Myst - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Written by Vetinari

Previously on The Adventurer's Guild, we were on a dock on a Myst-erious island, and we were preparing to explore our surroundings.

Right at our side when we start, there is a submerged ship that is at the moment unaccessible.

A pirate I was meant to be...

At the end of the dock we find a lever, which we can pull without any apparent effect. On a nearby hill there is a big cogwheel, near which another lever is present. Throwing this also has no effect.

The background music turns ominous here, for no apparent reason...

Continuing towards the interior of this small island, we find some stairs that lead us higher on a gently sloping hill. Right before we arrive at the first building (a sort of circular neo-classical rotunda) we find a letter laying on the grass.

I doubt that I am the Catherine to whom this is addressed to.

O-kay, so these levers that I found are apparently "marker" switches, and I should count them all and then input the number in the imager (?) inside the fore-chamber near the docks? What is all this? Maybe the fore-chamber is this circular building that I am close to? I approach (activating another one of these switches that sits by the door) and enter it.

Seems like a dentist's office to me.

Somehow I doubt that this contraption is the imager, and that this is the forechamber, since when I sit on the chair the view switches to a panel with sliders and numbers, where I find out that I can input a date, not a single digit (or maximum two, I hope). There is also a light switch by the door, which turns off the light in the room. When the light is off, by entering a date in the panel, we can make the display on the left show a constellation of stars.

Sadly, no easter egg for this particular date.

Anyway, I proceed to the outside of the next building, which seems like a greek temple or somesuch.

Seems like the architects in charge of this place were big on Jefferson style.

This also seems to be the highest point on the island, and there is a path which goes off through a columnade to a small conifer wood.

Silver firs most probably.

Near each of the columns there are some tiles with figures on them, which on closer examination can be pressed. This action changes their status from "red" to "green". The eight figures are a bird, an eye, a snake, a spider, an anchor, a leaf, an arrow and a cross.

Is that an ostrich? I am not too keen on ornithology.

In the middle of a fountain there is a model of a submerged ship. There is also another marker switch nearby, which I pull.

Sure bet that raising this model will also raise the ship anchored at the docks.

Entering the "temple" reveals what would seem a very nice study room. It has an octagonal shape, with each wall having some point of interest: one bookcase, two paintings, two book stands, a fireplace, the exit door.

But no place to sit anywhere.

Hanging on one wall there is also something which is quite clearly a map of the island. Checking it closely, it would seem that all the locations where I threw a marker switch are now highlighted on the map diagram, so this pretty clearly hints that I should find and activate them all.

From the dimensions of the island, I guess there's another four or five maximum.

When I click on the two paintings which hang on the walls, something interesting happens. When I operate the one that shows a staircase with a corridor, the bookcase retracts into the floor and the staircase/corridor from the painting appears, leading who knows where. At the same time, the exit door from the building closes up. When instead I use the painting which shows the open door to the columnade, the exit door opens but the staircase gets back to being a bookcase.

I always wanted something like this in my house.

Also of interest are the two books sitting on the book stands. In fact one of them is red and the other one blue, and besides them there are two pages, also respectively red and blue.

Maybe it's actually a white page and it's a trick of the light.

When I click on one of the books all I get is a window which only displays static and emits white noise. When I insert the coloured page in the related book however, something happens.

Okay, this guy creeps me out.

In each of the books some guy appears, telling me (while interspersed by static and white noise) that they are trapped inside the books and that only by inserting more red (or blue, respectively) pages I can free them.

Static and white noise is so 1990s. With modern DAB and DVB this wouldn't cut it.

I also catch that their names are apparently Sirrus and Achenar. (Actually I don't – no subtitles, remember? – but we find these names written down shortly afterwards, so it's pretty easy to connect the dots).

So, I think that we got our main quest. Find these red and blue pages and insert them into these books to (possibly?) free these two guys.

Where's Herschel Biggs when you need him?

Checking the bookcase it would seem that almost all of the books on it have been burned. Only four seem to remain unscathed. All of them are travel journals detailing the journeys of this guy Atrus (ostensibly the same Atrus that wrote the note near the docks, even if the handwriting seems slightly different) into some parallel worlds, which he calls "Ages". It is not clear if Atrus creates or just discovers these Ages by writing about them into books, but apparently he can change the characteristics of the ages and what is contained inside them (albeit with some effort) by modifying the books describing them.

The first book details the age of Channelwood, which is apparently a water world with just some trees emerging, upon which the monkey-like inhabitants of the world live in stilt houses.

The journals are also dotted with diagrams and drawings.

The second talks about the Stoneship age, so called because Atrus tried to evoke a ship into the world but only managed to make it stuck inside a rocky island.

How did the ship got out at such an odd angle?

This book also details some interesting constellations.

Hmmm... where I have seen this before?

The third book is about a volcanic world with meteorites falling from the sky, which Atrus calls the Selenitic age, and on which he apparently constructed and tested various inventions. Unfortunately many pages from this diary are discoloured and almost blank.

This drawing is obviously something that will be needed for some later puzzle.

The last of these four books describes an age with a constantly grey sky, on which Atrus sided with a group of people which were constantly harassed and raided by some pirates. He constructed a rotating fortress to help these people defeat the raiders, and then left.

Apparently this is called the Mechanical age.

Throughout all of the diaries, he also talks about his wife, Catherine, and their two sons Achenar and Sirrus, by whom he is accompanied in some of his extra-planar travels, and whom he also leaves behind in some cases to fend for their own.

Strangely enough, from what is described in the journals Sirrus and Achenar seem to be young boys, but the two guys trapped inside the books are clearly grown men. So I have the strong impression that these journals are seriously out of date, and something else happened in the meantime.

Before exploring the corridor behind the bookcase/staircase combination, I find another interesting feature of this room. If I get inside the fireplace, there is a button which encloses it with a metal door. The lower part of the door is such that I can then insert a pattern into it but, since I have no idea of what the pattern should be, it does nothing.

Something for later, I presume.

At the end of the secret corridor I find an elevator which travels between two levels: the one on the ground, from where I start, is apparently called the “Library”.

See, it says it right there.

The other one, which is reached by some horizontal shift as well as the more common vertical one, is instead the “Tower” level.

Can you still call it an elevator if it travels diagonally?

The Tower is composed by two ladders going up to a catwalk, and identified by two symbols, a book and a key. Right now the book one seems to have a sort of opening at the top, but you can't interact with it or do anything else.

You do not find anything up there.

The one with the key is even less interesting, since it just goes up to a featureless brick wall.

The exploration of this part of the island has taken a pretty long time (especially with all the book reading), so let's stop here and we will continue next time.

Session Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!