Tolesa was an Age written by Guildmaster Kadish of the Guild of Writers, who was one of the last guildmasters before the Fall of D'ni. After making his fortune, he retired from the guild and spent much of his time entertaining in the Watcher's Pub, which he'd purchased. Kadish wrote Tolesa sometime around D'ni year 9395 (AD 1739), although the exact date is not known. It was a private Age that served as a massive security vault for his wealth. In fact, the name "Kadish Tolesa" means "Kadish Sealed Place" in D'ni, with the connotation of a vault or walk-in safe. Atrus' father, Gehn, would have been around three years old at the time it was written.

Tolesa is comprised of two main sections; a dense forest of massive trees and a series of underground rooms ending in a huge spherical cavern. The forest section has many birds that can be heard up in the canopy, including woodpeckers. There are also frogs that can be heard occasionally that sound much like the ytram frogs of Riven.

Kadish had a major personality quirk. He couldn't make a lock that wasn't a puzzle, and he couldn't make a puzzle without leaving clues to it somewhere. Kadish was also fascinated by the prophesies of the Watcher's book, "Words", and wanted to be the Grower prophesied in its pages. He spent a great deal of time, energy and money attempting to fulfill the prophesies by the use of clever tricks.

After writing Tolesa, Kadish bought a shop on Ae'gura island. He had it renovated, and reopened it as a museum of what he called ahrotahntee (non-D'ni) artwork. He named it the Kadish Gallery, and had that name emblazoned on the walls. The reality was that it was a fraud. He commissioned all of the artwork to his own specifications, and it served a specific purpose. It was a shrine of clues to the puzzles in various Ages he had written. It delighted him that no one in D'ni ever figured that out, although the exhibits were popular.

The surface world of the part of Tolesa that we can walk in is made up of a maze of giant trees. The trees themselves seem to have characteristics of some of the giant Eucalyptus trees of Australia and Tasmania, and the leaves that fall to the forest floor seem to have some of the shape of Eucalyptus Regnans Myrtaceae. It is possible that the trees we see later in the Vista are the tops of the same kind of tree. The leaves lying on the ground in the Age exhibit Eucalyptus characteristics, one of which is that they are bilaterally asymmetric.

In Australia and Tasmania, the trees are called by various names including giant ash, mountain ash, Victorian ash, swamp gum, Tasmanian oak or stringy gum. While gum trees are members of the Eucalyptus family and the names fit, ash trees and oak trees are unrelated species so many of the names are not accurate descriptions.

It has been suggested that some Eucalyptus Regnans trees have been the tallest trees in recorded history, taller than the coastal redwoods or Sequoias of the United States. This cannot be verified because of the sad fact that the Australian logging industry has cut down all of the trees that might have been contenders for the title. One tree that may have been the tallest in the world was destroyed to make 75 tons of newspaper.

The following images show the tops of some of the trees seen from the Vista, a branch from the forest canopy, and some of the leaves found in the Age. There are two different species seen from the Vista.

The next two photos show the upper portion of one of the trees from Australia or Tasmania, and the remains of a giant that was cut down in Tasmania by the logging industry, with a man standing on it to show a size comparison.

Three telescopes make up the first puzzle that had to be solved before a visitor could continue the journey through the Age. A linking book to the gallery can be found in the room that houses the first telescope. However, Kadish was too subtle to place a book tying the museum to Tolesa, so it's a lot more likely that Yeesha placed the book to the Gallery and the return book back to the first telescope when she created her quest. This was a common tactic for her; she always modified the Ages she used for her quests, and like a gang graffiti artist, she often signed the Age with her monogram to show she'd done it. In many of the Ages, her monogram appears several times.

The first and second telescopes are in separate rooms, while the third sits in the middle of the main passage. The second room has a unique gazebo surrounding the telescope.

This is called the Moon Room, because of the nature of the light. It's the second puzzle to pass.

In this picture, compare the railing design to the floor pattern. While not a match, the railings are meant to suggest the pattern on the floor.

The the only part of Tolesa where we can see a little of the outside world is an area the DRC calls the Vista. Like many other Ages, there are fireflies here, but they are solitary and territorial. There are two in the Vista area.

Here, we can see the two types of giant tree in the age. Note that the trees in the distance have a differently shaped canopy than the ones closer to the overlook.

The vista has a feature that cannot be seen all the time. Every so often, the clouds thin out enough to show that there is either a moon with its own atmosphere, or a twin planet. The sun and the moon (?) can be seen in this picture along with the first firefly. It has also been suggested that we might be on a moon of the other planet we see.

The second firefly is near the gate to the area where the pyramid is located.

Offshore, there are two kinds of trees which are unidentified, although one guess is that one type is the same Eucalyptus Regnans that surround you on the plateau. That also leads to the guess that the other type of tree is also a giant Eucalyptus variety.

The Vista appears to be at about the height of the local clouds, and the area off the plateau has a layer of mist and clouds. Given that the giant Eucalyptus can be upward of a mile in height, the trees in the distance would place the plateau about three-quarters of a mile above the ground they are rooted in. What exactly can be found down below is unknown.

This puzzle is called the Pyramid Room. It could also be called the sun room, since the sun plays a big role in its workings. The large ball on top is a lens and prism arrangement, similar to a periscope.

The interior is fairly typical of Kadish's designs for the puzzle rooms, intended to deceive would-be robbers.

This puzzle is called the Pillar Room. The central pillars are raised and lowered by a weight and counterweight arrangement.

No visitors were known to have gone to Tolesa in Kadish's lifetime, but if any had, the ones who made it all the way through would have been rewarded with this view of the actual vault. The pipes serve no purpose other than support. Much of the walkway's structure has collapsed in the last few hundred years. In Kadish's time back in the AD 1700s, it would have been much safer to walk up to the vault. There are a few remaining guard rails to show how it must have looked when it was in good repair.

The interior of the vault contained most of his liquid assets and artwork he valued. There is one interesting anomaly; to the left as you enter the vault, there is a painting of scenery from Teledahn. It appears to be an earlier version of a view shown in a painting in the Baron's Office that was used by Douglas Sharper. Kadish has no known association with Teledahn, so why he would have kept it in his treasury is a mystery.

This is the painting of Teledahn. Note the work platform around the mushroom just below the cap; since the energy tower is missing, it's strange that they had already put up the platform.

This is the painting from the Baron's Office. This one includes the energy collection tower, which means that Kadish's must be an earlier view. The mushroom just to the left of the tower is the one in shown in Kadish's painting.

The room has a great many gold coins laying about. Kadish had quite a fortune, and it lies in piles on the floor, and is suspended from the walls and support beams in hammocks of cloth. This is only place I know where D'ni coins can be found. The obverse of the coins have a profile of a man, but it is not known who he was. Given that the coins were probably minted centuries after the abdication of King Kerath, it might be the image of a man who was important to the D'ni for other reasons than being a monarch. There is one coin in the following image that shows the reverse, and it appears to be the figure of a man sitting on horseback. Unfortunately, none of the text on the coins can be read in the image.

Andrew Futterman noticed that the coins bear a striking resemblance to British Gold Sovereigns minted between 1902 and 1910, which feature King Edward VII on the obverse and Saint George and the dragon on the reverse. Here is a 1902 Sovereign for comparison.

As a personal aside, I find it rather amusing that the artist who created the image of Saint George evidently believed he rode into combat au naturel.

When A'gaeris and Veovis attacked the caverns with a mix of poison gas and deadly bacteria in the event called the Fall of D'ni, people tried to flee to places of safety. It was mostly futile. Those that survived the gas died from bacterial infection, and served as carriers to infect others. A'gaeris and Veovis even passed infected bodies through linking books to spread the bacteria to all the Ages they could. Only a fraction of the D'ni people survived, mostly those who were in other Ages—or who managed to flee before the cloud reached them—and managed to disable their linking books in time. They could not return for many years. It wasn't until Atrus and Catherine searched for them that the survivors of D'ni reunited and began the job of burying the remains of the victims.

Kadish fled to the safest place he knew, not knowing that he was already as good as dead. When he discovered that he was doomed, he decided to die here, surrounded by his treasure, and left a letter behind.

Here is a translation, although it is not precise because many of the words in the note have not yet been positively identified.

"I have met my end. Mortality overcomes me. I see it. It is waiting, watching for my soul to depart. Its acquisitions surpass my own. There is a linking book here, but I will not leave. I have decided this. I am here with all I could desire. No one can take it from me. I will die here with it all. This place is hidden, and will remain hidden. If these words are found anyway, remember that I did not surrender. I did not die with nothing, I died with everything. Look at my possessions. They belong to me, and will be with me forever.
Peace,
Guildmaster Kadish."

Yeesha identified strongly with Kadish, since like her, he thought he was the Grower of D'ni prophesy. She couldn't believe that he wrote those words, and scribbled her own feelings on his death note. Her words read: "Could he ever realize such failure? What kind of end is this? Impossible, unless..."

Finally, unable to accept such an anticlimactic ending for Kadish, Yeesha wrote a linking book to an alternate version of his vault.

No one knows whether or not it is a different Age, or a different instance of his Tolesa. All that is certain is that in her version of the vault, Kadish and most of his treasure are gone.

The alternate vault is separated from the rest of Kadish Tolesa. Yeesha collapsed part of the walkway from the vault to the tunnel system. It's also possible to see that in this version of Tolesa, she did not include her portal to the Rudenna Bahro cave.

In the alternate vault, Yeesha left behind scraps of paper. On one, she claims that she saved "his" life. On another, she claims to have the power of gods. I take that as a sign of her advancing insanity. She might have begun to lose her mind when her beloved mentor, Calam, was murdered and she avenged him, or it could have started when her older brother Sirrus trapped her mind in the Dream of the Age of Serenia. One can only guess. But she left many clues behind that show her mental state, and in her speeches in the Rudenna Bahro Cave, she openly admits that she had been seduced into arrogance by her own power.

One can sometimes find Crimson Kadish butterflies fluttering about this room. They are native to the Age of Laki'ahn, but because they were first discovered here, they were named after Kadish. I believe that Yeesha might have written them into this vault because Kadish was fond of the arena games of Laki'ahn. Yeesha left behind a Relto page that sends some to your Relto as a reminder of Kadish's story.

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