Author Archive: Shadow Dan

Pins

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Hello all! We have a few more items to announce.

Pins

First, we’re opening pin submissions for Mysterium 2024. For more information see the Submissions page. Pins are not required to follow the Mysterium theme, but if you’d like to incorporate it, remember this year’s is Serenia.

August Creativity Prompt

We are continuing to showcase two winners. This month the visual art winner was laughingpineapple with “Blazing Mentor”.
Blazing Mentor

The written winner was Salvo Ludus with the story “The Bad Ending”.

September’s prompt has now closed, but there’s a whole month to submit entries for October’s topic of “Noir”!

COVID Vaccines

We wanted to give a quick notice for anyone who hasn’t seen: there is a new COVID vaccine available as of last month for the latest variants of the virus. We’d recommend everyone obtain it when you can!
Additionally, we have received reports of pharmacies no longer updating or providing vaccine cards. If you are looking for an updated proof of vaccine, then it is advisable to specifically request a card if possible, or look into electronic vaccine records if available for your location.

We’ll have more to share in the coming months. In the meantime, happy spooky month!

Annacat and Dan
Mysterium 2024 co-chairs

T-Shirts and Passports

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Shorah! We’re getting underway with planning for Mysterium 2024 and have a few updates to provide.

Traveling to Canada

Since Mysterium will be in Canada next year, it’s important to pay attention to any immigration requirements. There are a few links on the Location page to help direct you. Most importantly: if you don’t have a passport, don’t procrastinate, since it can take a few months for the application to be processed.
Also, and this cannot be overstressed: rely on official sources for immigration information. We are simply providing these links for convenience. Do not rely on advice from our Discord server or any other unofficial source.

2024 Theme and T-Shirt Designs

We have chosen a theme for Mysterium! Since this will be the 20th anniversary of Revelation, we’re going with Serenia (think of Montreal’s waterways).
On that note, we’re also opening t-shirt design submissions. Submissions will be accepted until February 25. Details are available on the T-shirt design page but in general we will look favorably upon designs that incorporate this year’s theme and the host city.

July Creativity Prompt

In recognition of the variety of creative submissions we receive, we decided to choose two winners for July’s topic of Sun: one for visual, and one for written.
The written winner is Salvo Ludus with the story “Gehn’s Sun”.

The visual winner is Grayson aka redwoodrroad for this image of Gehn’s lab with the sunlight streaming in through the windows:

There are still a few days left for August’s topic of Blazing.
That’s it for now! We’ll have more soon on additional submissions and 2024 logistics.

Annacat and Dan
Mysterium 2024 co-chairs

Mysterium Returns Home

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Hello all! This will be my last blog post for quite some time (you can stop celebrating now), as I am handing off the reins to next year’s co-chairs - although first a few 2022 housekeeping details.

YouTube Videos

If you’d like to relive any moments from this past year’s convention, all YouTube videos from Mysterium 2022 are now available on our channel.

Survey Highlights

Thank you to everyone who filled out our 2022 survey. There were a few responses we’d like to highlight:
  • Meow Wolf went over quite well. We’ll look into similar excursions for future locations. (Chair’s note: I’m really glad people enjoyed this. I went there in January and my immediate reaction was “we have to do this during Mysterium”).
  • Cavern Feud was well-received. We’ll see if we can come up with enough questions to do it again, but regardless, we’ll aim for any game show events to involve larger groups like this.
  • A number of people asked about the possibility of ASL or captions. An ASL translator is most likely out of our budget; however, while we cannot yet make any promises, we are looking into captioning options for 2023.

August Prompt Winner

We received what might have been a record number of submissions for August’s topic of "Travel" and this was not an easy one to choose. However, we ultimately had to go with laughingpineapple’s submission of the three siblings on a trip together:

Mysterium 2023

As you may have heard at the end of this year’s Mysterium, we will be heading to Spokane for 2023! Cyan has once again invited us to their area, and we hope to see you all join us there. We have not yet determined dates, but we hope to announce those sometime this fall. That said, I’d like to introduce you to next year’s co-chairs:

Elliot "Taniith" Borenstein - Known primarily for chairing several Mysteria over the past 10+ years, you may also recognize him from his brief stint in the early 90s on the hit U62 show, "Cooking With Esher". Despite saying in 2019 that he would never chair a Spokane year again, his plan to talk Kelly into the role backfired spectacularly, leading to their partnership this year.
Kelly "Rayne" Coston - Kelly hails from the Pacific Northwest and has been drawing since she could crawl. Her days are usually filled with coffee, running a small business, and staring at her screen until art magically appears. Her evenings are usually filled with husband or cat snuggles and video games. A long-time Myst fan, she discovered her Myst family in 2014 and quickly joined the staff as the primary Creator of All Things Pretty and the Tormenter of Attendees on the Puzzle Team. She and the other members of the Puzzle Team are looking forward to tormenting attendees with brain melting puzzles this year!

Once again, thank you to all who joined us for Mysterium 2022 in Denver, whether in person or online. I’m glad I was able to welcome so many of you here, and look forward to seeing you all in Spokane.

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair

Thank You!

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It’s been about two weeks since Mysterium. Most committee members have returned home and hopefully gotten some rest, and your Chair decided to attend another convention the immediate following weekend so “rest” has been a relative term.

Survey

As is tradition, we have our post-Mysterium survey. We have once again dispatched with asking you to write a novel as we did in the past, although it is a little longer than last year since we have questions about both the online and in-person events. Whether you joined us online or in-person, we’d like to hear your feedback! We’d also like to particularly highlight the future planning section, as we are cognizant of costs to attendees and would like to hear opinions on the potential trade-offs we may have to make while looking at those costs. The survey is available at https://forms.gle/xkUTNie9vuoNCPt59.

YouTube

Videos from Mysterium are currently available on our Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/mysteriumcon), and are in the process of being uploaded to YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/mysteriumcon). We’ll follow-up in the next post once all videos are ready.

Thank You

We’d like to thank all attendees, since you are the reason this event exists. To those of you who made it out to Denver: it was great to have you in person and hopefully the altitude didn’t bother you too much. To anyone who joined online: thank you for watching and conversing through Twitch and Discord.
A thank you as well to all of our panelists who gave their time to answer everyone’s questions, the individuals who submitted presentations, and the committee members who couldn’t be physically present this year. While some of us were highly visible throughout the weekend (and you couldn’t avoid me if you tried), there were plenty more working behind the scenes, helping plan this event.
There are also a couple names in particular we’d like to highlight. One is Katie Postma, who helped with moderating Twitch, moderating panels, finding special guests, and putting us in touch with the Area Man Lives team. The other is Jeff Lanctot, who handled all the Cyan wrangling, ensuring the Cyan update video and Cyan Q&A happened; as well as helping us contact the teams for Walkabout Mini Golf and The Last Clockwinder.

It has been a pleasure serving as your chair this past year. I was happy to welcome so many of you to Denver, and I’d personally like to thank everyone who made Mysterium in my backyard a success.

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair

Rocky Mountain High

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Hello! Mysterium is only a week away, and we’re looking forward to seeing you all in Denver!

Special Guests

We have a final set of guests to announce from Cyan, The Myst Documentary, and Myst IV: Revelation.
  • Eric Anderson has been with Cyan for several years, contributing to Uru, Myst V, and Obduction.
  • Rand Miller co-founded Cyan and brought us Myst, Obduction, and all the other Cyan titles that are the very reason for this convention’s existence.
  • Joshua Reinstein is an editor and researcher for The Myst Documentary.
  • Guy Sprung is an accomplished thespian, but Myst fans should know him as Achenar from Myst IV: Revelation.

Hotel & Transportation

As mentioned previously, parking at the hotel will be free. If you are local and only parking for the day, you will not have to pay for parking unless you leave your car at the hotel overnight. For anyone staying at the hotel, if you booked at the Mysterium rate, your parking will automatically be comped.
The hotel offers a shuttle to provide transportation within a 2-mile radius. This includes the Central Park A Line station. It runs 6 AM to 11 PM. When you need a pickup, call the hotel at 303-321-3500.
For more information, see our Location page.

Cyan Q&A

A quick reminder that the Cyan Q&A will not be accepting live questions during Mysterium. If you have a question you’d like the team from Cyan to answer, submit it by August 7 via this form.

Writing & Artwork Table

The deadline for submitting entries to the writing and artwork table has passed; however, if you have a late submission you would like to display, please bring it to Denver and we’d be happy to feature it on the table.

July Community Prompt

We had some excellent submissions in July, but we particularly want to feature Talashar’s story “Future Motion”: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40537716.

I am very much looking forward to meeting you all in person next week!

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair