Greetings friends,
Fall has started and spooky season is upon us, so it’s time to formally kickoff Mysterium 2023 planning! Let’s jump right in:
Mysterium 2023 Dates
We know everyone has been anxiously awaiting the dates for next year’s event, and the wait is now over. Mysterium will take place from June 30 to July 2, 2023.
“But wait!” we hear you cry. “Mysterium is always at the beginning of August!” Well, that’s true, we always aim for early August (or late July if necessary), but our hands were tied this year. It turns out that Spokane has become a popular city for events since we were last there, and they were basically booked solid for July and August. So we took the best compromise we could find, and snagged this weekend just before the 4th of July.
We can’t give you all of the hotel details yet, but we want to give you a heads-up that Spokane’s popularity has also resulted in price increases. We’re doing everything we can to keep our room costs down where our attendees expect (many thanks to our master negotiator Odo!), but plan for rooms to be pricier than usual. Not astronomically high, mind you, just higher than usual.
We promise we’ll get you more details as we have them, so stay tuned!
Mysterium Theme
As you may know, 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of Myst’s release. In honor of that milestone, we’ve chosen to make this year’s theme ‘The Evolution of Myst‘.
That’s not just talking about the age of Myst. We mean the game/world as a whole. There have been many revisions and additions to Myst over the years, not least of which is Cyan’s recent version from 2020. The world and the franchise have evolved over the years, and we want to showcase that evolution. Which is a fun segue into our next topic…
Submissions
Get those creative juices flowing, because we’re opening up a couple submissions today!
First up is t-shirt artwork. Every year we invite the community to create artwork to go on our coveted Mysterium t-shirts. We think there are a lot of cool directions you could take with this year’s theme, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with. You can find all the details on the shirt art submissions page. The deadline is January 7, 2023.
As always, the creators of the winning designs will each receive a free t-shirt. And, similarly to the past couple of years, the shirt design will be added to your wardrobe in Uru!
If you have any questions about the shirt art submissions, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can either email us, or DM Rayne (our resident art wizard) over Discord.
Second, we’re opening up event submissions. Have a project you want to show off? A deep dive into D’ni architecture you want to present? An awesome group activity? Well now is your chance! Head over to our event submissions page and send it over to us. The deadline is April 29, 2023.
Discord Housekeeping
We recently performed some minor housekeeping in our community Discord server. Most importantly, we’ve revised and clarified our server rules. There shouldn’t be any big surprises – most of this was codifying what we had already enforced – but please check out our #rules and #announcements channels when you have a chance.
We are also now a verified server, which means we get a fancy custom invite link. So if you have friends that haven’t joined yet, send them over to https://discord.gg/mysteriumcon!
September Prompt Winner
We received 4 wonderful submissions to September’s prompt of “Rest/Sleep.” It was tough selecting a winner, but laughingpineapple‘s submission of a very tired Atrus just edged ahead:
There’s still time to submit something for our October prompt (“Spooky”) – head over to the Mysterium Discord to find out all the details.
That’s all for now. We’ll have more updates for you in the coming weeks and months.
Stay healthy out there!
-Taniith & Rayne
Mysterium 2023 Con Chairs