Hello everyone!

We have some updates, some reminders, and one important piece of news. So let’s jump right in.

Covid Policy Update

We have added an FAQ to our Covid Policy page, to help clarify items in the written policy. In particular, we are now specific in the FAQ about how we will be verifying bivalent vaccines. Be sure to check it out if you aren’t sure if your last booster was a bivalent dose.

We have also updated the paragraph regarding the modified Covid policy while at Cyan HQ on Saturday. The new paragraph reads:

“Importantly, a modified policy will be in effect for the Cyan visit on Saturday. In particular, special guests and Cyan staff may remove their masks while presenting or taking part in a panel. We also cannot guarantee that all special guests and Cyan staff will be vaccinated. The normal policy as outlined below still applies to all regular attendees while at Cyan’s headquarters. We will do our best to stream as much as possible of the Cyan visit for anyone who cannot attend.”

Finally, we have been asked if we will be dropping our Covid policy given that the Federal government will be ending their Public Health Emergency on May 11th. The answer is: No, we will not be dropping our policy. We are a private event, and the end of the Public Health Emergency has no bearing on us or our policies.

Reminders

If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to go register! If you have registered, you may be interested to know that we’ve added an art print of our 2023 shirt logo to the swag shop. If you’d like one, you can log back into your registration account and add one on to your order.

Don’t forget that submissions for events and pin designs are still open, but act fast! Pin designs close in just over a week (February 12th)!

Also, in case you missed it in the excitement of reg opening last week, we have an accessibility survey open right now. If you have a couple minutes, we’d love to hear your thoughts on making Mysterium as accessible as possible. You can find the survey here.

Musical Chairs

Last, we want to let you know about a change in leadership for Mysterium 2023. Here’s a message from outgoing co-chair Taniith with the details:

Shorah friends. With great regret, I want to let you all know that I’m stepping down as co-chair of Mysterium 2023. I will also be winding down most of my involvement with Mysterium over the next year or so. Andrea Mountain (aka M13) will be stepping up to take my place alongside Kelly. Without going into great detail, I have a lot going on in my personal life, and I can’t devote the time and energy to Mysterium that I used to.

I have 100% confidence that Kelly, Drea, and the rest of the Mysterium team will put on an amazing con for all of you. I know they have some wonderful (and in some cases devious) things planned. You definitely don’t want to miss out!

It’s been a heck of a ride helping to run Mysterium since I joined the Committee in 2011. I hope to one day be able to attend again. You are all part of my extended Myst family, and I’ll miss hanging out with all of you. Until then, though, you can find me on Discord and all the usual places.

Stay safe out there!

-Taniith

No pressure or anything, right?

Thank you, Taniith, for your years of service and your guidance during this transition. We have a great team, and we will do our utmost to put on one heck of a show to celebrate 30 years of Myst!

-Kelly, Drea, and the Mysterium team

Hello friends!

We’re sorry it took so long, but we’re here to tell you that registration and hotel booking for Mysterium 2023 are officially OPEN!

Before we jump in, a quick reminder for your travel/booking plans: Spokane years are action packed, so ending at mid-day on Sunday just doesn’t cut it. Expect events to go until ~4pm on Sunday.

Registration

We’re trialing a new (to us) registration system this year. It should make registering easier, and includes the ability for us to offer easier pre-orders on swag. You can also log back in at anytime and review or edit your registration and purchase information.

Please note that t-shirts and early-bird pricing for registration will be only be available through March 31st. Starting in April, shirt sales will close, and the price for registration will increase.

You can get all the details and register over on our registration page.

Hotel Rooms

Similarly, head over to our location page to get all the details about our hotel. Hotel prices in Spokane, and around the country, have gone way up in the last couple of years. We know $149/night is pricier than what we usually aim for, but believe us when we say that this is a good deal for the Spokane area. If you need to split costs by sharing a room, consider posting in the #looking-for-people channel on our Discord server.

Covid-19 Policy

We wish it were gone, but Covid is still with us. So, as with last year, we have a policy in place. You can read all the details here, but the short version is:

• Full vaccination is required, including a bivalent booster, by June 23rd
  
• Masking will be required and enforced in Mysterium spaces
• No exceptions – we’ll be streaming/recording most events for those who cannot attend
• Cyan will have their own policy for our time at their headquarters (more on that soon)

Swag

Oh, did we mention swag? That’s right! We don’t just have shirts this year, we also have mugs, prints, and lanyard charms available for pre-order. We’re also cooking up some other goodies that might get added later, but for now you can check out all our available swag over here.

Accessibility Survey

We are always striving to make Mysterium as welcoming and accessible to as many people as possible. To that end, we’re putting out an accessibility survey to solicit feedback and ideas. We want to know what you’ve seen/experienced that worked well, what worked poorly, services we should look into, and concerns you have about accessibility at Mysterium.

The survey is short, and all questions are optional. So if you have a few minutes, please consider sending us your thoughts! You can find the survey here.

Submissions Reminder

A quick reminder that submissions are still open for both events and pin designs. Be quick, though, because pin designs are due by February 12th!

December Prompt Winner

As with last month, we once again had our Discord community vote on their favorite entry for our December prompt, “endings”. The winner was Grayson aka redwoodrroad, who submitted this animation of a scene from Riven:

Our January prompt, “beginnings”, is still open until the end of the month. So be sure to drop by our Discord and submit your work!

That’s all we have for now. Stay tuned for more news soon!

– Rayne & Taniith

Mysterium 2023 Co-Chairs

 

Shorah everyone!

It’s been a while since you’ve heard from us. We know you all want to know when we’ll be announcing the hotel and opening registration – things are moving forward there, and we expect to announce that in mid-January. In the meantime, here are some updates, announcements, and reminders:

Pin Submissions

As in recent years, we’re going to make a batch of exclusive enamel pins for Mysterium, and we invite you to submit your designs.

The community has made some amazing designs in past years, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with! Submissions are open until February 12th. Check out all the details here.

Other Submissions

Reminder that submissions for shirt designs and events are currently open. Shirt design submissions close on January 7th, so be sure to get them in by then!

Community Prompt Winners

We have two prompt winners to announce in this post. First, October. We received a bunch of great submissions for October’s topic of “Spooky”, including a few from some newcomers to these prompts. We’re happy to announce the winner is IwonK!

Next, for the month of November and the topic of “Fall”, we decided to try something a little different and let the community vote on their favorite. By a close vote, laughingpineapple’s Yeesha took the lead!

Submissions for this month’s prompt, “Endings”, are still open on our Discord. We’ll be continuing the community voting going forward, so check there in January to vote on the December submissions.

Policy Updates

Lastly, we’ve made some updates to our policies. As always, you can find all of our policies here, but below is a rundown of the major changes:

• Privacy Policy
  • Added new Room Block section, detailing information the hotel may share with us
• Other Policies
  • Adjusted how ages are handled for the minor and drugs/alcohol policies, to take into account legal age limits other than US federal ones
  • Added ‘medical devices’ to the harassment policy
  • Added a badge replacement policy
  • Updated photo/video policy to include language about official recording/streaming
  • Added an animals policy
  • Added a sales policy

That’s all we have for now – be sure to check back in January for more. Until then, we hope you all have a happy new year, and that you stay safe and healthy.

– Rayne & Taniith
Mysterium 2023 Co-Chairs

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

Shorah everyone.

We hope you are all safe and healthy. We have some very important news about our 2021 convention, so please take a moment to read through this post.

The short version – We will NOT be holding an in-person convention this summer. Instead, we will be holding another online event on the same weekend. Refunds will be available to everyone who has pre-registered.

We know this announcement may be frustrating to many of you, but we feel it is the best course of action we have right now. Please read on for the details in a handy Q&A format:

Why aren’t you holding an in-person con?

The Covid-19 pandemic is still too out of control right now, and we simply can’t be sure what the situation will look like in July. It’s possible everyone will be vaccinated and everything will be safe; it’s also possible that vaccine delays will happen, or a more dangerous variant will appear.

There are also legal and logistical concerns surrounding a distanced con with mandatory vaccines that are still under an Emergency Use Authorization. We are a tiny volunteer-run organization with limited resources, and July is very soon. We would rather let governments and larger organizations learn how to safely hold these sorts of gatherings over the next year, rather than try to be one of the first cons out of the gate.

Why not wait another month or two to decide?

Logistically, we have to start planning for an online event. That takes time and looks different from on-site planning, so we had to make the switch at some point.

Legally, we have a contractual deadline from our hotel. If we don’t cancel now, we will owe them more money.

Why not just let the people who feel safe attending do so anyway?

Everyone has their own personal level of acceptable risk. However, the FMG Board (which oversees Mysterium) has a responsibility to do what we feel is best to protect the safety of our attendees and the people they will come in contact with (hotel staff, airline workers, food workers, etc). Given that, and the reasons we listed previously, we feel that the risks are too high to hold an official in-person event right now.

I already registered. Will I get a refund?

Yes, you will get a full refund. You will receive an email once the refund has been processed (check your spam or promotions folders!). If you don’t hear from us by the end of next week, please reach out!

What about t-shirts and other swag?

We will be selling and shipping t-shirts again this year. If you got one with your registration, it will be refunded and you will be able to re-buy it through our web store at the same price.

You can find our web store with shirt sales here.

As far as other swag – we don’t know yet.

Should I cancel my hotel room?

No, you don’t have to cancel your room reservation. The hotel should do that in a few weeks. If somehow it looks like they aren’t going to do so, we will let you know with plenty of time to cancel.

What about transportation that I booked?

Please check with your carrier for details on cancellations.

Have you considered postponing the con until later this year?

We are investigating that option, but we have no useful news about that.

How is Mysterium doing financially? Is this going to bankrupt the convention?

Overall, we’re doing pretty well. Obviously, between refunds and hotel fees, we’re going to take a hit to our funds by moving to an online convention, but thanks to sales and very generous donations from last year we should be fine.

Can I host a panel/event or otherwise help out with the online Mysterium?

Yes! We’re not ready to take in your ideas just yet, but please check back soon. 

How/where will online Mysterium be hosted?

We don’t have all the details yet, but we will likely base it on what we did last year (Zoom+Discord+Twitch/Youtube). There have been many advances in online convention hosting, though, so we’ll look into other options.

How much will the online convention cost?

As with last year, the online convention will be free! It is likely that t-shirt sales can cover our costs, and we want to make sure the convention is accessible to as many people as possible.

That’s it for the Q&A for now. Before we wrap up, we want to give a shout out to all of the volunteers on the Mysterium staff who have put in a lot of work these last two years in the hopes of running an in-person con. They have some cool stuff planned, and we hope you get to come see it at our next in-person event.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out by email, discord, or social media. We hope to have more information soon. In the meantime, please stay safe and get your vaccine when you can!

-Falling Man Group Board of Directors