Savreedo was not thinking straight at the end of Myst Exile because he was thinking about reuniting with his family
At the end Savreedo wants you to drop the outer shield so he can go back to his family. He should be able to see the lever that will do this from the area outside where the inner shield should appear. If he wanted to be careful he would have stood there and stared at you and the lever. When he sees you sprinting up the stairs he'd should've been tipped off and gone after you before you could trap him between the two.
Also in the ending where you don't get him to give up the book by trapping him and let him go he destroys Releeshan. He thinks Atrius is a) at least partly responsible for the ravaging of his home world and b) can manipulate worlds on a fundamental level. He now has everthing he wants and chooses to piss of a creature that could annihilate his homeworld again. By doing this he may have ensured that he will be reunited with his family only for everyone to die together when Narayan is reduced to a burning wasteland or have his entire species at the mercy of a vengeful being who can inflict unending suffering on them. In that ending he was lucky that Atrius was so merciful otherwise his entire world could have been turned into something out of Event Horizon
Myst is an allegory for colonial imperialism
Atrus represents the explorers who charted new, undiscovered areas and left them wide open for European takeover, represented by Sirrus and Achenar. Sirrus represents the colonists' greed and lust for power, while Achenar represents the atrocities they committed to get those things.
The Mechanical Age represents Europe, specifically the political factors behind colonial imperialism. Europe at the time was ruled by absolute monarchs who used fear and repression to extract heavy taxes from their subjects. Stoneship is the Age of Exploration, where the first colonizers sailed to the new world to extract gold and silver from it. Channelwood is Africa, where religion is used to justify the subjugation of local populations by the Europeans. Lastly we get to Selenetic, or rather the Space Age, which is an alien world littered with probes and exploration equipment. This is where we're at today; the reason Sirrus and Achenar haven't destroyed the age is because Europeans aren't there yet, they are still in the process of exploring potential worlds to conquer.
Gehn is the White Man's Burden personified.
The Mysterious Stranger looks like Atrius
Savreedo seems to mistake the stranger for Atrius during the third game but later realises his mistake. They might actually look quite similar. Perhaps as part of a fourth wall break the stranger is Rand Miller, the guy who helped write Myst and who plays Atrius. The stranger is from earth after all and the theme is entering into the worlds you write.
Matti 23Myst was trashed by pirates from Mechanical
Sooner or later, they'd realize that the fortress is no longer inhabited. Some pirates might get curious.
- Yeah, I'd say leaving a Myst linking book in an age like that is a pretty bad idea.
- Agreed. Sure, it's locked up... by a combination that's written down in plain sight. You have to figure out the puzzle that lets you get to the combination, but the pirates just have to sail up to the other islands with their ships, land on the shore, read the answers, and put in the combination!
- My guess would be is that Atrus merely committed the combination to memory, and when it no longer became necessary to remember (retreat of Black Pirates) he installed those pedestals so he could leave when he wanted. Also, TBP are no longer a threat. The sky of Mechanical was originally stormy and gray, and wouldn't change until all the black pirates were killed. When you link there, the skies are blue and clear.
All worlds have a linking book.
There was a past Golden Age where the D'Ni were either ridiculously creative and/or generous and taught their
Reality Warper methods to other peoples. How much a particular world follows the
Rules Of Index and/or takes
Acceptable Breaks from Reality depends on the author.
Related to this WMG...
...and are
Author Avatars having fun in their own world. Insert
Haruhi jokes here.
All of the series'
Ret Cons are the result of someone writing in Earth's Descriptive Book.
The parody game
Pyst actually takes place in the canon timeline.
Anyone who has seen the bad endings in Myst V would certainly believe this to cope with seeing Myst's current state. Because the Myst series of games existed in-universe, it would be a matter of time before gamers saw the ruined island and once the books linking there were salvaged; a mass load of tourists would turn Myst into the place seen in the parody. This would also make "Pyst" the last Myst game in chronological order.
Atrus and Catherine are liars
Word of God holds that all of the Myst games were based off of what Catherine wrote in her journals. The only games that were portrayed according to "real life" events were Myst V (based on what Richard A. Watson did) and Uru, hence the many
Ret Cons. Of course,
Literary Agent Hypothesis can go both ways. Atrus and Catherine could have recorded anything they wanted into their journals, effectively changing the past and there wouldn't be any way to prove them wrong.
- What Ret Cons? Besides the Prison Age one, which was explicitly mentioned to be a shortcut for gameplay (not that that makes sense as an answer...), the only ones I can think of are those related to the rules for linking between Ages, which only apply to the Bahro and to Yeesha.
The shape of an Age's inhabitants is subconsciously affected by the shape of the Writer.
This explains why every single sapient inhabitant of every single Age that is explicitly named are
Human Aliens: Atrus, Gehn, Catherine, and other Writers simply haven't figured out how to adapt
Xenofiction to the Art. In fact, it may be likely that a Xenofictionally-written Age would simply fail to link, or be so alien as to be worth nothing to the D'ni other than resources. This might be why the Bahro are enslaved by the Tablet during Uru and Myst 5: the D'ni Wrote the Noloben book xenofictionally, only to find out that the Bahro were (in their opinion) only fit to serve them, and thus the whole endeavor was a failed experiment. Alternatively, The Bahro gave the Tablet to the D'ni as a peace offering, a specieswide surrender perhaps after a genocidal war. This in turn explains why Esher was so quick to write off the Bahro's form of linking as "
an abomination" in Myst 5.
Related to the above, using a proper noun when altering a linking book, locks the link to that world
For example, changing the link to reflect that Ghen is in Riven locked that version of Riven for that linking book. This in turn probably has drastic consequences when one does further changes to the link (think Stoneship age). These changes probably work by pulling elements from related ages into the now locked age, but not necessarily placing these elements into the Age as the writer intends.
When Atrus dies, his body will be interred on Tay.
That is doubtless where Katran was laid to rest, and he will want to be interred with her.
- Or, if the D'ni and Tay don't prohibit the practice of cremation, Half his ashes will be on Releeshahn with his people, and the other half with Katran.
... Or rather, the protagonist of Myst and Riven is
Will Navidson. In
House of Leaves, it is never detailed how long Navidson disappears into the labyrinth for or how he gets out: this is because while inside the labyrinth, he discovered the Myst linking book that Atrus originally threw into the Fissure (in Myst, it is discovered by the player in what appears to be an endless black void). When he collapses into the Fissure as happens at the end of Riven, he "falls" back to the real world. This is backed up by
Myst: The Official Strategy Guide, in which the main walkthrough is narrated by
a man who has a camera: "Carrying case, plenty of film. If I couldn't document this place, nobody would believe it". The only flaw with this theory is that the protagonist of the
Guide walkthrough starts his journey in a library, rather than in a black void.As a side note that is slightly related, the makers of
The Starry Expanse Project
discovered that the Temple on the first island of Riven is
larger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Make of it what you will (explanation starts about 9:00 minutes in).
The Stranger was drawn to the Cleft by the trapped Bahro.
A small problem with putting the exit of the Star Fissure by the Cleft is that it conveniently draws all the events of the Myst series far enough away from any kind of civilization that there is no explanation for how the Stranger, an outside observer on the trials and tribulations of Atrus' family tree, was able to enter the story to begin with. However, in
Uru, an NPC in the first area mentions that lots of people had been drawn to the area, and Yeesha implies that it is her doing, with the intent to free the Bahro from their chains. (This is presumably after failing the Tablet quest as shown in
Myst V, as if she'd figured out the right thing to do with the Tablet,
Uru would have no plot). Given that by this point, Yeesha had all the powers of the Bahro without the humility to let them go as RAWA did at the end of
Myst V, at one point the Bahro must have had the power to send out a subconscious call for help, which they undoubtedly would have used, if not before the Fall of D'ni, then definitely after. So who answered this call for help? The Stranger. What did he do at the Cleft? He found the Myst book, setting off the events of
Myst and
Riven, thereby reuniting Atrus and Catherine, and forging a friendship borne of gratitude that would eventually lead to Yeesha becoming the Messiah of the Bahro and setting up the plots of
Uru and
Myst V. Of course, there's no way the Bahro would be able to extrapolate that out, which is why they didn't try the call for help again until Yeesha set up the journey cloths and the plot of
Uru.
The song "Dragostea din tei" was actually written by Saavedro about Tamra.
The chorus translates as follows:
You want to leave but you won't, won't take me,You Won't, you won't take me, you won't, you won't, you won't take me(referring to where Tamra and Saavedro's two daughters fled, where he now wishes he could have followed them)Your face (as depicted on the laboratory wall) and the love from the linden trees, (or rather, Lattice Tree, changed by O-Zone as the Lattice Tree would be unfamiliar to most listeners)They remind me of your eyes. (the one part of Tamra's face that Saavedro still cannot properly reconstruct)
Veovis was in love with Atrus.
It's somewhat out there, but it would explain why he used to torment Atrus when they were at school, why he wanted to reconnect with him at the start of The Book of Ti'Ana and also why he developed such unfathomable hatred for Anna.
The Bahro are the true inventors of Writing.
We know they've been subjugated by the D'ni for thousands of years, and their ability to Link at will seems to be innate to their species. The use of Bahro symbols in End of Ages suggests that their version of Writing is actually more powerful than that of the D'ni, as their tablets can do things with a single glyph that a D'ni Writer couldn't manage to do with an entire book's worth of script. Finally, Esher's resentment towards the Bahro species is so extreme as to suggest he knows something about them that repels him utterly, far beyond what their non-human appearance or behavior would account for.
So, rather than the D'ni having discovered Noloben, and enslaved the native Bahro to take advantage of their natural Linking abilities, perhaps the Ronay ancestors of the D'ni were themselves discovered by Bahro explorers, killed them because of their weird appearance, and stole the tablets they were carrying. Using the stolen tablets, possibly aided by patches of Bahro skin, they reverse-engineered a crude form of Linking and Writing of their own, that wasn't nearly as efficient (too many words required) but did have the advantage of using paper or cloth rather than stone. They used this new technology to spread through the Ages, eventually stumbled upon the Bahro homeworld, and quickly subjugated the beetle-creatures for fear the Bahro would avenge the slaughtered expeditionary group.
Yeesha duplicated and personalized so many Ages...
...in case Uncle Sam repeals freedom of speech or civilization goes ashcan in some other way. Many secret places for a Samizdat to preserve crimethinkful writings (or writings in general), and many secret way stations to hide refugees en route to Releeshahn.
The Star Fissure is Catherine's first age.
In the Book of Atrus when Atrus fell into the Star Fissure it described him as having the fireflies of Catherine's age... Basically Catherine wrote a
huge linking panel into her first age.
The idea that Sirrus and Achenar (and potentially Gehn) were trapped in separate Ages rather than in empty voids really was planned from the start, rather than a
Retcon decided just to bring the brothers back for
Myst IV.
Looking over at the Fridge page, a couple people have noticed connections between the first game and the two prison ages in
Myst IV- the locations of the pages in the Selenitic Age matching the prison ages, and sound effects used in the first game's bad endings also appearing in those ages. It would be pretty strange for the developers of
Myst IV to have specifically seized on that one age's environment to base the prisons on unless it were already planned. So, why were the traps presented differently in the first two games?
The Law of Conservation of Detail. If the player were informed that Sirrus and Achenar were sitting in entire separate ages in the first game, they'd want to visit those ages. But they aren't relevant to the story at all, so there's no reason to go there. If the ages were made explorable in the bad endings, where it'd actually be logical for the player to be there, players might get confused and think there were more puzzles to solve to continue the story. So instead, they modified the presentation to make it seem like Sirrus and Achenar weren't held anywhere the player might want to go.
Esher was the first person to call the Least "Bahro".
He picked it up from Atrus et al.'s reports from Terahnee.
The Selenitic oasis has spread to more of the island by now.
The meteor storm occurred in the Seventeen-Eighties or -Nineties. There has been plenty of time for forest regrowth.
Sedona was in a triple star system.
If the supernova were anything but a
Type 1a, there would have been no time for a habitable zone to stabilize beforehand. Therefore Sedona likely orbited a main sequence star which, in turn, orbited at a distance two close-orbiting old stars. Probably two white dwarfs, though, since the Maintainers would know that a red giant spilling gas onto a white dwarf means the system is not stable. Therefore, the Maintainers would have decertified Sedona when these two white dwarfs' orbits started deteriorating.
In the ending of Myst, Atrus moves his sons from prison books to prison ages.
He wrote the two ages before mastering the art of making prison books. When he figured out how to make a one man prison, he decided to recycle those ages as bait. Before burning the books, he fixed the slight imperfections in the descriptions, which instantly linked the occupants to the destination age. Once there, it took them a while to realize that they'd just been transferred to a bigger cell.
The Stranger is one of Zandi's anscestors.
Zandi is real chummy with the D'ni. Atrus's family probably stayed close with the stranger's descendants across several human generations.
The New Mexico Department of Natural Resources has commissioned a Writer from Releeshahn, Averone, or Tay to Write another Age for the invasive predators on Aurack to be resettled.
It is likely that the original Age they were from is lost, but one could Write an Age to which they are also native.
- Atrus et al. would have dealt with them long since.
And their methods are most widely taught on Kamigawa.
Several edible plant species from Uru and EoA Ages are being farmed in the US and probably elsewhere on Earth, as are the mushrooms from Teledahn.
The Teledahn mushrooms in particular could be useful for those with gluten issues.
Related to the above, some plants from Everdunes are farmed in the American Southwest and northern Mexico.
It's the right climate for them, if the journal entry for the calendar is anything to go by. And Atrus set up Tomahna in Nueva España after Writing Releeshahn. He might have sold a few seeds, or some seeds might have escaped cultivation with locals discovering the plants to be edible.
Esher is actually Guildsmaster Kadish under a false identity
Given what little we actually know about Kadish from Uru, and the fact that we don't see him despite his statue adorning Sphere #4 in Ahnonay and the fact that he lived from Yeesha's tampering with his vault age, Kadish Tolesa, to create an alternate timeline where he survived. The only things that we know about Kadish is that he was a guildsmaster who sought power, and sought to prove his own worth as the The Grower, a prophetic figure that will bring the D'ni civilization to its former glory.
Who else wants to be The Grower? Who else seeks power (in the Bahro Tablet)? Who else wanted to prove that they could bring D'ni back to its former glory? Esher, of course. His clothing also seems slightly too lavish for someone who is simply a common person.
He even is scientific in nature. Esher has a (crude) laboratory on Noloben (because of the fall, and no possible access to any real instruments). Kadish had a laboratory on Ahnonay as well.
Various instances of Teledahn are in the possession of various universities' astronomy, geology, biology, and engineering departments.
Especially astronomy.
If a typical Slavic language, with six or seven noun cases, were to be adapted for the Art, some new endings would have to be created before an Age could be Written in it.
The vocative (in languages that retain it) can stay distinct or merged depending on gender, number, and paradigm; it would play no part in the programming. However, every combination of singular or plural (or dual with Slovene or Sorbian) with nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, or locative/prepositional would have to be different to avoid ambiguity in the link. Indeclinable nouns would also have to be given declensions.
"Dark magic in an errant phrase/The people bow to the Lord of Error" has nothing to do with The Art...
...and everything to do with
The Antichrist.
Tadjinar fields a minor league
Baseball team.
Regular humans will learn The Art and even improve upon it with their unique cultural perspectives.
As a possibility for sequel material, human from all walks of life will take interest in learning The Art and open a new area of research and development. This could pave the way for new inventions such as applying The Art to technological devices to create devices such as a
Portal Network, and new medical breakthroughs from discovering new worlds to extend lifespans.
