Myst canon
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The Myst series of video games and their affiliated literary adaptations feature a fully-realized world inhabited by various races and peoples. A central tenet of Myst canon is the ability of certain individuals to learn "the Art", writing descriptive books which become portals to the worlds they describe.
The concept for the D'ni kingdom and the word "Dunny" came from an unfinished novel called Dunny Hut that Myst creator Robyn Miller was writing about a cavernous underground empire and a boy who discovers that this empire is actually his long-lost home. As Robyn and Rand designed Myst, they decided to mine ideas from the novel to aid them as they created the back-story for Myst.
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[edit] Design
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[edit] D'ni
A central race in the Myst series is the D'ni. Descended from a people known as the Ronay, the D'ni have the ability to create portals to worlds by writing a descriptive book about them. They call this ability "the Art". The Ronay discover that their world of Garternay would soon become uninhabitable, and write several books to other worlds, known as Ages, to escape its destruction; one of these refugees creates the Age where the D'ni begin their own civilization underground.
As the civilization grows, the D'ni cavern settles into two main sections: Ae'gura (The Island) and The City Proper. Ae'gura is the largest island on the cavern lake. It is the center of D'ni, both literally (the basis for D'ni's cylindrical coordinate system, The Great Zero, was founded here) and figuratively (as it was the first place the refugees settled, many major sites of commerce, religion, and state affairs are located here). It is overlooked by the most famous and grandiose D'ni landmark, the giant Arch of Kerath. Human archaeologists originally mistook Ae'gura for the main residential area of D'ni, and grew to call it "The City." However, they discovered later that most D'ni lived in another area, which they now call "The City Proper". The City Proper is located on a steep incline up the sides of the cavern, forming a perimeter to the lake. The City Proper is where the D'ni neighborhoods were located. The neighborhoods were small, compartmentalized residential districts, with their own residences, schoolrooms, auditoriums, entertainment venues, and public transit stations.
Eventually, D'ni is beset with a great catastrophe that leads to its fall. A woman named Anna comes down into the city from the surface and marries a D'ni named Aitrus. Veovis, a conservative D'ni lord, is enfuriated by this, and with the help of a disgruntled excommunicated guildsman, A'Gaeris, destroys the D'ni city with a huge poison cloud. Again the D'ni escape to other Ages, leaving their great underground city in ruin; in most cases this proves fruitless, as A'Gaeris and Veovis send the infected cadavers of the D'ni victims into these ages as well. Veovis is then murdered by A'Gaeris for refusing to write an Age where they would be worshiped as gods (the ultimate D'ni heresy). Aitrus tricks A'Gaeris into traveling to an unstable Age, which claims both men's lives. Anna and her young son, Gehn, escape.
As an adult, Gehn meets and marries a human from the surface named Leira, whom he calls Keta. Keta dies while giving birth to their son, Atrus. Miserable and unable to cope, Gehn runs away to the D'ni caves, leaving his son in Anna's care. Some fourteen years later, Gehn comes back and takes Atrus away from Anna to teach him how to write Ages. Over time, Atrus discovers his father has become mad with power. Eventually, Atrus decides to escape, but Gehn locks him a basement, with Gehn's Age of Riven the only way to escape. Atrus travels to Riven, meeting Catherine, whom he falls in love with. Together they trap Gehn in Riven by destroying every book leading out of the Age and escaping with the last book, linking to the island of Myst, through a massive tear in space known as the Star Fissure. Atrus loses the Myst book in the fissure, where he hopes it will be destroyed.
Catherine and her people were freed by the stranger at the end of the Riven game and Catherine went back with Atrus to D'ni. However they chose not to live on Myst again and they make their new home on the Age called Chroma'Agana. From there they gather all the D'ni survivors that they can find and settle them in a new Age called Releeshahn (Myst: The Book of D'ni, Myst III).
Years later, Atrus & Catherine abandon Chroma'Agana and travel up to the surface of Earth, building a home near the Cleft they call Tomahna.
The City of D'ni, The Art, and D'ni's Ages were rediscovered by a human, John "Fightin' Branch" Loftin, in 1987. Loftin's discovery began with a place in New Mexico now known as The Cleft. The Cleft is a large chasm near the edge of an inactive volcano. As it is described (and later seen in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst), the Cleft has rooms carved into each side of the cleftwall, with several rope bridges spanning the gap. The caldera of the volcano itself houses the entrance to a long series of tunnels, eventually leading to the D'ni cavern. Catherine's Journals, one of our most important early discoveries, later told us that The Cleft was in fact Atrus's childhood home (see the Book of Atrus).
Elias Zandi, a friend of Loftin, founded the D'ni Restoration Foundation, with hopes of restoring the D'ni cavern. When he died in 1996, he left his son Jeff the land on which The Cleft is located. The task of restoring D'ni was left with Dr. Richard Watson, who founded the D'ni Restoration Council (DRC). The DRC continued its restoration effort steadfastly, and opened the cavern in November 2003. However, the DRC was quickly losing funding, and in February 2004, three short months after allowing the general public down, the restoration effort was supposedly cancelled indefinitely.
Luckily, a new source of funding was secured and the cavern was reopened on February 15, 2007. The DRC, however, left the cavern again on November 5, 2007 having lost by that time most of its actual members. However, the cavern is still open to explorers under an explorer-run guild system.
While the Myst games and novels are our main sources of knowledge of the D'ni, some events and principles are not portrayed as they "actually" were. For example, we learned from Cyan (and now also from Myst IV) that the Prison Books in Myst and Riven were actually regular Linking Books to complete Ages. The Prison Books were an element of artistic license, introduced to simplify gameplay.
In the D'ni canon, the games (except Uru) and novels are historical recreations of past events made by the company Cyan Worlds. The games are re-tellings and may have historically inaccurate information in D'ni canon as such a result of artistic license. In Uru, you can even wear Myst and Riven T-shirts. Uru itself, however, takes place in the present day; as such, it is not historical, and current D'ni canon.
[edit] Bahro
The Bahro are a fictional race of creatures depicted in various games from the Myst franchise including Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, Myst V: End of Ages, and Myst Online: Uru Live.
In the games, they appear as vaguely reptilian bipeds with retractable wings. Throughout Myst V they are shown hiding on the roofs of caves and caverns, with just their glowing blue eyes visible. In addition, Myst V depicts the Bahro in great detail, both visually and metaphorically.
Bahro, meaning "Beast People", is a derogatory term used by the D'ni and other Ronay for non-humans. It is related but not identical to the term Ahrotahntee (Book-worlder, alien).
In Terahnee, the name was another name for the Relyimah slaves. The same name was used by the D'ni for what some have conjectured to be the original (non-human) inhabitants of the Cavern, whom they displaced when they came to Earth.
Yeesha calls them "The Least", and in the game of Uru the explorer discovers several totems belonging to the Bahro. Little is known about them at this time, but they are seen in the ending sequence to Uru climbing up the volcano and into the center. Bahro screams can also be heard in the Cavern from time to time. There are indications that the Bahro were at one time being hunted for sport.
In Myst V: End of Ages, the Bahro play an important role in the storyline. Myst V continues URU's story of freeing the Bahro from their slavery to the D'ni. They seem to have the ability to link at will, including between points within the same age. In addition, they can be ordered to do things with the Slates, by drawing symbols on them that the Bahro can understand. They can then, in turn, allow the player to teleport to other sections of the Age, or harness the elements, by summoning such forces as rain and sandstorms. The Tablet released at the end of the game controls the full power of the Bahro and can be given either to one of the two characters of the game or to the Bahro to free them from their captivity. It can also be noted that the bahro are afraid of snakes, and will never appear in a place with snakes or the symbol of the snake.
Bahro are somewhat humanoid in appearance. Moving in a hunched position, they can walk on two or four legs with equal ease, and are capable of flight. They possess what appears to be an exoskeleton, which is dark grey in color. Their eyes are small, and glow blue. Bahro do not appear to have mouths on their smooth, insectlike faces, but are capable of making sounds, including chitters, squeaks, and the trademark, haunting scream.
[edit] The Art
[edit] Books
In the Myst franchise, the Linking panel, also known as the Gateway Image or descriptive panel, is an animated panel appearing in a Linking or a Descriptive Book. The player of the game travels to the Age of the Book by touching it. The panel is usually placed on one of the first pages, but it could theoretically be anywhere in the book. The manual for the original game Myst stated that the panel was on the last page, but this has since been corrected.
However, in Myst, the characters Sirrus, Achenar, and Atrus were able to talk to the player through the Linking panel of a normal book (the D'ni book) (although this may have been use of artistic license on the part of the creators - see below). Furthermore, Atrus stated in Riven that he would have been able to see a signal from the Age of Riven if the image weren't so distorted. This indicates that the linking panel shows the current state of the Age.
It is believed that the above variations are not contradictions, but are dependent on the writing. The behaviour of the Image could, in theory, somehow be 'programmed' in the book by its writer.
It is hinted at in various games that the Linking panel could, with some writing tricks, be deceptive. This was shown in Riven and alluded to in Myst IV: Revelation. The player traps Gehn in this way in Riven, using a Book, the Panel of which showed that it was a linking book to D'ni when it was in fact a Prison Age. According to Myst's in-game history, Sirrus and Achenar were also trapped in this way due to the deceptive images of the Spire and Haven linking books.
This is also the case with the book to D'ni. When the book is opened, Atrus somehow sees the Stranger, and he can talk to him through it, like a screen, and gives him the final hints. However when the Stranger is in D'ni, he sees nothing when Atrus is supposed to open the book, before linking back. Indeed in other cases, it was obvious that there is no way for a person to see the face of someone who opens the book of the Age he is in.
Cyan explained that all these were indeed impossible according to the D'ni canon, and these properties were put before the Myst universe and backstory were further evolved (or as Cyan claims, it was artistic license to facilitate gameplay). A Prison Book (alternatively, Trap Book) is an artifact in the fictional computer-gaming world of Myst.
Prison Books were Linking Books to desolate Ages, and no other Linking Books to return. The D'ni used this method to punish and isolate unwanted persons. Atrus also used this, and altered their Linking panel to show rich and flourishing worlds to lure greedy explorers. Sirrus and Achenar were 'prisoners' in Spire and Haven.
According to Atrus' plan, Gehn also was trapped in one, thinking that he would link to D'ni.
In the scenario of the two first games, we are told that Atrus discovered that with some slight modifications, Linking Books could become unable to link the Age traveller to their destination, thus trapping him in the void between the Ages (see Star Fissure). The Linking panel seemed normal, showing the supposed destination. The modifications that 'harmed' the link were so slight that even a knower of the Art who would read the book could miss them. Atrus then decided to use them as traps for greedy explorers who would want to visit his Ages.
An interesting property of the Trap Books was that when someone tried to link to an already occupied Trap Book, the persons would switch positions, thus freeing the 'prisoner'.
According to the Myst scenario, the Red and Blue Books are Trap Books, and after Atrus left for D'ni, Sirrus and Achenar had eventually been trapped in the inter-Age void, while looking for more Ages to rule. They sought for the Stranger to find the 5 pages in order to link to the books, thus freeing the brothers, while s/he'd be trapped there. According to the Riven scenario, Gehn was trapped also in a similar Trap Book.
After the production of Riven, Cyan Worlds decided for some reasons that Trap Books are not canonical and cannot exist. Instead, the simplified concept of Prison Books was real and Trap Books were retconned into Prison Books. This became known by Cyan employee Richard Watson who was the first official mouth to dismiss the established canon set forth by the games [1].
Unfortunately, this retcon is inconsistent with the first two games: There is thus no logic behind the switching places between the Stranger and the brothers, since the books are now normal. While this can be easily overlooked, since this plot element is used only in the losing scenario, this is not so simple in the sequel: In Riven, Atrus' journal makes an analysis of what Trap Books are, and an essential puzzle for trapping Gehn, includes this exclusive property of Trap Books, getting trapped while switching places with another. These events are explained by Cyan Worlds as artistic license, as well as the communication through the Gateway Image.
For this reason, the fans didn't like the retcon and preferred to think of the Trap Books and the events concerning them as 'actual'. Some theories tried to reconcile these: At the end of the Myst game, it is believed that the brothers were indeed trapped in the void, but Atrus before burning the trap books, rewrote them into prison books, and the brothers finally linked each to his own prison Age. The switching of places between Gehn and the Stranger can not be explained unless the book used was a trap book and not a prison book, although there is no reason it too could not have been rewritten into a prison book by Atrus after the events in Riven.
In Myst IV: Revelation, a new pair of Red and Blue books appear (we know they are not the same books from Myst because Atrus clearly states that he burned those books during the course of Myst IV.) These two books are linking books to Spire and Haven, respectively, as we are led to believe were the two Trap Books from Myst. We are told that Atrus' family linked to them and visited their sons, and the Stranger also can link to them normally, so these two new books have not been altered into Trap Books like the older pair had been.
The dates of the journals kept by the brothers indicate that they have been exploring their respective Ages for the last twenty years. Since there was a ten year gap between Riven and Exile and another ten year gap between Exile and Revelation, this means the brothers arrived in their Prison Ages about the same time Atrus destroyed the original two Trap Books they had previously been caught in during the original Myst.
From all this, we can infer that one of two things happened to release the brothers from their trapped position in the "void between Ages." Firstly, as suggested above, Atrus may have altered the Trap Books before destroying them in order to "free" the brothers by completing the links. Secondly, it is possible that the simple act of destroying each Trap Book forced the link to complete, dumping the brothers in their new homes. Since these are the only known instances of occupied Trap Books being destroyed, it's hard to know which is true.
[edit] Ages
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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