Dovah-Tsavahn, The Immortal World

Age Written by: The Bathyscaphist

Theme: Organic processes, symbiosis/parasitism, the mystery of life

Aspects:
Life Within Life
Low Gravity
D’ni Bio Lab

Dovah-Tsavahn is an Age that exists entirely within a gargantuan living body. Gravity inside the entity is around .1G, suggesting either that it dwells on a small planet or moon, or that it is a truly enormous separate object. Luminescent fluids flow and pulse through the walls of the chambers and tunnels, and it is host to a diverse ecosystem of smaller entities that deal with injuries to the superstructure and manage the carpets of vibrant cilia and other more obscure organs. [Think a vibrant coral reef in diversity and colour and oddness].

There is a constant flow of air through the regions the linking book gives access to, though its occasional change of direction and humidity, and the faint complexity of smells born on the wind, give the impression of slow breathing. The chambers close to the Age arrival point have been explored by the D’ni and many of their relics and constructions are to be found, partly1 grown over like rope around treebark. Arching domes of reinforcing metal suggest the early explorers were paranoid about random spasms of the fleshy mass crushing their camps, though the ribs of D’ni engineering show no sign of damage save slight rusting from the humid air. Giant surgical pins attach the structures to heavy bone, where it passes close to the skin; it appears to be a purplish-black material of incredible hardness, though nodules have grown up around the pins confirming its organic origins. Paper, wood, cloth and other degradable materials have long ago been digested, or scavenged by the small, colourful harvester-squid that ricochet off the walls in a low-G ballet of motion.

The Linking Book collection here is protected from such predations within a hermetically sealed vault, anchored to bone and opened by a poetic word-puzzle that D’ni explorers would easily answer but which defies random exploration by native wildlife.

Other D’ni objects appear to be massive medical instruments custom-made for this Age; ports and shunts to safely tap the ichor that flows within the veins of the Dovah-Tsavahn.

Constant keenings and rumblings echo through the tunnels; in one chamber a large D’ni recording device still holds hundreds of hours of audio files, and several have been filtered to reveal something akin to a deep and alien song; like whalesong, only with consistent punctuated gaps and repeats.

This Age was Written as an experimental amusement, but proved to be invaluable to medical research and treatment as, like many Ages, the biology and biochemistry of Dovah-Tsavahn is unusually compatible with the D’ni. Fluids tapped from various ducts make excellent pharmacological solutions; membranes work well as a kind of living sterile dressing, and many of the symbiotes that roam the tunnels can be harvested for medically-useful materials and organs.

Near the linking point is the remnants of a large research hospital, and in a vast organ-pocket further on a D’ni specialized care facility was built. That part of the Age shows signs of heavy decay and atrophy, and is badly scarred and pitted. Records indicate the facility was used to house victims of an unknown disease shortly before the Age was abandoned.