There are several possibilities I can forsee:

1. I find Earth's descriptive book. It's dusty. I sneeze on it,
erasing the line about North America.

2. I plant a flag in the volcano, accidently breaking through the
cap and causing the volcano to erupt. I panic link.

3. Jeff Zandi leaves the cleft to play Magic: The Gathering (there
is a real Jeff Zandi who plays that game and is some sort of
expert at it) and the goverment decides it would be an ideal place
to test a new cruise missile. I'm given the job to launch the cruise
missile. I press the big red button, and then immeadietly realise
why the target site looks so familiar.

4. A mega multi-artist rock concert is held b the volcano.
The rapid jumping of tens of thousands of fans causes the volcano
to colapse. The bands and fans land in the water, where they continue
the concert, much to our dismay.

Quote:

Hmmm. A similar unfortunate thing regarding the sun happened to Garternay. Could there be a hidden lever in Ae'gura which reads "Trigger nova - do not pull", or something like it?

Around here we hae large green pipes sticking out of the fround, twisting
every which way, crowded with levers, wheels, and buttons.
I always have to restrain myself from letting my Myst instincts
take over .

I think Dr. Watson is going to reappear in the Cavern as a professional wrestler nicknamed "Destruction."

Just my 2 cents.

_________________
"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
-Jorge Luis Borges, "Poem of the Gifts," from "The Maker"

KAHN!

EDIT: C'mon, you must have seen THAT coming...

Quote:

Hmmm. A similar unfortunate thing regarding the sun happened to Garternay. Could there be a hidden lever in Ae'gura which reads "Trigger nova - do not pull", or something like it?

Reminds me of System shock, when you accidently trigger the laser and destroy earth...

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Is this "destruction" supposed to occur at the start of the new game - and "we" the community are tasked with digging our way out? Or is it something that will occur 10 years down the line as part of an ongoing story plot? (Assuming the online game lasts that long. ) Also, is this a wide spread destruction of the Cavern or just some small significant part?

The idea of the Cavern being destroyed early on scares me - there is to much still to explore and discover in it to loose it all right out of the gate. Course, if they've incorporated aspects of EoA into Live - and Live is supposed to be real time - then we'll have until 2040 before everything goes "poof".

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All things come to those who wait.

On a more serious note, my hunch is that the surface will become uninhabitable. I offer you this quote from page 326 of David Hatcher Childress's Lost Cities of North and Central America:

An interesting legend that has been reported about the Hopi is that a of a Dark Star that will appear soon in the sky. This Dark Star will herald the end of the Fourth World, or Fourth Sun. The Hopi, like the Aztecs or Toltecs, divided the periods between catastrophes by "Suns" with which they named each epoch. There was the Sun of Water, the Sun of Earth, the Sun of Wind, and our current age, the Sun of Fire.

The end of the Sun of Fire will also be indicated by an unusual blue flower that will bloom in the desert. According to tribal reports, a strange blue flower, hitherto unknown, has been found in the desert regions of New Mexico.

- - - -
Make of that what ye will.



The author is a bit far out, by the way.

My guess is that Yeesha's unique abilities will become paramount in Live, perhaps linking us to a new refuge akin to the rainy Cleft.

qriD

_________________
"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
-Jorge Luis Borges, "Poem of the Gifts," from "The Maker"

I don't think that the surface will be destroyed, however it
may become inaccessable through the normal means. It
seems to be experiencing some problems at the end of EOA,
and it would be interesesting if the 'bad' ending of EOA was
the correct one, and it would make sense because that ending
gives you access to an additional age.

In that case, we may have the task of freeing the stranger fomr Myst 5.

If, as has been speculated elsewhere, the timeline of Uru Live places us AFTER the events of EoA, then the earthquake activity in the Cavern is likely to be the cause of the Destruction.

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Proud former member of The Meeting Place

Well let me run a line of thought here.....

T'iana - through a desire to see justice allows a situation where one lives that is the main part of a plot that ultimately destroys D'in.

Her son Ghen then grows up amid this loss and destruction and is driven to attempt to learn for himself the powers of the ‘art’. In the pursuit of this goal he develops a god-complex and starts to destroy book after book – and causes untold misery on worlds he connects to and finally has to be imprisoned by his son.

His son Atrus attempts to gather the scattered survivors and rebuild D'in. In the process of doing this he manages to destroy the other retreat of the D'in by inflicting a pandemic on the world. The resultant uprising of the ‘least’ while probably inevitable, effectively destroys the entire place and leaves it struggling to move on while rather sensibly sealing itself off from Atrus and the D'in survivors. He then writes Releeshan and retreats there with the D'in to rebuild anew. The cavern is left to decay in much the same way the D'in split off to create the cavern in the 1st place.

His daughter Yeesha then makes a spiritual journey developing her abilities far beyond that of the D'in and discovers the 'least' known as the Bahro. The Earth D'in apparently following the same course as the original D'in; in that the culture is based on the abuse of another race. She embarks on a long mission to educate and encourage others to break free of the D'in culture. In this she is effectively derailing the DRC in their rebuilding of the cavern. This of course, if successful would see the return of the abuse of the Bahro. I am making the assumption that it would now be hard to reinstate the D'in culture as it stood since the Bahro are no longer controlled by the tablet.

So I have this developing view - T’iana and her descendants are well meaning but tend to take actions that become the catalyst for major changes, and those changes have unfortunately tended to result in the deaths of rather large numbers of people.

So I assume the chances of destruction are very high if Yeesha or any of her children turn up. (I am assuming that she does take the chance to settle down in Releeshan and have her own life).

I too think Yeesha is a fairly likely canidate to cause some destruction. Especially if one considers the journals and imager messages she left in Myst 5. The imagers especially show her to have become more than a little demented.

Although, I also would be wary of the bahro. For one thing, I have never found any proper explaination for what purpose the Bahro served in their enslavement. Myst 5 implies they were servants of some kind, but if they were vital servants, why was no deeper explaination of their exploitation by the D'ni given?

It is entirely possible that the Bahro were not the oppressed underclass we thought. Perhaps they weren't enslaved, but restrained because of the damage they could cause?

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Alec Winters KI 06399622

"History is irredeemable."
- Kain, Scion of Balance

I think there are a couple of answers provided to the question of the Bahro's purpose in their enslavement, and why it is not mentioned, in The Book of D'ni and in one of the endings in Myst V.

In The Book of D'ni, the D'ni there do not even see the people who are their slaves, unless they absolutely must interact with them. They feel themselves so superior to these servants that they do not even recognize their existence and everything seems to happen almost magically.

I could easily see the same thing happening with the Bahro. Despite the fact that the Bahro undoubtedly share the same Linking abilities (and may be the origin of them among the D'ni?), the D'ni feel themselves so superior to these "animals" that they do not acknowledge their contribution. They are not mentioned in any D'ni literature because the D'ni willfully ignore that they have any part in their society, or even that they exist

I think there is also a hint of the power of the Bahro in one of the losing endings in Myst V. I won't elaborate too much here for those who have not seen this one, but it's the one where you bring Esher the tablet on Myst island. What Esher says and does in that sequence indicates that, yes, the Bahro are held captive, and because of what you've done in bringing the tablet to Esher, they will be forced to serve this person whom they despise. In his speech, Esher himself says what he hopes to get out of it.

As for the question of whether the Bahro are being restrained because of the damage they could cause, well, I think that's part of the philosophical difference between Esher and Yeesha, and it hinges on whether one trusts the Bahro or not. And even if they were being restrained for such a "noble" reason, does that still give the D'ni the right to use their powers for themselves while deeming them lesser creatures than themselves? Why would we trust the D'ni with that power any more than we would trust the Bahro?