Zarf Updates

The rest of my 2026 Mysterium report. (See part 1 for the Cyan news.)

All the videos are currently available on Mysterium's Twitch channel. They will be archived on their Youtube channel pretty soon.

Documentary Update

Philip Shane gave his usual progress report on the Myst documentary. It moves forward.

We have been in serious conversations with some pretty influential people in the entertainment world. And I am not allowed to say more than that.

"Serious conversations" are cheap coin in the business, but we'll take it.

Philip introduced collaborators Randy Woods (writer), David Van Taylor (consulting producer), Joshua Reinstein (editing, history cataloging), Ben Reichman (editing), John Clark, Hollister Starrett (music), Elana Bogdan (web design), and Khatie Postma (community manager).

He showed several completed and edited scenes:

• "The House that Myst Built": Footage of the original construction of the Cyan office.
• "Riven: Behind the Scenes": Assembled from outtakes from behind-the-scenes "Making of Riven" footage.
• "The Origin of Myst": Puzzle design discussions between Rand and Robyn, back at the beginning.
• "Launching Obduction": In-office footage from 2016 leading up to Obduction's release.

John Clark talked about tagging and cataloging all the VHS footage that was extracted by the VGHF. Apparently there was a plan for a Coke-Myst-Online co-branded ad? It was never released, but there's footage.

Joshua Reinstein talked about digging through acres of ads and articles that were released.

Myst Online news

Jalargura

A new fan Age was released a couple of weeks ago: Jalargura, created by Semjay. It was originally created for an Age-writing jam in early 2025 and then polished for public release. It's an observation-pod Age in a ruined desert city. No puzzles, no interactivity, but you can get out of the pod and poke around the city square. I thought the audio cues were particularly well done.

Descent

Robert Murry introduced a presentation on the Restoration of the Great Shaft. That is: progress on the "Descent" areas that lead from the desert caldera down to the D'ni city. Myst 5 had a version of this sequence, but the Uru fan community is in the process of completely revamping it for Myst Online. A long-running process, to be sure, but it continues.

(Previous Mysterium reports on Descent progress: 2021, 2023, 2024.)

Doobes, the original fan developer of Descent, is no longer involved in the Myst community; see 2025. The project is now run by Harley, Ametis, and Tweek, with many other contributors chipping in.

Harley gave a remote demo of an up-to-the-minute dev build. They explained that the Descent has been through a lot of iterations, from Cyan's original DIRT prototype (2000) to the Myst 5 version (2005) to the tiny glimpses visible in Myst Online. The sequence is also described in the novels. Those books are somewhat out of continuity these days, but the current version of Descent is closer to them than it is to Myst 5.

(Note: this area is not yet available in Myst Online. Harley was playing on a test shard.)

You arrive in the familiar Caldera area, with brand-new music by Semjay and Morris. The area looks almost the same as in Myst 5; the new feature is a rough wooden elevator platform. It looks like it's intended to take you up (not down!) to the lip of the volcano, but the cables are broken.

As in Myst 5, a crack in the ground and a rope ladder allows you to climb down into a natural tunnel. (Or you can just jump down, since the Uru engine doesn't have falling damage as such.) The descending passages have been greatly extended since the Myst 5 version. This is both to match the books better, and to ensure that the top of the Shaft doesn't technically protrude above ground level -- a mapping flaw of earlier versions.

The tunnels run along an underground stream down to a cave, which is Ti'ana's cave from the books. The cave areas are fully modelled, but not fully textured, and the lighting work is still in progress.

You then break out into the D'ni passages and chambers that lead to the top of the Great Shaft. The spiral staircase running down the Shaft is now fully connected, and you could run all the way down on foot. That takes about two hours, real-time. Or you could take the elevator, which is rigged with excellent music and camera animations as you zoom down and down and down.

In the lower regions, you will find the Tomahn (rest chamber) which is already visitable in MOUL, the one with Watson's journal. This has been moved around the shaft; but it will be replaced with a second Tomahn, for an interesting reason. MOUL supports player-made marker-hunting games, and people have made many marker sets which use the original Tomahn coordinates! If that volume was replaced with solid stone, those markers would be unreachable. So it will remain open; but that area is still under construction.

Then of course there's the big elevator puzzle at the bottom of the Shaft. This is fully functional. The areas beyond are still preliminary, but Harley showed a teaser of a "bug cave". (Semjay is reworking this from the original DIRT demo. I could make out distant fireflies.)

When will this be available? No planned date. They talked about several "phases": phase 1 and 2 are the tunnels and the shaft, phase 3 is the "bug cave", then perhaps more. This collides somewhat confusingly with the older DRC terminology (see the Archivists page), where Ages go through five phases of modelling, testing, and release. So I'm not sure what the exact plan is. But clearly things are moving forward.

The intent is to release Descent as a public shared area on MOUL. As a shared area, presumably everything would be unlocked from the start.

In the future, you might also be able to reach Descent at the end of Uru's "Journey" storyline. You'd complete the Journey, reach the Rainy Cleft, and then climb up the volcano to the crater. You'd find an elevator platform; but when you step on it, it breaks. You black out for a moment (covering the level load!) and then wake up in the caldera. Thus the broken elevator mentioned above. You could then explore a private instance of Descent and solve the puzzles yourself.

However, this is very hypothetical and wouldn't be tackled until after the public release. Whenever that is.

Next year

Spokane in 2027! It's an anniversary year. Riven will be thirty years old; Cyan as a company will be forty years old. It's had a few different names, but the original Rand-and-Robyn basement team-up began in 1987.

So they're bringing the con back home. Furthermore:

Hannah: We were recently approached by a local cultural institution about a possible exhibition...

Spokane's Museum of Art and Culture? That's just a guess. I visited there in 2019; good museum. Regardless of which institution they're talking about, the idea is to have the exhibition live for Mysterium time.

I will certainly be there -- despite all uncertainty. Not like 2023, when I slept through my flight-change announcement and showed up at the airport three hours late! Whoops.

See you there.