The Grower - Re-Written and EDITED

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:04:13 -0500

I am re-writing this stupid story and was wondering whether I should just leave it AWAY from MC or post it here. I'll be waiting for replies: should I just post links, btw, or type it up here? Just wondering.
It is much shorter, by the way: only six-chapters-long.
For more information: check this update.

What? How? Where?

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:58:51 -0500

I've spent some time in MOULa now. I've completed the journies, shared some puzzles, talked to other explorers. I have not yet attempted Mintaka or spent much time in the pod ages and I have a bunch of KI calibration missions to accomplish.
So I am not yet completed everything, but there are a few mysteries that I don't think I will find the answer to by any further wanderings. So I thought i'd ask my questions here!

What is it with these sparklies ? Do they do anything or serve a purpose?

What is the secret of good pellet? And how was that found out? Trial and error?

I have 17 Relto pages. How do I know when I have them all?

I understand that there is a time aspect to the pod ages, but how was it worked out when it occurs? Not just the translation of D'ni time, earth time and pod time, but initial instancing and period?

Still on pod ages, I read somewhere that someone spent ages playing with the sound buttons but it didn't effect anything it didn't make any of the creatures approach. I don't want to waste my time if nothing happens. Is there more to it than that?

I started the final stage of KI calibration. My unerrtanding of the machine was that each button corresponded to an area of the cavern, and informs you of how many markers there are to find. Press the button and a times starts? Do you have to get them allk in a set time or is this just for competitions on who is the fastest? I chose what I recognised as the great zero with only 8 markers, but I only found 3!

I think thats enough for me to be going on with. I'm going to run out of time soon to get to myst online, so want to complete as much as I can in the next 2 or 3 weeks.

Converting .tar to .zip

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:16:36 -0500

I'm asking because I've recently learned that TuxRacer still works, but some of the expansion pack courses are .tar files.

Eudptula albosignata

Er'Canna this time

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:19:47 -0500

I'm now having trouble with ErCanna (don't remember finding this a problem in POTS, am I being daft or has it changed?)
In the last but one room, I have turned on all the power and set all the viewer sliders up to max and pressed the button. linked out (due to lift not worked as power is on!) and linked back via the bookmark to the pellet room, but neither the button nor the lever do anything. I am guessing that I need a certain combination for the sliders, but where can I find that combination?

Someone online, suggested the Ahnonay Bahro Cave, but all I have in there is a big X in a circle. Doesn't mean anything to me.

Can someone please give me a hint. Thanks

Managed to join a group and solved the Eder doors last night The result is a bit of a dissapointment! Still to finish this POTS journey, the Minkata and Pod Ages. oh, and find the last 5 markers to calibrate my KI!!

Hmm, still lots to do!

TB

Mangled Plots V

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 20:46:12 -0500

Books, movies, TV stories, and video games.

1. A mystery man who has really changed in the last twenty-four hours, an AWOL sailor, and a mad scientist's former secretary must impersonate a government official and his assistants in order to save colonists from the serious gaps in their history books.

2. Someone investigates a good friend's family and kills said friend's younger son, recently sprung from an oubliette, with a weird cult's divination equipment.

3. A kid dies again and again in the hopes of killing off his father for good.

4. Aliens mistake a LARP based off a centuries-old story for reality, creating considerable problems for a shipful of explorers from very far away.

5. After being rescued from marauders (who worship his father as a spirit of vengeance) and losing the only family he's ever known, a youth tries to take take two robots to a place that turns out not to exist anymore, and eventually wrecks the largest spacecraft in recorded history. Identified by Capella.

6. ~~Children fleeing one war stumble into a different universe and find themselves at the forefront of another war.~~ Identified by aander91.

7. When an old philanthropist vanishes, his heir inherits the very being of Jakooth's second-in-command. To get rid of this, he needs guidance from a dangerous psychopath.

8. A guy learns that his whole life is a lie and that the prize everyone is eagerly waiting for is an appointment with reMahn-Shooth. This is the version with a happy ending.

9. A boy who's really packing heat gets a literal lift from a classmate. It turns out that their principal problem is only half-solved.

10. When a guy gets unlimited railway travel, he soon learns that an old interior decorating fad harbors a sinister secret.

Eudyptula albosignata

The caverns and air

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 11:52:19 -0500

I'm sure this topic has been done to death in the past but its pretty quiet around here so I thought i'd ark it any way.

I have just re read BoT and mentioned several times about the great fans which brought fresh air to the caverns, but it also said they had not broken through to the surface. How could they have got fresh air from great fans without breaking through?

List of Myst and Riven remakes?

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:28:53 -0500

I would like to find out which games have had Myst island made in them. I know of the new Riven Reborn being made but I'm talking about games that allow custom maps, in which people have crafted any of the islands.

These are mine: Bolo - All of original Myst, Tony Hawks Underground (xbox) - Myst island, Farcry Instincts (xbox) - Myst island and Riven's Jungle island, Quake 2 (just some objects from both)

Made by others: GTA Vice City - Myst island, Crysis - Myst island, Minecraft - Myst island, Unreal Tournament - Catherine's Age from Book of Atrus (Deathmatch)

Floor Puzzle

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:53:39 -0500

Hello,
I recently bought ABM and am enjoying it immensely. BUT I have a dumb question. Where's the clue to solve the floor puzzle? I've been to the temple looking age and can't find anything that looks close. Sorry, I don't know the name of the age. I just need a tiny hint.

Froggie

Ahnonay!!!

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:44:45 -0500

I'm kicking myself for not getting this myself, but I really need a hint here.

how do I get to the

Click to reveal hidden content

4th world

of Ahnonay? I've tried everything I can find to do, but I am stuck with just the

Click to reveal hidden content

3 worlds

I am fairly certain that the way to get through to the next section is through the edge chamber of the

Click to reveal hidden content

4th construction world

.

Please help with a hint please!!

Thanks

TB

Happy Birthday Mystress

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:25:10 -0500

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

19, eh! So young

I remember when these birthday messages were practically every day!!

Here, have a birthday tomato and a great day

Topher Bear

Details of Cyan's new game "Stoneship"

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:29:04 -0500

http://toucharcade.com/2010/08/26/details-...zler-stoneship/

Taking their games in a new direction, YARRRR....

What would you change in Myst IV?

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:32:19 -0500

That is the question. I have seen a lot of criticism about Myst IV, and while I liked it, it really didn't have this awesome Riven and Myst feeling to it. Maybe it was the puzzles, the story, I don't know.

So, what would you like to change in Myst IV? what would you change so it would be better?

(and please no "GET RID OF SERENIA AND DREAM!" or "THE BROTHERS NEVER RETURN! TRAP BOOKS!" or such. I'm talking about samller changes. Get rid of a certain puzzle, or change it. A certain way to improve the depth of the characters)

Myst passages on amazon

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:17:25 -0500

hey all- i just bought a new copy of Myst #0 on amazon, and there's still a used copy!
Here

Drizzle27!

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:52:01 -0500

Drizzle27 has just been released, and here's what's new!

You can get it through the UAM tab of Drizzle, or download it manually from Sourceforge: http://sf.net/projects/drizzle

This release focuses mainly on shard administration, but there are some important conversion changes, so this is a recommended upgrade for everyone!

(The official page with installation instructions, walkthroughs and screenshots for the Ages, and a more detailed description is here: http://alcugs.almlys.org/Drizzle)

(You can use Moulagain files instead of Moul files if you wish! And you can buy MagiquestOnline at http://www.magiquest.com/mqonline/)

New features for Age Writers:
-3dsmax Age Writing: swim regions now work in multiplayer.
-Command-line texture distiller, to pull the textures a prp uses into the prp itself. (Useful for things like Ahra Pahts.)
-Reorganized command-line help into categories, making it much more understandable.
-More exclamation marks than an Archie comic!

New features for Shard Administrators:
-Talcum now uses unencrypted .pak and .sdl files, which is much easier for editing. (For shard administrators.)
-Can search for, detect the version of, and use CPython's Python compiler if installed. (Intended for advanced users.)
-Can create diffs between Python files, or entire .pak files.
-Can patch .pak files to resolve some online problems. (For shard administrators.)
-One-click Uam updater and shard file generator. (For shard administrators.)

Bug fixes:
-Fixes for Moul memories, which were causing some troubles with some textnotes.
-Pagenums now reproduce the Plasma quirk of overflowing. (Which was causing a problem.)

The Drizzle team includes L.K. with walkthroughs and the German translation, myself with coding, Chacal with the French translation, and Wodan with the Dutch translation. Enjoy!

Strange Graphical Glitches After Cleaning LCD Screen.

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:01:43 -0500

I had a very good friend of mine (I'll call her D for simplicity's sake) contact me over Skype late last night before bed and tell me that her Netbook had started having very strange graphical problems, namely that there was a thin neon green line near one side of her screen. I questioned D about what she was doing before it started acting up, and she replied that she'd been cleaning her computer. A little questioning revealed that she had been cleaning the LCD screen of fingerprints with a plain wet wipe, and the Netbook was on during the cleaning. D claimed her problems began about fifteen minutes later while she was using the device normally. Over the course of the conversation over Skype, she said that her screen began to have two neon green lines on one side, then a green and a pink line, then a bunch of green lines again, and finally it began to flicker. I told her to turn the computer off and leave it that way.

My suspicion is that she somehow damaged her LCD screen with the chemicals in the wet wipe, but she's concerned it could be the graphics drivers going wonky. I highly doubt her claim, since she got the Netbook only last year, on Christmas. There are no other problems with the computer save the graphical problems. Are there any other possibilities I didn't consider? She runs Windows XP SP3 on an Acer Netbook.

The Book of Emmit, Branch and Will

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:01:56 -0500

This takes place in an alternate universe where the ship was set free
Atrus sat there, trying to write in a ship so that he and the boys could explore. He was afraid it wouldn't work, but he didn't think about that. He just wrote it in.
On his return to the Rocks, he discovered it was successful.
To be continued...

Uru

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:31:24 -0500

Hey, I just joined the UAM shard< and it says Until Uru. Whats the difference between until uru, moul, and uru cc?

Caption This 22 Aug 2010

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:19:37 -0500

Egg

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:23:22 -0500

whats with the giant floating egg and nonsense papers in bevin?

Backwards thread again

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:19:56 -0500

I start with the last post in a thread, you do the one before it. etc.
Ok. Here we go.
The ending of this thread has not yet been written...

Uru CC K'veer

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:09:54 -0500

in kahlo pub, pretty self-explanitory

Collectors edition?

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 07:11:06 -0500

It has dictonary, book of marrim, and dvd of music/making of. Is it worth it? i think so...

Eventide - New book by Tracy and Laura Hickman

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:10:14 -0500

I figured this was of interest and thought I should share. Two of my favorite authors, Tracy and Laura Hickman, have begun writing a new trilogy in a most interesting fashion using serial chapter releases via the internet. Even more interesting than that, however, is if you subscribe to the all chapters you also get a complete hard-copy of the book shipped at the end. This copy of the book is also numbered and signed. Anybody interested should check this out, since the subscription is on a first come, first serve basis with limited subscriptions available.

http://www.dragonsbard.com/about/

Road trips

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:40:13 -0500

Hi everybody. you may have noticed I've not been active for several weeks - I was having the time of my life in the USA! I met a friend from California and went on a road trip across the continent. You Americans sure have a beautiful country! I intend to live there one day.

For anybody who's interested I kept a journal at the time and have just finished converting it into a blog at http://richards-roadtrip.blogspot.com, and uploaded the photos to my Flickr account here.

Also of interest might be this map of our route - starting in southern California, going up the coast.

Has anybody here been on a road trip before, in the US or anywhere? I'm thinking of going back next year to do the East coast.

Stoneship

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:15:52 -0500

Hey, has everyone else seen the new iPhone game advertised on Cyan's website? It is apparently called stoneship (ha) and looks a little like civilization revolution with a pirate theme.

OMG LOOK AT THIS MYST CAKE.

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:11:00 -0500

The best thing I saw all day was this cake. I bet it tasted delicious.

Also, it is not a lie. The books are frosting, the Ki and Dagger are Fondant.

The Uam Shard!

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:39:36 -0500

Welcome aboard the Uam Shard!

The goal of this shard is to provide a place where everyone can visit the fan Ages online. It is not a replacement for the smaller, friendlier feel of a small private shard, but I still hope you will enjoy it! In the process, I've automated a lot of tasks through Drizzle, and I intend to automate yet more. (A side goal is to make it much easier for people to set up their own shards, something that has not happened as much as I would have liked to see.)

Besides being able to visit the freely available Ages, you can also visit the Crowthistle, Myst5, Hexisle, and Magiquest Ages if you have purchased them and convert them with Drizzle. (Drizzle is not required for the shard otherwise.)

The page is here: http://dusty.homeunix.net/shard

This is an Alcugs shard, which means that in addition to the regular Drizzle/UAM team, thanks also go to Almlys and Diafero, and of course, to all those who have written Ages!

There are no official forums (and this is on purpose), so please feel free to ask questions or discuss on any of the following forums which I read: huru.info, uruobsession.com, mystcommunity.com, guildofwriters.com, guildofmaintainers.org, or forum.almlys.org.

Enjoy!

Clever Myst yesses and nos

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:24:04 -0500

!Shorah everybody

I am working on another "Interactivity" for my Myst Fansite, and I need some help from all you creative folks. What I need is clever ways to say "yes", "no", "maybe", "probably", "probably not", "I don't know", and "ask again" using elements from the Myst and Uru games. For example, a "no" could be "Does Myst Have Toilets?" and an "ask again" could be "Calibrate KI & Ask Again". Let's hear what you've got!

Feel free to guess what this is for, too...

Riven from GoG problem

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:38:00 -0500

I got the version of Riven from GoG, and I'm having a few issues.

1.) Turning off 640x480 mode doesn't actually give me any scaling. All it does is allow the adapter to maintain its normal resolution instead of switching to 640 mode, but the graphics remain steadfastly 640x480, a tiny little window in the middle of the screen. Is there any way to get the images and movies to scale to fit the screen?

2.) After a few minutes play, it crashes, just locks up.

I have it set to Windows XP compatibility mode.

Attention, Farscape fans!

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 13:28:25 -0500

Okay, I fell in love with Farscape, particularly the earlier episodes this summer, and I imagine Myst and Farscape might have overlap in their fanbases (In fact, I'm pretty sure they do), so I wanted to find out.

What I really love about the show is the characters, the way they interact, and they way they make you (or at least me) love them in spite of their manifold flaws.

I really love D'Argo and Zhaan, particularly. I love Chiana, too, but D'Argo and Zhaan would have to be my two favorites

Click to reveal hidden content

which is why I'm really mad at the writers for killing BOTH of them off! I understand Virginia Hey was tired of sacrificing not only her hair and her personal life, but also her health for her job, but they didn't have to KILL her, and why did they have to kill D'Argo. Why was Rygel the only one of the original escaped prisoners to return to his home? I dream of someday making Farscape movies just so I can bring the two of them back from the dead, which happens in sci-fi all the time.

Nice D'ni phrases/sentences?

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 03:15:16 -0500

I think I've finally found a good way to put D'ni writing onto metal, and am hoping to try it out in the upcoming month--but what should I write? What are some sentences or phrases in D'ni that you find particularly beautiful or inspiring?

moul

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:53:20 -0500

has anyone else ever had something disappear from their wardrobe?

My home and stuff

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 06:23:09 -0500

Well, it is midday on a Saturday and I am bored so I thought...
Why not look around your flat and just see how much stuff is Myst related or influenced (I know this is meant to be a non-Myst forum but I didn't know where else to put this), anyway...

Here we go, my home in pics with a little bit of descriptive stuff - totally boring but then I thought if I am bored then why not bore everybody else...

A screenshot from Revelation framed and hanging on my wall

From Myst 5 printed on a plotter at work...

And another...

Another from Revelation...

To be continued...

Yahvo/Yahweh

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 23:30:17 -0500

I know it's a sort of traditional interpretation that Yahvo = Yahweh, and while I'm sure from a Doylist perspective this is probably what Cyan intended, I'm not sure how this works with the Uru canon. (I recently reinstalled Uru and have been reading through all the king journals in the room you can link to from the Eder Gira/Eder Kemo fireflies/cave/waterfall/baskets-puzzle-from-hell area. I haven't played EoA, and I haven't read any of the books except BoT, so there is probably info I don't have that might be more canon than Uru.)

According to the Ri'neref journal, Yahvo was worshipped on Garternay, and belief in Yahvo was the original reason for Ri'neref and a bunch of proto-D'ni breaking off from the Ronay and going to Earth. So, depending on your philosophy about linking books, Yahvo either pre-dates Earth entirely or at least pre-dates D'ni on Earth. Therefore, it seems pretty clear that at least Yahvo can't be a D'ni variation/adaptation of Earth's Western monotheism. In fact, "outsiders" aren't mentioned at all until later, in the journals from around 4000-someodd DE. No mention is made of religions practiced by outsiders, and if belief in Yahvo changed at all during the 6000-year span of these journals, it's not mentioned at all. OTOH, the Ri'neref journal does mention that there were apparently some D'ni who opted to live on the surface after the fans were put in, and were apparently never heard from again.

As an aside here, for a minute, "Yahweh" itself is (AFAIK) not actually the original name of God in Western religions anyway, as it was basically a mispronunciation by relatively recent Christians of YHVH (the tetragrammaton, but life is too short for words like that so I'll just say YHVH). Basically, early Jews had decided that God Was Ineffable and therefore Unpronounceable and in order to prevent anyone from saying God's secret secret name, they put the vowels from words like Adonai and Elohim (which just literally mean "lord" and "god(s)") onto YHVH, with the idea that it should be pronounced as "Adonai" or "Elohim" based on the vowels and not on the YHVH. Later people took the YHVH as pronunciation with the vowels, or decided to reverse the vowels, or apply some kind of other alchemical nonsense and arrived at Jehova and Yahweh as "pronunciations" for YHVH. Wikipedia has more tl;dr on this, but the bottom line is that "Yahweh" and "Jehova" did not actually exist until relatively recently, unless the secret original name of God that no one knows happened to be similar to one of those (but ultimately that doesn't matter, since it was so utterly secret that no one except priests were allowed to know it, much less random xenophobic D'ni).

So, if you want to say that Yahvo and Yahweh are somehow related, these are the interpretations I see:
1. The D'ni who chose to live on the surface either intermarried with humans or possibly evolved into humans, and Yahvo was actually the origin of Western monotheism. In this case, "Yahvo" or something very similar was probably the original secret name of God, which explains why they would pick YHVH to attach the vowels to, at any rate.
2. Outsiders learned about Yahvo when the D'ni began interacting with them, and developed some new form of Yahvo-based religion on the surface, using YHVH for the vowel base since the consonants were similar to the D'ni name.
3. Ri'neref, with his great faith in Yahvo, actually wrote existing Yahvo-based belief systems into the native population of Earth when he was writing the linking book.
4. There really is a God (or at any rate some kind of trans-dimensional being) named Yahvo/Yahweh or similar, who influences people everywhere to name the objects of their beliefs after him.

1 seems most likely to me, and maybe it's actually what Cyan intended. 2 seems kind of unlikely, given the D'ni's reaction to outsiders. 3 probably depends on exactly how linking books work, and whether they can actually influence the inhabitants of an age rather than the physical properties of the age itself, but I think it would be awesome. 4 seems extremely silly in a Myst-context.

Alternatively, we can assume that there is no connection, and that the similarity in names and beliefs and customs is entirely due to:
1. DRC/translator bias
2. Gradual assimilation of earth religions into D'ni religion via outsiders
3. Combination of 1 and 2
4. Coincidence

What do you guys think?

Uru CC

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:26:26 -0500

I am supposed to go forward 3 in the ahnonay coaster chair, but it ejects me after two times. Maybe i'll solve it with flymode.

Myst Bird

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:42:41 -0500

Has anyone ever seen a bird you can make sing in Myst or Riven?

Rand said in a n old wired interview about Uru:

There's a fine line between making an interactive environment and making everything within it interactive. After Myst we got a lot of mail from people complaining about the red herrings. For instance, there's a bird that you can get to sing, but to no end. Not everything is meaningful.

I have seen a windup bird in mechanical, but in iphone (and i think realmyst) it doesnt sing and ends eventually. Does it keep going in the original?

QUOTE (AaronAKAAtrus @ Aug 13 2010, 09:43 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Oops, posted it 4 times,

Flymode steam

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:40:31 -0500

as anyone achieved flymode in the steam version? i have it and the gog version, and it never worked in steam and just barely in

ok, it sorta works.

Creating an age

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:50:48 -0500

Hey all
This game is simple: We all say ONE thing/feature we want in an age. If they all come together to make a nice age, we may be able to get some writers to make it. (start with larger, more general features.) You may not post another thing until someone else posted after your last post. I'll start.
Tall, snow-capped mountains.

Playing Moul and Uru CC

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:15:55 -0500

I am almost finished with MOUL, i just need to find more markers and do Minkata. is it worth also playing the story of URU CC? The path of the shell seems different, but not much else.

Mangled Plots: Manganimé Edition

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:16:41 -0500

Based on the game by Shinkansen, now with a twist. If the previous games were about movies, this one is different: it's all about anime (which may or may not have mangas associated with them, but a lot do). Try your best to decipher them.

Here are your clues:

Five aliens attempt to invade Earth with unexpected results.
The power of bicycles can really make a difference.
A group of ordinaries band for mankind, love, and glory.
Glory awaits those who can make their yards count.
For these heroes, their real power is inside... and dark.
A classic story is retold with new twists.
Discover team spirit with the most beautiful game using a ball.
Everyone has a secret... and this leading student is no different.
A little girl attempts to make a difference in her world.
A robot travels from the future to salvage the past.

Go for it.

Strange edition of Myst Masterpiece

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:02:49 -0500

I have a chance to get my hands on this one edition of Myst Masterpiece, in mint condition, unopened and for dirt cheap. But what really struck me was that I have never seen this particular edition, the cover art seems completely alien to me. Has anyone of you ever seen this cover image and can you tell me something about it?

The logo in the bottom left corner is the logo of the auction site I'm possibly getting it from and is not part of the actual cover.

I live

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:41:53 -0500

Yeah, hi. I don't think anyone remembers me, but I'm back. I was somewhat active about a year and half back, but haven't been on much lately, what with moving to a new city, working off my military service and getting into a university, but I think it's high time for me to return.

Feels pretty nostalgic being back here. Got to go read through some old threads!

STARCRAFT 2

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:52:57 -0500

ZOMGSTARCRAFTOO

Anyone get it? I'm just now starting to not suck and I'm starting to get quite a few wins.

Topic ID

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:58:03 -0500

Where is it?

Riven freeze

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:16:34 -0500

whenever i try to enter the fish, it freezes! Help!
Note: The version is downloaded from steam

Seolar Barayen goes to Myst

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:44:46 -0500

I've always intended to do some IC Myst journals after having played the games, and since I'm now in limbo for a bit while I get my new hard disk set up and waiting for my adapter to arrive so I can transfer all my old files, I figure now is a good time. (Also, I've been reinstalling, and consequently replaying all my Myst games, so there's another reason.) I couldn't find my Myst Myst CD, so I bought realMyst from GOG for about five bucks. I haven't played Rime yet, so don't spoil me when I get there.

The other thing I've been wanting to do is take a mythological character of mine on a test drive. Barayen is a minor deity/folk hero/folk villain/trickster/demon with a distinctly non-demonic personality and some memory issues. I figure he is perfect for a Myst journal because
a) his abilities to shift between planes would make him right at home in the Mystverse
b) his memory problems make him ideally suited to surviving Myst canon's horrifying retcons
c) his personality and mythical nature make him the only candidate for what I have in mind for the journals, which, to clarify, is to find all of the bad endings first.

Anyway, I've got the first segment of this done. Let me know what you think of the character, and any spoilers/etc. regarding all the bad endings to the games will be appreciated (though I've played them through before, so I already know how to win them).

--------------------

I was lazing about in a tree the other day when a rift appeared in front of me.

Now, rifts are not terribly uncommon, if you know how to see them, but my shaky memories suggest that they tend to appear at junctions between realms and fault-lines in the fabric of reality, not smack dab in the middle of the Springland where nothing much is going on. The feeling of comfort and nostalgia always call me into them, of course, but this time I was already quite comfortable and only vaguely nostalgic, and for the record, I would like to make it clear that there were clearly Forces Beyond My Ken at work there (as you will see!) The Void itself was strange as well, and not nearly as familiar-feeling. I could not make a surface to stand on, and simply drifted, surrounded by the stars on all sides. Eventually I gave up my struggle to subject the Void to my will, and relaxed.

A book floated past.

This is strange, of course, because in general three-dimensional objects do not exist in the Void, unless I have willed them into existence, and this book was certainly nothing of my own creation! For one thing, I do not actually use books. The Summer people have books, for writing stories and histories and prayers to their God in, (and apparently for warning each other about me) but their minds tell me everything that is in those books without my having to read anything, so there is no call to actually go read them. For another thing, this book is in no language I have ever seen - certainly not the Summer people's language, and, I have a feeling, not the language used by the creatures in Springland and Winterland either, assuming they even use writing. The title contained four stick-like characters, and the interior is full of swooches and curves, at bit like the Summer people's writing, but with more straight lines. Then I turned to the front of the book and found something even stranger - a rift, apparently sewn into the pages itself. A three-dimensional rift, on a three-dimensional object! I know rifts often spontaneously appear in the Void, but this akin to knitting an entire palace onto a hat. Palaces are certainly useful, as are hats, but there is absolutely no call to go combining them.

There was no mind present to read the book for me, but for a second I caught a hint of one from somewhere far off...

I realized that moment I fell into the fissure that the book would not be destroyed as I had planned...

A strange world beckoned through the rift. Not the hot sandy one that the Summer people go to when they are killed, but a place of ocean and trees and rocks. Fascinating! And anywhere is better than a Void that I can't control. I entered the rift.

I stepped out on a wooden dock beside a seemingly infinite expanse of ocean, with the masts of a ship all but entirely sunken into the water beside me. The rift had disappeared when I came through, or, given that this was apparently a strange three-dimensional rift, possibly had never existed in this world in the first place. The sky was a beautiful blue, with a small white sun shining high above. Behind me a forest rose, one tree confined behind a man-made wall. More buildings where the trees tapered off, great big round ones of stone, and a giant gear on a rocky outcropping at the end of the dock - rising behind an odd wooden device. I went to go poke it.

In the event, there wasn't much to poke, just a handle that flipped up or down and seemed to do a whole lot of nothing. There seemed to be another one at the top of the small rocky hill with the gear on it. I went up to see if it did nothing too.

A short flight of stone steps lead my up to a level strip that gave access to the buildings, and a longer curvier one got me up to the gear. Yup, more nothing. I whiled away some hours happily flipping handles.

The sun was a bit lower in the sky when I noticed the metal door sunk back into the hill that climbed steeply up from the dock. It didn't appear to have a handle to play with, but when I approached it opened itseld with a terrifying roar. Going inside, I proceeded down a corridor of rock and metal, and a metal staircase, until coming into a chamber with a pool of odd swirling water at its center. Or so it seemed... I dipped my hand into the pool, but there was no sensation. An illusion, a hologram? Pushing a button on the front of the "pool" dispelled the false image and showed a bunch of machinery. I turned to go, but behind me on the wall was a panel with more incomprehensible writing on it, the last two characters on each of the three lines being larger than the rest. Touching a small green light on the corner caused the panel to slide up, revealing a symbol entry pad of some sort with two similar symbols on it. Repeatedly sliding the panel up and down confirmed that the two symbols in the entry pad were also on the outer panel itself.

I experimented with the entry pad. Each of the two symbols could be changed to one of ten possibilities, including one that looked a lot like the number 1. A set of numbers, then? There were rumors the Xuzhin in the mortal world where the Summer people went had used ten digits, after all. I would have to try and learn them. In any case, I tried turning the entry pad to one of the other two sets of digits on the panel. Pushing the button on the pool resulted in a hologram of a wooden device like the ones I'd been playing with on the dock. Huh, must be important to someone. The other code resulted in a hologram of an island (this island?). Other combinations seemed to have no effect.

I left the chamber and returned to the dock. Nothing to do here either, really, so I started climbing the bluff towards the stone buildings. At the top of the short climb a path made of wooden slats began, and someone had apparently dropped a sheet of paper next to it. More gibberish, of course. What did I expect, really? Obviously the Summer people had never lived here.

Following the path took me to the doorway of the first round building, which had another flippy switch device in front of it (to which I gave a half-hearted prod) and an ornate seal on the door. I pushed it open.

The building contained only a small circular room, with a very comfortable-looking chair in the center. Near the door, a large blue button compelled me to push it. The ceiling, previously some vague brownish color, suddenly became a dome of the night sky covered in stars. Stars! Beautiful stars! The Void had stars of course, but they weren't real stars. These were real, or at any rate they looked real enough. I was a star too; they'd made me one when I left the Void originally, or so they told me. They'd even named me Barayen, named me Our Star. The Spring Goddess and the Summer people's God had their altars in the official temples, and the Winter Lady shared space with Spring in the old Xuzhin temples in the north, but in every house in every town and city there was a shrine to The Star. The images usually depicted me murdering Summer people in gruesome ways, but I was there and they were not. I was Their Star.

I lowered myself into a chair, and a machine immediately came down to block my view of the starscape. Then I realized I could poke things on it and get it to show individual constellations. I applied my newly acquired knowledge of this world's number system. Two number fields in the middle, one on then separated by two dots, and a string of symbols on the left that didn't look like numbers at all. Well, it made no difference what they all meant to me. I played for hours, and saw uncountable constellations.

When I finally emerged from the building it was night outside as well, and the same starscape appeared in the larger dome of the sky. I lay on my back and stargazed until I fell asleep.

--------------------------------

Next time*:
Will Barayen find someone to read him Atrus's note? Will he even be able to understand the message to Catherine if he ever figures out how to activate it? Will he be able to offer fourth-dimensional insights into the nature of prison ages that do not directly contradict Revelation? Or will he simply spend the rest of the game playing in the observatory?

Find out, next time!

* eventually

Lower right bolt

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:53:19 -0500

hey, whats the lower right bolt easter egg? a pic or video?

Rules of 'heek?

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:07:40 -0500

I get that it's Rock-Paper-Scissors, but how does that work with up to 5 players?
Thanks,
-LU

A (Possible) Interview with Brian Wrench

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:19:28 -0500

Hey guys,

So I've been in and out of email contact with Brian Wrench, the man who played Sirrus in Myst IV: Revelation since about this time last year. As I've gone to the last two Mysterium's after speaking to him, I've been trying to convince him to come to us. Unfortunately voice acting for sociopaths is only a night job and he is pretty much unable to come to any Mysterium - so I'm planning on asking him to do an MP3 interview with me in order to have a presentation for Mysterium 2011 next year. (We've not chosen a place yet, so wherever it is, I'll be there.)

I've come up with several questions but what would *YOU* like to know? Give me a bunch, give me more than a bunch, give me a truckload! I'm doing this as if he's said yes already but he's on vacation and will not be checking his email until the end of this month so I have to wait, but better safe than sorry!

Please don't ask for his contact info, however, because while it is available I won't be the one to give it out and enable inbox flooding.

Questions, questions, questions, give me some!

M13

Star fissure

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:33:39 -0500

Mystlore claims that the first age we see in riven, through the fissure. But that's only the sky, not the actual age, so unless any of the stars are ages, the first one we see is earth, when the book lands.

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