![Image](http://www.barehandsdesign.com/DS6/AgeConcept01.jpg)
I, like countless Myst fans I'm sure, starting thinking up ages years ago. Once the notion of fan-made MOUL content started to look like more than just a pipe dream (or more accurately, once I noticed that it looked like more than just a pipe dream), I pulled my old sktechbooks out of the attic. This is not one of those sketches (I did this today), but it is based almost entirely on an idea in one of them.
The Guild of Writers is just beginning. OOC, we're not going to get everything perfect right out of the starting gate (no offense intended, of course). Like so many OOC aspects of MOUL, I think it makes sense to make these imperfections an IC aspect of the guild as well. To that end, I propose this broken age (perhaps I'll call it that for now: Broken).
The age is, in a word, unstable, not unlike Riven. There is little doubt that the age will destroy itself... but not for a while, say three to eight decades. The star fissure is plainly visible far, far, below the myrias floating pillars that make up the main body of the age. In other words, the age exists over a tear in reality. The pillars are being pulled toward the fissure (as we saw in Riven, things have a tendency to fall in), but extremely slowly. Maybe it's because of the way the fissure turns as you stare up at it while you fall during Riven's finale, but I always pictured the pillars circling the drain as they descended. Perhaps the puzzle/puzzles in this age could focus on determining the rotation schedule, like the pods but self-contained. I'd also make the puzzle different from the pods in that there would always be a way "through" the puzzle at any given time, but that route would be different depending on when you were there. Time would be a factor, but it wouldn't be a waiting game. (I only just thought of the puzzle aspect; I like it.)
There'd be no structuresâ€â€no civilization ever inhabited this age, as conditions are hardly civilization-friendly. I'd even hesitate to call them life-friendly. You'd start in a natural cavern, perhaps eventually finding (somehow) other caverns, containing the sleeping bags, provisions, and IC journals of the writers (and maybe a maintainer and/or cartographer or two) behind the age. These could or could not correspond to the actual OOC creators of the age.
The only major plot-hole I see (all defecation on the laws of physics aside) is that the IC Guild of Maintainers might never allow an age like this to see the light of day. On the other hand, one could make the argument that even the Earth is certainly going to end in the future (though it is hopefully a more distant future than three to eight decades) but is, for the time being, safe, and that the same principle applies to this age. (This could be an IC conflict reflected in the journals now that I think about it!)
Thoughts?