Where In The World Is Magellan Linden?

I just placed some "Missing Magellan" posters around Slang Life island (the magazine I work for) to help spread the word! Also, my friend, Cezary Fish, placed the poster in his Caffee Del Mar. Maybe someone will spot the posters and contact us with some useful information.

Any of you out in the Eddison or Biernu area with the tag Fancy Dresser? Tried saying hi when you came flying up on me scaring the hell outa me as I was checking out the area but you just teleported out of there. Nice freakin outfit though, lol

Anyone else get the shot of rum Magellan was kind enough to leave in a bottle of rum on the beach? The rum itself seems displeased with the size of the shot glass lol

I didn't even know I was at the crash shit or whatever I just happened to notice some debris underwater and went down to check it out and when I came back up saw I was at the crash site Dumb luck there, lol

Would it be possible to set up some sort of harmonic alignment doohicky at the site? Something to try and bridge the gap and help our man get through and hopefully stay through?

/me looks towards Sal for advice - maybe an off-shoot of GINI research?

Aye, good advice. The lords alone know how many lone explorers we have lost to this kind of accident... Poor devils.



I *had* wondered why he kept that suit on... although little good it has done him compared to, say, Guy Linden who has not beeen trapped between worlds and has no such suit. No, on balance I am willing to take this risk. Besides, I'd only have to saw holes in the top for my horns.



This is excellent advice. Faint heart may not have won fair maid, but niether has one damned explorers to a lifetime of limbo dancing in the voids between worlds. When the grid gets wobbly, the smart get gone I always say.

Great stuff! The more eyes we have looking for him, the more sightings we should have... hopefully...

Just a random thought... would it be possible to open a channel with The Powers That Be to leave our man some supplies... water, canned food, booze (of course), a photo of Osprey... that sort of thing? He seems to be running quite low.

Mind you, I suppose we could just transfer them to him direct, I just hope the void barrier doesn't turn the food bad and give him an upset tum.

The easiest (and quickest) way to get him supplies would be just to drop them on his profile. The next time he materializes on the Grid he can snag them. He seemed to accept the notecard, landmark and moolah I sent him just fine. Perhaps he would accept those items readily and add them to his stocks at the beach? Going the Linden route would mean starting a JIRA, getting support and votes on it, forming a committee and hoping that there is enough love in the Linden lab to transfer some of the food and drink from the well-stocked employee breakroom to Magellan's camp site. The man could starve by then! But then, I am getting the feeling that he is not as helpless as I had thought he was.

p.s. Then again, as you sort of alluded to earlier, he may have move deeper into Gaeta and left his base camp. He did leave us a few messages to follow him. Dropping some supplies on him would be a great way to assist. It would give him plenty to work with should he decide to leave some breadcrumbs for us!

Right! For example, if you drop some bottles of hi-proof stuff on him, we can track his movements by the empties.

...especially if you place a transponder under the label on the bottle...

Now THAT is top notch thinking!

What is with all the random appearing and disappearing of green dots on the main map but they don't appear on the minimap? I could have swore I was being tracked by one of them as it would vanish and appear closer to me every so often but I had on a jet pack going about warp 10 lol. It would follow me across the contientent always a little behind but never came all the way to me if I just stopped for a while.

Every time I would get right on top of one and search from ground level to thousands high there was never anything there! This was in the middle of the new area, south on the coast and up just north of the new area where there is a gray square but it is all underwater.

I was just having a problem similar to this. I was flying around very fast. The green dots always showed up where I was about a minute or two earlier. Looks like map lag.

On a side note, don't know if anyone noticed this, but Magellan has a camp in the sim Squall, on Gaeta.

Yup, I had been chasing myself for quite sometime before someone pointed this out to me



Aye, we'd noticed alright

Be careful there - the grid seems unstable and things pop in at random times... See Salazar/Osprey's advice on exploring a few posts ago and make sure your will is up to date.

You know, all this has made me wonder a few things, about the Grid and the Void and how the Universe works.

We've got things, like bits of Magellan's campsite and (latest) crash site "phasing" into existence as the Grid attempts to stabilize what once was Void. We've got things like the daring Void explorers in Caledon who used a mountain as a temporary island of stability extending into the Void. Magellan himself seems to have been trapped in the Void for some time... and seems to have made a campsite and lived there for some time.

Now, all this has made me think that the term "Void" may be a bit inaccurate. "Void" implies something empty, and whatever IS there, obviously Magellan found enough of it to make a camp, probably explore, and so on.

So just what IS there, in the area we call the Void?

I'm beginning to think that a more proper term may be "Chaos" rather than "Void"; that is, an area of 'potential' reality that is not stabilized, constantly in flux, and subject to random disruptions and erasures. It may be that when the Grid is extended, it's nailing down the Chaos into a fixed state, perhaps like collapsing a quantum function into a single state.

Following along the quantum analogy, it could be that an intelligent mind COULD exist there, by "observing" the Chaos into local islands of stability. So why can't we all do that? Well, for one thing, GETTING there seems to be an issue; even if one were brave (or foolhardy) enough to try, piercing the edge of Grid-induced stability is all but impossible. Another issue may be that it takes a conscious mind to "stabilize" a section of chaotic Void, so what happens when you go to sleep or log out? You may well find yourself, and your supplies or equipment, wiped away by a random fluctuation! That may be where Magellan's primitar suit comes in... perhaps primitar material is inherently stable even against random chaotic fluctuations?

All speculation of course, but it has really grabbed my imagination.

Now if only I were brave enough to try and actually follow up some of these ideas to see if they are correct...

Your theory is very intriguing. The only way to surely find out is to have a nice long chat with Magellan himself. Until that happens...

I thought of another theory, while I didn't go into as much depth as yours, maybe he was sent to the future? His ship was destroyed, or at least most of it. On the beach there seem to be some rather large parts. So maybe, Magellan himself inside of his suit, and a few select parts of his ship were sent into the future, to Gaeta? If you notice, it's not much of a crash site. Just a few large parts, bits and peices, and of course bottles of Rum, which I can only assume were the last few he had stashed either in his suit or close by when he crash landed


Very interesting.

I've been referring to the area outside the Grid as the "Void" just to call it something. Anything. Magellan wrote that it was lonely in the Void in his profile. I guess it's inworld use might come from the term "void sims" or "void regions" that the Lindens (or perhaps others) first used to call the spaces that were opened up between regular regions on the Mainland. The void regions were the Mainland version of what came to be known as OpenSpaces, the new low-powered Grid squares that Linden Lab now sells to any estate owner with at least one private island. Though mostly water on the Mainland, these small voids can contain an island or two. And in the hands of a private owner they may contain no water at all and can be terra-formed as the owner sees fit. At least inworld, such a void is not completely empty and one can walk, fly or swim through it, drive a vehicle through it, even built on it (albeit, with a more limited number of prims as four voids share the resources of one regular Grid square. The Gridded voids are protected areas though, which makes them different than the areas out in the Void, beyond the Grid's boundary.

I didn't know until today.. had to look it up.. that a void, in astronomical terms, refers to the empty areas between heavily populated galactic systems. But even those voids are not completely empty it seems, as they can contain small islands of isolated galaxies and other stellar material. I wish I knew more about that stuff.. it seems pretty interesting. Grandma Thetan would know much much more about that.

Speaking of her, she has always referred to the other side of the Grid boundary not as an empty place, but as a place full of "chaotic energy." And that one of the Grid's attributes was it's ability to act as a protective shield against that energy's destabilizing effect. It's very interesting that you would use the same term, "Chaos," to describe it. That seems right to me too.

It has always been my understanding that the basic land and seascapes outside of the Grid do exist, and have existed in basically the same state as they did prior to the Great Erase. They are somehow impervious to the destabilizing actions of that chaotic energy and, rarely, there have even been objects and, indeed, whole structures that seem to have been able to escape it's destructive nature.

Keep in mind that the Lindens have the ability to establish a basic grid in a region, or series of region, and still keep it hidden from the public. Perhaps they do that so they can determine how safe it is before opening it to the public? Much like the Maintainers did in ancient D'ni wearing their protective suits. Come to think of it, perhaps Magellan's suit acts as a sort of maintainer's suit.. protecting him from the corrosive energy beyond the Grid's shield or as safety measure, should the basic Grid structure fail when evaluating a new region.

I have been assuming that Magellan has been lost and unable to return to the Grid for the past few years. Perhaps that's not so. He may have been scouting out remote areas on his own and simply preferred the isolation of those pristine regions far away from civilization.

Then again, say that the Lindens began griding an area and then lost contact with it. Is it possible that he may have got stuck in a habitable zone with no way to get back or make contact?

The more that I think about this, the more questions that seem to come up. But this I know. Where in the world is Magellan Linden? Currently he is in or near Gaeta. We have found him. We have seen him. Some of us have talked with him and others, trying to get near, have seen him fly away in a hurry. If Magellan was every truly lost he certainly is not lost now. And, I think, will make contact with those seeking him out in his own way and in his own time.

Some have wondered if we should be on the hunt for him. He has spoken very clearly to all of us about that. On the very land that he claimed as his base camp in the newly-named region of Squall on Gaeta's western shore. "Follow me those who can." "Follow me if you dare." What else is in store? We will have to follow him to find out.

Ooh, just now we (me, SpykeMcCallister Kayvon and Hulaboom Voom) came across Jeska Linden at the camp site! She said she's been getting photos sent from far away and tracked them back to the camp:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeskalinden/sets/72157604663110428/

Can we reconstruct the story? Jeska said she thinks Magellan was able to build a new ship while he was crashed at Gaeta... And it does seem it happened, looking at the photos. You know what it means - we shouldn't be exploring Gaeta, he left to discover new land! All leads go to Bay City, and although it seems he already left there, we might find some new clues, once it's open (this week!).

Another minimap related anomaly that I am noticing at the campsite is the lack of objects. A week or so ago, I was seeing a lot of object markers on the minimap, even in Gaeta sims that had no visible objects. Now, even in the campsite, none of the objects are showing on the minimap with the exception of the dock and infohub markers. This implies that the new land is still not nearly as stabilized as it appears. Explore at your own risk.

I've also noticed that some of the new wreckage is below the sand. Look under the sand next to the large gear closest to the water to find it. If the sand has had time to cover that up, the campsite must have been in place for quite a while.

You know, that could explain why there isn't very much wreckage at this second crash site... Magellan may have cannibalized a lot of it to make a new ship!

Ah, I love speculating about this kind of stuff!

The Void... not to be confused with Void Regions, but the actual gap between sims. Very interesting to think about. I envision the Void being something of an Aetheric Medium that completely envelopes the regions of the Grid we inhabit. I personally am unsure whether this medium is the Chaotic Potential described earlier, or simply a mist that obscures and blocks already existing regions from our access. Both theories have merit - and perhaps both are true in different situations.

One thing that I am certain of is that the Void is some kind of substance. We have all seen that during extreme conditions, the Grid Barriers that act as shields (or even levies) can fail - though I believe that "breach" may be a better term. The aetheric ocean ebbs and floods in, reclaiming regions and causing all other sorts of phenomena.

I have noticed that the Grid barriers seem to be weaker on the vertical axises than they are on the horizontal axises. If not careful, one can occasionally "fall though the crack" of adjacent regions and plummet into the void below. Conversely, I've also seen documented accounts of others climbing high enough in elevation to slowly start crossing over into the Void. An avatar exposed to the open Void will not survive long... The pictures that made it back were not pretty. Even prims seem to be affected... I can only imagine what it takes to temper the prims in Magellan's suit to withstand such conditions.

I'm not sure if I agree that an Avatar could exist in the Void (or create stable regions) by pure intelligent observation... If that were the case, I imagine it would be far more easy for the Lindens and other intrepid explores to carve out paths through the Void (and poor Magellan wouldn't have been lost all this time ).

Still, I do wonder how the Lindens in all their power manage to advance the Grid and keep it (mostly) stable. My personal theory involves powerful artifacts from the days of Alpha when the Primitars were still shaping the world.

As for the speculation of the Primitars, my own theories differ. From what lore I've read, I envisioned the Primitars as a separate race all together. The forerunners to the Avatar in the most literal sense, they were beings created of living prims! Are they extinct? Or perhaps they still thrive, in seclusion - or exile... Maybe it is they who continue to cultivate the Grid, behind the scenes, while their Linden descendants work to maintain them as they become available? Maybe they have adapted to actually survive in the Void... other the other way around? They did always wear those breathing masks...

... whoops, I'm rambling! I'll just close with am eager to follow the trail that not seems to point to the Bay City!

Dat would explain what happened to the other engine

I IM'ed Magellan a few days ago asking him if he would please talk to us, and this morning I got a response (while I was off the grid, of course). Message follows:

"aargh the bees!"

I don't know what this means. Did he run into a hive of angry bees? Are there bees in the void? (if he's truly in the void, which seems less and less likely). I sent him several tinctures of Old Hog Warts to make sure he's not in any pain from the bees.

Are there any pictures of the craft that crashed at Gaeta? From those pictures, I can't tell if that's the craft that crashed at Gaeta, or something made from the parts of what crashed.

Excellent hunting, Ayumi! This is indeed a significant lead and would explain why our man has not been seen for some time at camp - he has managed to escape and is once more exploring the world at large. It also makes perfect sence that he would head over to Bay City - after all, did he not also explore Nova Albion, Bay City's neighbour when that too was new.

This seems more and more interesting, so many theories... I'll add several of mine

I was thinking about the same thing as Salazar: what if Magellan wasn't lost, what if he just prefered to dissapear from public and continue on exploration on his own? If you read his old blog, there is lot's of signs he wasn't very happy with Lindens exposed his explorations to public, ... "if everyone is exploring, where is room for explorers", or something like that. So maybe he really will chose his own way and time to talk to us...

Trying to explore the Void is great idea, on Gaeta crash site I tried to climb up to cca 38000 m (powerfull jetpack) to find out if there isn't some thing in a place of that dark square on minimap, found nothing ofcourse, but haven't experienced any instability either - maybe the borders of the grid ar much more far? What about this effect when you crossing the sims and you are stucked and walk underground for long distance, before you reappear on the borders of the sim - are you in those moments close to the Void? And if so, could it be extended somehow to get deeper into the Void? Maybe some technology - primitar suit? Anyway - idea of wearing primitar suit while searching for Magellan isn't so bad, I believe we could get closer to him during grid instabilities... Any ideas where to get those suits?