Salazar Jack

K A H R U V E L

I’m just a guy from Seattle who stumbled upon Linden Lab’s Second Life technology, was teleported to an alternate universe and:

1.Found out that it was the world my family had fled from over 35 years ago.
2.Packed up my parents and grandparents and moved them back here
with me.
3.Got transmorphed by Zero Medici’s chemical-spewing warehouse in Miramare.
4.Had a deja vu and bought my first property in Rodeo from the first person I met (a very creative gal named Shantilly).
5.Met a tall orange dude with horns whose name seems to fit him.
6.Discovered that my Rodeo property was actually the site of my great grandpa's lookout retreat and...
7.Began replanting a large forest that is the site of many ancient ruins.

You know... just everyday run-of-the-mill stuff.

My parents had told me about the possibilities of other worlds ever since I was a kid. Mom said that when I was four, we had been forced to leave our world of Urtahra because of a catastrophic event called the Great Erase. I grew up being fascinated by stories of other worlds, like those by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Especially Lewis, since people were going to and returning from Narnia like nobody's business. But I never thought of them as real places. Every time I tried to go through the back of a wardrobe I just got a bruised forehead. Sometimes it was hard to take my mom’s stories of the old world seriously.

In my college years I discovered the Miller brothers’ game, Myst. It also sparked my imagination and I looked forward to exploring that world and the world's that followed in Riven and Exile. About a year and a half ago I was astounded to learn that Myst, Riven and the city of D’ni were real places that had existed. I hopped a Greyhound and headed to New Mexico to join in the restoration of D’ni, only to have the work stopped before it had barely begun because of budget cuts. In the short time that I was there I made many friends and visited a few of the worlds we were able to link to. I had hoped that by studying the D’ni way of writing Linking Books that I would be able to find a way to return to my home world. Those blasted barricades and construction cones were never as much of an obstacle as the folks funding the research.

So I returned to Washington State and began looking for other ways to visit worlds when I stumbled upon Linden Lab's Second Life web site in February of 2004. After installing their software I double-clicked on the icon for it, hit the Connect button and was instantly teleported from my home on Puget Sound to a place called Ahern.

After exploring the Lindens’ Grid for a few months I was amazed to learn that it was actually the world that my family had fled from many years ago during the Erase. My parents and grandparents joined me inworld at that point and were sad to learn that what had been a vast forest had become a barren and stark place. The Lindens had opened that area of The Grid just before their arrival and it was still virtually undeveloped. The first land auctions were held soon thereafter and we were able to acquire quite a bit of the forest’s previous area, along with the land in Nova Albion where my family’s Brownstones had once stood.

We have spent the last few years re-establishing the forest and rebuilding some of the structures that existed before the Erase. What began as The Forest of Rodeo later became The Forest of Kahruvel after I uncovered a cryptic notation on one of my great grandpa’s research maps. The forest has since grown to over 200,000 sq. meters. Along the way, discoveries have been made involving ancient ruins, mysterious stones and other strange phenomena that continue to pose puzzling questions.

My family and I created the Phyneas Jack Memorial Trust to help with the caretaking of the forest. Our charge is to preserve the forest and all that exists there. Our inspiration is its’ namesake, Phyneas Jack, who was a passionate naturalist and environmentalist until his death in 11 B.G.E.* Our hope is to give folks a glimpse of what life used to be like in Urtahra.

Onward and Upward!

Salazar Jack

*Dates ending with "B.G.E." (Before Great Erase) are derived from the time the Great Erase occurred as it corresponds to Earth-time. The Great Erase occurred in approximately 1969.