I’d never done the Pod Age during my last foray into the Cavern. I’d been worried that I needed to follow Yeesha’s directions explicitly if I was to learn her ways, if I was to learn the art of writing the Ages. Since then, I’ve come to a different conclusion. She, or the Bahro themselves, would be the only ones able to put the cloths throughout these Ages. They would be the only ones to add the rotating stones to my Relto. So, whether the DRC released these Ages as “safe” or not, Yeesha and the Bahro want us to go through and learn the lessons that these places have to teach. That’s good enough for me.

This Age is unlike any other that I’ve visited so far. Scattered throughout the different climates of a large land and ocean mass are observational pods. Most are no longer reachable, or their linking Books haven’t been released to the Explorers yet. In any case, the four that are available are underwater, in desert, and in jungle. The second underwater pod is damaged, and only has emergency lighting. After a bit of exploring each pod, I discovered that a powered switch on the bottom floor brings full transparency to the windows. The buttons that surround the switch create sounds that mimic local wildlife. Kind of an active wildlife observatory, where you can use the sounds to call specific creatures to you.

Unlike the other Ages, solving the puzzle of the Pods was pure research, and most of it was done from the Cavern. There’s journals and documentation scattered all over the place, most of which I ran into during my marker hunts.

The one clue that I remembered from my last time in the Cavern was that the Pod puzzles had something to do with time. So, I started there. I learned all about the D’ni clock in my Bevin, as well as brushing up on the differences between surface time measurement and D’ni time measurement. Once I got that basic information and understanding down, I knew I’d have to apply it to something.

I remembered a map that I’d found that showed the locations of all of the Pods within their Age. The map was filled with numbers. The Pods were numbered, as were smaller dots in the ocean, as was a path along the bottom. The key was in here. It was in the timing that the puzzle lay. Once I figured out the when and the where, I’d be set.

I was right, but it was easier said than done. I had no idea how entrenched I was in our system of time measurement. I’d never been outside of it, even in other countries. There had always been different words for the same system. But the D’ni day was not based on a solar or a lunar cycle; they lived underground. It was based on the lighting cycle of the algae in the great lake in the Cavern.

There was an additional clue, one that helped start off the cycle that could be determined from the other clues. The sunlight in the desert Pod was particularly bright, and shone through some cracks (or holes?) in the glass in four streams, as you can see here. There were also four symbols on the ground. As time progressed, the beams of light moved across the floor as if they would eventually touch on the symbols on the floor.

I’ve solved all four Pods, and now have another layer of circling stones in my Bevin. I wasn’t greeted by Yeesha’s voice, so I’m left to my own to discover the lesson taught. With all of the research needed to discover and understand the proper timing, as well as the Pods’ obvious purpose as research stations, I’m thinking that it has something to do with the importance of learning.

Possibly also patience.