Noloben is the Age to which Esher fled during the Fall of D'ni. He claimed it as his personal Age. The name Siralehn appears in reference to the Age in a few DRC notes, but Dr. Watson does not remember anything about it or what it meant. The DRC appears to have surveyed it sometime around AD 2003.
Douglas Sharper got hold of a note Marie Sutherland wrote to Dr. Richard A. Watson in 2003 about finding Esher and left it on his desk in the Baron's City Office.
Dr. Watson Big problems. The house on Noloben is NOT empty. I met someone there today. My D'ni isn't great, but I spoke with him for a while. Yeah, he's D'ni and, as we figured, he knows a lot about the creatures. A WHOLE lot.
We obviously need a meeting ASAP. -Marie
Reading the note caused Sharper to write the following entry in his journal.
5.20.03 - There are rumors of a D'ni survivor going around here. The DRC is keeping it lo-key but it seems pretty reliable. Obviously, I'll be the last to hear but I've got to find a way to meet him as soon as possible.
It was once suspected that Noloben was the home Age of the Bahro, but it's
now known that the supposition was in error. The real home of the Bahro is called the Spiral Age. The idea that it was
the Bahro homeworld was based on a comment by Esher, and by the
symbols they carved into the rock on the outside of Esher's laboratory. The
markings there are not the Bahroglyphs typically found in the D'ni caverns
or the Cleft. It's the actual form of writing they use.
Esher had this to say about the Age:
Welcome to my Age, Noloben. When D'ni died,
I fled here. From death to death. You will see the fingerprints of
the creatures everywhere. This was their home, and they did not welcome
me... ...You have unlocked my lab. Impressive. It is safe here. They
are afraid. They will not come here. The snake binds them, prevents
them from linking. I take no pleasure in what they have endured here.
But I had to learn.
This leads to another speculation. If the Bahro were there when Esher arrived, were they placed there by another D'ni citizen in the past, or was Noloben a world they colonized before they were bound to D'ni? Until and unless more information about the Bahro is released, those questions remain unanswered.
The Age
The Age of Noloben is an archipelago made up of a main island with smaller islands and
rock outcrops separated from it by high tide levels. The islands were partially
undercut by the sea, forming them into plateaus. Along with the main island,
there are a number of small islands and rocks that are probably the remains
of peaks from a submarine mountain chain.
This is a view from atop the main island, looking out onto the ocean.
There is isn't much diversity in the plant life found on the islands. The main types are grasses and a species of fern.
At the top of the island is a giant hollowed-out rock. Esher's laboratory is inside.
Much of the structure is underground, and is entered by a long tunnel with rotating doors spaced along it. Esher probably chose to place his laboratory in the cave system because tunnel snakes live there, and the snakes kept the Bahro from entering.
The Bahro covered the rock with symbols that are more sophisticated than the petroglyphs they drew for Yeesha. Some of it may even be mathematical in nature, although I can't say for sure because no one has interpreted the writing yet. That's partly because there's no Bahro equivalent of a Rosetta Stone that clues might be gleaned from..
The top of the island is a plateau that drops off sharply to the beaches below. It's covered with tall, lush grasses which may indicate that there is soil on the plateaus.
Looking inside Esher's laboratory, you can be see that the rock dome visible from the outside is just a small part of a much larger space.
Very little of the floor is used for anything other than a foundation for the scaffolds and platforms he used as his workspace. What you won't find here is any sign of his living quarters. It may be that there's a hidden area in the tunnels that lead to them, perhaps branching off from one of the tunnel nodes containing rotating doors.
Esher used the laboratory to study Bahro language and anatomy. As this involved both murder and experimentation on living Bahro, even he admitted that it was not something he was proud of.
In the end, his work paid off when he learned how to preserve a portion of the skin of a living Bahro and use that Bahro's ability to link at will wherever it wished. That gave Esher the same ability to link without books that Yeesha had, although Yeesha's was a voluntary gift from the Bahro. They taught her how to do it and how to make the skin markings that were needed.
One of the more horrid aspects of Esher's theft of the Bahro ability to link, it seems that Esher had to remove the skin without the Bahro dying. Much of Esher's experimentation must have been to learn how to remove a significant portion of skin without killing the subject. Esher left a number of notes about Bahro anatomy pinned to a board in the laboratory.
It is thought that the Bahro who was Esher's final test subject not only lived, it became the leader of a group of Bahro who hated humanity and sought revenge. Yeesha called it them the Bahro Nekisal, or "twisted Bahro", and the one mutilated by Esher is believed to be the Bahro who killed Wheely Engberg.
This cage is where Esher kept the Bahro who lived through having their skin flayed. Since he was removing their ability to link, the bars were enough to keep them confined.
For the crippled Bahro, this hatch in the top of the cage was the way in or out.
Climbing all the way to the top of the scaffolds inside the laboratory led to an observation platform carved into the top of the rock.
Fauna
The only animal restricted to the ground on the main island is a green-banded snake that Bahro were terrified of. The D'ni Zoological Society called them "tunnel snakes", but their burrows can be found outside too.
Bahro so feared the snakes that they would not enter any area where there were signs that the snakes might be around. They even avoided any area where the Bahro symbol for the snakes was written, whether or not it was possible for a snake to be there.
Esher said that the Bahro were afraid of them because they somehow kept them
from linking, but how that might be was not explained.
These holes at the edge of the beach are tunnel snake burrows. Esher placed his rope ladder to the main island's plateau above the burrows to keep the Bahro from touching it.
Noloben is the nesting grounds for three known species of bird. The first type was given the name "bluff pelican" by the DZS.
Bluff pelicans are sexually dimorphic in their coloration. Both sexes have white neck and head feathers and black eyes, but the rest of their bodies have other colors.
Males mainly have light gray body and wing feathers, and dark bills with black throat sacks.
Females have pinkish-brown body feathers with light brown bills and red-brown throat sacks.
The DZS called the second species of bird that nests here the fan-crested gull. They greatly outnumber the pelicans, but both species seem to coexist peacefully.
In this picture, there is one pelican and eleven gulls nesting on one of the smaller islands. This is fairly typical of the population ratio.
Both species seem to nest in the same way, in what appear to be hollows in the soil atop the island rather than in a constructed nest. The nests are found on the grassy plateaus atop the larger islands, but not on the main island. Presumably they didn't nest there because of the presence of Esher.
In the case of both species, male birds do not seem to be allowed in the nesting areas. Instead, they are usually found resting on boulders and outcrops I've dubbed bachelor rocks when they are not flying.
Here is one of the bachelor rocks with male birds resting on it.
The birds catch fish in the sea around the island for food. Here's an example, a fish that looks similar to a species of salmon.
The third species of bird found in the Age was called hector by the DRC, and they named the inlet where the birds were found Hector's Cove. There is a crevice in the cliff face around the cove that looks like it leads into a cave, and I've observed the birds emerging from it. That suggests that the birds may nest in the cave.
Hectors are usually found scuttling on the beach, where they are very vocal. I don't know what they eat.
Dr. Watson informed me that the D'ni name for the bird species is noloben, and confirmed that they named the Age after them.
Here is a drawing of a hector. The animal is puzzling in many ways because it doesn't resemble birds found on Earth the ways the pelicans and gulls do. Some of the stranger characteristics are the flat, two-lobed feet and the segmented legs. But that's only the start.
Working upward, the forelimbs are short and club-like. The animal has a pair of stubby wings that are hidden under the protective shell, which seem to be made of modified and hardened feathers from their appearance. That means that the animals have six limbs instead of the four of the other birds.
The head is also quite unusual. Hectors don't use beaks as their functioning mouthparts. Instead, the beak structures seem to be a kind of armor for the real mouthpart, which is the tube you see underneath them.
The shells appear to be a paper-thin and may be made up of hardened feathers. They also seem to play the same role as the wing cases of a beetle. The iridescent coloring makes them quite striking.
It's possible that hectors were on Esher's dinner menu. For whatever reason he strung up three of their wing cases on the beach near his rope ladder.
This view shows the edges of the shells so that you can see how thin they are. Note the cutouts for the birds' forelimbs and the notch where they attached near the birds' necks.
In flight, a hector's shell opens up and to the sides like a beetle's shell to expose a pair of wings. The wings are too small to generate a lot of lift, and hectors tend to fly a few feet above the surface of the water.
A diagram exists that shows some of the motions hectors can be seen making. The first is a feeding motion in which the birds peck at the ground.
The second is their walking motion, which is a rapid waddling.
The third is a motion in which they curl up into a defensive ball when kicked, but I haven't seen that happen since they are too quick for me to have caught up with yet.
If Esher had a taste for the hectors, he wasn't alone in that. There is a species of sea animal that appear to be called Shales in DRC notes. They are much like whales, but have modified front flukes that have bony arcs along their edges which the animal uses to get a grip on the ground and lift itself out of the water in a rocking motion.
Shales are ambush hunters, and lie in wait along the edge of the beach in Hector's Cove. They rest with their eyes above the water's surface, waiting for prey to wander into reach.
You can see the upper part of its fluke bones projecting above the water on either side of the animal. It uses them to lunge up and catch hectors when they try to fly over to a nearby islands where there is a tangle of plants to provide safety from predators.
This illustration was probably made by a DRC surveyor, perhaps one of the team that first encountered Esher. It shows the attack pattern used by the shale when striking. The text is overly dramatic, but the information is accurate.
I took some video footage of a hector getting too close to a shale.
Myst, the Myst logo, and all games and books in the Myst series are registered trademarks and copyrights of Cyan Worlds, Inc. Myst Online: Uru Live is the sole property of Cyan Worlds Inc. The concepts, settings, characters, art, and situations of the Myst series of games and books are copyright Cyan Worlds, Inc. with all rights reserved.
I make no claims to any such rights or to the intellectual properties of Cyan Worlds; nor do I intend to profit financially from their work. This web site is a fan work, and is meant solely for the amusement of myself and other fans of the Myst series of games and books.
There is isn't much diversity in the plant life found on the islands. The main types are grasses and a species of fern.
Looking inside Esher's laboratory, you can be see that the rock dome visible from the outside is just a small part of a much larger space.
Esher used the laboratory to study Bahro language and anatomy. As this involved both murder and experimentation on living Bahro, even he admitted that it was not something he was proud of.
This cage is where Esher kept the Bahro who lived through having their skin flayed. Since he was removing their ability to link, the bars were enough to keep them confined. 
For the crippled Bahro, this hatch in the top of the cage was the way in or out. 
Climbing all the way to the top of the scaffolds inside the laboratory led to an observation platform carved into the top of the rock. 
The only animal restricted to the ground on the main island is a green-banded snake that Bahro were terrified of. The D'ni Zoological Society called them "tunnel snakes", but their burrows can be found outside too.
These holes at the edge of the beach are tunnel snake burrows. Esher placed his rope ladder to the main island's plateau above the burrows to keep the Bahro from touching it. 
Noloben is the nesting grounds for three known species of bird. The first type was given the name "bluff pelican" by the DZS.
The DZS called the second species of bird that nests here the fan-crested gull. They greatly outnumber the pelicans, but both species seem to coexist peacefully.
Here is one of the bachelor rocks with male birds resting on it.
The birds catch fish in the sea around the island for food. Here's an example, a fish that looks similar to a species of salmon.
The third species of bird found in the Age was called hector by the DRC, and they named the inlet where the birds were found Hector's Cove. There is a crevice in the cliff face around the cove that looks like it leads into a cave, and I've observed the birds emerging from it. That suggests that the birds may nest in the cave.
Here is a drawing of a hector. The animal is puzzling in many ways because it doesn't resemble birds found on Earth the ways the pelicans and gulls do. Some of the stranger characteristics are the flat, two-lobed feet and the segmented legs. But that's only the start.
The shells appear to be a paper-thin and may be made up of hardened feathers. They also seem to play the same role as the wing cases of a beetle. The iridescent coloring makes them quite striking.
This view shows the edges of the shells so that you can see how thin they are. Note the cutouts for the birds' forelimbs and the notch where they attached near the birds' necks.
In flight, a hector's shell opens up and to the sides like a beetle's shell to expose a pair of wings. The wings are too small to generate a lot of lift, and hectors tend to fly a few feet above the surface of the water. 
If Esher had a taste for the hectors, he wasn't alone in that. There is a species of sea animal that appear to be called Shales in DRC notes. They are much like whales, but have modified front flukes that have bony arcs along their edges which the animal uses to get a grip on the ground and lift itself out of the water in a rocking motion.
Shales are ambush hunters, and lie in wait along the edge of the beach in Hector's Cove. They rest with their eyes above the water's surface, waiting for prey to wander into reach.
This illustration was probably made by a DRC surveyor, perhaps one of the team that first encountered Esher. It shows the attack pattern used by the shale when striking. The text is overly dramatic, but the information is accurate.