Shorah!

The snow is melting, and we have some swag announcements to share with you!

Enamel Pins

We got a lot of fantastic pin submissions this year! We chose four designs to have available at Mysterium.

We all began this journey with the fissure! The Fissure design is by Katherine “Squeefruit” White. You can see her work here: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Myst.

The Black Ships design is by Kelly “Rayne” Coston. Her website can be found here: Geek Girl Stuff

The Scarab design is by redwoodrroad. You can visit his website at https://redwoodrroad.tumblr.com/.

And the Clockwork Adjunct design is by Avior. You can see their other work at: https://twitter.com/avior_dev.

Buttons

We’re rolling out some brand-new swag items this year! One of them is 1.25” buttons, featuring art submitted by Neil Darbyshire and Kefrith. The buttons will be sold as a set.

The dome design was submitted by Kevin F. “Kefrith” Smith. His website may be found here: http://facebook.com/KefrithMyst.

The Miller Brothers and Scarab designs were submitted by Neil Darbyshire. His website may be found here: https://www.instagram.com/robaku.and.bear/.

The pins and buttons are now available for pre-orders in our registration system. If you have already registered, you can log in to your account and add these items to your cart for purchase. We will have a limited number of both sets available at the swag table at Mysterium.

Social Buttons

Speaking of buttons! We will have social buttons available for attendees, staff, and guests again this year!

These darling little buttons measure 1.25” and the purpose of these is pretty straightforward. Wearing a green “yes” button implies that you are comfortable with people approaching you and engaging in conversation. A yellow “ask” button implies that you would prefer people to ask before engaging in conversation. And a red “no” button implies simply that you would like some space and to be left alone.

These buttons will be available at the registration desk at no cost. Just come up, snag one, and feel free to wear it on your badge, lanyard, or shirt. These are completely optional, just a nice easy way to communicate comfort level.

We do ask that everyone please be respectful with these. We also ask that the buttons be returned at the end of Mysterium so that we can sanitize and use them again next year. 

Stay warm, folks! We’ve got more announcements coming soon!

– Kelly “Rayne” Coston & Drea “m13”
Mysterium co-chairs

Shorah everyone!
We have a couple of quick things we want to share with you.

Writing and Art Table Submissions

We’re thrilled to announce the return of the Table and submissions are now open! Spearheaded by our very own Annacat, the Table is an opportunity for folks to submit their fan work for display. Head over to the Submissions page for more information!

January Creative Prompt Winner

The Discord community has spoken! For “beginnings”, this piece was submitted by Grayson aka redwoodrroad.

February’s theme is “Heart” and submissions are still open until February 28th! Head over to our Discord server if you have a piece you would like to submit.

Covid-19 Updated Policy

We’ve modified the wording a bit to clarify what to expect during the Cyan visit on Saturday. The policy now states:

Importantly, a modified policy will be in effect for the Cyan visit on Saturday. We cannot guarantee that special guests and Cyan staff will be masked or vaccinated. We’re looking into the feasibility of streaming content from the Cyan visit for anyone who cannot attend. If you have questions about Cyan’s covid policy, please feel free to reach out to Jeff Lanctot at jeff@cyan.com.

Please note that Mysterium’s Covid-19 policy remains unchanged. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions!

That’s all for now. We’ve got more goodies to announce soon!

-Kelly “Rayne” & Drea “m13”
Mysterium Co-chairs

Thanks once again to everyone for making this year’s Mysterium a success! We had over 800 people registered, and our peak on Twitch was over 6,000 viewers! We have a few updates to share as we wrap up the convention.

T-shirts

If you have been waiting until the last minute to order a t-shirt, well, now is the last minute. We will be closing shirt orders this Saturday (August 22), and the next time you will be able to purchase one will be for Mysterium 2021. If you ordered a shirt, we will be contacting you soon, and we plan to ship orders in September.

Survey

If you registered for Mysterium, you will be receiving a survey by the end of August. Please fill it out – it gives us valuable feedback on what worked, what didn’t work, and what you’d like to see at future conventions.

YouTube Videos

All of the videos from the convention are now on YouTube. The official events can be found in this playlist, and the watermelon videos and other fun stuff previously exclusive to Twitch can be found in this playlist.

We’ll have more news on Mysterium 2021 in the coming months. In the meantime, enjoy the last few weeks of summer!

–The Mysterium Committee

Special Guests

• Adrian “Okaydrian” F.E. is a Twitch streamer and gaming host, having interviewed several famous names online as well as at Comic Con, PAX, E3, and the White House.
• Eleri Hamilton is a curator for Cyan’s lore archival project, and a leader at Inkworks Productions and the game Unwritten.
• Veronica Hamilton is the primary developer for Unwritten and part of the leadership at Inkworks Productions, now partnered with Cyan Ventures.
• Claire “Shoom’lah” Hummel’s artwork has been a part of the Myst community for years, including concept art for Obduction and one of the two designs for this year’s convention t-shirt.
• Karl Johnson started with Cyan in 2003. Having served several roles since then, he is currently a developer, paying particular attention to comfort and motion sickness in VR.
• Eva “laughingpineapple” Jucci has contributed a variety of artwork, writings, and cosplays over the years.
• Blake Lewin is a thirty year veteran in the games industry. He helped to revive Uru on Gametap, and wrangled the rights to Myst III and IV back to Cyan from Ubisoft.
• Nate Lewin has handled sound design for numerous games, films, and TV commercials, as well as recording several of his own experimental projects.
• Keith “Tweek” Lord has been contributing artwork to the Myst community for the past 20 years. He also really likes waffles.
• Jamey Scott was the audio director for Myst III with Presto Studios. He is currently the sound designer for the HBO series Raised by Wolves.

See their full bios and the rest of the list on our special guests page.

Streaming & Zoom

There has been some confusion as to the use of Twitch, YouTube, and Zoom. The events on the schedule page are color-coded according to where you’ll find them. Events shown in blue are streamed to both Twitch and YouTube. Events shown in red are streamed exclusively to YouTube. Links can be found on the schedule below each event’s description. None of these items require Zoom to view them.

The third category, green, is for discussion rooms, which will be held on Zoom (think of the un-conferences and casual discussions that typically pop up during an in-person Mysterium). While the Twitch and YouTube streams will be available for public viewing, you will need to be registered for Mysterium, and must download Zoom, to participate in any of those discussion rooms. We will be sending an email to registered attendees later this week with more details on how to join those rooms.

TL;DR – Other than the discussion rooms, everything on the schedule will be viewable through YouTube and Twitch. Zoom is only needed to join discussion rooms.

Also, the nature of an online convention means that we’re able to hold multiple events at the same time this year. Don’t worry, though – all events (except for discussion rooms) will be recorded and posted to YouTube for you to watch later.

Digital Activity Book

As mentioned in previous posts, the activity book we had planned for this year’s Mysterium is available for download in a digital format. Click here to download the activity book, and here for the solutions.

We will provide more information later this year about the printed book for next year’s in-person convention.

Discord Channel Updates

We are reorganizing the Mysterium Discord server with some new channels to use during the convention. To make it easier for you to know where to post, we’re putting everything in a brand new category: Mysterium 2020 Online! The full list of new channels and their descriptions can be found in the #rules channel on the Discord server.

Unwritten @ Mysterium

You might have seen on our calendar that Eleri and Vee will be running an Unwritten campaign during this year’s convention! You still have a couple more days to sign up (please do so by August 5), using this form.

Hope to see you all online this weekend!

–The Mysterium Committee