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Myst

I don't know where to begin...
Found in the desert
I have found this empty book in the library and have decided to keep notes in it of my experiences in this world. I say “world” since I am no longer in my own world. I found a book lying at the foot of an old volcano I was visiting in the desert. It was a strange book that seemed to be in perfect shape in spite of having lied there for a very long time as it was buried in the sandy ground. The book had “Myst” written with large letters on it, and curious as I am I opened it to find an image on the first page, an image that moved, to show a beautiful Island in the seas... I was so enchanted by this and somehow I was transported to this Island... I can’t explain how and why, but somehow the book has taken me here.
“Here” seems to be on an island in the middle of nowhere called Myst. I will be writing here to keep track of what I am doing. I have no food and only my polaroid camera. I will take lots of photos to save for others to see.
This place is amazing! I found a note that said that someone called Catherine should enter the number of Marker Switches into the “imager”. I have counted all Marker Switches (or at least those I think are marker switches) and they are eight. But where is the imager? I am currently reading all the books found in the library, all of them are very fascinating! They talk about different places and something called “Ages” which I interpret as “worlds”. It would seem that a person called Atrus has written all of these books and that he also has the ability to create Ages which indeed are worlds... Curious indeed! The most scary thing about the library is a blue and red book though. When opened, there is a panel showing on the first page with static and flickering images of two different human faces screaming to me. I can’t make anything out of it, but they keep talking about red and blue pages. Scary!

Red Book - Sirrus

Murdered Atrus?
Seems greedy
Takes drugs? Found pills in Stoneship Age

Blue Book - Achenar

Seems violent
Traveler, found maps in Stoneship In league with the pirates?
Found piece of cloth with the black ship insignia
Cruel, murderer? Electrocution chamber found in Mechanical Age
Some form of trap in Channelwood

Marker Switches

  1. The docks
  2. Big gears
  3. Star observatory
  4. Rocket
  5. Generator house
  6. Cabin
  7. Clock tower
  8. Miniature sunken ship

Ages

Channelwood
Osmoian
Everdunes
Stoneship
Selentic
Mechanical
Rime
D’ni

People

Sirrus
Achenar
Atrus
Catherine
Emmit
Pran
Branch
Will
Ah, I’m so stupid. It said in the note that it was the imager by the dock, and at the docks there is a hidden room down a stair with something that could be called an “Imager”. It displays some sort of 3D animation... After entering “08” into the wall panel, it displayed a message from what I assume is Atrus. The Message went as this:
Catherine, my love. I have to leave quickly, something terrible has happened. It’s hard for me to believe... most of my books have been destroyed. Catherine, it is one of our sons. I suspect Achenar, but I shouldn’t leap to conclusions... I’ll find him and Sirrus as well. Oh, I should have known better than to have left my library unchecked for so long! Well, I have removed the remaining undamaged books from the library and placed them in their places of protection. You should not have to use the books until I return, but... if you’ve forgotten the access keys, remember the tower rotation. Oh, and don’t worry Catherine, everything will be fine. I’ll see you shortly. Oh, and erase this message after you’ve viewed it just to be safe.
I wonder what has happened... It seems obvious that Catherine didn’t get this message since it wasn’t deleted. But where is she then? And where is Atrus? And what is the “tower rotation”? This has been a long day and I will go to the cabin and get a good nights sleep now. Hopefully tomorrow will be a day of answers, not more questions.
Aha! A new day and lots of new things to write about! have found some answers but there are still lots of new questions. I have made a “inventory” of this Island now and this is pretty much what I have found:

A Star Observatory

It seems that you can sit in this chair and observe star constellations at any time of day, which is odd to say. It has controls for date but I have not understood what its function is.

A Library

It contains lots and lots of books with information about Ages and stories about people Atrus has met. Most of the books are burnet, though. It also has two books - a red and a blue, on separate shelfs that I will write more about later. They are fascinating to say the least!

A Cabin

This is a small cabin in the middle of the small “forest” and has a small furnace. This is where I slept

A Clock tower

A couple of meters offshore there is a big clock tower. I can’t get to it, nor can I switch the marker switch by it. A set of controls on the beach can set the time on it.

A Power Generator House

I have no idea what this does yet, but it has a number of power generators

A Sunken Ship

In the docks there is a sunken ship just like in the middle of the island in a small pedestal.

Big Gears

By the docks there are two big gears that’s solidly fixed to the ground.

Rocket

Behind the Library is a huge brass Rocket that can’t be entered. It’s beautiful. I’m a bit anxious that this might be the only way away from this island, since the ship in the docks can’t be used.
There is a painting in the library that says “Tower rotation”. This is probably what Atrus talked about. When touching the painting a red line is beamed out from what I assume is the cylindrical thing on top of the mountain. It’s safe to assume that that is indeed the tower. What a strange place this is.
Since things happen when I touch them, I tried touching other paintings, and when touching one, the bookshelf folded down and revealed a path deeper into the library (or rather, the mountain). In there, I found an elevator that led me to what I assume is the tower. It had two ladders with two symbols - a book and a key. I couldn’t find anything else interesting up there.
Aha!! When touching the painting the tower actually rotates according to the red line and locks on to the Marker Switches on the map! This way, information is revealed in the tower:
The only thing that made any sense to me was “59 volts”. I went down to the generator house to see what could be done with that information. As it appears different voltage is tied to different buttons. With a little experimenting, I found that the correct buttons to be pressed where the ones I marked here. Wow! After turning on two switches on the way to the Rocket, it now opens! Amazing! It doesn’t look like I could use this to get off this island though. There is a piano in one end and some musical instrument in the other end. I am currently trying to match the tunes to the ones I found in one of Atrus’ journals.

Selenitic Age

It has happened again! When I had set the tunes correctly according to a sketch in one of the books in the library, a book was revealed and I was taken to Selenitic Age. This is just an awesome world. I don’t know where I am in relation to Myst Island now, and I don’t know how to get back. It seems I am getting farther and farther away from home and my chances to ever getting back is getting smaller... Enough with these thoughts now, I have to check this place out.
I’m having a hard time understanding this Age. It’s practically empty, no huts or buildings at all. Who can live here? No one apparently. All I have found are some sort of antenna stations with buttons and symbols. I don’t know what they mean. I have to draw a map of this place.
It seems obvious that the purpose of this age is to use the sounds from each symbol in some way. Symbols are found all over the place, and each symbol has a microphone next to it, plus, they are all located in places where there is distinct sound. There seems to be a central island where the sound can be heard from each, but I can’t seem to make it work.
Aha! You need to turn the microphone on for them to work. Silly me. Ok, so with all of them on, the central antenna picks up the sound, and I can set it to frequencies.
With the sounds in the right order, I could finally open the door by the rocket (after some trial and error). It led down a passage to this beautiful vessel in bronze and gold. It was truly amazing! Inside it was a chair and some controls. Forward, backward, left and right. I hesitated a second but then I pressed the forward button. The “train”, it turned out, is running on tracks in what can only be described as an underground maze. I instantly got lost and spent what felt like hours tracking back and forth in the maze. I felt panic creeping up but when I found myself back where I started I decided to start from the beginning and map the entire maze to help me out. Looking at the map, it seems I never actually travelled very far, so I’m assuming that this was a puzzle, not a means of transportation to get anywhere else than the end station (which, according to my map, seems to be really close to the beginning). There I found a linking book that took me back to Myst Island.
Another thing I found in Selenitic Age was a blue and red paper. They looked old and antique and had very strange writings on them, but they reminded me of the papers in the Library here on Myst Island. And indeed - when I inserted them the “connection” to Sirrus and Achenar became clearer. It appears that what they meant was to get more, or even all, of the pages for their respective book. I feel a bit suspicious about them though, so I don’t know how much I want to accommodate them. They both says not to trust the other one.
Moving on! Back to the clues from the tower rotation. Moving the line to the big gears, the clue was “2:40” and “2, 2, 1”. The only thing on this island that could relate to time is the clock tower, so I set the time to 2:40 by using the controls on the shore. A pathway opened and I could get inside the clock tower. It’s a puzzle inside and it’s obvious that the gears should read 2, 2 and 1. I took some time to figure out that the middle gears continues to spin if I hold the lever, but when I had it done, the big gears by the docks had opened. I am assuming the book inside leads to Mechanical Age. I will go there in the morning, but right now I really need some sleep.

Mechanical Age

Morning, I'm now going to use the Linking Book in the big gears, hopefully it will work as good as yesterday. I can't stop feeling a bit anxious about this, not knowing where to end up in this linking thing.
A curious Age indeed. Vast seas as far as the eye can see. In the center is a huge rotating house. Or at least it looks as if it could rotate since it rests on large circular tracks. I’ve searched the house and found the brothers rooms and even two secret areas with more pages for their books and a note from Achenar to Sirrus that Sirrus’ greed sickens him. It is obvious that there is some real tension between the two. At the place I was linked to was a panel where a code could be punched in. I assume I have to find the code somewhere, presumably on the other islands the house can rotate to. There is a “fortress rotation simulator” inside, but nothing happens when using it.
Done! The elevator in the middle of the house had some controls on top of it which controlled the rotation. After having rotated to each island, I now have the entire code. After punching the code, the gear opened and I was brought back to Myst. It dawned on me that there doesn't seem to much to do in each Age, and the only thing I get out of it are these blue and red pages for the books. I'm starting to get the feeling that these two books are the key to understanding this.
Back on Myst I have started to ease down a bit. Inserting pages to the brothers books just keep upsetting me. They both seem insane and both want me to ignore the other one... I’m having a nervous breakdown it seems and I just want to take a break.
As I wrote, I took the “day off”. I went swimming, ate some fruit and just relaxed. But now I’m at it again, of course. I was looking at the dates found in the tower and realized that there was one place where I had seen dates before - in the star observatory of course! I went there and set the dates in it to the three dates. At first I didn’t realize it but what I was looking at were constellations that was found in one of Atrus’ books. jotting them down I connected them to the pedestals found in front of the library, with the small sunken ship. Clicking each constellation symbol raised the ship from the small pool and a huge rumbling told me that the ship at the docks had risen as well. As expected, inside the ship was yet another linking book. Reluctantly I laid my hand on the panel...

Stone ship Age

This age seems as small as Mechanical Age, but is even more weird... There is a huge ship that’s wedged solid into a huge rock, and at a weird angle. Hard to explain... I’ll draw a map of this place. Each “side” of the boat has an entrance, and there is an entrance in the back of the boat as well. In the house there is a generator (after you’ve found the key, which was an ordeal
) that you can turn to generate power, and then direct the power to each door with the switches. At the top of the rock is a small telescope but the thick mist makes it impossible to see anything. The entrance down the boat is pitch black and I don’t want to fumble around in the dark, so I focused on the other entrances first. Both leads down to rooms belonging to Achenar and Sirrus respectively. Both rooms are beautiful in their own right. Sirrus’ room is luxurious while Achenar’s is more brutal.
In one of the rooms I found a ripped note that talked about a vault of some kind. I can’t make any sense out of it. And in Achenar’s room I found a cloth with the black ship insignia on it, which were pirates that raided this Age, according to Atrus’ journal. Sirrus’ room is luxurious and it’s obvious that he is a very greedy person that wants a life in luxury. I'm starting to get a clear picture about what kind of people these brothers are.
Ok, after running around trying to find out as much as possible while there is still power, I have finally found a way to have the power on at all time. In the pathways down to the brothers rooms there was a hidden door, that led to a small room with a big compass-like plate with buttons on its edge. Pressing a button turned off the power. I assumed that I had to press the right button, so I had to find out which one that was. After walking around I realized that the only thing I could see in the telescope was the little house with the generator in. And the telescope is graded in a 360 degree circle and the generator house is at 135 degrees. After sitting down and trying to calculate where 135 degrees would be, I pressed the button and now power is on again. With power on, I could walk down to the end of the ship, where there was a linking book back to Myst. Bringing the two pages I’ve found in this age, I linked back...
It’s so hard to tell if I’m doing any kind of progress... When including the new pages to the brothers books, Sirrus talked about a reward for letting him out and Achenar claimed that Sirrus had murdered their father. What am I to do about them? The problem seem to be that when and if I find enough pages, I am going to have to do as either one of them says, what else can I do? I can only hope that one of them has a way to get me back home... As far as I understand, there is one age left for me to visit. Channelwood. I strongly suspect that the passage to it is connected to the huge tree on the Island... In the safe in the cabin, I found some matches in a safe and I lighted a fire there when I first came here. That fire has burned since then and is what keeps me warm at night. The code for the safe was the clue for the tree, so this fire and the big handle is probably the key for Channelwood.

Channelwood Age

I was correct, when the fire was lit and I rotated the wheel, I suddenly heard a large banging noise coming from outside the hut. The fire burned more intense and the meter moved the more I turned the wheel. When going outside I noticed that the tree had grown larger! How curious! After a couple of seconds, an entry inside the tree appeared and started to rise to the sky. I soon figured out that I needed to lower the heat by turning the wheel the other way which made the tree go down again, before the entrance disappeared under the ground I jumped into it after some hesitation and traveled down below Myst island.

As I suspected, below there was a book which I didn’t hesitate to travel to. Channelwood

Another beautiful world! It is completely covered in water and there are walkways going in every direction. Tall trees are reaching for the sky and there are pipes running along most of the walkways.
Outside the tree border, there is a small island with a windmill on it. Inside there was a large water tank and a valve. After turning the valve, I can hear the sound of water running inside the pipes. At a lot of walkway crossings there is a valve to let the water flow in either direction. The water in turn powers different machines that gives power to an elevator for instance.
Right, so after some backtracking and hunting the water all over this age, I’ve managed to reach the above levels in the trees. There is water as far as the eye can see, just like in all the other ages. I’m assuming that these ages are merely islands far apart in the same sea and the books are some form of portals to travel between them.
There is a maze of walkways and huts in the upper level but not a single person, and there isn’t much of traces of anyone either... If anyone lived here it was a long time ago. I definitely have to map this place out, the number of bridges are dizzying.
After opening a doorway to a spiral staircase I figured out how to get energy to another elevator that led to a third level. On this level, there are several houses where the brothers obviously lived. A large house had some leftover cheese that had mildew on it, but not enough for it to have been abandoned for too long. That made me feel uneasy since the rest of these worlds has seemed void of life. I also found a red paper and the other half of the note I found in Mechanical Age. When combined, the both parts read:

Marker Switch Vault Access, Island of Myst

The vault is located in very plain view on the island of Myst, and access can be
achieved very easily if the simple instructions are followed. First locate each of the Marker Switches on the island. Turn every one of these switches to the "on" position. Then go to the dock and as a final step, turn the Marker Switch there to the "off" position.
I have no idea what this vault is and I will check this out when I get back to Myst.
In the other direction, a smaller house had what seemed to be a menacing recording of Achenar speaking a language I didn’t recognized projected in the air above something that appeared to be a trap, when touching it, large metal jaws snapped together and hadn’t I been fast enough, my hand would have been caught in it. Old age and rust seems to have made the mechanism slower. I can only assume that this is a trap for the locals where they would be tempted with something, like food and then punished when trying to grab it. Evil.
In a third house I found a blue page and another device that seemed to have been some form of recorder. It had four buttons and three of them played menacing messages from Achenar in the same language. The fourth had a message from Sirrus, to Achenar - having recorded over a message from Achenar.
Sirrus said that he hopes he didn’t erase something important, and then said something curious: “He is preparing. Remember, take only one page”. What does it mean? It seems the brothers at one point conspired to do something, probably against their father. Taking one page sounds a lot like the reverse of what I’m doing, bringing the pages back. Could their father be trapped as well?
With both pages I traverse back and down to the bottom level and redirect the water power to the elevator furthest away and go up to the Myst book and travel back.
With the red page inserted into Sirrus’ book the static was almost completely gone and Sirrus gave a long speech about how he and his father had been trapped by Achenar. It is obvious that he can see me, but he can’t hear me. I tried to ask him questions, shouting at him, but he couldn’t hear a thing.
Finally he spoke of one final page I had to retrieve for him to be free. I was to use pattern number 158 from the book in the book shelf. This pattern should be inserted into the wall inside the fire place. He also warned me about a green book that I would find then that if used would imprison me.
Inserting the blue page into Achenar’s book was equally disturbing. He continued to accuse Sirrus of murdering their father, but in the end he gave the same instructions to use pattern 158 in the fire place and also warned about the green page.
Since both brothers are accusing each other for wrongdoing their father, and both are equally imprisoned, I can’t stop to suspect that they have been imprisoned by their father. I don’t know if I dare releasing either of them, but I have no idea what to do if I don’t.
Instead I walked to the docks and turned that marker switch off as the note had instructed and the marker switch itself opened and inside there was a white paper. Very much like the red and blue pages but white instead. The paper had the same writing and was torn in one end, suggesting that it came from a similar book as the brother’s books. Then I remembered that Sirrus had told Achenar to “take only one page”. This could be that page. The note with instructions to get to this page was hidden in their respective quarters. But what was it torn out of?
Pending an explanation for that, I looked up that pattern in the book and went into the fireplace and pressed it into the wall. I heard a noise and when pressing the button again the entire fireplace rotated and moved around, revealing two final pages and the green book.
I looked at the green book for a long time, fearing merely touching it might imprison me. When I finally opened it there was a similar panel as in the brothers book but in it was the image of a man at a desk, writing in a book. The image was clear, no static and he saw me almost directly. He instructed me to not use the linking panel and started to introduce him - and indeed, he was Atrus, the brothers father. He explained about his sons betrayal and how he wanted to set things right. He told me to get the page in the switch vault and then link to him. Like the brothers he couldn’t hear me.
I hesitated for a minute and then linked to him, certain that I had all that I needed for him.

D’ni

After the link I found myself in a large circular room with many hallways leading in every direction. Atop the stairs to one such hallway was a temporary desk set up with the man I saw in the linking panel sitting behind it, writing in a book. He didn’t notice me at first but when I approached him he started to talk to me. He asked me about the paper and I gave it to him, trusting him completely now that I met him in person. He was anxious to do something and after he inserted the page into another book on the table he excused himself and disappeared into the book. Uncertain of what to do I lingered in the room. After what felt like a long time, he returned.
Atrus and I started to talk, and he explained everything about his sons, their betrayal and we talked about the Ages, Myst and how the linking book works. We spoke for hours about how he had come to this place, he told me about his grand mother and his father. He spoke of the people “D’ni” and how this room was a part of their old world. He also spoke about his wife, Catherine, that currently is under great distress in a world called Riven. That was the book he was currently writing in, trying to mend it, since it was apparently broken.
He pleaded for my help with his wife and while I was eager to find a way home, and had hoped that Atrus could help me, he told me that he was unable to do so at the moment due to the problem he was having with Riven. I realized that I had no choice but to help him, but I couldn’t do it just yet, he had to “stabilize” the world enough for me to travel there. He said I could spend my time in Myst until he called for me so I went back.
Many of my questions have been answered by Atrus and while my disappointment in his reluctance to help me home left a bad gut feeling, I still really liked him and we got along really well.
This will be my last note in this book since I am currently living on Myst awaiting further directions from Atrus, enjoying the relaxation of the nature for once.