The pod age is a single age that can be visited by using any of the the four available linking books. The linking books to the Pod Age can be found in the Ae'gura Museum. This is the same place where the Relto page that gives you two moons is located. Four linking books can be found there, each one linking to a different continent of the Pod Age world. The Pod Age linking books are called: Negilahn, Dereno, Payiferen and Tetsonot.
When visiting any of the pods, the first thing you will want to do is turn on the power. Without power it is hardly possible to look through the windows. The switch to turn on the power is located on the lower deck, opposite to the Nexus linking book.
To read more about the power usage and charging in the pods, read the Pod Age Power topic.
Some have claimed that the buttons not only produce animal sounds but also release a scent of the animal in question that will lure other animals closer to the pod. The latter has never been observed, not by me and not by others. Other than producing an animal sound and draining the power, the buttons seem to have no other effect.
In three of the four pods it is possible to observe animals in their natural virtual environment. The fourth pod (Tetsonot) is broken and only the emergency lighting will barely work.
Little information is found about the animals in the Pod Age. There used to be a DRC notebook about the Negilahn animals on the table in the museum. However, the notebook was later removed from the game. However, in August 2020 the notebook was put back on the table in the museum again. The following images show the contents of the notebook. Click on the images to zoom in on them.
The description of each animal in that notebook is only one or two lines and doesn't really give much information at all. Moreover, most of the animals described in there you will never get to see in Negilahn as the pod age was never finished. A total of eight pods were planned but only four made it so far. A bigger zoo surely would have helped people decide to stay a while longer in the pods if only for the scenery. On the table is also a drawing of several Negilahn animal silhouettes in relation to the human height.
The Urwin is easy to spot as it is a very big and colorful bird that cannot fly. It will walk around the pod for quite a while. You will have to walk from window to window in order to follow the Urwin. It will keep its distance, but a very big bird like the Urwin is hard to miss.
The Pumi is a different story. It's a small monkey with a forked tail and a large crest on its head. It appears only in one of three trees closest to the pod. It is therefore only visible from the two upper deck windows. The growth on the windows hinders a clear view though.
There are many places where you'll find fireflies in Uru. The fireflies from Eder Kemo even play a crucial role in finishing the Eder Gira Age. The D'ni Zoological Society described a dozen or so different species present in Uru and Myst 5. The Negilahn fireflies are called Kiris. Kiris is plural for Kiri. It is said to be the only source of food for the Urwin.
The appearance of the Negilahn Urwin and Pumi is calculated the moment you link into the Negilahn pod. For both animals, a set of two or three times will be generated and scheduled, spread over the Negilahn day. No appearance will be scheduled during the Negilahn night for both animals. That means that the Urwin and Pumi will each show themselves two or three times during a timespan of roughly seven hours. The code that drives this behaviour tries to schedule these appearances as much as possible within the first five hours after dawn.
There is a little catch in this schedule: If you link into the pod sometime in the (Negilahn) afternoon, you may never get to see any of the animals during that day. That's because the appearances are scheduled for the whole Negilahn day, not just from the moment that you link into the Age. In other words: Uru also schedules times in the past, depending on what time of the Negilahn day you arrive. Another thing: new appearance times are generated only once every day. If you visited Negilahn before in the last 24 hours, no new appearances will be scheduled. Instead, the schedule that was generated the last time you visited Negilahn is used, even if all scheduled times are in the past.
During one of the All Guilds Meetings, I had a conversation with Focus-mocus about the appearance of the Pod Age animals. He was told by Shokhootahn Rehn that an animal would appear sometime in the hour prior to the opening of a portal and another one would appear sometime in the hour following the time that a portal opens. This idea would exclude the possibility of randomly generated animal appearance times like I have stated in the previous two paragraphs. However, the code that controls the appearance of the Pod Age animals does not support this idea. Granted, the code does not exclude the possibility that it occasionally happens that way, but it is by no means certain. As the basis for my conclusion lies within the code, I feel that I should include the code here as well. So, unless Cyan is using different code than what's available at the Openuru.org website, my original conclusion is correct.
The code that controls the Negilahn animal appearances, taken from nglnUrwinBrain.py:
def InitNewSDLVars(self):
ageSDL = PtGetAgeSDL()
ageSDL["UrwinLastUpdated"] = (PtGetDniTime(),)
beginningOfToday = PtGetDniTime() - int(PtGetAgeTimeOfDayPercent() * kDayLengthInSeconds)
endOfToday = int(kDayLengthInSeconds / 2) + beginningOfToday
#print "Dawn: %d Dusk: %d" % (beginningOfToday, endOfToday)
# We need a random times in the first 5 hours of the day
# which is in the first 44.5 percent of the day. So we're
# generating a number from 0 to 445 and dividing by 1000 to get
# something roughly in that timeframe.
randnum = float(random.randint(0,kFirstMorningSpawn))
firstTime = int((randnum / 1000.0) * kDayLengthInSeconds) + beginningOfToday
print "nglnUrwinBrain: Generated a valid spawn time: %d" % (firstTime)
spawnTimes = [firstTime]
while type(spawnTimes[-1]) == type(long(1)):
randnum = random.randint(kMinimumTimeBetweenSpawns, kMaximumTimeBetweenSpawns)
newTime = spawnTimes[-1] + randnum
if newTime < endOfToday:
print "nglnUrwinBrain: Generated a valid spawn time: %d" % (newTime)
spawnTimes.append(newTime)
else:
print "nglnUrwinBrain: Generated a spawn time after dusk, exiting loop: %d" % (newTime)
break
else:
print "nglnUrwinBrain:ERROR---Tried to add a spawn time that's not a number: " , spawnTimes
spawnTimes = [0]
while len(spawnTimes) < 20:
spawnTimes.append(0)
ageSDL["UrwinSpawnTimes"] = tuple(spawnTimes)
Dereno is obviously a cold place, everything that is above the water is frozen solid. In the water, under the ice is where animal life can be found. There are some fish, and a creature with a hammerhead called Kamkenta. There are no scheduled appearances, this place is just a fishtank.
Payiferen is a barren place. Outside the pod is no vegetation anywhere. The wind is continuously sandblasting everything that is outside of the pod. Hard to believe that anything can survive here. Yet, the only living animal you'll get to see here - the Sandscrit - seems to be feeding itself with very small animal- or plant-life burried in the sand. The Sandscrit is a huge bird without wings. You can't miss this bird when it appears, as you can easily hear each footstep it makes.
The appearances of the Sandscrit are scheduled in the same way as with the Negilahn animals. About three times will be scheduled the moment you link into the pod. And again, if you arrive in the Payiferen afternoon, you may have missed them for that day.
