In the opening ceremony, Ghaelen D’Lareh retold the last minutes of the closure of Prologue, back on February 9, 2004, and the first days of MOULa’s reopening on February 8, 2010.

In the Door Run competition, team A was the winner (2′45″), followed by team B (3′06″) and team C (3′38″). Team A included ghoul (caller), Ro”Jethhe, Malim Praedari, Boywhith, Jet Blast, allie page, Rhys, maree. Team B included Kneb (caller), etelka, Sleeper Jan, Mak Raves, Adrian Green, ondine, Boris, aqua. Team C included Susa’n (caller), thoekenem, Maleficent, EthanEver, PodHopper, Mevvah, angelmyst, Umo.

Each team suffered from setbacks: team A suffered from a lag spike at the very last symbol; team B suffered interference from a mean person/people; team C had little practice, the most substitutes, and a position swap.

On Saturday, for the Cavern Tour, for the first time Larry LeDeay streamed the event through his Twitch channel. Despite technical difficulties for a few attendees, the new format was on the whole a success. The stream is not meant to replace actually being there, but will allow showing extra materials that would otherwise not be possible.

The NULP Dance Show (featuring Aeonihya, Calisia, Claidi Song, Lu*, Mabe, Roland, Eternal Seeker, Willy, tsuno) was, as always, excellent and perfectly color-coordinated. The music was provided by Piboc, who was present at the show.

For the Story Night Special, in the Baron’s office, r’Tayrtahn recounted Douglas Sharper’s experience with the restoration, and the rising tension that led to the bahro incident.

On Sunday, in the Fashion Show competition, five contestants won the votes of the public: Ondine was 1st, with 32 %; Kamikatze, Claidi Song and Mabe were 2nd ex aequo, with 16 %; Aristocat was 3rd, with 8 %.

For the Explorer Memorial, Ghaelen read the names of the explorers we lost along the way; 2019 was a particularly hard year, with the loss of Tai’lahr. Korov’ev took the occasion to remind everyone that he took charge of keeping the OpenUru page updated, so if you know of names that are missing, please contact him.

Closing the weekend, of course, Yoda performed a Magic Show on the cliff in Kadish Tolesa, followed by a dance party in the Pyramid.

A big thank you to the organisers: Minasunda, Eternal Seeker, PodHopper, Larry, Fil, Donahoo, the participants at the contests, and to all the explorers, in the Cavern or on the Surface, who keep making Uru the unique place it is.

In other news

• On the aftermath of the announcement of the official forums closure, Yali announced the revival of RivenGuild. The initiative was greeted with mixed reactions, some rejoicing at seeing the return of one of the most beloved fan hubs, others worrying it will never be the same. Cautious optimism!
• A couple days later than expected, the MOULa and Cyan forums are now read-only. Chogon announced that the previously hidden MOUL beta sections of the forum, including the GameTap Live Rehearsals, have been made visible to everyone.
• On the first day of the anniversary celebrations, Korov’ev suggested the idea of an Ahyoheek tournament, to be held sometime Soon. Not much has yet been planned, but stay tuned if you are interested!
• A new Cyan Venture has been announced: Area Man Lives, from Numinous Games!
• Rel.to is back! At the time of this post, most of the links point to websites that do not exist anymore. In the following days and weeks, each link will be checked, and new ones will be added.

Mysterium

The Meeting opened with a recap of all the things that happened at the Myst/Uru community convention Mysterium. Many of the panels were streamed on Twitch and are currently available here. As soon as they can, the Committee will copy those videos to the YouTube channel.

Fissure parties

Back to the Cavern, two Fissure parties were held right after the Meeting, with reahrotahn and thoekenem. Fissure parties are events where people gather in someone’s Relto, to celebrate the conclusion of the First Journey (spoilers!).

Magic Skydiving

Next was Mister Magic’s latest project: a skydiving-oriented robot! With Magic Skydiver, aerobatics will have no more secrets for the explorers, who will be given flying certificates by participating in missions assisted by an instructor, starting from the first level of ‘Initiate’.

Lushun is translating the game into English. No special client will be required. The opening evening of the Magic High School of Skydiving will be around the end of the month. You can find more info and tips on the Uru Magic Worlds Facebook group.

State of Minkata

Rarified was back with some news from the OpenUru.org shard Minkata. Real Life has been hard since May, so little progress was possible. Some of the content on Minkata has been out of sync with the Cyan MO:ULa servers. This manifested during a new installation: people started the Minkata client, and it complained about being unable to load files.

Rarified will take the weekend to bring things on Minkata back into sync. Once the server will be updated, an existing working installation of Minkata will no longer work, you will need to copy the game files again from MO:ULa. Instructions will be posted on the shard section of the OpenUru.org forum.

Next, the fixes that have been under test in Minkata have languished for a while; Cyan developed an automated mechanism to process updates from the shard, but Minkata missed its part of the pipeline. Rarified hopes to submit all the patches (including the Windows 10 mouse fix) to Cyan to be released on the MO:ULa servers in a few days.

After that, he will be back to work on the Minkata-Alpha server, where the first fan content is scheduled to appear for testing.

Explorer memorial

Korov’ev had to close the speaker session announcing the passing of explorer Zander the Heretic, a.k.a. Zanda. He was one of the early explorers of the Cavern, back from at least 2006.

And that was it for this month. Don’t forget to donate to keep the Cavern open!

The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, September 7 at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

The day started with the guidelines for the trip and parking instructions (including the hard-to-follow recommendation of “try to keep to the path”) for the various groups headed to Cyan HQ: some shared cars, while others went by a rented bus.

At 11:00 am the crowd, gathered in the courtyard, greeted Rand Miller with a cheer. Rand, who gave up celebrating National Watermelon Day to be present, started the event (“me talking”) by claiming that the office was not set up as a giant puzzle. In an emotional moment, he invited Rawa on stage, to say hi and get a heartwarming applause from the crowd.

Then, Rand gave a few announcements: a big performance update for Obduction, and its future porting to the Xbox; the release of ZED for macOS on August 15, on Steam and the Mac App Store; their future venture plans including a collaboration with Numinous for their VR series Into The Mind; and a not-a-game mobile app (initially only for iOS) named Crowbox, related to the photo library.

Next, he noted how the Myst25 and Firmament kickstarters have given them the chance to make more and bigger plans. First, Cyan want to make a definitive, VR edition of Myst. Next, a VR edition of Riven (without “real-” attached), in collaboration with the Starry Expanse project. Then, they feel it is time for new stories in the Myst universe; not specifically a “Myst VI”, perhaps the start of a new series.

Rand then mentions their plans for the TV series (“this time for real!”). Cyan is much more involved than on previous attempts, with Rand and Ryan working on a treatment and a pilot script. It will be a different take, not based on the Myst novels or games, set in the “lost years” – between The Book of D’ni and Uru, perhaps?

Then, Rand answered some fan questions, with his proverbial obscurity: are the gahrohevtee a different script? It was never determined, they were always meant to be the vague, ‘magical’ part of the story. Will there be a Making of Firmament? Sure, they have a ton of video. The Book of Marrim? It is now off the back burner! Will Cyan work with external publishers? Difficult choice, they don’t want to be locked in exclusivity schemes, but more funds mean bigger and better games.

After being gifted by the Committee with a pair of ‘birken-socks’, because of his habit of doing presentations wearing sandals, Rand then invited the crowd to visit the studio building – with some of the props and costumes from the games on display! –, try VR demos of Obduction, Firmament and ZED, get signatures from him and Rawa (with scenes like this one), and of course have lunch (with cookies provided by a fan!). There was also a shop, where you could get posters, the Obduction artbook, sondtrack, Hex Isle and a free, vintage box of The Manhole. At some point, a raffle was held: the prizes were a life-sized journey cloth, an Obduction banner and a highly detailed 3D model of the Myst island, printed by Rand himself.

Back to the Ruby hotel, some time after 3:00 pm the Soundscapes Beyond Myst panel (hosted by Katie ‘Kha’tie’ Postma, Russell Brower, Tim Larkin, Marty O’Donnell, and Jack Wall) shared their experiences designing, conducting, and directing music and sound for games and media published by Cyan, but also Blizzard, Valve, Microsoft, Disney, etc. The question about the meaning of the Myst III: Exile lyrics remains unaswered once again, Jack Wall gave a sample of his a cappella singing, Tim Larkin expressed his preference for electronic instruments, contrary to the rest of the panel, and they mentioned their involvement with the Video Game Live concerts.

At around 5:00 pm, the Evolution of the Myst Community panel (hosted by Elliot ‘Taniith’ Borenstein, Katie ‘Kha’tie’ Postma, Ryan ‘Grey Dragon’ Warzecha, Blake Lewin, and Vicki ‘Tor’i’ Almond) looked back at the history of Mysterium, the changes the community has gone through, and its resiliency through the years. Memes from the original Cyanchat were mentioned; the reasons behind the Gametap cancellation of Uru Live were explored; and Kha’tie noted noted how she kept jumping between game cancellations.

At around 6:00 pm, the return of the Mysterium Showtunes was announced. After the dinner break, the crowd splitted: some of the attendees continued to work on the puzzles; some tried the Starry Expanse VR demo; some tried the Escape the Age card game; and some sung songs with Myst and Uru inspired lyrics.

Other attendees just chilled out with new and old friends, chatting about games, puzzles, and ideas.

And now, we are ready for the third and last day!

Hollywood Reporter mentioned that the project will be “both scripted and unscripted”. Some kind of reality TV? The move to adapt Myst comes shortly after a new mandate by Village Roadshow to make the company into a ‘broad-spectrum content creator’ focused on television, streaming and other distribution platforms.

This of course is not the first attempt at bringing Myst to the small screen: Legendary Entertainment had plans for a transmedia series with a companion video game in 2014; the following year the rights were moved to Hulu, but never materialised. As for a film, the story goes back to 2002 if not earlier.

As Zarf cautioned, ‘paid for the rights’ is a long way from ‘greenlighted the production of a show’; and in Myst’s case, ‘artistic differences’ have brought these attempts to a halt too often.

Hopefully this time will be the charm!

Some more articles related to the announcement:

• The Wrap
• Cracked

(Thanks to catherwood and Hoikas for collecting the links used in this post.)