Question About the Cleft

[Inanna]

I am currently writing an archeologist's research notebook about digs around the Cleft, circa 1960-1967. This is 20 years before the Cavern is discovered and I need to figure out what the Cleft looked like at the time. Now before we just assume that it looked then as it does now, I am dealing with the following "facts":

(1) Answering Greendragon's question:

IC it's usually vaguely referred to as "going up to the surface," but they never specify how that is achieved. I suppose your relto book will get you to the cavern once you have it, but last time I looked, none of those linking books on my shelf link me back to my house.

I am guessing that to go to the surface we use the Cleft book in Relto and then climb over the fence to where we parked our cars. So I guess my answer is that the instance ends at the Cleft fence, but that fence only went up when Zandi bought the land.

(2) We each have a private instance of the Cleft, but such instances are not a natural feature of the surface -- just this one place. Where does the "instancing" end?

(3) If the Cleft is real as is Jeff Zandi, his grill, his airstream -- then over time we have to assume that someone would have taken or broken all that is within the alcoves and rooms. Not the Navajo, of course (their traditional beliefs would label the Cleft as taboo), but certainly the invading Europeans, who in the early days were respecters of nothing that was not of their own making.

I have never found the Atrus time line nailed down to RL specifics. We know that there have been human habitants all over North America for 20,000 years and Spanish conquerors were in the area in the early 16th century. Ana was most likely of European descent. I suppose this is going to be one of those math question (numbers are not my thing ) If Yeesha is alive now (we have seen her) and we know that D'ni live longer than humans, then how long ago was her great-grandmother living in the Cleft. Ana was human and had a human life span, but we do not know if living in a D'ni world changes the life-span for humans (we have seen stranger things).

Here is my proposal for writing about the Cleft in the early 1960s -- and please be thoughtful in your critique:

The Cleft looked very different before the discovery of the Cavern by John Loftin and Elias Zandi. Only then was Yeesha's call heard and we were drawn to the Cleft, which was then instanced and took on the appearance that Yeesha remembered as a child. Artifacts in the rooms, the skeleton and the Riven viewer all appeared. (Bear in mind that if the skeleton and the viewer had been visible for centuries they would have entered written history of the US and since they are not in our books, they must not have been there). So when my archaeologist was studying the area he found the Cleft but devoid of artifacts, the power supply unavailable, no viewer, no skeleton. The wooden bridges would be gone, but he can surmise their existence from remains of rope and the posts.

Viewed in this manner means that any "photos" taken of the site will go through a lot of doctoring to remove items, but I am willing to do it just so you get the best story possible.

Your ideas -- and encouragement -- are always appreciated.

[Lade'e]

Hmmm ... since the events of Riven took place about 200 Earth years ago (about the time that the viewer would have landed near the cleft), would a seismic event explain the reappearance of the artifacts? As a speculation, let's say the cleft and the volcano existed, but the surrounding area was covered in drifting sand and when a small earthquake hit in the early 1970's, it reveals the buried artifacts, which are discovered by Loftin in 1987.

(Timeline supplied by MystLore)

Lade'e

[Inanna]

Certainly an earthquake could uncover the viewer and the warg skeleton but the artifacts inside the rooms are just as Anna left them -- or so it appears. The other problem I have with seeing the Cleft through the eyes of the local people is that the bones and the viewer would excite scientific curiosity, drawing far more attention to the Cleft than is evident by the subsequent events.

Because we are working only with HTML and static images (a tad more primitive than the original Myst ) we have to depend on having lots of things to learn in order to make a non-linear story interesting. Some things will just have to be mysterious, like having the Cleft be a place that Yeesha has set as an instanced age, even if that is hard to show in our chosen format.

Recently I found the date of the fall -- July 11, 1744 -- can't imagine why I didn't remember it. So that is when Anna headed back to the surface. She lived for another 41years. In my story's timeline Anna died 15 years before the monks built the monastery. The occupants of the Cleft, therefore never crossed paths with the monks who would have been educated enough to understand some of what was going on. I recall from the book that Anna and young Atrus traded with travelers passing by. I do not remember if the book had the Cleft in New Mexico or just in some unspecified desert.

Part of La Casa's story is based on what the Navajo would have understood about the Cleft. They believe that all heights and unusual rock formations are sacred; places where the holy ones lead the souls of the dead to the sky home and where evil spirits throw trespassers down. Naturally the sight of Bahro dancing on the rim of the volcano would only support these beliefs.

I actually had a lot of fun creating the archaeological dig notes that cover La Casa's history from 1800 until 1960 -- and some emotional moments too. Part of the story is that the man writing the dig notes was dying. He had uncovered an archaeological mystery about the Cleft and knew that he would die without ever solving the puzzle. I doctored up some black and white "photos" of the Cleft as he saw it in 1967 and the dig notes is one of the books currently in La Casa's library.

[Lade'e]

Can't wait to see the results!!

[Inanna]

Well, here is Dr. Richard Donnelly's Research:
notebook

Use the device in the upper left to turn pages forward or back.

The dig book contains much of La Casa's back story as well as setting the groundwork for later events at the Cleft. I have tried to blend canon into the story as much as possible while keeping realities straight -- not an easy thing to do. The surface history is established and our fantasy must bend to it, rather than the other way around. Of course, Yeesha makes a wonderful "Deus ex machina" since no one knows the full extent of her power. If she can calls us from around the globe, write Relto, send us on instanced quests (requests ) then I see no reason for the Cleft to have been the way we see all the way back to the end of the 18th century. Yeesha set it to appear as it did in her family's time there.

Please let me know if there are any broken links in my HTML code. My verify program does not seem to catch everything that goes wonky.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

Just spent some time at La Casa - great fun! It's a nice alternative to the 3-D worlds. I especially like the dreams.

Please let me know if there are any broken links in my HTML code.

I did discover a broken link: in the map for the upper level, the link to room 3 is this:

http://www.webmousepublications.com/uru ... /rm-3.html

But it should be this:

http://www.webmousepublications.com/uru ... /rm-3.html

Keep up the great work, Inanna!

[GPNMilano]

I like it Inanna. Importantly, it feels like a journal that could be found in Uru. The only problem I have with it is it may conflict with the timeline that Cyan has in mind. No date was ever given for when Yeesha left her parents, and we know she lived in the Cleft and Caverns, prior to 1987. It is there that she learned of the Bahro and mastered the art. And we know that the whark skeleton, and riven telescope were there in 1987, as well as other artifacts in the Cleft. According to the accounts Loftin sold these to Zandi, before finding the D'ni digging machines.

[Inanna]

I understand your concerns. I share them. When I first played URU as a solo game (what was it? 8 years ago?) I wanted to know what was outside the fence and why no one had messed with the items in the Cleft. I could explain why the Navajo would not go there, but not why no one else did. I felt I needed to explain why everything was perfectly in place even though the surface was inhabited during the entire time of the stories told by Cyan. Instancing was the only way I could keep the surface history and the story history in sync.

So I set the dig notes in 1967, 20 years before the arrival of Cyan's explorers to the area. This is just one possible approach to puzzle. If we believe that Yeesha's call was first heard when the Cavern was opened by Loftin and Zandi, then it makes sense that she did something to reset the Cleft to what she wanted us to find -- along with the journey cloths. For all I know Yeesha changed the Cleft to what Donnelly found in his digs and then reset the Cleft the day after he packed up and went home to die, but no one at La Casa went back to look. The dig notes are meant to present a "snapshot" of the area, and explain why nothing was disturbed before the arrival of Loftin and Zandi.

I suppose another explanation is that those who do not hear Yeesha see the Cleft as Donnelly did -- empty since the death of Anna -- while those who do hear Yeesha see the Cleft as Yeesha left it. Believe me, there is no easy way to make the URU concept of instancing work with surface world physics. This is just one possible approach and can be easily adjusted to make way for a future Cyan story idea. I am being very careful not to hinge my entire plot on any single aspect because I realize that this story is not even so much as a cog in the Cyan wheel.

Anyway, I am delighted that you read the dig notes. More is coming, I promise. Along the road to La Casa are a series of radio interviews with different La Casa characters -- each with a different piece of the story to tell. I am also working on animated picture books, journals and figuring out how to hide some clue-full easter eggs throughout the website.

Our most recent interview is not really part of La Casa's story. One of my characters, Dr. James Timothy interviews the "RL me" so I can talk a bit about La Casa's creation. Read the interview here.