Posting from the surface...
I like how it took most of a month to start writing what I said I'd post "tomorrow". Oops.
December 20, 2006 marked the reopening of D'ni to the masses. It almost makes me wonder if the events that occured the day before were fated, as a way to sort of "reboot" things. After I got off work that day, I immediately linked to Relto to find my first surprise. Everything was gone. All of the Yeesha pages I had found were missing, there were no books in my shelf except for a Neighborhood linking book, and where the four pillars used to sit, there was now only one.
To be honest, I was dying to check out the single pillar, but I've come to appreciate how important it is to have a working KI, so I chose to link to the Neighborhood, and then Gahreesen. I don't know what 'hood I ended up in... it was one of the default DRC ones. It sure wasn't UruObsession(1). The imagers were gone, the 'heek table was gone, the privacy room door was locked, and most frustrating to me, the community room had been blocked off. To make matters a little more confusing, the Eder Kemo linking book wasn't on it's usual pedestal either.
Linking to Gahreesen, I found that everything beyond the KI dispenser had also been blocked off. The balcony bahro stone was in it's usual place, and so was the Nexus book. Since I would apparently have to rebuild my collection of links from scratch, I went ahead and used the Nexus book, and made a point to come back for the balcony link later.
In the Nexus, I realized that all of my city links were missing since I had a new KI. I'd need to take a run around Ae'gura and make sure to replace them all... however, the Great Zero links were also out of place. As it turned out everything beyond the Great Stair had been blocked off, which left us with a lot of explorers crammed into a relatively small space. The population cap had been lowered to forty, which kept things from getting too bad, but still pretty awkward.
After meeting up with some of my friends and registering everyone's new KIs, I went back to Relto to investigate the new pillar. Just like the four pillars that had come before it, pressing my hand to the journey on it's face resulting in it sliding open and revealing a linking book. However, instead of a link to an unfamiliar age, it was clearly a place that many of us had become very familiar with. It was the cleft. The cleft hadn't changed much in the past year, the trailer was still there, the various bits that had fallen from Riven were still lying around, and the seven cloths were in the same places as always. I was a little surprised to see that Zandi was back, and once again greeting explorers. He didn't act as if he remembered me, but I think I noticed some recognition in his eyes. Maybe I'm just dreaming.
Near his trailer, I did find a new Yeesha page, definitely something I hadn't seen before. I'd check it out once I made my way back to Relto. Yeesha's message was the same as it always had been, and nothing had seemed to change. I didn't know why I was taking this leg of the journey again, I already had a Relto book. But after I made my way into the tree, I found another surprise. Instead of a Relto book, there was another page... and as soon as I had taken it, I heard a Bahro cry out, and I found myself forcibly linked to Relto. Again.
No, it's ok, really. I love getting linked against my will. It's a turn on.
On Relto... things were starting to look familiar again. The single pillar was gone, replaced by the four that I had become accustomed to. This was apparently the result of the page I found inside the tree. The other page, had added a bridge to and between two of the islands that were hanging in the air off to the left of the hut. On the larger island now sits a sort of dial... featuring some swirls, some lines, and an image of a sun and moon.
Inside the pillars were the same four books that had always been. I added them to my bookshelf, then returned to the Nexus to see about getting my membership with the UO hood back. As it turns out, the incident had also completely reset the lattice. All of the Neighborhoods had been unregistered, and had to be recreated. There's also a lovely problem where the Nexus is calling every single Neighborhood a "Bevin", even though it's impossible to tell where the original Bevin is now. Besides that, it's impossible to give the Neighborhood a name other than the name that the KI of the person who registers it, is registered to. So someone had to register a second KI under the name "Uru Obsession" in order to register "Uru Obsession's Bevin".
More to come...
