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avevale_intelligencerFar beneath the caldera of an extinct volcano in New Mexico lies a ruined city, D’ni, home of a people who could Write worlds. In their Age Books they wrote descriptions so precise that one could travel through the book to the world described. Two hundred years ago, an explorer happened upon one of their Linking Books, travelled accidentally to an island called Myst, and became caught up in a story spanning three generations, the story of the last survivor of the D’ni, Atrus. Time and again this stranger journeyed to Ages Written by Atrus and others, seeking to undo the evil done by Atrus’s father Gehn, and by his sons Sirrus and Achenar.
Atrus was a polymath, an artist, scientist and engineer, fascinated with the world and everything in it. He loved to set and solve puzzles. Where another person might hide a book in a locked box and keep the key on his person, Atrus would put it in a sunken ship which could only be raised by pressing a combination of symbols on the pillars in the garden of Myst island, and hide the key to the combination somewhere equally eccentric. To him, nothing was worth doing unless it could be made fun, and to be fun it had to be complicated and difficult. This seems to have been a quirk shared by many of the D’ni’s Writers of Ages...
When a team of scientists, learning of the stranger’s experiences, traced the path to D’ni, it literally opened up whole new worlds to them. They formed the D’ni Restoration Council, working in secret to open up the city and rediscover the art and the technology of the D’ni.
Now, Atrus’s daughter Yeesha has taken it on herself to guide and control the restoration of D’ni. The stranger’s journals paint an idyllic picture of an enlightened and civilised race, a race of people like Atrus; but the reality is much darker, and old injustices need to be set right. The DRC has gone, but more and more people find themselves drawn to New Mexico, to find the cleft in the ground near the volcano, to follow Yeesha’s typically tortuous quest and discover their own way to D’ni, to the ancient Uru...
EDIT: changed cut-tag text in case the word "spoiler" was putting people off reading it. I also have a couple of copies of the original Myst game in case anyone wants to start at the very beginning (which, I have been credibly told, is a very good place to start): it clanks a bit these days, but is still fun to play.
Atrus was a polymath, an artist, scientist and engineer, fascinated with the world and everything in it. He loved to set and solve puzzles. Where another person might hide a book in a locked box and keep the key on his person, Atrus would put it in a sunken ship which could only be raised by pressing a combination of symbols on the pillars in the garden of Myst island, and hide the key to the combination somewhere equally eccentric. To him, nothing was worth doing unless it could be made fun, and to be fun it had to be complicated and difficult. This seems to have been a quirk shared by many of the D’ni’s Writers of Ages...
When a team of scientists, learning of the stranger’s experiences, traced the path to D’ni, it literally opened up whole new worlds to them. They formed the D’ni Restoration Council, working in secret to open up the city and rediscover the art and the technology of the D’ni.
Now, Atrus’s daughter Yeesha has taken it on herself to guide and control the restoration of D’ni. The stranger’s journals paint an idyllic picture of an enlightened and civilised race, a race of people like Atrus; but the reality is much darker, and old injustices need to be set right. The DRC has gone, but more and more people find themselves drawn to New Mexico, to find the cleft in the ground near the volcano, to follow Yeesha’s typically tortuous quest and discover their own way to D’ni, to the ancient Uru...
EDIT: changed cut-tag text in case the word "spoiler" was putting people off reading it. I also have a couple of copies of the original Myst game in case anyone wants to start at the very beginning (which, I have been credibly told, is a very good place to start): it clanks a bit these days, but is still fun to play.