could not keep them in captivity, only in places like their Royal Tower they were kept. A war was fought over this, when one contender to the throne started keeping White Songs in his own palace. Nowadays, these birds still command the respect of the Achur people, who protect the populations and try to increase their numbers in the wild.

We left before dawn and it was good to have an experienced guide with me, to navigate the mountain paths in the dark. Saisio III does not have moons, and its asteroid belt is but the faintest trace of light on the sky. The guide took me to a grove where trees grow that bear a fruit the White Song love.

We could hear the birds already singing as we arrived at the grove. We found a good spot, and sat down. It is hard to see the birds in the trees, but I caught a few glimpses of them. Their song is definitely more impressive than the little birds themselves! Sometimes they appear to have a conversation, singing tunes one bird after another. Sometimes they make a choir, they synchronizing their songs when they sing at the same time. It was a beautiful dawn, I felt as if God had been granted me a few hours in paradise.

Data on the shard

Any ore that is mined contains a unique mix of rare element impurities, including radioisotopes. The particular relative abundances of these elements is like a fingerprint that can reveal from which system the ore comes, and sometimes even from which mine it comes.

On top of that, the radioisotopes will decay over time, resulting in a chain of decay products many of which are long-lived rare isotopes too. The ratios of the decay products in turn allows you to date the time when the ore was mined. The more unknowns there are, the more ratios need to be measured to provide a closed set of equations. It is an art on its own, at the crossroads between astrogeology, nuclear physics and history, to identify isotopes with useful decay chains for dating.

I was hoping to use the data from my ocular filter to do such dating and tracing on the shard, but the error bars I got on my estimates were still massive. 

Yet, it turns out that no subterfuge was needed to get such data. Master Drellken was happy to talk about the dating efforts on the relic. The Achur investigate their relics with great scientific rigor, and what he shared agrees with my own scarce and imperfect amateur measurement. 

They date their shard at 15000 years old, give or take a milennium. The rare element composition cannot be matched to any known system (excluding wormhole space and Jovian systems). The relic is nano-engineered with a precision not matched even by the Jove. 

Master Drellken explained that this is not unexceptional for relics found on Achura, especially the relics attributed in folklore to the "old Gods". The Elder Visionaries speculate on their origins, with a popular theory being that these relics are remnants of an advanced civilization that spanned the entire cluster before the dark age, before even the Talocan or the Jove. This would be the "Cradle of Mankind" civilization - the common ancestor of Amarr, Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar. Some, like the Goners, claim these ancestors come from beyond the gate.

While the relics may corroborate such theories, they are of course no proof!

According to the Achur themselves, Achura would have been an important planet for that ancient civilization, maybe even their homeworld. Some Achur patriots see themselves as the heirs to that mythical civilization...

I confess that I am curious whether our own Amarrian older relics have a similar composition - with my scan of the shard and the additional data I was given, I could figure out in principle. But I have to contain this unhealthy curiosity - it might invite the demon of pure thought to attack my soul. After all, the Code of Demeanor teaches us that the sin of pure thought is science that forgets the spiritual context of our relics.

A shard of the Rod

It was in the middle of the night when my exchange mentor, master Drellken, appeared at the cabin where I stayed, in the company of four armed guards.

A rude awakening.

I feared I had unknowingly made some unforgivable cultural misstep, maybe said some blasphemous thing by accident? Or maybe I failed to properly sign all the correct forms back at the immigration office? Was I going to be executed on the spot, imprisoned, or merely banished?

Luckily, it was nothing of the sort. The Elder Visionary leading the temple of the Seeing Blind has decided I am allowed to see their shard of the Rod of the Creator. As a precautionary measure they did not tell me in advance, so it would be more difficult if I were a thief preparing a heist.

I could not bring any scanning device to investigate the relic. In fact I could not bring anything else but the sandals on my feet and the pajama I was wearing - my favorite one with the sleeping kittens print. However, capsuleers never come fully unprepared, and this particular clone's implant slot 1 was equipped with ocular filter augmentations specialized in materials analysis. It would have to suffice.

The ocular filter wasn't much help at the start though, since I was blindfolded and led on a walk. I think I am pretty sure where we went, I came to know the grounds a bit, but I will not write it down here should rogue eyes read these logs.

The relic was displayed for me on a table, we were in a vault when my eyes were uncovered at last. The guards were tense. Master Drellken was here, as well as some other older monks I have not seen before. They were looking at me like an exam jury scrutinizing a student.

I offered a prayer of gratitude and meditated a bit in the presence of this relic, so holy to the Achur. I meditated a bit more as the ocular filter took its readings. To the unaugmented eye the shard looks deceptively unimpressive. A small black shard with a metallic shine, similar to black hematite or obsidian. On one side a few lines that were part of a carving of sorts, but nothing can be made from these line segments - they do not reveal the grander design that was covering the entire Rod when it was still in one piece. 

After a short while, the guards blindfolded me again. I thanked my hosts, and the guards took me back to my cabin. 

Of course I couldn't sleep any more.

The unlucky peasant

In today's discussion with my mentor we talked about how I hiked up to the monastery. I was telling him about the peasant that was looking at me from his field, and he seemed to know him. Master Drellken then told me another of his stories, which I try to recount here.

One day, the horse of the peasant ran away. It was his only horse. So the villagers pitied him, telling him  "That is so bad", and "You have really bad luck". He just answered "We'll see."

A couple days later, the horse returned, and there were two wild horses following it. The peasant now had three horses in stead of one, and the villagers went "Lucky you! That turned out all right". Again, the peasant said "We'll see.".

The peasant's only son tried to tame the wild horses, but he was thrown off and broke his leg and couldn't help any more in the field. You can imagine the villagers' reaction: "That's awful!", "I'm so sorry". But the peasant replied: "We'll see."

Soon after, the Caldari Navy recruiters came for the young men of the village, I think it was at the onset of the Triglavian war, but they passed over the peasant's son on account of his broken leg. Some villagers whose sons had signed up and who worried, told him "You got lucky!".  The peasant thought a while, and said: "We'll see."

That's the end of the story. As usual I don't quite know what to make of it. Is this referring to the fact that the State would go on to lose so many systems to the Triglavians? Or is it a tale about the wisdom of the peasant who sees beyond good and bad things? I asked what the peasant meant by his "we'll see"s, and my mentor answered,

"Ah, nothing probably. When the peasant was young he had a stroke, and was left with brain damage, a kind of aphasia. He can only speak this one sentence, 'we'll see', even though in his mind he thinks he's said something quite different. Doctors can't cure it. His wife learned to interpret the intonation of his 'we'll see's to figure out what he wants."

Stunned I said, "So... he's not wise, really?"

To my further surprise my mentor answered: "Oh no, even before his stroke I thought he is one of the wisest persons I have met."

I raised  my eyebrow at that. "Ah, such bad luck then that he had this stoke."

My mentor grinned and said "We'll see."

Stormy weather

Today there was a storm. This required the full attention of all the monks, as they prepared the monastery to withstand the torrential rains and the gale force winds. Stroms come in from the other side of the mountain range, where the sea lies, so usually they have lost their power when they arrive lakeside. Still, they can do a lot of damage, winds uprooting trees and lightning strikes causing destruction.

We were gathered in the central temple for the duration of the storm, to avoid people getting caught in accidents. It was fierce. And yet, some monks were allowed to stay outside, continuing their meditation, apparently unperturbed. 

I kept myself occupied with revising a text I am working on during my spare time here, a chronicle of our war in Pochven. But the storm made it hard for me to concentrate on this work.

The cleanup started as soon as the storm subsided. I'll be looking for the blue knitted caps of the statues in the woods for a while...

The challenger

I was still thinking about the grand master who thinks he is the best archer in the universe but doesn't know it is because his apprentices carefully paint bull's eyes around his arrows wherever they land. 

When master Drellken came to see how I was doing, I asked him if no-one ever told grand master Nori about the deception.

He thought for a bit, and then said, "Actually, one day, a young champion archer came to challenge the venerable Nori. He came to the training field, and showed off his skill. He shot an arrow right in the bull's eye from certainly one hundred meters. Then the took a second arrow, and shot it with an aim so good that the second arrow splintered the first arrow. He yelled out at master Nori to come and do better."

"So, grand master Nori took him to the forest, to a place where an old tree bridges a deep ravine. The tree is not stable and mushrooms feast on its rot. Master Nori carefully stepped on the tree and walked to the middle of the ravine. The tree creaked and cracked and shook and pieces fell into the deep, but master Nori didn't fall. He shot an arrow which landed in a tree trunk farther away. He then carefully stepped back and with a little leap made it back to the safe rock at the side."

"The challenger may have been an excellent archer, but he did not dare to stand on the rickety tree. As the champion bowed his head in defeat, master Nori explained to him 'you have trained your eyes and the muscles in your arms, but you forgot to train your mind'."

I guess that was my lecture for the day, as my mentor left and I still don't understand how master Nori can be thought of as the best archer in the universe.

The master archer

On several occasions during my walks through the forest I noticed, usually in places difficult to access, an archery target with a single arrow right in the middle of the bull's eye.

Curious about this, I asked my mentor Drellken about it.

He said those are from grand master Nori's archery sessions: "Grand master Nori is the best archer in the universe. Sometimes he wants to make sure he is still so good. Then, he instructs his apprentices to blindfold him, and to lead him to a random place in the woods where the target practice will take place. He doesn't know in advance where this will be."

"There they spin poor master Nori around and toss him around, and it is not rare that he falls and hurts himself, as he is already very old and gets easily disoriented. But then he stands up, and still as blindfolded as he was all the time, he takes his bow, places an arrow, aims without looking, and shoots."

"Only after the arrow has flown its course through the air and landed with a satisfying thud, master Nori allows himself to take off his blindfold. And every single time all can see that his shot has indeed again hit the bull's eye. What you encounter on your walks, are the results of such field archery exercises."

I was in awe, and without due deference I asked "But... if he can't see and doesn't know where the target is, how does take aim? Is God guiding the arrow for this holy man?"

"Probably not." my mentor answered, "As soon as the arrow leaves the bow, the apprentices run after it, and when it lands, they quickly paint a target around the arrow. They are good at this and train for it all year round, so they can do it without grand master Nori knowing."

As our directrix would say: Okies.

I asked "And... he never figured it out, grand master Nori?"

At this my mentor laughed heartily and replied "How do you expect an weary old man to notice if you yourself don't notice such things? You haven't even noticed the apprentices running around you!". Still laughing and shaking his head, he left me in my confusion.  

((ooc disclaimer: The stories Theodosius hears from the other monks during his stay in the Achura monestary do not come from my own imagination: I picked them from the folk tales and stories I collected while traveling around, told to me by the random people I meet during these travels.))

The role of idols in Achur faith

Life at the Achur monastery is peaceful and contemplative. It is strangely dissonant with anything I associate with Caldari corporatism. I've always mentally pictured the Caldari as a kind of "ant colony people", where the individual worker ants exhaust themselves for the good of the industrious colony. This monastery is about as far removed from that mental picture as possible. It is as if all the modernity and space technology cannot reach this ancient place. It doesn't want to build something new, or produce something tangible, it is meant to help individuals to discover some truth about themselves.

I've asked if I could be given a simple task to help my brothers. And so I've been tasked with maintenance work on the myriad of statues and idols that are on the monastery grounds. Some need cleaning of cobwebs, moss or leaves. Some wear blue knitted caps, and the caps must be replaced when they become too weathered or winds blew them off the statues.

I inquired with master Drellken about the statues. I thought that the Achur faith did not worship gods or saints, as I was told it ponders the universal truth and the redemption of the self.

He explained that while this is indeed so, common villagers don't care all that much about the deep practices of Achur faith and they think worshiping the spirits or old gods in the statues is a good deed. But in fact, the statues are just symbols, for example to pay tribute to wise men of the past who taught about the truth. They can be like images of a loved one you keep near and can look at to bring back memories. The monks don't worship them and know they cannot reach the truth by worshiping them. They use them in their rites to remember teachings and to help focus.

Something similar goes for relics, but they have in addition the property that maybe still something new can be learned from them, so they are treated with even more respect. Our discussion thus turned in a natural way to the topic of the rod of the creator shard they have in the monastery. My mentor will inquire if I may visit it - they are afraid of theft as many pieces held by various monasteries have been stolen and are still missing.

Matins

I am settling in. I have been housed in a very comfortable wooden cabin, with all amenities I could wish for. It has a deck with a magnificent view over the mountains, towards the lake that sometimes can be seen in the distance. The view lends itself to sitting down and meditating. I realize this cabin is a privileged lodge for pilgrims, and even though I marvel at the view a regular cell would have suited me just as well.

The day starts with matins. The monks gather at the temple and chant in front of their idols and relics. One of the monks, a man with the build of a tall wardrobe, beats a drum. The rhythm is rather fast, two beats per second. The others chant one syllable per drumbeat. From time to time - I haven't been able to discern a pattern- another monk strikes a cymbal. I been given a hand missal, but it is a translation so I cannot chant along, just listen. In addition, I am not sure it would be proper for me to do so. There are villagers and visitors attending the morning chanting - I have not seen many during the other hours.

After this morning liturgy, we have breakfast porridge. It is the only meal of the day that is not taken in the refectory, but in the public hall of the temple. Each monk sits at a table with one villager family or visitor group and they eat the breakfast porridge together. This is the occasion for the visitors to talk to the monks, to tell them their stories and plights and to ask for prayers.

Achur that have problems with their eyes visit this particular monastery, many come from far away to place offerings and pray in front of the statuettes of the eye idol. The monks give them a flask with which they can scoop up water from the temple source, as this water is said to have healing powers for eyesight troubles.  

I take breakfast with my mentor, master Drellken. We talk about our faiths and rites. I haven't yet brought up my main question - my request to see the piece of the rod of the creator that they keep in the inner temple.

The stairway of a thousand steps

I slept like a log last night, tired, but in a good way. So, I shall finish yesterday's story. 

I arrived at the stone lantern in the late afternoon. A monk was there, I do not know if he was waiting for me or if they saw me coming and had sent him down. Their clothing is simpler than our robes, and I did not see any signs of body augmentations. Next to the lantern was the start of a stone stairway that led up into the forest on the mountain slope.

My monastic colleague told me that this is the staircase of the thousand steps, and it is the entrance to the Monastery of the Seeing Blind at the top of the mountain. My courage sank at the prospect of having to climb it. I was starting to feel the exhaustion of the walk in the heat. But he insisted this was the proper way to go the monastery. 

He had some duties still at the lantern, but would come up later and rejoin me. I started the climb. To my surprise, the stairs were not well maintained, there are stretches were the stones are broken up and scattered, and this makes the ascension difficult. I wondered if the monastery would ever get visitors. There were also snakes in the cracks between the stones, so I had to tread carefully, which hampered the climb. I had to stop several times, to catch my breath and drink the last sips of my water. 

There's this compulsive thing I do - counting the steps of stairs. In this case, thousand. It's hard to stay focused, but usually I am within a few steps of the actual correct number. Here, I counted two thousand two hundred and fifty five. "Thousand steps", a figure of speech, indeed. Dusk was falling but the heat was sweltering by now. There was no breeze and the air was humid, despite being in the mountains.

After great effort, I arrived at the top of the staircase, at the entrance to the monastery. There was a water well nearby, and several peasants and monks. Also the monk I had met at the bottom was there. I hadn't seen anyone else on the staircase, and he never passed me, so I asked him how he got there. 

He said he just took his ground transportation vehicle along the road a little bit farther from where the stairs started, it leads to the parking lot of the monastery. I was dumbfounded - "But, wasn't this the proper way to enter the monastery? You told me so yourself!". He answered, as if he was talking to a kid, as if it had been plain and obvious: "Yes, proper way for you. Not for me, I live here."

I was parched so I wanted to drink from the well, which was equipped with a row of cups on a long stick. But I was not allowed to drink yet: the well is meant for ablution, you scoop up water and rinse your hands and arms. Actually, the cold water flowing over my arms gave relief from the heat.

After that, I was given water to drink and brought to my lodgings, where, as you already know, I fell asleep shortly after.

Reaching the monastery

It has been a long day, but I have reached the monastery. I've been welcomed by my mentor and shown my lodgings. I am tired, and feel I will fall asleep soon, but I want to record my day.

Early in the morning, I left Nizunpaska. There is and old railroad for plasma maglev trains that circles the lake. It is a bit of a tourist attraction, and there is a museum of plasma maglev technology at the starting station, where one can marvel at the old engines. 

image credit: Christian Chihaia

The track goes along the shore of the lake, offering nice views. I took the northern route to one of the many valleys where a mountain river meets the lake. The station where I stepped off the train was not much more than a platform - and it was deserted. As I stepped off, I felt the day was already starting to get hot. 

I started my walk following the river up the valley. There is some farming, mostly hydro-culture grain fields. I only saw one farmer, knee-deep in the water between his crop. He looked up and stared at me, I think he had never seen an Amarrian before.

The valley is rather wide at the start, and flat at the bottom where the river meanders. After two hours of walking, I came across a hill, in the middle of the flat valley. It was maybe thirty meters high, and looked very much out of place. There was a shrine at the top, and despite the heat I climbed up to the shrine. It was deserted, but there were nice statues of old gods and there were relics scribbled all over with undecipherable writing. It looked well maintained, even if there was no-one there at the time. I rested a while, praying and taking in the quietness of the place.

I continued my walk up the valley. It narrowed down and became more woody. My mentor for the exchange had told me to walk all the way up, past the foothills, until I arrived at a large stone lantern at the base of a mountain. 

Ah, I am falling asleep as I write, I will continue tomorrow once I'm rested.