MORE work! MORE fun!

Well I haven’t had much time lately, haven’t been anywhere near a linking book for weeks now, I’m getting withdrawals. Plus all my journals and most of my photos were destroyed, so there was only one thing for me to do, bury my head in my work. Since the DRCs’ announcement, that cavern will open back up sometime in the near future, but under another new name; MORE, an acronym for Myst Online Restoration Experiment. I wonder if there is a Guild of Acronyms, down some musty old basement where a couple of people throw acronyms at each other until one sticks, can I get a job there please.

Where was I, oh yes, an experiment for whom and what purpose and what’s with the online bit? The online bit; probably means that we will get public instancing back, in the same way as IMing works on the internet as in a members only instance, it must be. I wonder if the Bahro are playing nice. I think the experiment bit is to see if the community, overseen by the DRC, can make the restoration happen without a financial backer. It appears that the DRC will use our cavern entrance and members fees to cover running costs. It’s been rumoured that they will charge 25 American dollars for six months, now that’s a good deal. Far as I can see this whole venture will be based on trust, trust on both sides of the camp. The DRC working with the community; some will find it ok, but some groups have been anti-DRC for a long time. I see friction a head, but I hope not.

Saw a good one the other day, MOREon, but my favourite is MOREish, I love word play, seems such an intelligent sort of humour and whit.

Can’t keep my mind on one thing presently, ok that’s it, since the announcement we at the Guild of Messengers and at The Cavern Today Archiver have been franticly trying to get all the relevant information out to the community. Well they do say you learn from your mistakes, and these last few weeks have been no different, what a learning curve we are all on, especially at the GoMe where we are all newish to the guild and are just starting to get things together. But as with both community based groups, we are so short staffed, but we have had a few new recruits though, before and after the good news, but we need MORE. Sorry could resist the pun. What’s a messenger to do?

I suppose I am lucky to have the time and money to be a fulltime explorer and prospective Guildsmen, sorry Guildsperson. I must give at least 4 to 5 hours a day to my messaging duties, which include writing, which I know is too much for others, but as the old saying goes, many hands make light work; then I might have more time for exploring and analysing, fun.

Time to have a nosey over at the GoW to see if any new ages have been found, they like to call it written. You don’t write an age; you write a link to the age, Gehn couldn’t understand that and look what happened to him. I often wonder how he would have turned out if he never went to the GoW at the age of five and stayed with Anna for a few more years.

Wow my brain is fried; all I can see is the GoMe logo...............

The New D’ni

Find a way, make a home; both Yeesha and Dr Watson said it and now it is real. Yes, some explorers have taken this literally and found new homes to gather and explore, whilst trying to keep the cavern community together. But this could also be interpreted for us, the surface dwellers, to write new ages. This has lead to a heated debate, among the explorer community as to whether we are ready for this great responsibility. Yes humans have been writing ages for some time now, how they started no one really knows and some don’t seem to care, maybe one day we’ll find out. But what matters is that we can write descriptive books, well some of us can. We know this because Ti’ana (Anna) herself was human. Admittedly she was taught by the D’ni but nevertheless Anna did have the capacity to understand the concepts of writing ages. Catherine, Atrus’s wife, wrote an amazing age which turned the known laws of the D’ni Art on its head, again not D’ni but Rivenese. But not everyone can write these amazing books, me included, just in the same way that not all D’ni could. History has taught us that writing ages is not an easy task and comes with great responsibility and this is where the debate has split the explorers into different camps, with different and sometimes strong views and ideas. Here are just a couple of those views.

Explorer written ages, it’s an affront to the Art, some have inferred. Others have said I’m paraphrasing here, don’t reopen the cavern at all, forget it and move on. I think the latter would be a shame, just to walk away from the biggest Archaeological find of our time, yes a real shame. The things we could learn! Well MORE on that later.

Personally I have explored some of these newly written worlds, some I only stayed for a short while, due to certain instabilities, but some are just outstanding. Like sitting in the cave in Maw, looking up at the sky and listening to the bird song, all the while trying to figure a way out, or going for a starlit paddle in Zephyr Cove, absolutely stunning. I am impressed how far these and other explorers have come in such a short time. I say a short time because relative to the D’ni learning process for writers, it is short.

These modern day writers are still making great progress and to think they have had no formal training like the D’ni of old, it is a true testament to their dedication. I don’t see it as an affront to the Art but as homage to those skilful writers. Perhaps writing and then walking around the age can give the writer a certain perspective on how a good descriptive book was written, but this too can be fraught with danger. Gehn and Esher spring to mind not to mention geological and environmental instabilities. Maybe that’s the point to learn, to grow and to better ourselves through this collaboration of knowledge. Not to take things for granted, to use this ancient Art for good, together as a community. But whatever the future holds there is one thing I am sure of is that the D’ni will live on through us; are we the new D’ni?

Break in transmission

Well that’s it, my journals and half the photos are gone, gone as in damaged beyond hope; boiler leaked and flooded the basement and guess where my journals were kept? So I decided to delete my last entry and then continue with some MORE up to date thoughts; as we continue towards the re-opening of the cavern.

If never rains but it pours, well in this case floods.

New kid on the Blog

I am starting to write this blog now because I have just learnt how to and just for the love of writing. No, not to write, learnt how to set a blog up. Mind you looking at my writing one might think I have, just learnt to write. Now if I happen to entertain you along the way, then I can only apologise for that, I don’t mean to. I have come to realise how cathartic writing ones thoughts down and sharing them can be, so I decided to start a journey of public scrutiny. Maybe, hopefully I might learn something as well.

Boring! I am going to start at the beginning so bear with me. I suppose there is one blessing; I only came to the cavern in November last year.

October 2007:
Where have I been hiding all these years? It was there all this time, and I nearly missed it. I have been on the internet for some years now; I got bored waiting, due to having a 56k modem, so I didn’t do much surfing. That all changed, (that’s not the only thing that changed), when last October I bought a brand spanking new computer, not the top of the range but well worth the money. Anyways, this enabled me to get broadband. I don’t usually get lucky like this, but this just made my day. Because we had been a long standing customer and paid our bills well before they are due, our cable company gave us the top speed for a snippet of the cost, whey hey! A couple of weeks went by and while I was surfing the web, I came across a site called the DRC.

All those years and I never knew that a civilisation used to live down there, but who were they really, were they human? And to top it off I found out that there were a bunch of humans down there, from all over the world, trying to build a community. Why, what for, who would want to live down there? I asked myself these questions, but for some reason it felt like I was meant to be down there as well. But, whatever the reason I had to get some coin together so I could see for myself, as well as organising payment methods, which took a few weeks.

It was November by the time I got my first, ever, piece of plastic so I could pay for my personal linking book. Linking books, I didn’t, couldn’t and still can’t get my head around this, where did this technology come from. At the time I thought it was just part of a game and not real, but I know better now, eight months later. If you don’t know what I am talking about then you will have to find out for yourselves. I can’t tell you everything, I would be here forever. Anyway was this linking safe, I thought, let’s face it, it is all down to trust. Trust that the place you’re linking to is safe, trust in what I had read and trust in this organisation, the DRC. I supposed it was the attraction of the unknown. But not only that, it awakened the explorer in me; I had a thirst that I couldn’t quench, a thirst for knowledge. Now that I knew it was real and not just part of someones vivid imagination, I did the deal and in no time at all I was on my way. With my heart pumping I opened the book....

Pictures courtesy of Myst Online Uru Live, thank you Cyan.
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