Linking Book "rules"

[Tweek]

Fan Ages will be following the D'ni rules of linking, even if they are not written by D'ni. The premise being that we learned The Art from being in D'ni thus we adhere to their rules.

Linking in an Age to another area in the same Age is something only Yeesha and writers of her caliber can do, which isn't us thus it is not allowed.

Personally I think it is something we need more information on, for example I have been toying with an Age which was written by multiple people as a result some errors within the book had occurred which has been discovered within the actual Age causing some anomalies which are similar to what could be obtained via Bahro/Yeesha linking techniques.

[boblishman]

You could use an intermediate nexus age. If you make that a sub age of Sonavio that nexus will not show up under Personal Ages. At least not in a server controlled environment such as MORE. This would keep your age self contained.

so .... I just make a new (hidden) area ... link there ...and have another book to link back .... but all actually in the one age... ?

[dtierce]

Takla Ma'kan "links" between locations in the same age. One of the owners said that they get away with it by avoiding books. Instead, another mechanism is used which they described as "warping" when touching certain objects. Supposedly it is a completely different physical process than the books use.

You could substitute some token other than a book and you would be "legal" for the same reasons.

David Tierce

[D'Lanor]

The premise being that we learned The Art from being in D'ni thus we adhere to their rules.

I see a major flaw there. This premise assumes that the person/group who submits an age is also its writer according to the IC storyline behind the age. Which is not necessarily true.
The story of Prad does not tell who wrote it. Yet according to that story it couldn't possibly have been me.
Does Sonavio's story say it is an age written by Boblishman? I don't think so.

I think most ages need to have their background stories rewritten if "we" actually wrote them IC.

[Erik]

Therefore whatever loophole Yeesha found, is findable also. Maybe even commonplace.

I disagree. The D'ni had lived for thousands of years before the Fall and none of all those skilled writers were able to do it. (Those writers were also probably far more experienced than us, having had proper education in the Art.) Wouldn't it be odd if it would be a piece of cake for us? Yes, Yeesha can do it, so it is possible, but Yeesha isn't just someone. Remember, she is supposed to be the Grower, so she manages to do things that no one else can. The volumes of Words weren't written if she wasn't the only person to do these amazing things.

I don't see why this limit should be a problem to be honest... I can understand that it can be frustrating to boblishman, as he built a puzzle around the book before he knew about this rule, but if you know about the rule, and take it into account when designing an Age, it shouldn't be a problem I think.

Just my opinion of course.

[D'Lanor]

You could use an intermediate nexus age. If you make that a sub age of Sonavio that nexus will not show up under Personal Ages. At least not in a server controlled environment such as MORE. This would keep your age self contained.

so .... I just make a new (hidden) area ... link there ...and have another book to link back .... but all actually in the one age... ?

No, you would use the PtLinkingRules.kSubAgeBook linkingrule (a coded rule, not IC ) both for linking to and from the sub age. It will still link to a different age but this will make sure that every player returns to the instance they came from. Just like we did after dropping a pellet into the lake from Er'cana.

So if you are exploring Sonavio with friends you can return to them from the "Sonavio Nexus".

Of course in the offline single player game it would not make any difference since it has no instancing.

[Kierra]

Yeesha grew up outside the influence of the D'ni. She learned the Art from her father, who was something of a maverick when it came to Writing as well.

I could be wrong, but I always figured that the reason why Atrus made such leaps and bounds in the Art is that he didn't grow up influenced by the D'ni. Same for Yeesha.

The D'ni might have been extremely intelligent, but they were also proud, and hide-bound to tradition.

Yeesha, little miss "think out side the box" saw the Art of Writing in whole new ways the D'ni never even considered.

And lets not forget Catharine, who made even bigger leaps and bounds than her husband even considered could be possible. She wasn't D'ni...she wasn't even human.

So it stands to reason that we (the GoW, surface dwellers) are similar in that aspect. Sure, we admire the D'ni culture, and even Ape it. But we're not D'ni, so we have different ideas about it, and experiment more with it.

I see no reason why we couldn't have discovered Yeesha's "secret". Nor our IC world's inhabitants.

~Kia

[katreeny]

I think Kierra's right - Yeesha herself says as much in Myst 5 when she talks of how she learned the Art from Calam. She did things that the D'ni considered impossible because she had no idea they were supposed to be impossible. Of course, she didn't say *which* things she did that way and which were because only she could do it (I suspect Relto is in the latter category).

I'm quite sure there are a range of other linking methods we can "discover" IC, as we discover worlds created by other people who discovered linking.

As an aside, here's what I suspect happened. Early D'ni Writers, teaching the apprentices, tell them they "can't" do X. X being anything that's too difficult for most Writers, or so dangerous that not many people manage to learn to do it well enough to Write a stable age. Gradually the perception that X is impossible filters through D'ni Writers as bits and pieces of the most difficult Writing technique are lost with the rare genius Writers or forgotten in Guild archives because everyone "knows" you can't do that.

Whether linking within an Age is one of those things or not is anyone's guess. The link-like methods used in Takla Makan and Janga are an example of something that might just be difficult to master ICly.

Regards,

Katreeny

[boblishman]

errr... what exactly is a "sub-age" ... and how would I go about making one?

[Trylon]

Meanwhile, I'll continue to secretly crack Relto's code, and to hack together a way to make other linking books perform the same trick