Mysterium > Events

Saturday Logistics

Posted on June 12, 2023June 12, 2023 by rayne

Shorah and happy weekend!

Mysterium is right around the corner and we wanted to share some important information regarding some logistics of how Saturday is going to work.

Convention Room Opens

The first thing everyone needs to know about Saturday is that the con room will only be open briefly, between 8-9:00 am, primarily to give everyone time to gather and make their arrangements for getting to Cyan. We strongly encourage you to pick up your badges before Saturday, as we are at capacity.

Badges that are not picked up by 8:30 am on Saturday morning will be considered a no-show and their seat will be given to someone on the stand-by list.

Cyan staff will be checking for attendee badges. If you do not have your badge, you will not be allowed to participate in the events that take place at Cyan. Please check for your badge before we leave for Cyan.

Bus

If you have a seat on the bus, please gather in the con space with staff member Ace at 8:30 am. At 8:45 am, Ace will lead those with bus tickets to the bus to begin boarding through the East entrance of the hotel to where the bus will be parked. At 9:00 am, the con room doors will close and the bus will depart for Cyan. Be punctual!

Arriving at Cyan

Map of Cyan HQ

The con room doors will close and we will leave for Cyan at 9:00 am, and it will take about a half an hour to arrive. Cyan will be prepared to accept arrivals at 9:30 am (and not before). If you’re taking the bus, it will drop you off in the bus and ride-share drop-off area indicated in green on the map below. Neither bus nor ride-share should attempt to drive past the drop-off area toward the campus. Drivers, please park only in the designated parking lot in blue (the Mag-Lev Depot) below.

Welcome to Cyan

Once you have arrived at Cyan, please proceed into Gehn’s Temple for a welcome message, updates, announcements, and a quick review of the order of events. From there, we will have Cyan’s State of the Union.

Round Robins

Due to the number of people we’re expecting this year, and the variety of activities to do on Cyan’s campus, it can be hard to fit everything in. To make it easier, we’ve split everything into threes:

Three time slots
Three activities
Three groups

The groups are named for three iconic Riven animals:

You’ll know what group you’re in from the email you get before the convention, and your animal will be printed on your badge. Each group will have a minimum of two Mysterium Committee members to serve as guides. If you get lost, just find a staff member.

Groups will alternate between eating lunch (“lunch”) at the Squee Conservatory, a guided tour of the campus (“tour”) at DRC Headquarters, and an opportunity to meet some Cyan employees and guests (“meet and greet”) at Gehn’s Temple in three time slots.

Sunner: 11:15-11:55 am: Lunch; 11:55 am-12:35 pm: Tour; 12:35-1:15 pm: Meet and Greet.
Whark: 11:15-11:55 am: Tour; 11:55 am-12:35 pm: Meet and Greet; 12:35-1:15 pm: Lunch.
Ytram: 11:15-11:55 am: Meet and Greet; 11:55 am-12:35 pm: Lunch; 12:35-1:15 pm: Tour.

We will begin to funnel back into Gehn’s Temple at 1:15 pm for the afternoon’s presentations.

Presentations

We have several presentations this year, all of which are fascinating and most of all, a secret! You’ll have to come to Cyan (or stream in!) to see them. 😉

Keynote with Rand Miller

After the ~~secrets~~ presentations, Rand will give a keynote talk, followed by a question and answer session. There will be a microphone in the aisle of Gehn’s Temple, so if you have a question, this will be the time to ask! If you’re watching the stream, feel free to ask your questions there or via Discord; we will have moderators gathering them to ask Rand for you.

Wrap-up

From there, we will leave Cyan around ~4:45 pm to head back to the hotel and break for dinner. We have some fun activities to do in our evening hours.

Alright, that’s all we have for today! More details are coming soon. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions! Discord is the easiest way, but email works as well.
Have a great rest of your weekend everyone!

– Rayne & m13
Mysterium co-chairs

It’s Beginning to Looks A Lot Like Mysterium…

Posted on May 25, 2023May 25, 2023 by rayne

Everywhere you go…

Mysterium is coming up quickly and there are a few important things we need to share with you.

Registration Cap

First, registration is capped at 250 people this year. We are approaching that number now, so if you intend to come but have not yet registered, now is the time! All of the information regarding registration can be found here. If you know you are no longer able to attend, please reach out to us so we can account for you and avoid turning any more people away than we need to.

Hotel Deadline

The deadline for the hotel is very soon. If you do not have a room booked by May 28th, you will not be able to get a room in our room block or at our special Mysterium rate. There may be other rooms in the hotel available, however we cannot offer nor guarantee any special pricing for those rooms. If there are any issues with availability of the room type you are looking for before the deadline, please reach out to Odo to see if any more rooms of that type are available.

Again, the deadline is May 28th. There are no exceptions to this deadline.

Swag Deadline

The swag deadline is June 3rd. While there will be a limited number of swag items available to purchase at the registration desk, it will be first come, first served basis.

If you’re interested in placing an order for items ahead of time with your registration, please do so before June 3rd.

Listening Aids Update

Due to lack of interest, we’ve decided to not rent the listening aid devices this year.

On-Site Activities 101

We put together a great page that talks about all the fun stuff that will be available for you to do on-site at Mysterium this year! Check out the full list on this page!

April Prompt Winner

The April Prompt (“You Fool!”) winner is redwoodroad, for their drawing of Achenar, Sirrus and Yeesha playing a prank on Gehn. Congratulations!

Schedule is Live!

Posted on May 12, 2023May 12, 2023 by rayne

Shorah and happy Friday!

Schedule

The schedule is now live! We had a lot of great submissions come in and have some exciting events planned for the weekend. We’ve been hard at work contacting everyone and confirming everything, so be aware (as always!) that some of the schedule may be subject to change, at this time. Nothing will be changed very drastically, however, so you shouldn’t worry about making plans around the schedule only to have it shift dramatically.

You’ll notice that much of the schedule for Saturday afternoon is still TBD as Cyan has been a biiiit busy lately, but as we get closer and those events start to solidify, we will update the schedule ASAP.

Saturday at Cyan

Logistics are still being fleshed out but the most important part is that everyone will need a badge to go to Cyan HQ on Saturday. We will open the con room early Saturday morning to allow any attendees who have not yet checked in a chance to check-in and pick up their badge.

We will not be taking badges with us to Cyan so it’s crucial to pick up your badge at the hotel before you go to Cyan on Saturday. Cyan will be checking badges upon arrival and escorting folks off the premises if anyone arrives without a badge.

COVID Policy

As a reminder, Mysterium’s COVID policy has not changed. You are still required to be masked and vaccinated, despite the policies of any governing bodies or states. This will not change, so please refamiliarize yourself with our policies which can be found here.

There are no exceptions to our policy within the convention space at the hotel.

Mysterium is next month! Ahh!!
We can’t wait to see everyone!

– Rayne & m13
Mysterium co-chairs

Rocky Mountain High

Posted on August 5, 2022August 5, 2022 by Shadow Dan

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

Schedule

Posted on July 17, 2022July 17, 2022 by Shadow Dan

Hello again! This will be a bit of a long one since we have quite a lot to announce.

Special Guests

We have another round of guests to announce. Numinous Games are the developers of Area Man Lives, published by Cyan Ventures and released this spring. We also have several members of the ongoing development team for Uru/MOULa and an additional member of the Myst Documentary team.

ametist first started building ages for MOULa in 2008
Elana Bell Bogdan created the soon-to-be-revealed “Vault of Stories” for the Myst Documentary
Colin “Maccodemonkey” Cornaby is currently focused on bringing Uru to the Mac
Patrick “Doobes” Dulebohn has been creating content for Uru since 2007
Amy Noel Green has created games with Numinous including That Dragon, Cancer and Area Man Lives
Ryan Green is the Creative Director and Head of Narrative for Numinous Games
Harley “Calum Traveler” is a writer, artist, and tester for MOULa
Adam “Hoikas” Johnson is a developer on the open-source Uru client
Keith “Tweek” Lord works on Age development and helps support other developers in MOULa
Mike Perrotto is a software developer and producer for Numinous Games
Darryl “Paradox” Pogue is a software developer for Uru
Paul “rarified” Richards is a fan content coordinator for MOULa

Again, full bios can be found on our Special Guests page, and we’re still not quite done announcing guests.

Schedule

Here’s the big announcement: the schedule for Mysterium 2022 is now live on the website! Check it out on our Schedule page. We are still finalizing one or two events so it will likely change in the next few weeks, but most of it is ready to go.

June Community Prompt

Once again we received some great submissions, this time for the topic of “Resilience”, and our winner is Harley “Calum Traveler” for the Narayani word “resilience” in pride flags.

Social Buttons

Do you like warm hugs? Not quite into all the unknown people around you? Or maybe people should just ask what would be the next right thing for you? We’re providing social buttons this year to let everyone know your comfort level! They’ll be available all weekend in the con room.

Yes button – I’m comfortable with conversations, come on up and talk to me!
Ask button – I’m unsure about my comfort level. Please ask before approaching me.
No button – I’m not comfortable with conversations. Please give me space.

Feel free to swap out buttons whenever you feel you need to! We also ask that you please be respectful in regards to these social buttons. Don’t harass other people for wearing them. Be a kind human.

Writing & Artwork Table Submissions

Just a quick reminder that submissions for the writing & artwork table are open through July 31. Check out our Submissions page for details.

Registration

Registration is still open through August 1. After that date, online registration will close. We will sell admission at the door starting Friday morning, but the early badge pickup on Thursday will only be available to those who purchased their badge online.

Hotel Booking Deadline

If you plan to stay at the official Mysterium hotel this year, the Holiday Inn Denver East, you only have a few days left to book a room at the Mysterium rate. After July 19 there will be no guarantee of availability as any remaining rooms in the block may be released to the public. See our Location page for more information.

OK if you made it through that whole thing, thank you for reading. We’ll have more guests, as well as information on the hotel shuttle and parking, soon.

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair