Author Archive: Shadow Dan

Eat a Peach

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Hello! We are ready to wrap up Mysterium 2024 and kick off 2025!

Survey Highlights

Thank you to all who filled out the 2024 survey. A few trends we saw in the responses:
  • Guildmaster was really popular. We will try to continue doing game shows in the future.
  • There is a general demand for interactive activities such as WWCB and Ransom Notes. We will aim to have a few of these each year.
  • Several people expressed an interest in more excursions. We had a great attendance at the unofficial outing to the Biodome this year, and Atlanta has a number of options, so we should be able to do something again next year.
  • We have received a fair amount of feedback on our COVID policies and questions as to when/whether they will be changing. We will discuss these for next year.

YouTube Videos

The videos from this year are now all up on YouTube. Check out the playlist on our channel.

Mysterium 2025

We will be heading to Atlanta next year! It will be a while before we announce dates, but as usual, it will be in July or August. And leading the con next year will be our co-chairs:

Drew Salad (Yuki)

Drew has “attended” seven Mysteria since 2011. Why quotes? Well, he’s somehow always been on the committee. Since year one. Weird, isn’t it? Outside of Mysterium, Drew leads Apple device management and Zoom platform administration for a large university. His favorite games include Riven, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and Mario Kart.
You can usually find him repeatedly planning large events and trips (for whatever reason), studying Japanese, or taking pictures of landscapes and flowers.

Fant Steele (Curator)

Curator attended his first MYSTerium in 2020 virtually. His first in-person MYSTerium was in 2022 in Denver Colorado. He joined the committee following the 2023 convention in Spokane.
Curator can also be found doing various things relating to the Unwritten RPG published by Inkspark including a monthly stream showcasing various facets of the game.
During the rest of the year Curator manages a security team for a fortune 500 company and additionally manages (or attempts to) his three children. Aside from the MYST franchise, he can be regularly found playing a number of games from the Zelda and Monkey Island series, the occasional Mario Party bout, and odd indie games like Kindergarten or The Last Door.
His other hobbies include writing, GMing for a smattering of TTRPGs, camping, miniature painting, and woodworking.  You may have even seen some of his Unwritten based creations at a MYSTerium in the past.

Thank you again to all who joined us this year in Montreal or on our Twitch stream, and we were pleased to see how many newcomers there were! We look forward to seeing you next year in Atlanta.

Signing off,
Annacat and Dan
Mysterium 2024 co-chairs

Survey

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Greetings! It’s been two weeks since Mysterium, and hopefully you’ve all managed to settle back in at home. Before we get started on next year, we have some things to wrap up for this year.

Survey

We once again have a post-Mysterium survey. Whether you made it out to Montreal or watched our Twitch stream remotely, we’d like to hear your thoughts. What worked? What didn’t? What would you like to see in future years? The survey will be available at https://forms.gle/AHCw3Wv6hC1YewB37 until August 6.

May/June Prompt Winners

For the topic of “Blooming”, we had Harley win the written portion, with “Blooming”. The visual winner was redwoodrroad, with this image of the cleft:
There are still a couple more days to submit posts for the July topic of “Serenia”.

Achenar Needs Your Help

You all are aware Guy Sprung took his time to come out to Mysterium this year and entertain everyone during his panels. What you may not know is he was recently in a legal battle, and while he won, he still has some significant legal fees to deal with. We told him we’d happily share a link to his GoFundMe to get the word out to anyone who may be able to help. Click here for more information.

Thank you all again for making this year’s Mysterium in Montreal a success! Enjoy the offseason, and we hope to see you on Discord!

Annacat and Dan,
Mysterium 2024 co-chairs

Schedule!

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We have published the schedule for Mysterium 2024! Read on for details.

Special Guests

We have a few more guests to announce:
  • Mary DeMarle is an accomplished game writer whose portfolio includes both Myst III and Myst IV
  • Patrick Fortier has a number of gaming titles under his belt, including serving as the creative director for Myst IV
  • Sebastien Yelle is now a teacher, but way back when was a level designer for Myst IV
Check out all the guests’ full bios on the Special Guests page!

Schedule

Our schedule is now live! We’re still filling in details on a few events, but we’re ready to release the 2024 schedule to the world. See the Schedule page for all the details.

Unconferences

As you’ll see on the schedule, we’re bringing back a few long-standing Mysterium traditions we’d put on a shelf for a few years. One of these is Unconfererences. If you don’t know what those are, they’re a set of mini-conferences on topics decided by attendees. Pitch your topic and get people interested so they want to join! That said, we need topics for people to choose from. If you have an unconference topic you’d like to discuss, fill out the form here.

Marker Missions

If you can’t make it to Mysterium this year, don’t feel left out! We’ll be hosting an in-cavern marker mission beginning at 3:30 PM Eastern Time the Friday of Mysterium. Curator, Rayne, and Yuki will also be streaming whatever shenanigans they manage to get up to at that time. For more information, see the Marker Missions page (note: you will need to follow the setup instructions in advance if you want to be able to join on time).

Last Call for Writing & Artwork Table

Annacat is still accepting submissions for writing and artwork, but these will close Sunday. If you’d like a work displayed at Mysterium, make sure to get your submission in before then. For more information, see the Submissions page on our website.

Riven 2024

Some of you may be aware that there was a remake just released of a certain Cyan game. Not everyone has had a chance to play it yet so we’re going to discourage any discussion of spoilers from the new game at Mysterium. That said, Cyan’s presentation will likely contain spoilers, and we cannot control every conversation people have.
 
We’re looking forward to seeing you all in Montreal in just two weeks!
 
Annacat and Dan, Mysterium 2024 co-chairs

Special Guests

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We’re excited to announce our first few special guests for this year’s Mysterium!

Special Guests

This year we’ll have some guests from Myst IV: Revelation. The first we’re ready to announce are:
  • Meinert Hansen is an illustrator who served as the art director for Myst IV.
  • Katie “Kha’tie” Postma is a long-time member of the Mysterium family and the Social Media Manager for The Myst Documentary.
  • Joshua Reinstein is an editor and researcher for The Myst Documentary.
  • Philip Shane is is an award winning documentary filmmaker currently working on The Myst Documentary.
  • Guy Sprung is an actor, director, and writer Myst fans know as Achenar from Myst IV.
Check out their full bios on our Special Guests page.
We’ll have more guests to announce in the coming weeks!

Last Call for Swag Orders

Reminder that swag orders are closing June 9. We will not be selling any swag during Mysterium, so if you want any, you must order it by Sunday.

Also note, there was a mistake on the swag page on our website. It mentioned the shirts are black. That was from copy-pasting the description from last year. The images on the page do show they are light blue but just to clarify in case that wasn’t clear.

Policy Update

There’s a small change to the Conduct section of our policies. Please take a look as it will apply during this year’s Mysterium.

More special guests and this year’s schedule will be announced soon!

Annacat and Dan,
Mysterium 2024 co-chairs

Registration

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Hello all! We finally have the big announcement: registration is open for Mysterium 2024!

Registration

Registration is now open. Standard registration (admission to Mysterium) will be $25, and Premium (admission plus a 2024 t-shirt) will be $40. Since we are starting later than usual this year, online registration will be available at the same price up until the weekend of Mysterium. On-site registration will be available for $30.

Important Note: We will not be selling any swag on-site this year. All swag must be ordered by June 9.

See our Registration page for more information.

March/April Prompt Winners

For the March/April topic of “Memories” we had Talashar’s story “Autumn Winds” https://archiveofourown.org/works/55416358
The visual winner was again redwoodrroad with this excellent image:

a man so blinded by painful memories of the past, by pride and vengeful wrath, he failed to see the life he could lead in the present–
–and the life he could foster for the future.

There’s still plenty of time to submit content for the May/June topic of “Blooming”.

Special guests and schedule announcements coming soon!

Annacat and Dan,
Mysterium 2024 co-chairs