Guild of Writers

I just wanted to pitch in an idea I just had about an age. It's about the D'ni city's book dump, where broken or otherwise dangerous linking books are stocked and destroyed (I'll let the linguists come up with an appropriate name). The actual place would be a dry salt mine, which, as you might know, is an excellent place to store things for a long time so they don't deteriorate (most of the facility is underground, though). Long time storage is important since the D'ni wouldn't destroy books before being completely sure there has been no mistake (I'd say they could wait 5-10 years, maybe more). The second reason is that destroying a descriptive book is a criminal offense in D'ni society. Well, I've come up with that one (as far as I can tell), but it makes sense considering how important the art of Writing is for the D'ni.

The age itself would be known through its two "characters", both of which would be long dead. The first would be the lone "white-collar" city employee in charge of the facility. Since he can't destroy books on his own, he has very little power and his job is mostly to store and catalog the books he receives which are broken, dangerous or otherwise unusable. The actual destruction of any books would be an official event that other people would organize and attend, people on a much higher pay grade than his. This is because the destruction of a book is in fact a "death sentence for an entire world", which no one would see ever again. Pursuing the same analogy, most books would be left on "death row" for years or even decades, since destruction is a very icky political decision. All in all, very few books would actually be destroyed and the employee would be left in his corner. This would mostly be told through the employee's journals, which would be ponctuated by the anecdote of a woman complaining to him that she has lost her garden age.

The second character, much more actual, would be a mildly disturbed DRC fanatic who didn't cope very well with the cavern closing. He thus decided to hide in this age to remain in the cavern. He would be obsessed with keeping those books intact and finding a "rare pearl" among them (maybe finding a discarded treasure age, or just the age reported lost). He would be the one to have translated the employee's journals from D'ni to english (that's an annoying plot technicality concerning the D'ni in general... since every single thing the D'ni have written will have to have been translated by some other character). This second occupant would grow more and more disturbed as time passes (as written in his own journal), to eventually try a linking book for himself, with the probable result of linking inside a supernova... or something equally unpleasant.

The actual age would be separated in three parts: the small desertic outside area, a neat-and-tidy area and a completely messy area. The last two areas would represent the employee's tidy working space and the second explorer's descent into madness (with books everywhere, rats and general disorder). There would also be a large library area with countless unidentifiable books and a small book-burning room (with an oven that can only be operated by two people).

The actual puzzle would be to find the age that was lost by the complaining woman centuries ago through bookeeping records and various notes from both characters. It would be one of the books inside the large library. However, the player can't try books willy-nilly as there are too many of them and any other book would link inside a deadly area (but of course the player will actually panic link back home). The "right" book would lead to a tiny private garden age. Inside of it would be the remains of the woman's husband, stuck there long, long ago after losing his linking book (it could be something less grim, but I think it's a poignant image on the dangers of linking, one of the central concepts of my age idea).

I could say more, but I think I've already typed quite a bit for now. I'm probaly not going to create the age myself anytime in the forseeable future, but I've pitched it anyway to see what you guys think. Any comments?

Addressing your idea about the D’ni city book dump, I must say that I like your idea. It is one of those few things still unanswered about the art of writing and D’ni culture so I do think this is a good idea. By the way just so that you know the salt cones that you discussed are presently salt pockets in the sea floor that have pushed upward from the sea floor creating doom/cone like shapes. Due to these cones being completely hollow and their ability to preserve items and fluids they are being tested by the government for the possibility of placing inside them nuclear waste. By the way I am not an economy geek (even though I am kind of “green”).

Also I came up with an idea that these books are held in tall shelves that can only be accessed by KI and typing a curtain code into a pad on an object (the book grabber). By typing a code into the book grabber the grabber will move along a some tracks by the use of gears to navigate up and down the levels of shelves until it comes to the proper shelf then it rolls to either the left or the right until it finds the book. Once it finds the book it has been sent to find to pulls the book from the shelf and returns to the pedestal from which it was sent.

This some idea of mine is a mixture of Gareeshan and the Nexus. Sort of. Except the books here are as you said in your idea either non-functioning ages or dangerous ages. Except for a few of course such as that complaining woman’s garden age.

Age ideas (with codes)
* - Broken age + - Broken yet explore able age

1202816 – Women’s garden age
2062062 – Obliterated age*
6425161 – A fiery volcanic age +

The Obliterated age is pretty much a whole bunch of rocks in space. When the player links in he or she falls straight through the rubble into empty space where they panic link back to Relto.

The fiery volcanic age is a whole bunch of rocks floating in lava. The planet possesses a red dwarf as its sun revealing that this age is coming to an end. The plain idea about this age is that it isn’t all safe but can yet be explored.

The Codes

To find out the codes to these ages you need to find cleverly hidden numbers throughout the other Springs of Kelbert.

I must say that presently I don’t think this idea even though it is a good idea will pass for the springs of Kelbert. However I think that the group plains to expand the story beyond what we are working on at present so add what ideas you have for this story and submit them for this could be a great sequel idea.

I love the book dump idea, and with RAWA's new guidelines, it seems very possible to make it. I would like to caution robbie about his KI-access idea. KIs were supposed to have just been set up right around the Fall, so while I guess it would be reasonable for the D'ni government to set up this KI system for the book dump, I'm sort of interested in any pre-KI methods they might have used.

I like the idea of a code-based system for finding books, although I'm not sure if it's feasible to activate it through the KI. I wasn't thinking of a particularly large library, maybe a hundred books... so a 3-digit combination can do the trick. I guess it depends on what's easier to implement: different "zones" of activation for the books on the shelf or an automated machine with a combination. As for the "dud" ages, I guess it's mostly a question of how many different ideas it's practical to create. A lot of them would obviously be the same. Some of the ideas I've thought of to fill the slots on the machine or shelf:

- No book at all or the book is damaged beyond use
- Link is inactive: shows a black "screen" or static
- Link in the sky falling down
- Link near a sun
- Link in the middle of empty water
- Link inside something solid (is that possible?)
- Your pictures are cool. I think it would be a great idea if an alternate solution would lead to an empty island of rock surrounded by lava. The only thing on the ground would be a piece of clothing/collectible. This is like some Cyan ages that have a secondary puzzle that lets you earn a reward page or clothing.

I didn't know about the actual cones being used to store things, that sounds interesting. It's just that I saw once on tv that film companies store all their old rolls of film in abandoned salt mines so they don't deteriorate (it's dry and the temperature never changes). Imagine years of the Tonight Show sleeping underground, waiting for somebody to watch them.

True the KI idea is a little up to date but the KI format could have been an upgrade in later D’ni years. At the time of the safest way to protect secret devices and ages from curtain public members was to:

A) Make a device to registered KIs as objects used the appropriate user (not all D’ni received KIs).

B) And to create some sort of locking mechanism to protect some items.

Also as far as we know the KI addition could have been something added on by Atrus during the D’ni restoration (see the book, Myst the book of Atrus). Or they could have been installed by the DRC.

As for the reason of more then three digits I have a question. How much easier is it to type in a password that has three digits instead of four or more? It would take time but it would take less time to continually try out codes until you come across the book you want if you have less digits, which by the way doesn’t seem to be very much like a puzzle solving situation to me.

Also what if a rite broke out and invaded the age book dumpsite or someone like Veovis tried to steal some of these books wouldn’t you want to make it hard for them to steal the books. This could make it easier for the guild of maintainers to overcome the rite before they caused too much damage.

Just to bring you back to RIVEN; remember how Gehn’s books required electricity to open a clear link. Perhaps the dumpsite could feature a power source that powers up the books on the pedestal after it has been delivered to the user.

Speaking of the age dudes, I think the linking panels should look like the up to date Riven linking panel like the one featured in Myst III: EXILE on the pedestal behind Atrus’s desk. That way there seems to be more of a connection to the other games in the Myst series.

As for the volcanic age carrying new clothing or puzzles I did have the idea of creating a hood that had a small resemblance to the D’ni shirt (see images below. The D’ni shirt is a clothing piece from the path of the shells). Of course the D’ni helm from Yeeha’s alternate reality of Kadish Tolsa matches the same design but come on. Who wants to run around with a heavy helmet on his head (a helm that looks pretty dorky, to me at least. No offense to Cyan)?

Another clothing item idea is the “Bahro Costume” this is featured as a head piece resembling a stuffed toy Bahro head. When activated in the closet it makes your character look like a Bahro. Or sort of. After all it is made out of fabric not Bahro flesh or anything like that. This is for those of us who have fallen in love with those unusual creatures seen wondering the cavern.

We could also put in curtain areas: Winter clothing, gothic clothing, more D’ni garb, and maybe some garb seen used by some of the characters from the previous Myst games.

As for a puzzle being in that age, I had the idea of small slips of paper being hidden throughout some of the Kelbert ages along with some of the dump ages that were code sequences for the age code device.

As for a broken age that links into a vast ocean well if you look below I have created an Image using Bryce5.5 that looks kind of like what you were thinking of. I also worked on a near the sun image (in this case a dying sun).

One of the things you mentioned was linking into a solid object. Due to the fact that when you materialized into that age that you end up with parts of the object that you linked into would be inside your system. In other words, “Your Toast”. For those of you who watch Star gate SG-1 this is one of the many reasons why earth has an iris over its star gate, so that enemies can’t just come in off some planet and come of earth firing their guns. Now one idea I had was that maybe an age was left at the dump due to the fact that it linked inside a giant fruit and so all books linking to that age were taken to the dump for examination. The books of this age weren’t taken here due to it being unstable but rather it somewhat defying usual linking point rules. I created an image with an idea of what this plant could be like. The fruit that I am talking about is the green sphere attached to the branch.

Another idea that came about due to this idea was that perhaps in one of these ages is a linking book that links into some D’ni storage container within D’ni. Inside the container there would still be items left behind (due to the fall) and perhaps broken open later by Atrus’s restoration team or the container may have been damaged by falling rumble caused during the fall. Maybe the link is to where the toxin valves were.

Just incase any of you guys think I am being hostile or just sounding like I am rude in this message, I am not. I am just tired from a one-week camp trip and preparing for a 4-H fair that is coming up.