Greetings all

It seems like just yesterday we posted that there were six weeks until Mysterium, and yet here we are, only two weeks away from Mysterium 2019! Are you ready? Excited? We can’t wait!

With Mysterium just around the corner, we have some updates and reminders for you. Let’s jump right in!

A Beautiful Surprise…

To kick things off, we have a beautiful surprise! Early-bird registrants will receive the below patch when they check in:

These patches were designed by our very own Taniith. We only have enough of these exclusive patches for early-bird registrants, but we have something else for everyone:

Early-birds each get a full set of pins for free, but everyone is welcome to buy more pins (while supplies last). The lamp pin was designed by “Moiety Jean” Fioca, while the four Obduction pins were designed by Xemylixa.

Reminder: Topics and Questions for Panels

This year, Mysterium has a number of panels with our special guests on the schedule. To help make those a success, we’d love to hear your ideas, questions, or topics of interest for our panelists to discuss or answer. If you have some, please send them along using this form. You’re more than welcome to submit as many ideas as you’d like.

Open Mic Night

Last year we ran a very successful event called Mysterium Showtunes, and this year we’re expanding on the concept with our Open Mic Night on Saturday evening. Whether it’s a poem, a song re-written in the original D’ni, or a love ballad between Atrus and Catherine, we’d love to hear what you can come up with! The possibilities are endless.

While there will be some time before the event to write something, if you’re interested in participating we encourage you to create your material in advance. Not sure where to start? Take a look back at last year’s award winning performances on YouTube or peruse our collection of lyrics.

If you would like music in the background, please either have a copy of it ready or located on a service like Spotify or Apple Music. Also, be sure to practice with the music! It’s not always as easy as you might think.

Frequently Asked Questions

We’ve compiled a list of FAQs and useful information to know on our Mysterium 2019 FAQ page. This page has more detailed information about autographs, the logistics of our trip to Cyan, and more, so we encourage everyone to take a look.

On a related note, if you have a costume you would like to wear during the weekend, we encourage you to wear it on Saturday. After all, Cyan HQ makes for an excellent costume parade venue! Please note that much of the visit to Cyan will be outdoors, so plan accordingly.

That’s it for today’s update. We can’t wait to see you all in just a few short weeks!

Mysterium 2019 Committee

Greetings all

Happy 4th of July to US-based fans! We have quite a bit of news for you today, including the release of this year’s schedule. Let’s get right to it:

Mysterium 2019 Schedule

At long last, we’re happy to release our weekend schedule. You can check it out here.

We have a packed weekend for you, including a visit to Cyan on Saturday. Over the next month, we’ll highlight a few of the more exciting events in additional blog posts. For the moment, though, we’d like to talk about how signatures from our special guests will work.

We have two blocks scheduled on Friday, as well as time while we’re at Cyan, for folks to get signatures from our guests. Of course, you are also welcome to chat with them throughout the weekend if they aren’t busy. Signatures are free, but we will not be providing photos or signature sheets for you. You are limited to having 3 items signed at any one visit, though you are welcome to get back in line. If you want to take a photo with one of the guests, you are welcome to take a quick selfie on your phone, provided it is out and ready to go. You may not ask other people to take a photo for you.

For signature slots at the hotel on Friday, we’ll be handing out numbers at the registration desk and calling small groups in according to those numbers. This will help us keep the crowds down, and also lets you do other things while you wait, rather than just waiting in line.

Hotel Update

As you probably know, our hotel (Ruby River) is booked solid. We have managed to secure a handful of rooms at a nearby overflow hotel. If you’d like to book one of those rooms, you can find out more info at our location page. Also, if you have a room at the overflow hotel and have mobility issues that would make it hard to get to and from the Ruby River hotel, please contact us through the methods listed on that page. We’ll try our best to help.

Next Guest – Kha’tie Postma

We have one last special guest to announce, and we’re very excited about it.

Kha’tie has been around the Myst community for a long time. In the early 2000s she was Ubisoft’s Community Manager for the Myst games. After Myst V and the Uru sequels launched, she moved to other studios including Cartoon Network, Gazillion, Disruptor Beam, and Stoic, and worked on titles including Stargate, Star Trek, Marvel, and Game of Thrones. Since the Myst 25th Kickstarter, she has been working with Cyan as a community, social media, and marketing management consultant. She has also been helping us to liaise with Cyan this year, as well as helping us get in touch with many of our special guests and moderating several of our panels. We’re happy to welcome Kha’tie back to Mysterium.

You can find out more about Kha’tie and our other special guests here.

Panel Topics and Other Submissions

We have quite a few panels on the schedule this year, and we know there are topics that you are dying to hear about. If you’d like to suggest some topics for our guests to discuss, we have a form here. We’ll forward any suggestions to our panel moderators.

We also have a new submission option that just opened up. A number of folks have asked if they can display their Myst and Cyan-related writing/fiction/artwork at Mysterium this year. Thanks to our awesome staff-member Annacat, we’re now taking submissions for just that! You don’t even have to be attending. You can find out all the details here. Submissions must be received by July 30th.

We are also still accepting Mysterium Memories up until the convention.

That’s all for today. Stay tuned for more news soon!

-Taniith
Mysterium 2019 Con Chair

Greetings all

We have six weeks to go before Mysterium! Are you excited? Here’s the latest news, and our next special guest:

Registration Update

We currently have just under 200 people registered, which is amazing! This is going to be a heck of a year, and we hope everyone who wants to can come take part. However, we can only fit so many people in our event space, so we are going to cap pre-registration at roughly 225 people. We’ll still have some badges available for walk-in registration, but if we hit that number before August we’ll have to close down online sales.

If you’ve been putting off buying your badge, be sure to do so soon at our registration page. While you’re there, be sure to grab a coloring book while sales of those are still open.

Next Guest

We’re extremely excited to announce that our next guest is Marty O’Donnell.

Marty has worked on everything from Flintstones Kids commercials to the multi-award-winning Halo games series. Myst fans, however, will know him as the sound designer for Riven. Where do you think they got the name of the Ytram?

These days, Marty is co-founder and co-owner of Highwire Games in Seattle. Their first title, Golem, is an exclusive title for Playstation VR and will be released in 2019. He has also composed and produced Echoes of the First Dreamer, the musical prequel to Golem, which is currently available.

Find out more about Marty, and all of our special guests, at our guests page.

Mysterium Memories

In celebration of 20 years of Mysterium, we’re compiling stories, photos, and memories from the years we’ve spent with our wonderful community. If you haven’t already, please take a look at the Mysterium Memories page for more information. We anticipate using the memories you submit on-site at Mysterium this year in a slideshow format, so we’d love to hear from you! Submissions will be open until the convention begins.

ZED Launch

In case you missed it, ZED launched a little over two weeks ago! ZED is the story of an aging artist, lost in regret and the haze of dementia. It was made by former Myst artist, and Mysterium special guest, Chuck Carter, and was published by Cyan’s publishing arm. It’s a beautiful game, and everyone on Mysterium staff highly recommends it. You can find out more about ZED at Cyan’s site, here.

If you enjoy ZED, please consider giving it a quick review. Everything helps!

That’s all we have today. We have a few more surprises for you, so keep an eye out over the next few weeks.

Until then,

-Taniith
Mysterium 2019 Chair

Quick update for you. Our coloring book proof came in this week, and it looks faaaabulous:

Keep in mind that this is an initial proof. We’re adjusting the positioning on most pages, including centering images on the pages and fixing the parts of the cover that are cut-off. Also note that the credit/title text is on the back of the page, so what you see in the photos is the info for the previous page.

If you’d like to pre-order extra coloring books, we extended the sale period while we were getting the proof made. You can buy them here. We’ll be ending coloring book sales without notice some time in the next week (once our edits are done), so if you want one be sure to order ASAP!

Big thank you to Kelly Coston for the huge task of laying out the book and converting many old logos and images into coloring pages. Also, a big thank you and congrats to everyone who submitted artwork that ended up in the book (and folks who submitted artwork in the past that we repurposed):

• Adam Winsor
• Calum Traveler
• Samuel Sefer
• Claire “Shoom’lah” Hummell
• Taniith
• Jeston Tigchon
• Xemylixa
• Katherine White
• LaughingPineapple
• Lehsa
• Matthew Schneider
• Kelly “Rayne” Coston
• Jam
• Moiety Jean Fioca
• NetWatcher
• Zib Redlektab
• Mary Wienckowski
• Michael Bower
• Kefrith
• Floydman
• Eleri

We hope to have some more news for you later this week. Stay tuned!

-Taniith
Mysterium 2019 Chair

Greetings All

Can you believe it’s almost June? In just over two months we’ll all be gathering in Spokane! With that in mind, we have a few updates and another big announcement:

Registration/Swag Deadline

Early Bird registration ends this Saturday, June 1st. After that, the registration price will go up, and we can’t guarantee you’ll get swag with your badge.

Also, if you want to order and extra coloring book or t-shirt, be sure to do so ASAP. After Saturday we’ll be closing pre-orders on those and placing our manufacturing orders.

You can register or buy shirts/books at our registration page, here.

Hotel Update

Ruby River, our convention hotel, is basically booked solid at this point. There may be one or two rooms currently available on our reservation link, but that’s it. We’re actively working with the hotel to secure a block of overflow rooms at one of their nearby properties. We’ll email all registered attendees, and post here/on social media, once we have more information.

In the meantime, some people on our Discord server have expressed an interest in sharing rooms to split the cost. You can post to the #room-and-ride-share channel there if you’re interested.

Announcing – Tim Larkin

We’re very excited to announce that our next special guest is Tim Larkin!

Tim began his relationship with Cyan as a sound designer for Riven, and later as the Audio Director and composer for URU and Myst V. He currently works as a sound designer and composer at Valve. You can find out more about Tim, and all of Mysterium’s special guests, on our new Special Guests page!

If you’ve been following our special guest announcements, you may be starting to notice a theme. Stay tuned, because we’re not quite done with these announcements yet!

Until then,
-Taniith
Mysterium 2019 Chair