The Spiral Age

This is an Age we know only from its name and sketches. For many years, it was thought that Noloben was the home Age of the Bahro, but it's now fairly certain that the Spiral Age is their true home. Certainly, it shows construction aesthetics and chambers that display Bahro construction techniques, when Noloben does not.

The name of the Age comes from the way it's built. It's laid out as a descending spiral with rooms placed at cardinal points along the path. It's necessary to pass through each room in turn to continue to the next. It appears that a visitor arrives in a linking chamber at the center of the spiral.

Very little is known about the Bahro. We do not know what they call themselves, how their society is organized, or how advanced they may have been in any area other than linking. We don't even know how to differentiate between sexes or even individuals.

There are few things that we do know. We know that they subsisted on grubs and insect larvae in D'ni. We know that they are not born with the ability to link. Instead, it seems that they gain the ability to link from ritual scars or tattoos on their skin.

The Bahro appear to have a very well-developed system of writing, and are able to use it to write what seems to be an ability to control certain aspects of reality into themselves. There are limits, but the power their system confers is awe-inspiring. Instead of creating Ages by means of descriptive books, they appear to be able to go directly to other worlds without having to alter them first, as long as they know the world. They also link to wherever they want and from one place to another in that world.

Their system is flexible enough that they can make changes to a world and reverse those changes at will, or even just make a temporary change that reverses itself. The system can also be used to make permanent links that others can use, which are known as Bahro stones, although the stone slates they use are just mounting points for cloth panels. The Bahro either invisibly weave their symbols into cloth panels, or write the symbols on their backs. Which is not known. In any case, the panels serve the same function as D'ni linking books without the need for a descriptive book to be written first. These panels can be attached to a wall, tree, or other surface, but the stone slates are most common.

Their abilities seemed to be tied to a carved master stone, and whoever possessed the stone seems to have been able to bind the Bahro to their service via an unknown mechanism. Someone in D'ni gained control of the stone in an unknown point in their history, and according to a rumor that is attributed to Dr. Watson, they used the Bahro as a bulk transportation system to move goods between Ages.

It seems reasonably certain that the vast majority of the people of D'ni had no idea that the Bahro even existed. The DRC never found a reference to them in any of the records they translated and the word Bahro isn't written down anywhere. It was learned because Yeesha and Esher used it.

The closest thing to a reference the DRC found was a brief mention of a sub-class in the society that was referred to as "the least". Whether this was meant to refer to the Bahro is not at all certain. Yeesha thought that it did, based on the use of the term in Words of the Watcher. She constantly used the word when speaking of the Bahro, but that may be because she was consciously attempting to tie them to the prophesies in Words.

Explorer Tweek, who has seen DRC documents that are not publicly available, once hinted that the scars or tattoos that confer the linking ability are applied to young Bahro in a coming-of-age ceremony somewhere in the Spiral Age.