It is not often that Ba'Cutty Machen, master of the messenger Izams of Fairhaven, is seen outside his rooms next to the aerie in the central tower, but it is also not often that a single homin wants to use a dozen Izams at one time, and in matched pairs. The area outside the bar of Ba'Naer Liffan is filled with the sound of beating wings.
Mac'Od Bittty: You are certain that they will not drop the containers?
Ba'Cutty Machen: You doubt my training? These are the finest messenger Izams in all of Atys!
Mac'Od Bittty:I do not doubt your training, but these samples may contain the instrument of salvation of Atys.
Ba'Cutty Machen:Really?? He laughs. Well, they won't eat it all wrapped up in clarified shell like that, and they won't drop it. I guarantee it.
Mac'Od Bittty: Given how much I am paying you for special delivery, they had better not.
Bittty takes six carefully constructed boxes of motega wood and places inside each of them two vials of dust and a letter. He then carefully impresses the identifying characteristics of the homins he wishes to receive his message into the malleable brains of the Izams. Machen holds the jesses that dangle from the legs of the Izams, then releases them as they fly off in tandem, east, north and west.
Bittty reads again the message that he has just sent to the most prominent scientists on Atys:
To:
Zo'ro-Argh, chief scientist of N'ASA
Salazar Caradini, member of the Royal Academy of Yrkanis
Serae Erminantius, noted Matis researcher
Ardan Keale, Ranger researcher
Daeronn Cegrips, noted Kitin researcher
Wilk Potskin.
Nair-homini, fellow scientists, greetings this first day of Frutor in the first AC of the 2578th year of Jena.
(Wilk, you've seen my previous messages. Please pass these samples on to Orphie Dradius, I do not have enough knowledge of him to send an Izam directly)
I believe that I have discovered the reason for the strange behavior of the white kitins near the remaining surface Mounds. In that discovery, I hold hope that the miracles of nature have, at least for a time, offered us respite from the invasions of the kitins.
Specifically, I have observed in recent months the sudden re-growth of the rotoa plants around the mounds. I am not sure what may be the cause, though my analysis suggests that the roots of the plants have sent up stems and flowers. However, and more importantly, I observed that the green kitin workers have disappeared from around the mounds and that the white kitin kirostas, kipukas and kinreys have displayed remarkable behavior patterns; agressive when they notice a homin, yet not noticing homins for minutes at a time, even when we stand close to them. It is as if they had ingested thinking moss, or stinga rum.
Inspired by the thoughts of rum and other drugs, I took samples of the dust near the mounds and subjected it to analysis. By use of certain lenses we were able to determine that the primary difference between the composition of the dust near the mounds (and thus the rotoa) and thatof the dust more distant from the mounds was the addition of find dark particles that glistened a blueish black in reflected light. Scrapings taking from an exposed root of the rotoa plant exhibited a similar (but not identical) appearance under our lenses.
Consider the probability that the roots of the rotoa have penetrated at least to some extent, the tunnels of the kitins. Consider also that in the months following the planting of the rotoa, only the largest of the white kitins were able to force their way past the roots (Including the very large green Kitin harvesters). Now that the rotoa have re-emerged, the green kitin harvesters have disappeared and the white kitins behave as if drugged.
If the roots of the rotoa are poisonous, or induce drugged behavior in the kitins, the first to be affected will be the harvesters. The second will be the warriors who push past the ever thicker rotoa roots to reach the surface. Not only are the roots working to block their passage, but upon being ingested as dust they are poisoning the kitins. The difference between the scrapings we took with our knives and the broken particles in the collected dust could be due to the difference in how the dust was made (e.g. breakthrough by kitins versus scaping by knives).
Gentle-homins, the enclosed vials contain samples of dust dug from the area within the circles of rotoa plants surrounding the mounds in Witherings and in Forest (labeled A) and of dust dug up from a nearby area well outside of the region of observed rotoa plants (labeled B).
I urge you to use every analytical tool at your command to analyze these samples just as I have used all the science available to me here in Fairhaven. Compare any differences to samples you take yourselves from the rotoa. If your conclusions differ from mine, please let me know. Only by proper analysis will we grow as scientists.
Mac'Od Bittty
Associate Researcher, NTCS
Ranger aspirant
Bittty nods and puts the copy of the note into his journal. He gestures to Ba'Naer Liffan to bring him another mug of Zorai ale.
Mac'Od Bittty: You are certain that they will not drop the containers?
Ba'Cutty Machen: You doubt my training? These are the finest messenger Izams in all of Atys!
Mac'Od Bittty:I do not doubt your training, but these samples may contain the instrument of salvation of Atys.
Ba'Cutty Machen:Really?? He laughs. Well, they won't eat it all wrapped up in clarified shell like that, and they won't drop it. I guarantee it.
Mac'Od Bittty: Given how much I am paying you for special delivery, they had better not.
Bittty takes six carefully constructed boxes of motega wood and places inside each of them two vials of dust and a letter. He then carefully impresses the identifying characteristics of the homins he wishes to receive his message into the malleable brains of the Izams. Machen holds the jesses that dangle from the legs of the Izams, then releases them as they fly off in tandem, east, north and west.
Bittty reads again the message that he has just sent to the most prominent scientists on Atys:
To:
Zo'ro-Argh, chief scientist of N'ASA
Salazar Caradini, member of the Royal Academy of Yrkanis
Serae Erminantius, noted Matis researcher
Ardan Keale, Ranger researcher
Daeronn Cegrips, noted Kitin researcher
Wilk Potskin.
Nair-homini, fellow scientists, greetings this first day of Frutor in the first AC of the 2578th year of Jena.
(Wilk, you've seen my previous messages. Please pass these samples on to Orphie Dradius, I do not have enough knowledge of him to send an Izam directly)
I believe that I have discovered the reason for the strange behavior of the white kitins near the remaining surface Mounds. In that discovery, I hold hope that the miracles of nature have, at least for a time, offered us respite from the invasions of the kitins.
Specifically, I have observed in recent months the sudden re-growth of the rotoa plants around the mounds. I am not sure what may be the cause, though my analysis suggests that the roots of the plants have sent up stems and flowers. However, and more importantly, I observed that the green kitin workers have disappeared from around the mounds and that the white kitin kirostas, kipukas and kinreys have displayed remarkable behavior patterns; agressive when they notice a homin, yet not noticing homins for minutes at a time, even when we stand close to them. It is as if they had ingested thinking moss, or stinga rum.
Inspired by the thoughts of rum and other drugs, I took samples of the dust near the mounds and subjected it to analysis. By use of certain lenses we were able to determine that the primary difference between the composition of the dust near the mounds (and thus the rotoa) and thatof the dust more distant from the mounds was the addition of find dark particles that glistened a blueish black in reflected light. Scrapings taking from an exposed root of the rotoa plant exhibited a similar (but not identical) appearance under our lenses.
Consider the probability that the roots of the rotoa have penetrated at least to some extent, the tunnels of the kitins. Consider also that in the months following the planting of the rotoa, only the largest of the white kitins were able to force their way past the roots (Including the very large green Kitin harvesters). Now that the rotoa have re-emerged, the green kitin harvesters have disappeared and the white kitins behave as if drugged.
If the roots of the rotoa are poisonous, or induce drugged behavior in the kitins, the first to be affected will be the harvesters. The second will be the warriors who push past the ever thicker rotoa roots to reach the surface. Not only are the roots working to block their passage, but upon being ingested as dust they are poisoning the kitins. The difference between the scrapings we took with our knives and the broken particles in the collected dust could be due to the difference in how the dust was made (e.g. breakthrough by kitins versus scaping by knives).
Gentle-homins, the enclosed vials contain samples of dust dug from the area within the circles of rotoa plants surrounding the mounds in Witherings and in Forest (labeled A) and of dust dug up from a nearby area well outside of the region of observed rotoa plants (labeled B).
I urge you to use every analytical tool at your command to analyze these samples just as I have used all the science available to me here in Fairhaven. Compare any differences to samples you take yourselves from the rotoa. If your conclusions differ from mine, please let me know. Only by proper analysis will we grow as scientists.
Mac'Od Bittty
Associate Researcher, NTCS
Ranger aspirant
Bittty nods and puts the copy of the note into his journal. He gestures to Ba'Naer Liffan to bring him another mug of Zorai ale.
---
Remembering Tyneetryk
Phaedreas Tears - 15 years old and first(*) of true neutral guilds in Atys.
(*) This statement is contested, but we are certainly the longest lasting.
<clowns | me & you | jokers>