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Characters / Myst

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A list of characters appearing in the Myst series.

This page may contain unmarked spoilers when needed so open the folders with care!

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    The D'ni 

An ancient civilization that once existed in the desert under New Mexico or the Middle East, the D'ni arrived on Earth many thousands of years ago after their homeworld's sun began to die. They had mastered the art of traveling to other worlds, known as Ages, by writing about them in descriptive books. They were destroyed by a deadly plague at the end of Book of Ti'ana, scattering the survivors to the wind.

  • And Man Grew Proud: The D'ni as a whole seemed to have a problem with this. The process of Age Writing does not actually create worlds from nothing, but many of its practitioners seemed to forget this after a while. It seems you can't swing a stick in D'ni history without hitting a King or other important figure who became drunk on his own skill and committed horrid atrocities to the inhabitants of the Ages because he developed a God complex. Gehn is a great example, thinking himself a god, and Sirrus and Achenar both seem to have fallen into this trap as well. Even Yeesha admits there was a time she felt the same.
    Yeesha: It was the same with the D'ni. The same cycle. Light opens the darkness. It takes, it uses, and it keeps. The D'ni found power in these books. These books you use to travel. They were a gift from the Maker. These Ages that you travel, too, were their Ages. Remarkable places giving life and taking life. This shadow came over them, this shadow of light. For it was in their enlightenment that they considered themselves better, better than the least. And we were sad for them.
  • Arc Number: Five and multiples of five occur frequently in their culture.
  • Defector from Decadence: Originally, their entire civilization broke away from the decadent corruption of the Ronay. Too bad for them that it ended up becoming a Full-Circle Revolution with a few of them, as they ended up just as bad. Sirrus in particular shows this off, as he tries to be a Man of Wealth and Taste while taxing and/or stealing money from inhabitants of the Ages.
  • Dimensional Traveller: Their entire civilization was built around Rehgehstoy, the art of writing books that could link to other Ages. Even though they made their official home in a depressing and relatively small underground cavern on Earth, they used linking to get all of their resources and space for expansion, to the point that they had no idea that humans existed on the surface of their nominal "homeworld".
  • Gadgeteer Genius: The D'ni are notable for their remarkable engineering skills.
  • Hidden Elf Village: The cavern. In Book of Ti'ana, the D'ni express doubt about the possibility of humanoid life existing on earth, despite their civilization having been here for many generations.
  • Human Alien: Apart from their pale eyes and gaunt features, they're visually identical to humans. In fact, they are a longer-lived subspecies of Homo sapiens.
  • Long-Lived: The D'ni seem to have a 400 year life-span, which is significantly longer-lived than an average human life-span.
  • Master Race: They see themselves as this, a bias which eventually leads to their demise.
  • Mole Men: The other thing that defines them aside from the Art. They've been underground for long enough that their eyes have weakened, forcing them to wear goggles in bright sunlight.
  • Proud Scholar Race: The D'ni are capable of using books, knowledge, and maps to develop Ages to live in. Trouble is, their pride in being able to create a civilization has made it so a few of them believe they can create worlds from nothing, which they can't actually do.
  • Shadow Archetype: While D'ni was far from flawless, Terahnee makes it look like a Utopia. While the inhabitants of D'ni might've thought of themselves as better than "normal" humans, their racism never quite made the leap from paternalistic prejudice to industrial-scale mass slavery.

Main Characters

    The Stranger 

The Player Character, who found Atrus' Linking book to Myst.

  • And I Must Scream: In Myst, all of the game's bad endings result in them being trapped forever in one of the linking books.
  • Camera Fiend: Portrayed as such in the official Strategy Guide, to provide a Watsonian explanation for all the screenshots in the book.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": A mostly fandom induced version. In-Universe, Atrus only ever refers to them as "my friend".
  • Featureless Protagonist: No defining features are ever given for what the Stranger looks like, what they sound like, or where they come from. One the bad endings of Myst uses a masculine pronoun for the Stranger, but that's about it. This was invoked by Cyan to allow players to better envision themselves as exploring Myst and its Ages. The official Strategy Guide portrays the Stranger as a male photographer from San Francisco, but how much of that is "canon" to the games is unclear.
  • The Many Deaths of You: The ending of each game features tons of stupid ways to either kill yourself or screw someone else over, sometimes both.
  • Non-Action Guy: The Stranger is not out to win any fights through force. They go through every game unarmed; should the situation ever devolve into a physical confrontation, they've already lost. In fact, throughout the series, a notable number of the bad endings involve them being overpowered and killed by an armed foe.
  • Posthumous Character: Because V takes place during the present day, they've long since passed away.
  • Riddle for the Ages: How did the Stranger manage to find Atrus and Catherine again after jumping into the Star Fissure at the end of Riven anyway?

    Atrus 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Myst4_Atrus_3248.png
Played by: Rand Miller

The D'ni man who regularly calls on the Stranger to help him with his family problems.

  • Absent-Minded Professor: He's so focused on his projects that he often fails to anticipate the consequences of his actions. Myst IV's opening gives us an example of this when his latest invention wreaks havoc on his home's power systems and sends him rushing to another age to gather replacement parts, neatly leaving him out of the loop.
  • Big Good: Wise, sensible, and kind, Atrus often serves as a mentor to the player.
  • Broken Pedestal: When he met his father as a child, he admired him at first.
  • Bumbling Dad: The start of Myst IV involves you helping him with a new invention. As soon as you manage to align some waveforms and he fires it up, it blows a fuse and shuts down power to most of his home. A later conversation with his daughter reveals this is common for him.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: The man is a prodigious builder, having constructed large structures on numerous worlds, including several complex advanced buildings and even a miles-long underground train network, all with his bare hands and his advanced engineering knowledge, with only occasional help from his sons or local natives.
  • Dead Guy Junior: Named for his deceased grandfather.
  • Deuteragonist: While he's the central character for the Myst games, he's never a playable character. It's entirely up to the Stranger to resolve the games' conflicts.
  • Distressed Dude: He needs you to solve his problems for him in every numbered Myst series title.
  • Disappeared Dad: Gehn took off the night Atrus was born due to grief over his wife's death.
  • Doom Magnet: As much of a Nice Guy as Atrus is, even during the good times death and destruction follow him.
  • Fatal Flaw: Focus. His Attention Deficit Creator Disorder in-universe leads to all kinds of trouble. Atrus is almost always a good visitor to the Ages he writes, friendly and helpful to the inhabitants without colonizing, exploiting, or otherwise engaging in the sorts of abuses evil users of the Art heap upon them. But once he's had his enjoyment, he tends to move on, and doesn't revisit much. This not only allowed his twin sons to begin doing awful things to his former friends right under his nose, it meant he didn't even know about Saavedro's plight until the man was teleporting into his living room to take his revenge.invoked
  • Gadgeteer Genius: His other skill set, aside from writing Ages. He's shown to be proficient with machines from childhood, and his inventions play a major role in most games.
  • Game-Over Man: If you foolishly enter D'ni without the white Myst book page, leaving you both without any hope of exit. This actually causes Atrus to shout "What kind of fool are you?!" before turning away in disgust. (If you instead choose to free Sirrus or Achenar, they will gloat before trapping you in their respective books.)
  • Good Is Not Soft: Atrus punishes both his sons and his father for their crimes with a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Happily Married: Despite the hardships they endure, he and Catherine are devoted to one another.
  • Large Ham: In the original version of Myst, Atrus was much more animated and emotional, occasionally dipping into Chewing the Scenery. This is most evident if you go to D'ni but forget to take the page with you, causing him to angrily shout the above quote in such a way as to sound like any number of gibberish phrases. Inverted both in later games as well as Updated Rereleases of Myst, as he is much more stoic and reserved.
  • Magical Native American: Half his ethnic background is a tribe called the Amad.
  • Meaningful Name: He is named after his grandfather, Aitrus.
  • Missing Mom: Atrus's mother died in childbirth, leaving his father Gehn devastated. It may have contributed to Gehn's villainy later on.
  • Nice Guy: He is friendly, helpful, peace-loving, wise and sensible. Contrast his father and his sons, who are megalomaniacs and violent.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: As much as Atrus means well, he often makes situations unintentionally worse. The biggest example is in Exile with a lot of focus on how Atrus attempting to forget the past has screwed over Saavedro big-time and created an enemy.
  • Non-Action Guy: Played with. In most of the backstory, Atrus is a tinkerer who likes working with his hands, whether that's writing or constructing things. He's also a very competent Guile Hero whose involvement in the Ages goes from observer and recorder to strategist and ambassador. In the games themselves, however, Atrus' big contribution - setting up the Ages - is part of the backstory as told through his journals, and you're going through them and solving puzzles to find things he lost while he stays in the background and does his own thing. He's also easily caught off-guard because he's so nose-deep in research he doesn't fully comprehend the results of his actions until they're right in front of him (such as in Exile, where the only times you see Atrus are at the beginning and end with no updates from him in the middle). The most active he is in any game is during Riven, where it's implied the only reason the Age doesn't implode on you is because he's writing furiously to keep it stable long enough for you to do your job.
  • Outliving One's Offspring: By the end of the fourth game, he has outlived both Sirrus and Achenar.
  • Properly Paranoid: At the beginning of Exile, Catherine complains about Atrus' obsession with security. As it shortly turns out, his efforts are both entirely justified and woefully inadequate. (He thinks someone's been breaking in, which is true, but what he doesn't know is that it's not someone in Tomahna, it's someone in a completely different Age who happens to have a Linking Book to Tomahna that gets them right past his locks.)
  • Proud Scholar Race Guy: The D'ni are known for writing books that link to and control worlds, and Atrus is the last master of that art. He also admits to and laments his own arrogance with regard to creating linking books in one of this journals, making him a downplayed example at most.
  • Raised by Grandparents: Raised by his grandmother in the desert.
  • Recurring Character: Atrus, played by series co-creator Rand Miller, is the only character to appear in every game. Even though Cyan did not make Myst III and IV themselves, Miller agreed to appear in the games for the fans — although it's been said that he wasn't fond of playing Atrus, as he thought the role was more deserving of a professional actor.
  • Renaissance Man: Played for drama. Atrus is an author, a painter, a scholar, and a researcher. Too bad for Atrus that this leads to Attention Deficit Creator Disorder, never staying on any one topic for very long. This allows his sons Sirrus and Achenar to do terrible things to the Ages right under their father's nose, simply because Atrus rarely checks back in with anything he's explored out of a desire to keep learning as much as he can.invoked
  • Schmuck Bait: The prison books he created are designed to make a person think they Link to a different Age (or back to Myst), but actually trap the person in a void within the book.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Non-time-travel variant; Gehn isn't a particularly good linking author, so the quantum-uncertainty thing the linking books have going on makes the Ages he links to dangerously unstable. Atrus is much better at writing linking books than his father, and reckons he can use those same quantum-uncertainty shenanigans to salvage Gehn's Ages, or even undo the damage Gehn caused; but it's a very time-sensitive endeavor because Ages don't stop deteriorating just because you're not in them, and some are beyond saving already. In fact, this is how Atrus contributes to your efforts to save Catherine and capture Gehn: The entire time you're in Riven, he's writing frenziedly in the book to patch any errors he can find and make sure that the Age doesn't fall apart and kill you.
  • Spell My Name With An S: 'Aitrus' and 'Atrus' represent the same name in D'ni script. Despite this, 'Atrus' is used for both grandfather and grandson outside of Book of Ti'ana.
  • Tailor-Made Prison: He's created about three different prison ages that we know of over the course of the series: two to trap greedy, exploitative adventurers (who turn out to be his own sons), and one for his father.
  • Uneven Hybrid: 1/4th D'ni.
  • Walking Spoiler: In the first game, Atrus being alive is a plot twist, as much of the game treats him as a Posthumous Character. It doesn't help that a lot of details come from Sirrus and Achenar, who both have a good reason to lie about Atrus being alive.
  • What the Hell, Player?:
    • Atrus doesn't react well to your stupidity if you go to D'ni without bringing the missing linking book page. His anger is much more severe in the original iteration of Myst while in realMyst, he's more baffled by your cluelessness than irate.
      Atrus: You didn't bring the page. WHAT KIND OF A FOOL ARE YOU?!
    • In Riven, he'll be subtle about it, but if you summon him before you rescue Catherine but after you capture Gehn, he'll look at you incredulously asking why you called him, hinting that you really messed up. You both must flee Riven with Catherine still trapped, and the game ends on a sour note.
    • Nor does he react well to your cruelty if you trap Saavedro in Narayan and leave without letting him go.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Atrus in later games expresses a certain amount of melancholy surprise to discover that he's inherited the great longevity of his D'ni roots, since it means he's had to watch his beloved wife grow old and die well before he does.

    Sirrus 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sirrusmain12.jpg
Played by: Robyn Miller (Myst), Brian Wrench (Myst IV: Revelation)

The younger son of Atrus and Catherine.

  • The Alcoholic: A couple of his rooms have various empty bottles scattered around. It ties into how much of a hedonist the guy is.
  • Big Bad: The sole main antagonist in Myst IV: Revelations. He is the one behind Yeesha's kidnapping.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: With Achenar in the first game. It's unclear which of the two brothers you should trust, but it's eventually clear that neither of them is a saint, and as the game progresses it becomes increasingly clear that they were working together.
  • Big "NO!": In Revelation upon discovering that the Myst book his father dropped off a ledge on his way out didn't fall to the earth far below because there is no below; Spire is a World in the Sky orbiting a ball of superheated magnetic green gas.
  • Determinator: Spire is an even worse place to live than Haven in terms of pure starkness, but Sirrus gets by. He even keeps going after spending years building a magnetic ship to fly to a place under the cloud cover, all in an attempt to recover the linking book that fell off the edge, only to find there is no world under the spires, just a charged ball of magnetic gas.
  • Distressed Dude: In the first game, he's trapped in the red Trap Book that the player finds in the library, and he can't free himself without the player's help.
  • Driven by Envy: While he never had the work ethic to learn the Art, he desperately wants its power. It's why his plan in Myst IV boils down to stealing his sister's life from her to gain another chance to learn it from Atrus.
  • Elemental Motifs: Sirrus is strongly associated with crystals, representing both his scientific, rational side, his appreciation for beauty, and, most darkly of all, his greed for shiny treasure even above and beyond any actual utility they offer him. While Myst IV really leaned into it, with his prison Age of Spire being literally formed of stony crystaline growths that are all but worthless without another human being around to appreciate them, it's present as early as the first Myst, where his red page in the Selentic Age is resting gently next to the whistling crystals. realMyst added the detail that he helped build the crystal viewer on Spire.
  • Evil Gloating:
    • In the original Myst, he engages in some of this if you put all of the red pages back into his book, which is when he reveals his true colors.
      Sirrus: "My dear friend. You've done the right thing. You stupid fool! Hahaha!"
    • In IV, the player sees the shredded-up remains of him gloating on and on to Yeesha during one of the game's final puzzles.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Unlike his brother, Sirrus is good at presenting himself as a prisoner of circumstance. In the first game, he's the imprisoned brother who isn't a cackling maniac, and in Revelation he plays his mother and sister like a fiddle to help engineer his escape and his attempt to steal Yeesha's body. It's only when he thinks he's won and his enemies are utterly in his power that the sadistic Evil Gloating comes out.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Every single machine on Spire was his own work, and he did a pretty good job given the crudity of his tools and the paucity of the resources availible to him. He even manages to create sonic grenades capable of destroying the allegedly-indestructable Nara material, a feat not even his D'ni ancestors could boast. In realMyst, he's mentioned to have helped with building the crystal viewing project on Rime.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: He and Achenar fill this role in Myst III. Their direct actions catapult Saavedro's path of revenge against Atrus.
  • Large Ham: Subtlety is not one of his strengths, especially in his ending of the first game and in IV.
  • Man of Wealth and Taste: Sirrus has a taste for nice things such as mahogany furniture and Renaissance art, in contrast to his more Ax-Crazy and Obviously Evil brother Achenar. This may make Sirrus seem like the more stable of the two, until you remember that his rooms of wealth and opulence stand in stark contrast to the poor villages around him, and then realize that all that money had to come from somewhere. Achenar helpfully leaves a letter chiding him for his greed and ordering their subjects not to pay new taxes Sirrus was apparently imposing.
  • Pun: If you make the mistake of freeing him from the red book at the end of Myst, he quips that he hopes you're into books (after duping you into sealing yourself in the red book forever).
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Inverted, his color code is Red but he is a scheming planner. Not that he never has bouts of emotion, he does.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: He's a greedy, murderous sociopath who's trapped in a book, and he depends on you to break him out.
  • The Stoner: If Sirrus has a weakness, other than his general egotism and greed, it's an overt fondness for drugs- of any kind, apparently.
  • Undiscriminating Addict: His chambers across the Ages are often filled with intoxicants of one kind or another, most commonly alcohol - though Stoneship indicates that he's been experimenting with harder drugs.
  • Uneven Hybrid: His full ethnic (racial) breakdown: 1/2 Rivenese (with possible Earth origins if the Rivenese language is any indication), 1/4 Amad Indian (Earth native), 1/8 D'ni (Ronay), 1/8 unspecified European (Earth native).

    Achenar 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/achenar.jpg
Played by: Rand Miller (Myst), Guy Sprung (Myst IV: Revelation)

The older son of Atrus and Catherine.

  • Ax-Crazy: It's pretty easy to recognize whenever you've found Achenar's room in an age due to all the torture implements and human remains lying around.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: Alongside his brother in the first game. You can't trust either of them, and they worked together to turn their father's once-vibrant, populated Ages into ghost towns or private palaces.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Has no problem torturing innocent people to death, for apparently no other reason other than he thinks it's fun. Even has a Torture Cellar in one age, fit with a collection of poisons and an electrical torture cage.
  • Distressed Dude: In the first game, he's trapped in the blue Trap Book that the player finds in the library, and he can't free himself without the player's help.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • His death-fetishism aside, Achenar apparently found his brother's greedy obsession with squeezing their Ages dry repulsive, and gave his subjects orders to ignore Sirrus's new taxes.
    • This also pushes Achenar to stop Sirrus from hijacking Yeesha's body for personal gain and go through a Heel–Face Turn. Achenar is disgusted by how vile he is.
  • Foreshadowing: Achenar's disgust over Sirrus's insatiable thirst for power and riches foreshadows Myst IV's endgame. Achenar reforms his old ways while in exile on Haven and is pleads for help from The Stranger to help him stop Sirrus from committing Grand Theft Me on Yeesha.
  • Giggling Villain: Especially evident in the bad ending in the first game where the player is trapped inside his book after freeing him. It's even reminiscent of the laugh provided by Frank Gorshin's Riddler.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: He and Sirrus fill this role in Myst III. Their direct actions catapult Saavedro's path of revenge against Atrus.
  • Heel–Face Turn: In IV, he finally realizes what a monster he's become and reforms during his time in captivity, ultimately choosing to die saving Yeesha.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: He dies protecting Yeesha from his brother.
  • Hidden Depths: Despite his eccentric mannerisms he is indeed as intelligent as his brother, judging by Atrus's comments in his journals and his actions in Revelations.
  • Insane Equals Violent: At least, he seems to have no reservations about painfully killing people to satisfy his own morbid curiosities.
  • Large Ham: In the original game, it's pretty clear from his dialogue alone that he's Obviously Evil. He does calm down quite a bit by Revelation.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Killing off the cerpatees, the top predators of Haven, upsets the ecological balance of the island. Seeing the consequences of his actions, and having to live with said consequences, gets him to start contemplating his actions from before, eventually leading to a Villainous BSoD.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: Has a pretty unhealthy fascination with anything having to do with death.
  • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Though not outright stated, it's heavily implied that the reason two normal men could subjugate multiple worlds is because the Ages created by Atrus tend to be inhabited by small populations of simple and pacifistic people who are simply unprepared to resist a determined brute armed with a crossbow, mace, and an unfortunately intricate knowledge of torture and terror tactics.
  • Obviously Evil: From the moment he makes contact with you, it's blatantly obvious he's unhinged and unstable. His rooms in the various Ages are also filled with torture devices, and he has a closet filled with the mutilated bodies of his victims. This is in contrast to Sirrus, who behaves calmly and rationally and whose rooms show him to enjoy wealth, which doesn't seem so bad until you realize that his opulence stands in stark contrast to the sparse dwellings of the natives around him, and that wealth had to come from somewhere... Atrus even fingers him as the suspect in his message to Catherine.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: Plays it up even more by giggling like a child whenever he speaks.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Is coded blue, but is known for violent outbursts. He starts becoming rational after he realizes how far he has fallen.
  • Redemption Equals Death: After his Heel–Face Turn in IV, he dies saving Yeesha from Sirrus.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Much like his brother, he's trapped in a prison book and he depends on you to break him out. Although he's not as bad in Myst IV.
  • Uneven Hybrid: He's 1/2 Rivenese (with possible Earth origins if the Rivenese language is any indication), 1/4 Amad Indian (Earth native), 1/8 D'ni (Ronay), 1/8 unspecified European (Earth native).
  • Villainous Breakdown: Suffered one in Haven. After realising he was trapped on his own with no Linking Book, and he got assaulted by a gigantic reptilian apex predator, his already unstable mind underwent a complete psychotic meltdown, causing him to butcher his way through half the Age's animal inhabitants in blind rage and going out of his way to utterly exterminate the entire Cerpatee species. Ultimately subverted, as he eventually came to terms with his fate and realised with all the blood on his hands just why he deserved to be there. Eventually, this led to his redemption.
  • Walking Spoiler: Later games make no effort to hide that both Sirrus and Achenar are evil.

    Catherine 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Catherine_Riven_2845.jpg
Played by: Sheila Goold (Riven), Maria Galante (Myst III: Exile)
Voiced by: Rengin Altay (Riven), Claudia Besso (Myst IV: Revelation)

Atrus' wife and a native of the Riven Age.

  • Accidental Misnaming: On Atrus's part. Her birth name is Katran, but because Atrus is unfamiliar with the language, he mistakenly refers to her as Catherine. She eventually takes this on as her actual name.
  • A God I Am Not: Played with. She's clearly uncomfortable with the godlike treatment she receives from the Moiety, but while she never sees herself as a god, she does eventually realize this can be used as a tool to galvanize them against Gehn.
  • And Now You Must Marry Me: Gehn springs this on her in Book of Atrus. It doesn't pan out for him.
  • Beyond the Impossible: The novels feature her Age "Torus", a stable doughnut-shaped world, which features a huge waterfall that falls through the planet's core, turns into rain and gets carried back by clouds to refill the ocean, which in turn feeds the waterfall. Atrus' reaction to first seeing this was that, until then, he had thought it impossible to do such things with the Art. Most of Catherine's Ages seem to have a touch of insanity, including the equally trippy Serenia. Atrus even acknowledges this when he realizes that Myst Island couldn't have been written solely by Catherine, because it was too normal!
  • Cloud Cuckoo Lander: She comes off as one on occasion due to the bizarre nature of her Ages and her enigmatic dialogue, especially in the novels.
  • Damsel in Distress: In Riven. One of the major goals of the game is to free her.
  • Dreaming of Things to Come: Implied to have this ability.
  • Foil: To Gehn. Both are outcasts from their respective civilizations who are elevated to a position of godhood by the Rivenese people. However, unlike Gehn, who abuses his godhood for personal glory, Catherine reluctantly uses her position as a means liberate the Rivenese. Gehn believes in the superiority of the D'ni race and has rejected his human blood, whereas Catherine works among the D'ni as a representative of the human capacity to excel at the Art. She is also shown to be an exceptional Age writer, while his Ages fall apart due to ineptitude.
    • Both Catherine and Gehn start off the game trapped on Riven by their own children. Additionally, with the end of Riven, both of them have witnessed the destruction of the worlds they were born in.
    • The similarities between them get a humorous nod in Book of D'ni, when Atrus is offered a pipe similar to Gehn's by a D'ni villager. After Atrus accepts it out of pure courtesy, Catherine immediately takes it from him and smokes it like a boss.
  • The Ghost:
    • In Revelation, where she has a journal and dialogue in memory flashbacks, but never actually appears.
    • In the first game as well, where she is referenced often, but her fate is left unrevealed until the sequel.
  • Good Parents: She still cares for her sons despite their transgressions. In Revelation, Sirrus has a potted plant given to him by her, while one memory of Achenar's centers on him gushing about his mother bringing him clean clothes.
  • Happily Married: In spite of all the hardship they go through and the strain Gehn and their sons put on them, Atrus and Catherine have always been shown to care deeply for one another.
  • The Illegible: Probably has the most chicken-scratch handwriting out of any character, perhaps to demonstrate that English is not her first language. This is especially evident in Revelation where her journal would be nigh-unreadable if not for the narration.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: With her grandmother-in-law Anna.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: Downplayed. Atrus's D'ni blood ensures that he'll outlive her, but he still ages, and he doesn't outlive her by that much.
  • Messianic Archetype: The Moiety see her as this.
  • Mysterious Waif: As a young girl in Book of Atrus.
  • Outliving One's Offspring: By the end of the fourth game, she has outlived both Sirrus and Achenar.
  • Posthumous Character: In V, she's since passed away.
  • Rescue Romance: One of her cousins saves Atrus from drowning when he accidentally ingests Rivenese water, and Catherine nurses him back to health. Later, her clever planning with Anna helps Atrus escape.

    Gehn 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/menacing_6563.jpg
Played by: John Keston

Atrus' father and the main antagonist of Riven. Played by "Francis Douglas Arthur Caston", or simply John Keston.

  • A God Am I: Has a massive god complex, entering the Ages he writes and declaring himself to be a god to the inhabitants.
  • And I Must Scream: Gehn suffers this fate in Riven if you do things right.
  • Archnemesis Dad: To his son Atrus.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Gehn's unwillingness to properly master The Art means he has to compensate by using slave labor to build contraptions to make his books work to begin with. These include his massive Fire Marble Domes which require a colossal amount of power to function and his smaller-system system he has in his office, both of which aren't portable. Cathrine's method in contrast is Simple, yet Awesome, as she expertly salvages a descriptive book that Gehn thought was a failure and makes a stable descriptive book to a habitable world with a type of gemstone that can power Gehn's books. This allows books with lower quality materials to function, and Cathrine only needs to use a fire marble dome once for the first link to acquire the gemstones.
  • Beige Prose: Exaggerated. Rather than actually learn the art of The Art, like his son, Gehn treats writing like a science, scavenging through old D'ni linking books to learn "formulas" and deleting any "unnecessary" words to preserve his ink supply. This has a direct and negative effect on the stability of his worlds. Atrus, who spends years and years trying to stabilize Gehn's Magnum Opus, the book of Riven, compares his work to looking at a collage of masterful tapestries and paintings haphazardly cut apart and strung together to form an image with no regard for cohesion or style.
  • Berserk Button: Do not toy around with Gehn's patience, he will respond with deadly results.
  • Big Bad: Of Riven. Trapping him is one of the major goals, and not doing that gets both you and Atrus killed.
  • Cutting the Knot: In Book of Atrus while he and young Atrus are exploring some D'ni ruins, he quickly decides to smash his way through a D'ni lock rather than wait for Atrus to figure out the puzzle solution. Given the genre he's in, this attitude marks him as a villain.
  • Disappointed in You: He's eternally unhappy with Atrus's inability to see things his way. Atrus, with every slow revelation that Gehn is kind of a mediocre loser skating along on other peoples' successes, eventually returns the favor. Upon discovering that Gehn didn't even actually chart out the D'ni tunnels, the very last accomplishment Atrus thought he could be proud of his father for, he intends for his last words to a sleeping Gehn to be "Why did you have to be so small a man?"
  • Disease Bleach: Never explicitly stated, but his hair is mentioned to already be white at the age of 33 in Book of Atrus. This could imply that he experienced this trope after the loss of his wife or from the general trauma in his early years.
  • Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: Constantly smoking from one in both the games and the books. Its not tobacco: it's an extract from poisonous frogs he captures.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Mentioned very briefly in Atrus's journal for the Stoneship Age in Myst, with a bit of contextual foreshadowing thrown in for good measure.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Most of his diary is filled with pompous declarations about his own importance and ranting... until you reach the page where he grieves for his wife whom he has not seen in years. There is a teardrop stain in the corner.
  • Evil Gloating: He indulges in a bit of this in the conclusion of The Book of Atrus, which gives Atrus and Catherine the chance to outmaneuver him. He's largely grown out of it in Riven, reacting with composed dignity even when he's not trying to manipulate the player into sympathizing with him, although once he has a captive audience he does indulge a little.
  • Evil Old Folks: He has more in common with Sirrus than his son, and by the time the player encounters him he's had time to grow old, although he's clearly still very spry and dangerous.
  • Evil Overlord: On a scale much greater than Sirrus and Achenar, as he actually knows how to use the Art (albeit using a simple and imperfect method compared to that used by actual masters like his son and ancestors) to Link to worlds. He uses it to create disasters on worlds, sometimes when they resist or displease him and sometimes out of actual incompetence. He also has an actual army on Riven.
  • Fatal Flaw: His pride in his abilities and inability to learn and grow at The Art ultimately dooms him. Atrus details in his journal that his prison book can trick those who are not properly versed in The Art which is how it will trap Gehn. The challenge will be finding the correct method of luring him into the book, as he is still cautious about using it first.
  • Faux Affably Evil: He is soft-spoken and unfailingly cordial in your conversations with him, and he claims that he's a better man for his time trapped in Riven - even expressing regret for trying to kill Atrus during the backstory. It's just a mask to disguise his true ambitions, but unlike his grandsons he actually mostly keeps his composure even in the worst endings where he's won. During a bad ending he goes so far as to politely apologize for shooting you with a poison dart and muse nostalgically on the chance of seeing Atrus again while you slowly die in the background. The closest he gets to their Evil Gloating is a reserved smirk in the bad ending where the player has unleashed him from the trap book in Tay, musing that it looks like he and the Moiety might be able to settle their differences after all.
  • Freudian Excuse:
    • Being taken from his parents at a young age seems to have had a particularly traumatic affect on him, to the extent that he's still bitter about it as an adult.
    • Losing Keta seems to be the other major thing. The time gap between Book of Ti'ana and Book of Atrus makes it ambiguous which event is his true Start of Darkness, since we don't get to see his state of mind prior to her loss.
  • Game-Over Man: Takes over for Atrus in this regard. If you release him from the trap book, he will puzzle over your naivete and leave you in the void to take his place. Likewise, if you summon him unwittingly on Riven by summoning Atrus too early, he plugs Atrus with a poison blowdarts, then has his guard do the same to you after mockingly thanking you for setting him free.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Half human from his mother and half D'ni, whose father is a D'ni while his mother is a human from the surface.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: As a way to justify his A God Am I behavior, he always frames his blatant colonialism and oppression as necessary steps for the glorious rebirth of the D'ni race.
  • I Have No Son!: If he meets Atrus in Riven, he will bellow "...I am no longer your father because you are no longer my son!" right before shooting him dead in cold blood, then having his guard fire the gun on you.
  • Irony:
    • He was subject to prejudice and mistreatment at the hands of other D'ni children as a boy, but as a grown man he's thoroughly internalized their supremacism and treats other peoples with contempt while glorying in his heritage.
    • He talks a big game about restoring the glory of the D'ni race, but in practice he's an inadequate failure in virtually every way, an exemplar of all the worst excesses of his people with none of their positive accomplishments. It is the son he despised as a failure who instead reassembles the survivors and reinvigorates the D'ni people.
    • He lords over the inhabitants of his Ages by virtue of his supposed creative powers, but Gehn is actually a pretty uncreative guy. He treats the Art as a science where "formulas" are inscribed into books rather than words in sentences, he slaps his Ages with numbers instead of actual names, and even in Riven he seems to have solved most of his problems with brute force and power rather than thinking laterally. Again, this in contrast with his son and daughter-in-law.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • Gehn built a ceremonial gallows to abuse his position as self-appointed "God" of Riven, complete with an elevator throne to preside over the execution. The location is visited early in the game and the means of death is discovered upon simply exploring the islands. And the means the player uses to learn D'ni numerals is a toy for children in a schoolhouse, where the whark eats the prisoner at the end.
    • He also traps the cute little frogs so that he turn them into some kind of extract he smokes in his pipe.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: He's so convinced in his particular worldview that he constantly fails to learn from his mistakes. In particular this means that the Ages he writes are always flawed, because he refuses to study the fundamental rules of the Art. He constantly espouses the greatness of the D'ni civilization, but most of the traits he assigns to them are completely invented or at most half-remembered from his childhood.
  • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Atrus is originally pretty impressed with his father at the start of The Book of Atrus, even if Gehn is still pretty cold and unloving, but as the book continues he becomes more and more aware of just how little his father's actually accomplished, how much of what Gehn has accomplished is just digging up other people's work and passing it off as his own, and how little Gehn actually understands about these things he's stolen. He's only really able to rule over the Rivenese by terrorizing them into compliance with advanced technology and passing himself off as a god (the Rivenese themselves being much smarter than he gives them credit for), and in the time it takes Atrus to raise a family and build many wonders across many worlds, Gehn's barely managed to get a single new Age working while stuck in Riven.
  • Offing the Offspring: Any goodwill between him and his son is long extinguished. If you give him the chance, he will kill Atrus. And you as well.
  • Psychological Projection: He tries to pass off his harsh rule of Riven as the Natives being a violent people by nature, but Gehn is the one who is abusing his status as a "God" by indoctrinating children from a young age to be obedient or face execution by being fed to a whark at his gallows. Gehn will also shoot Atrus dead in cold blood if given the chance and then have his lackey do the same to you.
  • Relieved Failure: Subverted. He states that he's relieved to have failed in his efforts to kill his son Atrus, and even claims to be grateful for being imprisoned in Riven, as it allowed him the time he needed to rethink his life. He's lying: if you've seen his efforts to indoctrinate the natives into worshipping him as a god, it's clear that he hasn't changed at all - and if you make the mistake of letting him go free he'll kill Atrus in cold blood and do the same to you.
  • Shoddy Knockoff Product: In universe, his descriptive books are dodgy imitations of safer and superior works thanks to heavy use of Beige Prose to preserve ink and thanks to his unwillingness to learn the Art properly.
  • Smoking Is Not Cool: He's one of the series' main antagonists and is the only major character shown to be a heavy smoker. Also, the substance he smokes is extracted from frogs. In our world, smoking toad extract can cause hallucinations and delusions of grandeur, suggesting that he might be exacerbating his own megalomaniac state by indulging.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: At the end of Myst Atrus refers to Gehn as an enemy far worse than his sons, foreshadowing the events of Riven.
  • Too Dumb to Live: It's out of his desperation to escape Riven, but the player has seen multiple telltale signs on Riven that Gehn hasn't changed in the slightest, including the still-active Moiety rebellion and potentially Cathrine warning you that he'll kill Atrus if given the chance. Yet in the end, after you enter into the prison book first to demonstrate its safety, he fails to consider that Atrus made it a "one-man-prison" and you're actually baiting him into the prison so that he ejects you. Gehn's limited expertise on trap books means he's too trusting.
  • Villains Out Shopping: The supplemental booklet for the soundtrack contains extra pages from Gehn's journal where he discusses some of his hobbies.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: You don't hear from Gehn after he is imprisoned. Does he mend? Does he die unreformed? Is he lost in the library fire?
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: His journal in the 233rd Age seems to indicate that he sees his deceased father this way. Additionally, the portraits in his room feature his father alongside his wife, while his much maligned mother is curiously absent.
  • White Man's Burden: His journal in the 233rd age makes it absolutely clear that he views the inhabitants of Riven this way. In fact, the entire group of islands bear striking marks of Gehn's "civilizing mission" agenda; from his destruction of the natural ecosystems to an indoctrinating schoolhouse he's set up for the natives to a literal temple where he's set himself up as a god.
  • You Have Failed Me: Trying his patience is a very bad course of action, as failing three times to enter the trap book to demonstrate its safety will get you shot by him in anger.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Gehn has this view of associates once they've given all their perceived value.

    Saavedro 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Saavedro_Wallpaper_by_MagicHinata_3097.jpg
Played by: Brad Dourif

A man who wants revenge against Atrus for the horrific crimes his sons caused to his homeland; and the main villain of Exile.

  • All for Nothing: Even if he'd hooked in Atrus instead of the Stranger, achieving his aim would've been impossible. Without a concrete understanding of the Art and how it works, he incorrectly believes Atrus has the godlike power to rewind time and remake reality, and that Atrus would be able to "fix" his world. And it turns out his world's not quite as destroyed as he believes.
  • Ax-Crazy: Despite his sympathetic qualities, he will kill you at the drop of a hat if given the opportunity, especially during the whirlwind of emotions he's experiencing in the finale.
  • Being Tortured Makes You Evil: To at least some extent, his misanthropy stems from his treatment by Atrus' sons.
  • Big "NO!": Brad Dourif really belts out the "nos" during the various stages of his Villainous Breakdown in the finale.
  • Fate Worse than Death: In one of his rants to Atrus, he mentions how Sirrus and Achenar destroyed his civilization and separated him from his family, concluding that "It would have been better if I had died." In one of the endings, you can put him in an even worse fate than the one Sirrus and Achenar put him through.
  • Foil: To the Stranger. Both were trapped in a strange world because of Atrus' mistakes and Sirrus and Achenar's misdeeds, but whereas the Stranger landed on an empty island where the brothers could only try to manipulate them, was able to solve the predicament, and subsequently chose to be helpful, Saavedro was physically and psychologically tortured by the brothers and then abandoned, had no means of escape, slowly went mad from isolation, and devoted his energies to revenge.
  • Go Mad from the Isolation: Having no one to talk to for more than a decade but the small animals he hunts for food hasn't helped his already tenuous mental health.
  • Heel Realization: If the Stranger reclaims the Releeshahn book, leaving him with no more bargaining chips to try to push them around, but then chooses to restore power and drop the shield anyway, Saavedro is struck dumb by their mercy, visibly aware that he does not deserve it, and can only make a wordless gesture of respect and gratitude as he returns to his people.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: After witnessing the destruction of his civilization at the hands of Atrus's sons, he's determined to destroy Atrus's future by ripping away Releeshahn. In his diary, he admits that this isn't necessarily fair, but he's so enraged at seeing Atrus move on in his life and rebuild his family that he doesn't care anymore.
  • I Have Your Wife: Holds the only contact Atrus has to his people hostage in order to get him to fix what Sirrus and Achenar did twenty years prior.
  • I Lied: Saavedro offers to return Releeshahn to the player freely at the end of Myst III when it turns out he can't return home without help. If you take up his offer directly, he gleefully tosses the book into an abyss and scampers off home.
  • Large Ham: He mostly restrains himself during his message to Atrus and while pacing and waiting for the player to solve the puzzles for the rest of the game, but during his Villainous Breakdown in the finale Brad Dourif really starts chewing the scenery.
  • Last of His Kind: Saavedro thinks himself to be the last of the Narayani race due to a rather nasty civil war that occurred on his home Age and disrupted the delicate balance they needed to maintain in order to survive in it. This is not the case.
  • Rapid-Fire "No!": Saavedro has two, alluding to the final line of Brad Dourif's first film character.
  • Sadistic Choice: In the finale, he discovers that his people aren't dead after all, and his civilization may have survived… but the only way to reach them involves a switch he can't throw himself without sealing himself off from them. He tries Cutting the Knot by ordering the player to throw it for him.
  • Tragic Villain: He started off simply as an innocent victim of Sirrus and Achenar's reign of terror, trapped alone on a desolate age for decades, believing his civilization to be destroyed, and unable to return to his wife and children. However, he has devolved into a genuine force of evil only just barely better than Sirrus and Achenar, and if you want to show mercy to him you'd better make sure you find a way to do it without giving him the opportunity to backstab you because he will take it with gusto.
  • Villainous Breakdown: From the point where he walks into the finale with a big grin that instantly melts into surprise mixed with despair to see that you're not Atrus, to the moment that the player character outwits and turns the table on him, Saavedro is in a steady state of ongoing meltdown that only escalates with each new development. This helps explain why so many of the endings involve him bludgeoning the Stranger to death with a hammer in a frenzy when the opportunity presents itself.
    Saavedro: Oh god. No. Please, don't do this to me. Not when my family could still be alive out there. You want the book? Here, I'll give you the book. Just… please, please, don't do this. Please, I can't… do this again. Please, don't leave me trapped here like this. I can't! … NO! NO! No, no, no! No no no no no no no…

    Yeesha 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yeesha_4323.jpg
As a child.As an adult 
Played by: Audrey Uhler (Myst III: Exile), Juliette Gosselin (Myst IV: Revelation)
Voiced by: Rengin Altay (Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, Myst V: End of Ages)

The daughter of Atrus and Catherine.

  • Achievements in Ignorance: Yeesha can do a lot of things when writing Ages that were previously thought impossible. It turns out that a lot of these supposedly hard-and-fast natural laws surrounding the process of writing linking books were just ancient traditions which had been around so long they were assumed to be laws. By being raised and taught in an environment where those weren't drummed into her head, Yeesha is able to accomplish things that everything her forefathers knew told them should cause her worlds to self-destruct.
  • Adaptation Dye-Job: She's brownish/sandy blonde like Atrus in Revelation, but as an adult she has black hair, making her look more like Catherine.
  • Broken Bird: In End Of Ages.
  • Bound and Gagged: In Revelation.
  • The Chosen One: She writes in a letter to Atrus: "I have seen new life, and brought it forth myself. And I go now to become the grower. If only you could see. Perhaps you do." Subverted.
  • Creepy Child: Later part of Myst IV - Sirrus possesses Yeesha's body. He does a good job at impersonating her, but his language slips through. Comes to a head in the bad endings, in which she smiles sweetly as she shoots you with a crossbow.
  • Daddy's Girl: Her father always calls her "my desert bird". In End Of Ages, when everything falls apart, they still have each other.
  • Damsel in Distress: Just like her mother. It must run in the family.
  • Inferiority Superiority Complex: She felt her sin all the more acutely because the D'ni expected her to be a selfless hero, yet in a way she was addicted to that same lie. In the good ending, the player forces her to go cold turkey...and Yeesha is overjoyed, because she can finally admit how imperfect she feels.
  • It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: A lot of her journals in Myst V have entries where she writes about how much being the Grower weighs on her, and how much trouble it's brought her.
  • Meaningful Name: Yeesha means "laughter" in D'ni. Inverted later in her life, sadly.
  • Messianic Archetype: Subverted. She fails to fulfill the role due to her own pride.
  • Sins of Our Fathers: "And a daughter will carry the burden of her father."
  • Third Time's The Charm: This could be unintentional, but as numbers are important to the D'ni, maybe it's no coincidence that Atrus has three children. He feels a lot of guilt and pain over the fact that the first two end up evil, so he goes out of his way to make sure he doesn't make the same mistakes with his daughter. She ends up good, though troubled, and plays an important role in the future of D'ni.
  • Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Goes from a happy, lively 10-year-old to a brooding, desperate adult who seems to have the weight of the world on her shoulders.
  • Uneven Hybrid: She's 1/2 Rivenese (with possible Earth origins if the Rivenese language is any indication), 1/4 Amad Indian (Earth native), 1/8 D'ni (Ronay), 1/8 unspecified European (Earth native).
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Releasing her pet ladybugs in Revelation just for the heck of it.

    Guildmaster Kadish 

A D'ni engineer and the last owner of The Watcher's Sanctuary. The Many of the ages explored in Uru were his work.

  • A God Am I: Believed himself to be 'The Grower,' one prophesized to restore the D'ni civilization to it's former glory.
  • Death by Materialism: When the the fall of D'ni started, he retreated to his vault and locked himself inside to be with his valuables... lacking any food or water. He didn't use the linking book he had with him due to the terror of dying away from his riches.
  • Dem Bones: All that remains of Kadish is a bleached skeleton in a tattered robe. Unless one were to be in the Alternate Vault.
  • False Prophet: He claimed to be "the Grower" and he wrote Ages that he used to prove that he had awesome reality-warping abilities. Turns out they were mechanically manufactured and he was just a fraud.
  • Light Is Not Good: Kadish is strongly associated with light. Two of the puzzles leading to his vault feature lighting the floor in some manner, he created a bio-luminescent bacteria that could light the waters in the D'ni Cavern. In short, he brought light to D'ni, both literally and figuratively. This enlightenment was a corrupting force, according to Yeesha. His actions and beliefs were what truly doomed D'ni during the fall.
  • Not Quite Dead: Yeesha, in what was both an act of pity, and to prove who the Grower truly is, wrote an alternate version of the age of Kadish Tolesa. The vault within is empty of both treasure and Kadish. It is unknown what fate Kadish met in the Alternate Vault, but it is possible that some version of Kadish still lives.
  • Posthumous Character: He is long dead by the time the player finds him, but his story is used by Yeesha to illustrate the fall of D'ni.
  • Rich Recluse's Realm: One of the wealthiest of the D'ni, he wrote his own private Age - Kadish Tolesa - designed to safeguard his wealth in a hidden vault, protected in turn by a myriad of cryptic puzzles of his own design. When the Fall of D'ni came, Kadish locked himself in his vault and died there despite having a Linking Book out, claiming in his death note that he would rather die with his riches than die with nothing.
  • Time Travel: He wrote the age of Ahnonay, which he claims can be used to accomplish this. This is subverted when you figure out how the age truly functions.
  • Unwinnable by Design: An In-Universe Example, Kadish's Path of the Shell, was designed this way. The way to the tree is blocked by a boulder that could freely roll up the path, but would always block the exit. No matter what anyone tried, the boulder would always return to the start, and there was no way around. The boulder is not the true path of the shell. It is referred to as the path of the stone. The true path of the shell is simply to wait in the right place.

    Nekisahloth 
Leader of the evil Bahro, and murderer of Willow Engberg and Rosette Taylor.

    Esher 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/esher_for_tv_tropes_9.jpg
Voiced by: David Ogden Stiers

One of the last pure-blood survivors of the D'ni, who guides you to help secure the Tablet in Myst V.

  • Big Bad: Of V.
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: If you give him the Tablet.
  • Fantastic Racist: He thinks of the D'ni as superior to all other races. He also appears to have appropriated the Terahnee word "Bahro" (used to refer to all non-Ronay) to refer to the creatures that link naturally.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: In regards to performing tortuous experiments on the Bahro. Or so he tells you; quite possibly a Subverted Trope as all available suggests he would have enjoyed such barbaric behavior against the Bahro.
  • Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: Very much gives off this vibe towards the Bahro.
    Esher: The creatures. You've seen them; always watching, calling to one another in the darkness. Loathesome wraiths. They are not as we are.
  • Final Boss: He's the villain of the final game in the series, and potentially the most dangerous if he were to succeed, given that he's an actual D'ni with full understanding of the Art.
  • Jerkass: He is incredibly unpleasant. Even when you give him the Tablet, he insults you and traps you on Myst Island forever.
  • Last of His Kind: He believes so, though there are many other D'ni living on Releeshahn.
  • Mr. Exposition: He shows up A LOT in Myst V. Perhaps even way too much.
  • Treacherous Advisor: He will help you along your journey, but only to further his own ends. Once you're of no further use to him he leaves you to die, even if you gave him what he wanted.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Goes into a particularly hammy one in the good ending, while being imprisoned by the Bahro.
    Esher: You… idiot! Moronic lump of filth! You are nothing! Rrghh — I needed the power! I needed it! D'ni needed me! You threw it away to this witch and her legion of scum, the demon slaves! You have released the slaves as masters! You've turned the small to great! Curse the Maker…

    The Bahro 
A race of vaguely humanoid beings that were enslaved by the D'ni long ago.
  • Fantastic Racism: Were on the receiving end of it from the D'ni, who enslaved them, referred to them with derogatory names like 'Bahro' and 'the Least' and treated them like animals, despite their sapience (they have their own language and a number system) and their powers.
  • Geometric Magic: The Bahro are commanded through symbols, usually drawn on a slate and placed on the ground for them to see.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: After they're freed, they split into two factions, one that is happy to be around humans and one that hates all humans and human subspecies because of how much they suffered under them, and want to kill them.
  • Of the People: 'Bahro' is actually a D'ni word meaning 'Beast People', which they used to mean anyone who was not of Ronay descent. What the Bahro call themselves isn't known.
  • Reality Warper: They are extremely powerful reality warpers, and can do things like summoning heat or rain and speeding up time.
  • Slave Race: They were enslaved by the D'ni to build their empire.
  • Teleporters and Transporters: They can link at will.
  • Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: Two arms, two legs, and wings.
  • Weather Manipulation: They can summon immense heat, rain and wind.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: They are absolutely petrified of snakes, even of a vaguely snake-like symbol.

Book-Only Characters

    Ti'ana (Anna) 

The human woman who stumbled upon the D'ni civilization after the death of her father. Grandmother of Atrus. She inadvertently causes the destruction of the D'ni city after advocating against Veovis's execution.

  • Action Girl: Despite Myst not being an especially action-driven series, her adventurous nature and stubbornness tends to give off this vibe.
  • Arc Words: "Atrus...what do you see?"
  • Cool Old Lady: Becomes one later in life.
  • Determinator:
    • Oh boy. Anna set off on her own into the wild with nothing but a wagon full of supplies after her father's death. After her entire adopted civilization is destroyed because of her mistake, leaving her a widow, she simply gets up and dusts herself off, raising two children in the barren desert.
    • Deciding to bring Gehn home from the Guild of Books without informing anyone, and persisting even after being turned away by the security guards.
    • When Gehn takes Atrus to D'ni, she secretly follows them for years, just to make sure that Atrus is safe.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Lived to a ripe old age, only to be killed off in an undisclosed accident on one of Catherine's Ages.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: She's mentioned in Gehn's journal in Riven before her appearances in the book series.
  • Happy Rain: With her future husband in Book of Ti'ana, and her grandson in Book of Atrus. The scene in Book of Ti'ana is also an example of Romantic Rain, as it's a turning point in their relationship.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Anna and Catherine had a close friendship during their time together on Myst Island.
  • Interspecies Romance: With Aitrus, he’s pure D'ni while she is pure human.
  • Maligned Mixed Marriage: The D'ni are not happy about one of their own mingling with an outsider.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: Her husband is over 70 when they marry, but because of his species' slow aging, he's still her peer. Ironically, she far outlives him.
  • Meaningful Name: An In-Universe example: the D'ni seem to be unable to pronounce her human name correctly. This eventually causes Aitrus to give her the name Ti'ana, the D'ni word for "Storyteller", due his appreciation of her tales about life on the surface.
  • The Mentor: Anna takes on the role of mentor for her grandson Atrus.
  • Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: She inadvertently is the reason behind the destruction of the D'ni city.
  • Missing Mom: Killed in a climbing accident, as she eventually reveals to Aitrus.
  • Mr. Imagination: Has this tendency, as shown by her unusual interpretation of the D'ni tunneling equipment.
  • Posthumous Character: She's portrayed this way in the video game series.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Her character didn't exist yet in original Myst, so her having lived on Myst with Atrus and Catherine comes off like this. Given a nod in the remakes of the game, which give her a headstone on the island.
  • Widow Witch: Purposely invoked by her on the traders who visit the Cleft. She warns Atrus that the traders would sell him into slavery if they knew he existed, so she pretends to be this trope to keep his existence hidden.

    Book of Ti'ana 

Aitrus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aitrus_for_tv_tropessmaller.png

A D'ni citizen and member of the Guild of Surveyors. Grandfather of Atrus.

  • Apocalyptic Log: His escape map of the D'ni tunnels after the fall.
  • Determinator: He spends days wandering the destroyed D'ni tunnels to create an escape map that can get his remaining family out of danger, then re-writes a descriptive book into a death Age, all while he's still dying from the plague. He's ultimately not even killed by the plague itself, but when he links to said death Age himself to trick A'gaeris.
    • Early on, his choice to forfeit his guild status, something shown to be extremely important to him, in order to be able to marry Ti'ana.
  • Distressed Dude: Briefly when Veovis and A'gaeris knock him out and chain him up.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Quite literally, as a photo of him appears on the wall in Gehn's room in Riven.note  He's also mentioned in Gehn's journal.
  • Good Parents: A rare example for the series, he's for the most part a competent and caring father. Subverted, however: D'ni culture norms sometimes cause him to do things that prove harmful to his family, with some of these actions forming the basis of his son's Freudian Excuse.

Veovis

A young D'ni noblemen with a hot temper, a member of the Guild of Writers. Allies himself with A'gaeris and plots the destruction of D'ni.

  • Aristocrats Are Evil: An example using the title of Lord.
  • Cassandra Truth: A'gaeris' initial framing of Veovis for murder results in one, due to convincingly forged evidence. The entire fall of D'ni can be seen as A'gaeris consciously weaponizing this trope.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: A strange example. Even after decimating his entire civilization, he's alarmed when A'gaeris suggests that they leave D'ni and find an Age on which they can rule as gods. Although it can be argued that by this point, My God, What Have I Done? had set in for Veovis.
  • Evil Former Friend: To Aitrus.
  • Fantastic Racism: His resentment of Ti'ana for being human is one of the driving forces behind his Start of Darkness.
  • Foil: To Aitrus. Both of them are proud of their D'ni heritage, and initially want the best for their civilization, but while Aitrus is open to contact with the surface, Veovis fears it will bring the destruction of D'ni. Interestingly, neither one of them is completely wrong. Ti'ana's arrival did spell D'ni's doom, but it was Veovis's hatred of her that caused the fall.

A'gaeris

A former member of the Guild of Writers who was long ago stripped of his title. Allies himself with Veovis and plots the destruction of D'ni.

  • Big Bad: Turns out to be a straighter example than Veovis, as everything that happens in the series is a result of his actions.
  • The Chessmaster: Among other things, he successfully plays Aitrus and Veovis against each other to further damage their relationship and get Veovis under his control. While the D'ni seem to mostly remember Veovis and/or Ti'ana as being responsible for causing the fall later on in the series, A'gaeris was the one pulling the strings all along.
  • The Philosopher: An antagonistic example. He's even referred to as such by the other characters.

    Book of D'ni 

The Terahnee

The wealthy, decadent cousins of the D'ni rediscovered by Atrus and his crew in Book of D'ni.

  • Extreme Speculative Stratification: With their Book-writing ability, they have unlimited access to land and resources, and indeed among their own kind even the very poor live in huge mansions, control land the size of a small country, barely work and spend most of their time in pursuit of the arts or playing extravagant games. However, the Terahnee decided that, with unlimited access to natural resources, the power source of their civilization should be slave labor. Because they see themselves as superior to other races, they enslave them and force them to work in backbreaking labor until death, while being carefully trained to never make a sound or be seen by their masters.
  • Faux Affably Evil: A whole nation of Mr. Sensibles, who are socially conditioned to ignore (and intensify) the the misery of their slaves.
  • Punny Name: The country of 'Terahnee' is built on “tyranny” towards enslaved peoples.

Marrim

A girl from the Age of Averone who becomes one of Atrus's apprentices.

  • Mythology Gag: A plucky human girl travels to a far-off civilization and falls in love with a misfit young man from said civilization just before the civilization is completely decimated by a deadly plague. This references the events of Book of Ti'ana, with Marrim as Ti'ana.
  • Small Town Boredom: Expresses this as part of her desire to leave her home Age.
  • The Cameo: She appears on one of the tapestries in Atrus's study at the beginning of Exile.

Eedrah ro'Jethhe

One of the few Terahnee who deigns to see the Relyimah.

ro'Eh ro'Dan

The king of the Terahnee.

  • Being Evil Sucks: Atrus wonders how much a prisoner of Terahnee's ways ro'Eh ro'Dan was.

Uta

A slave child on Terahnee.

Ymur

A Terahnee slave.

Alternative Title(s): Myst III Exile, Riven, Myst IV Revelation, Uru Ages Beyond Myst, Myst V End Of Ages

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