invasion of the sphereiods! (wellington part 8)

Location: Wellington Water Front

Baskets Left: 3

the quest to get rid of these three artifacts baskets goes on. having just left the wellington city and sea museum i was on my way to the new zealand museum of museums! te papa.

on my way though i noticed yet another aspect of wellington that leads me to suspect it is actually the covert launching point of an alien invasion (the other evidence being here and here).

walking from the one end of the water front back to the other i noticed some sculptures that initially seemed innocent enough...

until they popped up again a bit further down the front...

and AGAIN!

these spheres were just like an alien invader off something like dr. who... they sit ideally by for now, and than when the time is right SHWA BAMMO! doom to the earthlings!

sadly no one i tried to tell this believed me! all according to their evil round plan!!!

fortunately getting my peanut sized dis tractable sized brain back on the task i was here to do, was my destination. the national museum of new zealand. te papa...

what a museum it was too!

to be continued... in te papa!

mr. tyrannosaur goes to the beehive (wellington part 5)

Location: New Zealand Parliament... aka The Beehive

Baskets Left: 3

well despite today's earlier incident with the magically firing cannon, my efforts to get rid of ms. rhonwyn's three ancient maori flax baskets has been going relatively non eventful here in wellington thus far. there had yet to be any signs of my relentless purser whiro, maori god of darkness. that having been said i knew he won't be far off for long. what with these baskets being the kete o te wananga and all (that is to say they are the vessels of all maori mysticism and magic)

my first actual stop in wellington, as per ms. rhonwyn's list, was the new zealand parliament...

having wandered through downtown to get here, the first thing i stumbled into at the capital building was some rather odd stone statues as you'll recall people of the innerweb.

odd is truly the word i'd use for them. an upside down face planted bowling pin.

an ostrich head...

and giant rock banana!

though odd, i should also add people of the web wide world i like odd things. so they were cool. just like i said not something i expected to find around the place where the country was being run from!

just behind the banana i saw the most strange and unique building i'd seen in new zealand. it turns out my observation skills aren't too bad either. as you'll see this is one of the most important places in new zealand as well!

as i tried to get closer to this building i came across some more interesting statues.

they were maori figures... and though it sounds crazy people of the innerweb. they were watching me!

i had a slight sense of tinglyness from magic presence, at least the sensation i've been getting since stupidly exposing myself to the baskets full on essence at pearl harbour. suddenly what had been just a marble carving/statue was slightly alive.

i was freaked for a second, but after a few second it became quite clear these guys were not whiro level animated. in fact only their heads could move, and that was very slowly.

they didn't speak or do anything beyond stare at me.

getting a bit creeped out, and being so close to my destination i decided to push on. especially since this seemed to confirm my theory that the baskets were reacting with wellington. that was the second non specific magic incident this morning!

just beyond the watching statues was the weird building...

it could have come from some futuristic world of star trek or somewhere like that.

this it turns out people of the innerweb is the parliment of new zealand. for some reason they call it this part of the complex the beehive. i'm not sure why. there's definitely no bees, its not made of paper or wood like a real bees hive, and having been in it there isn't even any honey...

there was a lot of older looking buildings attached to the beehive. like the house of representatives.

there was also the parliamentary library. too bad mike wasn't here with me to see it!

now the cool thing about the new zealand parliament is that you can go on free tours of it on weekdays! so guess what i did? duh!

the only drag is you can't take pictures on the tour. so i can't show you much of what i saw, but it is a cool tour, and definitely worth its cost ;p

basically what i learned is that human politics are way more complicated than tyrannosaur pack dynamics. you mammals have so many complicated rules and procedures to figure out stuff. in t-rex society the biggest and strongest boss everyone around until someone stronger kicks them out of the pack (usually girls... in tyrannosaurs their the bigger ones).

anyways at the end of the tour nothing weird or different had happened due to the baskets.

emerging from the building i discovered a few last note worthy things.

one was this cool plaque of captain james cook the first englishman to explore new zealand.

than there was the war monument with a guy perched on a horse a million feet off the ground. boy that must be a scary job... won't want to be him. though think of the exercise carrying that horse up and down every day!

so that was one thing off the list down, but i had several more to go. wellington AGAIN is a big city people of the innerweb.

to be continued...

bigger than my home... the botanic garden (wellington part 3)

Location: Wellington Botanic Gardens

Baskets Left: 3

wellington is a big city... though i've said it already i'll say again. after spending a year and some in just dunedin you forget what a big city is like.

in the anticipation of hitting the various museums in town today, to try and get rid of these artifact maori baskets, i couldn't sleep. so i've got a couple hours to kill before the museums open...

i decided to explore a bit while killing time. the neatest things i found right away (that was OPEN anyway!) was the wellington cable car...

i'm a big fan of cars and TV... so i couldn't see how the combination of the two could be a bad thing.

getting aboard i was a bit surprised to find that it was more like a bus or a train than a car... and there was NO sign of the cable TV anywhere!

it was pretty crowded with people. most of whom i found out were on their way to work.


after a few minutes of waiting for people to get on the car it started, and it was here that i learned why it was called a cable car... it turns out that this thing is on a set of tracks that is pulled up and down wellington's big central hill by a cable... hence the name.

at the top i found something very cool but unexpected... the cable car drops you off at the wellington botanic garden.

well okay as you can see on the sign it nearly drops you off there anyway... not that it was hard to get to from here...

okay, so now i was at the botanic garden. since i had some time to kill i figured i'd check this out and compare it to my home the dunedin botanic garden.


now for those of you out there on the innerweb freaking out because of my being vulnerable out in the open with the baskets i had my reasons. unlike picton which was tiny, if whiro or another maori mystic monster tracked me to wellington they'd have trouble pin pointing me in such a BIG place.


wellington's and dunedin's botanic gardens had one thing in common they are both mostly on a big hill.

one of the key differences is that where dunedin's is fairly simple and has only 3 major routes through it wellington's has a LOT...

seriously... it has a lot. so many i got lost for a while!

finally i came to an interesting wooden outlook structure that dunedin's garden certainly doesn't have.



from here i got a view over wellington's garden. like the city itself the garden was BIG...

much bigger and wilder than dunedin's.



just imagine if i lived here people of the web wide world... it'd be like i was living in the mesozoic!

making it up to the top of the garden i walked along the ridge.

here i found a cool old observatory. i guess in the olden days before wellington got so big and bright this was a great place to come up and watch stars. though this thing didn't look like it'd been used in a long time...

from up here i had a commanding view of wellington. i could even see the ferry and terminal i'd used to get here in the first place.

i was only seeing a part of the capital, and it that was bigger than dunedin from a similar view.

yet apart from the skyscrapers it didn't look that much different from dunedin. i was liking it here thus far.

towards the end of the ridge was an old cannon gun. naturally a posed for a picture with it, cause... well i'm not sure why. just i've noticed that what humans do all the time in such circumstances.

anyways as i got up close the cannon and said cheese for my camera suddenly i felt real dizzy... and my shirt pocket heated right up... all just like when the baskets reacted funny to that whale in kaikoura...

there was a weird build up of light at the end of the gun... magic i realized! but why here?

before i could inquire anymore there was a deafening BOOM! the cannon had... well it fired!?!?!?!

for a moment i thought that had to be impossible... than suddenly one of the skyscrapers in line with the cannon EXPLODED!!!

before i could think, react, or do anything the people around me on the ridge all started freaking out! some started running away, others stared at the building which was on fire and missing a top, and a few pointed and yelled various blame type thing at me.

rather than stick around and face blame for something i didn't do, and couldn't explain to anyone like, oh say, the police... i cheesed it out of there!

i took shelter in a public washroom for a while. the radio was playing inside, and catching a news report i breathed a sigh of relief...

no one had been seriously hurt by the blast. it was too early in the morning... and i wasn't being hunted by the authorities! the experts were baffled. all evidence pointed to the cannon firing at that building. yet there was no possible way that gun could have fired as the mechanics needed to do so were absent. more to the point despite the damage, no actual physical trace of a projectile had been found in the wreckage! not even as much as gun powder residue on either the gun or the building...

there was a brief mention of witnesses seeing "a large reptile in the vicinity of the gun", but it was dismissed as hysteria surrounding the unusual event.

okay so what happened?

it had to be magic from the baskets, but why?

either they didn't like wellington (hence the trying to blow it up), or they were starting to react again like they did in kaikoura. maybe this was a step in the reaction ms. rhonwyn told me was bound to happen with them!

one thing was for sure. this little display of the baskets acting up on their own accord showed how dangerous they could be! just imagine if they fell into the wrong hands??? like i don't know maybe a certain god of darkness...

to be continued...

why i love statues! (museum quest part 18)

ms. rhonwyn realized that my posts on the quest are not as informational packed as they could be, due to my peanut sized brain and all... so she's gone through and added some stuff that i didn't know at the time of these events. their the bits in the [ brackets ] and in this colour and font.

Location: Picton

Baskets Left: 3

things couldn't have gotten more scary in my mission to get rid of these ancient artifact baskets!


as you know whiro the maori god of darkness will stop at nothing to get his hands on these flax baskets because they contain ALL the mystic knowledge of the maori people.


well the thinkable happened while i was in picton. not only did whiro track me down... again, i guess (he's done that 1, 2, uh 3 times before to be fair)... and is currently on my heels chasing me around town!

i don't have an escape plan people of the web wide world. i'm hoping i can outrun him to the ferry terminal... why he'd stop chasing me there i don't know...


the bigger problem (if that were possible!) is that ms. rhonwyn in her instructions was very specific. take the baskets to EVERY place on the list she provided. there are two museums in town on that list... i haven't hit them. i couldn't hit them till tomorrow... even without an evil maori god on my heels!


like i said people of the innerweb i didn't have an escape plan, and thinking on this problem was eating up a lot of my mental power (can you blame me with a brain as small as mine really?!?)... and again... whiro was right on my heels!!!


had it not been for my gracile [That is a science term for light and sleek] young tyrannosaur body and its ornithimimid like build whiro'd have caught me by now...

the ferry terminal was close now. it was only just a little further. maybe if i made it i'd be alright.

from behind me almost as though whiro could sense my hope. "you really think you can escape me kauwheke te kura [Translation: Ancestor of the Moa]?" his voice didn't gasp or fluctuate despite the effort he was putting in to keep up with me. i on the other hand was shattered (kiwi for exhausted or tired). i'd sprinted from one end of town to the other at full speed. my lungs were just about ready to give up.

even if i made it to the terminal i was certainly toast, and my mission a failure. i didn't even want to know what whiro could or would do with the knowledge contained within the kete o te wananga. i was certain it would not be a better world. not that i was likely to be around to see it...

my legs and even more so lungs were giving out on me. there was no way i could keep going. i made my final desperate push to the ferry terminal. i made it just inside the threshold of the door where i collapsed. right in front of a maori wood carving (i note this because in my exhaustion i freaked out for a moment thinking it was a second maori deity after me!).

behind me the all too familiar snarly growl of whiro could be heard as he detected my weakness, and sensed his moment to strike...

just as whiro approached the door i was overcome with dizziness... the sort i've come to expect when something magic is going on around me. [Mystic Gradient Radiation being its scientific name]... i thought it was due to my close proximity to whiro and his magical essence... boy was i wrong.

suddenly the lobby lite up with furious mystical activity... which i'll note got me some really weird or nasty looks from the humans there. they couldn't see what i was, but i assure you people of the web wide, had you seen it you'd have made some noise too!

this magic was pouring forth from the maori statue just above me, and it was pretty serious stuff. not like the presence of an atua like whiro or the magical essence [Mystic Gradient Epicentre. The equivalent of a magical nuclear reactor or sun] of the baskets themselves. this wasn't a manifestation of magic like an entity or framework. this was a machine made of it designed to do some serious alterations of the world as it went... it was a spell!!!

this spell sure didn't like something about whiro. whether it was due to his being an atua, magic critter, or god of darkness the magic zoned in on him with force!

i didn't stick around to find out what it was going to do to him... in hindsight i probably should have. how often to you get to see an action movie scene play out in front of you? (of course in real life their not fun like the movies!!!)... all i can say is whiro was not enjoying whatever was happening to him. though i was certain it wasn't going to kill him (can you kill a god?) that alone stop him for ever.

i did quickly catch the name on the plaque of the sign as i sped walked towards the counter to buy my ticket. the name said ao-kehu. i'd have to look it up later. after the sales lady finished looking at me funny for my earlier outburst she gave me a ticket for the next ferry. which left in 10 minutes... would whiro be warded off long enough?

[Ao-kehu was famous and revered Maori warrior of ancient mythology. In Maori lore Ao-kehu was renowned for being a slayer of Taniwha.

Taniwha were Maori monsters. They took many forms varying from the mundane such as giant whales, sharks, or lizards to outlandish and fantastic extremes of indescribable beasts. Though some Taniwha were benevolent guardians of a certain tribe or region most were malevolent or if not they were still a threat to outsiders of their realm. In such case Taniwha were a dreaded force for mortals to contend with, and most perished if they came up against one. Though there are tales of mortal warriors killing Taniwha, Ao-kehu is among the few to have killed many and survived these confrontations.

The most famous of these stories is Ao-kehu's slaying of Tuae-poroporo a very furious Taniwha of the Whanganui River. To slay the giant chimera {that is to say made of the parts of many animals} creature Ao-kehu devised a plan that used intellegence rather than strength to defeat Tuae-poroporo. He hollowed a log, and sealed himself inside it while baiting the outside. Unable to resist the lure of the bait Tuae-poroporo swallowed the log. Protected until he was in the stomach, Ao-kehu emerged from the log in Tuae-poroporo's belly and hacked his way out of the beast killing it.

Many modern Tohunga {Maori word meaning many things, but in this case refers to mystic priest} like to use statues of Ao-ketu as a focal point for spells and blessings designed to ward off evil spirits. This would seem the likely explanation for Traumador's experience at the Picton Ferry Terminal.]

i boarded the boat as soon as they'd let us. at least that way if whiro got inside the terminal he won't find me so quickly...

as i got on deck and looked back on picton a new dread filled me...

there on the harbour front was the edwin fox museum. a place i was supposed to have taken the baskets...

what if that was THE place that the baskets would have jived with the mana of?

what i did now was in vein. it wasn't like i could come back easily to try again. more to the point whiro was still after me. even if the boat got out of here without him it won't take him long to figure out a way to follow me. i was sure of it.

that alone the other possible mystic creatures that could be waiting for me on the north island!

doubt and worry ate away in my head even as the loud fog horn sounded to indicate we were leaving.

i started to feeling slightly dizzy. something mystic was getting closer.

leaning over the railing i let out a slight gasp at what i saw on the dock. whiro!

i knew he wasn't going to be stopped so easily...

though to both my surprise and his the boat started to move... i was underway... but would whiro be along for the ride?

though as the ferry's engines worked up to full power, and got us moving very fast for a ship this side it seemed to take forever!

in the meantime whiro struggled to find a way aboard... the one saving grace was not only was the boat moving steadily, but it had no easy accesses from dock level.

contrary to what i expected the ferry pulled out of port leaving whiro behind... well okay i expected the boat to leave port, but i was expecting whiro to have gotten aboard knowing my luck...

whiro just stood there clearly off put by this development. yet he was also eerily calm. i could just tell i hadn't seen the last of him...

the view of picton was lovely as he hit the open water of the harbour.

yet the museum's that lay in town, that i hadn't visited, caused me to not enjoy this and the other views as much as i should have. guilt, doubt, and worry were all i could think of...

we quickly left the harbour and picton behind. we were hitting the beautiful queen charlotte sound.

i'll let the pictures speak for themselves as i missed this going through them. i was picturing the quest's disasterious ending due to this turn of events...

a cool salmon farm operation (even if their bad for the environment i think they look neat at the very least).

here we reached the literal end of the south island. i left behind all i'd known and experienced of new zealand this past year, and set forth to a new frontier...

after the pretty islands and cliffs of the sound's natural breaker.

now we set forth into the cook strait over which lay the north island. site of the second half of the museum quest...

the end of one chapter.

the beginning of a new one...

(Production Note: We at Prehistoric Insanity applogize for the delay that has occurred in the Chronicles the last two weeks. In addition to the pre-production we're busily engaged in for the exciting new direction of Year 1.5, Craig's current immigration and employment efforts have been eating up a lot of time. Be sure to check out our blog to see some of this pre-production like this, that, and those.

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Also over at Laelaps there's a contest on May. 17th that The Tyrannosaur Chronicles will be submitting a special entry for. So definately be sure to check back here than!

Between now and than expect a post every day or two as we try to catch up and finish the Museum Quest.

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As always thanks for stopping by and checking out Traumador and his adventures!)