Ehm... what's the Original Age? O_o

[Chacal]

Couldn't she just make some kind of adjustment to the cavern/earth that would keep the Bahro from attacking?

Doesn't work that way. The book describes some essential parameters of the Age, the architecture. No matter what you write (within reason), that Age already exists somewhere (you don't really create it). That is because of the infinite tree of possibilities (which the D'ni call The Great Tree): there are infinite worlds out there, so everything exists.

The book will link you to the Age that more closely fits your description. Before you link, you don't know certain details, and you don't know the history of that world, its inhabitants, etc. You can make some changes in the structure of the Age, but it can lead to instability (as Gehn discovered). If you make too big a change, the book will link to a different Age, on a different branch of the Great Tree.

[Paradox]

Yeesha can also travel in time.

Who's to say that she didn't just link you to a point in time when it was raining at the Cleft?

[andylegate]

Yeesha can also travel in time.

Who's to say that she didn't just link you to a point in time when it was raining at the Cleft?

Paradox took the words right out of my mouth.

Remember, it does rain in the desert......just not very often.

[BAD]

I have read a lot of talk about the location of the Earth's descriptive book. However, I feel that one does not exist. Let me explain.

Every age we go to is not a whole world. We only see parts. As if the writer didn't really care what was beyond the area he was describing as long as it didn't interfere with his area. This is evident by the surprises of other life forms on ages written.

So perhaps when Ri'neref wrote the descriptive link to D'ni, he didn't write it as if he wanted Humans, and life on the surface of the world he wished for his new people, he just wrote about the cavern and everything needed to make it possible. That just happened to include everything that makes Earth.

So Earth had everything he needed and the link brought them here. So if you did find the original descriptive book Ri'neref wrote, it would not take you to Earth (sort of), it would take you to the D'ni cavern.

That said, I do not know if it is possible to take a descriptive book through a linking book for that same age. Maybe it causes some kind of paradoxical collapse? Sort of like the star fissure sucking up Riven.....

I am pretty sure that if the descriptive book is destroyed, the linking books do not work anymore for that age. I think Rawa said that was true.

[Chacal]

So perhaps when Ri'neref wrote the descriptive link to D'ni, he didn't write it as if he wanted Humans, and life on the surface of the world he wished for his new people, he just wrote about the cavern and everything needed to make it possible. That just happened to include everything that makes Earth.

So Earth had everything he needed and the link brought them here. So if you did find the original descriptive book Ri'neref wrote, it would not take you to Earth (sort of), it would take you to the D'ni cavern.

Exactly. It explains why the D'Ni were carving their way up to the surface. They had no idea what was there.

Yeesha can also travel in time.
Who's to say that she didn't just link you to a point in time when it was raining at the Cleft?

Ah yes that's true. This is pretty much what she did with the linking stone to the alternate kadish vault.

[Tweek]

Well that is a give, the Art is not a hundred percent exact there will be things that happen unexpectedly (Atrus himself was surprised to find inhabited Ages).

Saying the Book of Earth doesn't exist is technically true, as it wasn't the Book of Earth it would have been the Book of D'ni. But the Book of D'ni would have existed.

I expect Ri'neref focused on the description of the Cavern, touched upon the surface world details but didn't go into them in vast detail.

[Nek'rahm]

Hold on tho... the D'ni Cavern, as you guys just said, was the Descriptive Book for the Book of D'ni. Now, Garternay is where everything began. Terahnee was written (maybe first) to flee into. Now, that would leave the Terahnee Descriptive Book in Garternay.

Garternay is dead, we all agree on that. So wouldn't Terahnee be dead? Simple Plot Map:

Garternay + Terahnee Descriptive Book

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Terahnee + D'ni Descriptive Book

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

D'ni + Passage to Earth

-----------------------------------------------

Now, if a Descriptive Book left in an Age stays there... and the Age dies... well... wouldn't the Age w/ the Descriptive Book die?

So, if Garternay died from cataclysm, Terahnee would too, and there-in so would D'ni.

This means one of two things:

Terahnee and D'ni live, so Garternay must be alive

or

Another parallel Age other then Garternay exists, so as such all other ages live.

~Nek'rahm

[Trylon]

They could have just made a linking book to either D'ni or Terahnee, brought it to Garternay, and took the descriptive book for euther age with them when they went back through the (non-descriptive) linkingbook to eihter age they just made.

[BAD]

I can mostly assure you that if a descriptive book is destroyed it will not destroy the age it describes.

Remember we said that these books only link to an existing world, not create them.

However, if the descriptive book of D'ni was destroyed, none of the linking books we have now should work. If that is indeed how they work.

So, my thoughts are that Ri'neref was no dummy, he wrote a holder age for the book of D'ni. Probably with locks and traps all over the place. When the collapse of Gaternay began he led his people into the holder age and then into D'ni itself. So most likely the original descriptive book of D'ni is safe and sound buried in a room under miles of rock with all sorts of traps and locks for us to eventually find and stare in wonder at. If we are clever enough to get to it.

[andylegate]

Uhm.....

Okay, remember the Razor and the acronym K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). Some of these are rather, complex ideas and explinations.....good ones though!

However, let's go back to RAWA: "You can link thru with anything as long as you can take one step with it. "

RAWA never said that it would be impossible to bring a Descriptive book of an Age, to that Age. After The descriptive book for an Age was written. A writer would link through to create a linking book for that AGe. Once the Linking book had be created, the Writer could link back, grab the Descriptve Book and link back into the Age, with the Descriptive book in his or her arms. The only thing that gets left behind is a linking book, and the destruction of a single linking book does not destroy the link to the Age

Now, here is something else. The Ages that we are able to link too. Most of us agree that what we have in our book shelves are Linking Books. Yet when we link to those Ages, do you see any linking books laying around that link back to D'ni? No. The only thing we have is a linking book that will link you back to the Nexus. And the Nexus is not in D'ni.

Yes, there are linking stones to places in the Cavern, but those were made by Yeesha (or the Bahro). But there are no books linking back to the Cavern.
Minkata, Jalak, Er'Cana, and Ahnonay. None of them have even a linking book to the Nexus. Only your Relto book saves you there.

Now take a look at your City Book in your Relto. It's a single book that allows you to link to several different places with in the Cavern from Relto. As a mater of fact, almost all of our books in our book shelf work that way. They have multiple pages for linking. With the exceptions of the Pod's, Nexus, Ahnonay Cathedral, and Myst are the only ones that work truly like linking books are described in all the books of Myst. A book with a single linking panel.

Nobody (as far as we know) has found a single linking book that links you back to the cavern at a certain point, and that's the only link that it contains. Yet in the Book of Atrus, Book of Anna, and Book of D'ni they tell us that they had a linking book to link back to the Cavern, specifically back "Home" where ever home was. Yet we have not found any of these linking books.
Could be that A) Many of the D'ni took those books with them when they fled the fall of D'ni and are lost in those Ages, and B) when Atrus came back with the surviving D'ni, those books were one of the things that they took with them.

In anycase, this is the argument that there has to be a Descriptive Book for D'ni that is not destroyed. If the D'ni that could afford to have Ages made for them, or the ones that made their own Ages, were able to link back home, it works just like RAWA said: A writer simply goes to that spot and writes a linking book to that spot while within that Age. But the linking book will only continue to work as long as the Descriptive book is not destroyed or alterted too much.

It seems to me that even Yeesha has to follow the rules of the Great Tree. While she does things that no Writer dreamed of, if the original descriptive link is changed too much, the link moves to a different branch of the tree.