Surveyors, Cartographers and Maintainers

korovev · **Posted:** Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:12 am

Lore question: how were tasks and responsabilities allocated between the guilds? Surveying is an important part of map-making, and it could be argued that a complete assessment of the stability of an Age would require some surveying, if not making some preliminary maps. Were there guildsmen who worked under two or three guilds at the same time?

AdamJohnso · **Posted:** Sat Aug 05, 2017 6:27 pm

In BoT, the Guild of Surveyors were responsible for constructing the paths to the surface. I expect their role to be more of a survey-then-build-something than mapping for the sake of mapping.

KathAveara · **Posted:** Sun Aug 06, 2017 9:08 am

I imagine there is overlap between the roles the guilds have, but I imagine that's just where the guilds work together. Weren't the Miners also involved in constructing the path to the surface?

korovev · **Posted:** Sun Aug 06, 2017 11:27 am

One thing I don’t get is: wouldn’t one of the main tasks of the Surveyors be to establish the local coordinates? If that’s the case, shouldn’t the devices known as Maintainer Markers (mini-Great Zeroes that are supposed to provide the GZPS* locating signal outside D’ni) actually be Surveyor Markers? Maybe the Maintainers wanted the last word on their locations? EDIT: by the way, here’s a gallery of Markers.

* Great Zero Positioning System, of course.

Nalates · **Posted:** Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:01 pm

The answers are somewhat dependent on whether you are asking an In-Character or Out-of-Character question.

In-character we have the entire story of the D’ni civilization to work with and speculate about. It is reasonable to assume they were similar to us in how people specialize and blend professions.

OOC we have the history of how players participated in the game. Much of the history of players was/is about the Guild of Maintainers and Surveyors-Cartographers*. Access for most to the history was lost with changes at GoMa and the closing of the Uru Obsession forum.

The Guild of Writers and Messengers have been the more consistent of the guilds over the years. The GoW has likely had/has more members than any other guild. It is also the most active guild as there is lots of “writing” to do.

Players ‘obsessed,’ and not so obsessed, with the game often participated in more than one guild. People self-assigned their selves to guilds. Usually going where help was needed. Participating in OOC guilds was/is a volunteer thing.

*The canon story uses a Surveyors' Guild. In actual play, players of the day decided to be the Cartographers Guild, drawing maps. To some extent they were forced into surveying, measuring the place. Drawing was more what they wanted to do. So, the Cartography idea was more appealing than surveying, which I suppose sounded like work. As Uru moved to its second reincarnation Cyan shifted the story to better fit the players and gave the Cartographers one of the 5 guild halls in-world. They omitted a Surveyors Guild. Thus shifting the story a bit.

Nev'yn · **Posted:** Wed Aug 09, 2017 6:49 am

Nalates wrote:

OOC we have the history of how players participated in the game. Much of the history of players was/is about the Guild of Maintainers and Surveyors-Cartographers*. Access for most to the history was lost with changes at GoMa and the closing of the Uru Obsession forum.

Ugh...don't even get me started on this one...Even GoMe's history didn't escape the closing of that forum. There are tons of references/links in the GoMe archives to this period. Sadly, the Wayback machine was just coming into use about this time, so very little of it is available there. GoMe itself transitioned websites, losing much of the logs from that time. I've reconstructed much as could, plus interviewed almost every Messenger but two, namely White and Irissa.

I feel I should also point out I was a Cartographer when I first came to Uru, working with Prof. Almaron on a map for the GoC, until I discovered I really was the only "active" member, aside from the occasional visit from Nalates...As time moved on, and the DOMA(&S!) hood members met less and less frequently, I started helping the Messengers, and the rest as one might say, is well...history.

Anys, it's really late for me, and I'm kinda rambling...so, I think it's best I head off to bed after having added in my own thoughts and comments.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Thu Aug 10, 2017 6:00 pm

From the way I understand it, when a new Age was opened, the maintainers were the first through. After the invention of deretheni, the first maintainer into an Age wore the heavy environmental armor that provided protection from everything up to and including falling into an open lava pool. Once that maintainer linked back and reported that it was safe, the next step was a cooperative effort between several guilds. A team made up of maintainers, surveyors, cartographers, healers, and probably a few guilds that aren't as prominent in the texts would link to the Age and study it. The maintainers would look for inconsistencies with how the book had been written and any unexpected dangers. The surveyors would establish the zero meridian and study the terrain for a report to their masters, the cartographers would begin mapping the Age, and the healers would begin studying the air, plants, animals and other factors searching for signs of unknown diseases and other potential medical hazards. There were probably botanists, zoologists, and other specialists as well, although I have no proof of that. In any case, there was at least some overlap of tasks between guilds -- both the maintainers and the healers would have been interested in dangerous animals or plants. The maintainers and the surveyors would have both been interested in hazardous rock formations or water conditions.

In the book of Atrus, the surveyors did all of the work on the Journey to the Surface by themselves, and the only other guild along for the ride was the Caterers, in form of cooks and food handlers. The miners didn't show up until the end, when they brought up the great tunneling machines to dig the Shaft. Still, that's the book, and the facts in the books have to be taken with a grain of salt. David Wingrove did most of the writing, and he got a lot of things wrong.

Why do we call them maintainer's marks? The reason for that is pretty simple. The symbol on top of them is the logo of the maintainers, and we know that they were the ones who set them in place because of the stash in Gahreesen. That was one of the reasons why Tweek mentioning they are the transmitters for the coordinate system caught me by surprise. Why would the maintainers set up the coordinate system instead of the surveyors? The other reason is because in the two maps we have -- the pod Age and Teledahn -- the latitude and longitude lines do not correspond to the physical locations of the mark in Teledahn or the probable locations in the pod Age. In Teledahn, the only sign of radial coordinate lines are in the lower right corner of the map, nowhere near the mark. The island the mark is on is a little to the left of the center.

korovev · **Posted:** Thu Aug 10, 2017 8:02 pm

Perhaps the Maintainer Markers were temporary locators, used until the Surveyors were done building an actual, local Great Zero. If that was the case, though, the Great Zero itself should’ve been a Surveyor business.

The presence of Maintainer Markers in the Journey ages (either placed by Laxman or by Yeesha) and their active/inactive appeareance could be an unimplemented puzzle meant for To D’ni.

Surveyors, Cartographers and Maintainers

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