Category Archives: General

Saturday Logistics

Posted on by

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 campus

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:
Three groups: Whark, Ytram, and Sunner

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 by
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!

It’s Gonna Be May!

Posted on by

Shorah Everyone!

Mysterium is only two months away (cue the screaming here) and we of the committee are excited to see all of you come June 30th! That being said, we have a couple of reminders for you!

Reminders

  • Book your hotel room before the closing date on May 28th. If you reserve your room after that date, the code for the rooms will no longer work and you’ll have to pay the full hotel price. Reservations for the rooms can be found here. Any further information about the hotel can be found on our location page of our website.
  • Our cut-off date for swag is June 3rd! Any orders not finalized by this date will be unavailable. There will be a limited number of swag items at the registration table available for purchase on a first come, first serve basis.
  • Online Registration ends on June 16th. While we will allow walk-in registration at the door for 50$, we ask that you register before the deadline so that we can get an accurate head count for Cyan.

Which brings us to our next point…

Assisted Listening

This year, for the first time, Mysterium will be renting and offering assistive listening technology. We will be using Williams Sound PPA 457 Personal Assistive Listening System, so if you require one of these, please contact the committee through the committee@mysterium.net email ASAP (by no later than June 1st) so we can compile a headcount for the use of these. During the convention, please check in at the registration desk to pick yours up, but bear in mind that we will be requiring either a deposit or a form of collateral from you.

May’s Creative Prompt

And lastly, our Prompt for May is: Spring. (Give us all the plays on words, all the puns you can think of. No holds barred pun challenge is a go!)

We’ll be coming back to you soon with more information on a schedule, our final headcount, and any other important information, so be on the lookout.

Until then,
m13, Co-Chair of Mysterium 2023

Open Mic Submissions

Posted on by

Shorah Everyone

We have another quick update for you.

Open Mic Night

Last year we held our first Open Mic Night, an evolution of our Mysterium Showtunes event in 2018. It continues to be a popular, and fun, event, so we want to bring it to our virtual Mysterium. Instead of live performances, we’ll be taking submissions of your song parodies, poetry, skits, and anything else you can come up with. We’ll string them together and show them during the virtual Mysterium.

We hope a lot of you choose to participate, and we look forward to seeing your awesome creations. Remember, this is all about having fun. You don’t have to be the best singer or writer – just look at the goofballs on the Mysterium committee performing last year!

You can get all of the details about Open Mic Night submissions here.

Other Submissions

Don’t forget that we still have submissions open for events, activity book pages, and our Pass the Book Challenge. You can find all the details for those on our submissions page.

Registration Roll-Over

We said in our last blog post that we’d email anyone who already registered for Mysterium 2020. We promise we didn’t forget, and we expect those emails to go out in the next day or so. Keep an eye on your inbox!

Myst Documentary

Our friends over at the Myst Documentary have launched a new interactive website. Philip Shane, who is making the documentary, will once again be presenting at Mysterium this summer. Until then, though, we encourage you to check out the new site and sign up for their mailing list.

That’s all we have for you this week. Stay tuned for some exciting announcements next week, including registration, extra special guests, and more!

–The Mysterium Committee

(PS – Don’t forget to order a T-shirt and support some great organizations all at once!)

Mysterium Updates and Taking Action

Posted on by

Hello everyone

It’s hard to write a blog post about a gaming convention right now. On the one hand, we want to get you information about the convention in a timely manner. On the other hand, we can’t ignore what is happening in the world around us, as people of color and others around the country – and the world – protest police brutality and a long history of systemic injustice. We want to make it very clear that everyone involved in planning Mysterium supports the Black Lives Matter protests, and that there will never be space for racism or bigotry within the Mysterium community.

We plan to put our money where our mouths are at the end of this post, but first we want to give you an update on the rescheduled Mysterium 2021 convention:

Mysterium 2021

For the first time ever, we’re giving you over 13 months to plan for Mysterium! The dates of the rescheduled Mysterium 2021 are July 16-18, at the same hotel (Westin Alexandria Old Town in Alexandria, VA) and same room rate ($100/night). See our updated Location page for more details.

Hotel Bookings

The hotel will be cancelling your 2020 booking in the next couple weeks, so you should not need to do anything. If this hasn’t occurred by July 1, we will contact the hotel and update you with plenty of time before the cancellation date. We will post the link to book 2021 hotel rooms at our rate after our virtual Mysterium 2020 convention is over.

Registration

If you have already purchased a registration for Mysterium 2020, you will have the option of rolling it over to 2021, or requesting a refund. If you choose to roll over your registration, you will not be responsible for any price increases between now and the event. We will contact you soon with more details, using the email address you provided when you registered. For those of you who have not yet purchased a ticket, we will open Mysterium 2021 registration later this year.

Mysterium 2020

We have several interesting events planned for our virtual Mysterium, and we want to remind you that you can submit your own virtual event ideas here.

Calling All Costumers

One event we’re excited about is what we’re calling the Pass The Book Challenge, based on the popular Pass The Brush Challenge videos that have been circulating recently. If you have any Myst, Obduction, or other Cyan related costumes, this is your time to shine! All you have to do is record a pair of videos of yourself before and after putting on the costume, and we’ll edit them together into a fun video to be played during Mysterium!

Don’t stress about this. It’s not about having the most complex or intricate costume, it’s about having fun and showing off your creativity.

You can read all the details here!

T-Shirt Updates and Profit Donations

We have made some minor updates to the dates on the T-Shirt logos, and we have opened a new web store where you can order them! You can get all the info about our shirts and store on our Shirts Page. If you already bought a shirt with your registration, we will be in touch with you over email soon to discuss your options.

Now, we said at the start of this post that we’d be putting our money where our mouths are, and it’s time to do just that. We will be donating $2 from every shirt sold through the end of August to Campaign Zero and to Gameheads.

  • Campaign Zero is focused on research about police violence, how different policies affect it, and pushing for legislation to enact those policies and to help stop the violence entirely.
  • Gameheads is an organization focused on helping to prepare low income youth and youth of color to enter and thrive in the technology and video game industries. It’s certainly a different choice from Campaign Zero, but it felt appropriate coming from a convention about a video game series.

The donations will be evenly split between the two organizations. We’d love to give even more money, but realistically we only make $8-10 per shirt sold (depending on how many we sell), and the money we get from shirt sales is a significant part of how we fund the convention. If you would like to make your own donations, here are some other organizations to look at:

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund

The Black Visions Collective

The ACLU

Color Of Change

You local bail fund (find it on this and other lists)

We will have more for you soon. Until then, we hope you all stay safe and healthy.

-The Mysterium Committee