Is this worth developing?

[JohnB]

Please forgive me if this is in the wrong place, as I'm relatively new to MOUL and GoW.

While browsing through a book sale I came across a rather unusual journal. The relevent entries those here might find interesting.

05.02.07
I came across an odd reference today. "Starchasers". Not a name you would expect to find among a race of cave dwellers.

10.03.07
Again, "Starchasers". Who are they?

15.08.07
Well the months of reading those tedious personal journals finally paid off. A solid reference to who the Starchasers were. It seems that there was a group of D'Ni who saw the linking books as lacking something. While you could create entire Ages and worlds, and skies full of stars, you could not point to any one of those stars and say "I want to go to that one and have a look around."

They were explorers and Dreamers, or people who dreamed of exploring, I don't quite know which. I don't see what they thought they might achieve, the D'Ni didn't have the technology to travel to Earth's Moon, let alone the stars.

06.09.07
I get it now. They weren't trying to develop the technology to go to the stars. They created a place to signal from, in the hope that someone who could already do so would visit them. But what if the others were hostile? How would they stop the visitors from finding the D'Ni? But where were they? How did they get to their Age? How can I follow them?

19.10.07
Oh those clever people. Rather than try to develop the technology where other D'Ni might find them, they wrote their own Age for the purpose. Their group must have included Writers and Maintainers to pull that little stunt off. But where is it? How do I get there?

22.03.08
That was brilliant, nothing short of genius. Hiding the linking book in a Public Garden Age. With all the people linking in and out, who would ever notice that some disappeared? True genius. And hiding the clues in the words of the grower. I must go and see for myself what they have done.

08.04.08
Damn, damn, damn, damn. One short visit is all I managed and then the cavern closed, cutting me off from the garden Age. Damn. Such a waste. Such lost grandeur.

The meeting place/city is on a plateau, among mountains, such mountains. They are far higher than the city area. Above are thick bands of cloud moving quickly with the wind. Serving to highlight rather than obscure the sky. Below I can see the full cloud layer, so the city is build well up in the ranges, yet strangely not too cold.

The sun is larger than any I've seen in an Age, it must be three times as big as the moon seen from Earth and it's light was soft, so soft. I could look directly at its red warmth without harm. I could see the currents and sunspots, moving, swirling above me. Silhouetted against it I saw a plateau with the signal flare on it, the beam still working but weak and flickering.

The central plaza must be 150 metres wide, the buildings of white and pink marble. The buildings low, solid, three or four stories at most. Domes top some of them, shimmering with a greenish iridescent glow like solidified soap bubbles. Part of the plateau has given way and one edge of the city has fallen into the clouds. Looking over the edge I saw caves, possibly the ends of underground passages?

Emerging from the ground at one side of the city and towering over it I see a curving tube that flares like the end of an enormous French Horn. Is it some sort of sound receiver, or does it catch something else?

Someone has left a message there. A viewer has been put near the link in point that activated when I arrived. Unfortunately the power was too low to get the complete message. It looks like it was moved there after the fall.

What will it tell me? Were their efforts in vain? Can their equipment actually be powered up and put back into service? What happened at the fall? Perhaps one day someone will return and answer these questions.

The genesis of the idea is the Klaatu song "The Lonliest of Creatures" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzB2BtEo4Hw&feature=related In it the question is asked "If I am not the lonliest of creatures, then tell me who this wretched soul might be?" the answer is "In the dark of night there lives a lighthouse keeper, and the lone survivor of his world is he." What would it be like to be that survivor?

For a look at the album cover art, which is eerily D'Ni like, try http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/K/klaatu_hope.html

The idea is for a double Age. Firstly of course the Garden Age where the book is hidden and then the Age the flare is in.

The explorer would need to power the viewer to get the first message from the lighthouse keeper and then by exploring and getting things back online make his/her way to the mountain top in the distance to activate and aim the flare. Along the way, extra recordings from the lighthouse keeper fill in his backstory about after the fall, and hints? as to where to go next.

I've always loved the rides in the Myst series and so I thought this would be a perfect setting for a luge type ride from the mountaintop back to the city. I have a number of ideas for sections of this, but can't draw for nuts to show you.

Bottom line. Is this an interesting enough idea to bother continuing to develop?

[robbieagray]

It might work.

[Aikijitsu]

it sounds intriguing. It sounds like a good Age to try out.

I just finished EoA. My favorite age was Toldemer.(Sorry if I slaughtered that Age). The best part was when I got into the rings of the planet. It would be amazing if someone could create something similar to that Age. I'm a sucker for spacey type ages.

[Winna]

I'd say so. At the least, you find it interesting and that counts for a lot. The city and cliff sound delicious and like a place I'd want to explore. I keep wondering how they got the Todelmer pod into orbit, maybe with this we'll get a theory for it.
Dang, now I'm just curious about the lighthouse keeper. Coming back to a dead cavern's gotta mess with the psyche a bit.

[Aikijitsu]

Lighthouse keeper sounds like something Edgar Allen Poe or Stephen King would write about. I see him as a creepy looking guy. Like Saavadro only much darker and more sinister then Sirrus. If you do it right, you can go many directions with this story. Make him evil, a scientist, an evil scientist, a star gazer like Galileo, etc.

That pod in Todelmer is probably floating by gravity. Most rings around a planet...oh wait...how did they get it up there? Good question. Maybe Atrus wrote it in there or something obvious like that. Or maybe, the Bahro made a giant slingshot! I'd love to hear more theories on that one.



I didn't see it the first time, but a luge ride sounds fun. In fact, any ride would be awesome. My favorite has to be from Riven with the mine cart. From jungle island to boiler island. The ocean opens up just 1-2 seconds before the cart hits the water. The first time I saw it I said, "Oh no! I'm going to die!.....SWEET! The ocean opened up and I'm going under water."
Maybe add some thrills and chills to the ride from the cliff to the city. That would make it awesome.(But not cheesy like a amusement park ride...Yeah......I didn't see that fire breathing dragon coming.......*yawn* )

[Winna]

I vote mad scientist by that point. Mad science is more fun, and still allows plenty of 'Dude, that's messed up' moments.

John, do you have any doodles for it?

[Aikijitsu]

Random idea. (You don't have to take it of course)

Mr. Mad Scientist wanted to be powerful enough to bend stars to his will. He created a "City" device that would fuse that strange sun's power with his lighthouse. Kind of like Frankenstein he is trying to fuse the power of the stars with his own. (Maybe he failed, but he failures are all over the basement floor. 'Dude that messed up') The people he used of course wouldn't have enough power to move a rock with their mind...he was just pumping empty energy into to them to see if his machine could compress it into a small enough package for a human to use. If it worked, then he'd connect it to the sun.

Just a random idea. Don't take if you don't like it, but I spit out random things like this at times. Not to force you to take it, but just to give colorful ideas that you might not have thought of before. Nothing more.

[JohnB]

Thank you for your replies. I apologise for not getting back sooner but work has kept me rather busy.

I admit I hadn't thought of the Mad Scientist side of things, although I expect that the gentleman concerned would have been quite mad by the time he died.

The background thought was that he was an apprentice(?) astronomer at the time of the fall. He and a few others were at the flare when the sickness came and they were told not to come to the base city. After a while his companions went to the base city and died. The astronomer waited as long as he could before finally hunger drove him down.

He finds the base dead and makes his way to D'Ni where of course the city has fallen too. He makes his way to the surface (via the Great Shaft?) and lives amoung the surface dwellers for a time. He tells no-one where he is from and does not interact with any known Canon characters.

Eventually he returns to the base city, deciding to fulfil his groups millenia long quest to find another intelligence.

As the various machines die over time he is forced to make alternatives, but due to his lack of training in the mechanical arts his alternatives can be somewhat unusual and perhaps Golbergian in design. The ride especially could have some interesting twists. I was thinking something like a luge crossed with the taxi ride from "Robots" crossed with Indiana Jones. As each stage of the journey is powered up, the ride up the mountain progresses one more stage. After reaching the top and setting the flare, the ride back down is the doozy.

As he realises his time is ending, he sets things up so that should they stop, they can be restarted. Hence the messages and hints that he leaves behind.

By putting the city on a plateau in the mountains there is room for underground tunnels and caverns under the base as well as extra buildings that uses could be found for later, so further stories could conceivably be written for the same Age. Modifying the Garden Age that leads to the mountain city could allow acces to other parts of the mountain city as well.

[Jusme]

does not interact with any known Canon characters.

Kinda covering 'his' tracks, so to speak? Great story line BTW...

I've actually tried to expound on the 'canon' issues before...but found that most people are negative on doing that unless Cyan says OK....

And then this little tidbit...

However, all of us at Cyan and everybody that has ever worked on the creation and building of the dream called Uru Live (a.k.a. Mudpie, Untìl Uru, Myst Online: Uru Live and MORE) can not just let it die! (My definitions: ”Uru Live” is the original dream of the virtual world. And ”Myst Online” is the current implementation of Uru Live.)

So, Cyan has decided to give make Myst Online available to the fans by releasing the source code for the servers, client and tools for Myst Online as an open source project. We will also host a data server with the data for Myst Online. MORE is still possible but only with the help from fans.

This is a bit scary for Cyan because this is an area that we have never gone before, to let a product freely roam in the wild.

So, I'm wondering if maybe this will release the 'canon' issue?

[JohnB]

Not so much covering his tracks as me trying not to get in the way. There are much better storytellers and designers than me out there and I don't want to interfere with their work.

You'll perhaps note that the base city is envisaged as large enough for others to add other storylines to it later. It's something to build on, rather than a fully finished Age.