Preafter mopping up

Ainia · **Posted:** Tue Oct 29, 2013 1:59 am

Shorah everyone,

Quite honestly, I have no idea if there's anyone out there who can help with this, but after reading Rand's reddit answers about the "missing" Preafter spirals, I've been feverishly trying to find out more about this old business.

Rand made some cryptic comments back during the 2009 Mysterium, which his reddit comments echo a bit more clearly.

[Reveal] Spoiler: Snipped from the bottom of the first post and top of the second post

Quote:

Eleri: So, when we were down in Austin, you told me there was one of those PreAfter stones out there.

Rand (Smiling big): There's WHAT?

Eleri: One of those PreAfter stones, things still out there!

Rand (jokingly): I don't know what you're talking about!

Eleri: Is it still there?

Rand: Where'd you hear that from?

Eleri: Did you go check on it?

Rand: (Laughs) You know, maybe everywhere you look you should just dig a hole. [Maybe you'll find it]

Simon_Bitdiddle: Alright, this is an URU question.

Rand: Whoa whoa wait, hold that thought. How many people were, knew about PreAfter? Or, knew anything about PreAfter stuff? Not a lot. Yeah, not a lot of hands. How many people are like, "PreAfter, what the heck are you talking about?" Yeah... it was a little "Pre-URU" , alternative reality kind of game that we did. Which, by the way, I mean, the stuff we... even the little things we did in Riven, that you may not be aware of, ... (to RAWA) what was that guy's name on that whole thing? Guildmaster, ...

RAWA or Audience: Telanis?

Rand: Was it Talanis?

From the Audience: The URU [Indecipherable]?

Rand: It was the stuff we had during Riven. We had some crazy games going on during Riven, , where, this saying to D'ni would show up, it was on CNN, but only because they interviewed Josh and it was on the screen behind him and it would show up in different places and then, there was a website you could go to, and there was phone numbers, and there was this whole game outside of the game. And I think it was actually the first ARG ever done, and eventually like somebody got...

RAWA: The winner got a beta copy of Riven.

Rand: That's right, that's right it was before Riven, got a beta copy that was on a burned CD, and :

From the Audience: Five burned CDs?

Rand: And they couldn't reveal anything. In a gen... in a stroke of genius marketing on our part, the winner was not allowed to talk about it. (Laughter) Maybe we should've re-thought that. It seemed really smart at the time. "Oh, and they shouldn't say a WORD! AWESOME!" That's why we're... that's why this building's empty! Okay.

Eric L: But Nobody talk about how cool it is. [Indecipherable]

Rand: Yeah. So, so, the, so anyway we had someone call the phone

RAWA: At a specific minute

Rand: ...at a specific minute, during that minute, and offer a phrase, in D'ni, and it was a specific day, a specific minute only they had to call us live and they did it. And it was kind of obscure, on how they, on how it all came about, andsomebody did it, who is lost to history now, I don't know who it was. It was a female voice, that's all I know, who won... somebody called, like, the minute before, or and not on the minute, and if they called at the wrong time I think it was Ryan Miller, who was like "Hello?", and they're like, some d'ni phrase they'd say, and he's like "Who is this?," and they hung up. And went awww, I guess I messed it up. They didn't call... we were like, "Maybe they'll call back!" .... Nope! Missed it by THAT much! Ahhh, then somebody, like, nailed it. Said, , called up and spoke in D'ni, and won the prize. So that was cool.

After all this time, a lot of the old information is long gone. The old Uru Obsession and DRC threads are ancient history and the Wayback Machine only has some of the stuff archived from preafter.com and Zardoz's Zandi pages. I found an old MystCommunity forum thread discussing the clues and the work being done by the Ziacache team at that time.

The geocaching web site has one current record that I can find. Ziacache has left a log summary and photo record there. According to the posts there, the cache was last placed here in August of 2004. Would this be the missing spiral Rand is referring to? Or is this something else??

So apart from Rand's comments, how do we know there is another spiral out there to be found? As far as I can tell, five out of the nine "fingers" formed a part of Preafter--what about the other four? Is the missing spiral one of them? Or was there one of the five that was never found? What clues did we have back in the Preafter days? What in particular were Eleri and 75thTrombone remembering when they asked Rand about this?

[[Please help!! Before I hurt myself from running around in circles endlessly!!]]

Marten · **Posted:** Fri Nov 01, 2013 12:11 am

I am far from an authority on the topic, but my recollection (from having asked this same question of someone else once) is that Cyan put a clue on a billboard and fans did not find out until after the advertisement had been replaced with another. The clue was never recovered and therefore the preafter spiral it led to was never recovered.

Furthermore, Rand has directly addressed the issue in interviews - he has said that fans never got all of the spirals. There is no reason to believe he would lie about this.

Ainia · **Posted:** Sat Nov 02, 2013 11:10 am

Hmm... based on your comments Marten, I must assume that I wasn't being very clear in my original post.

After combing through all the information I've found (and linked in my OP), here's the evidence we seem to have today:

From vidkid7's post in December 2007, Zandi's Preafter web site, and the old Zandi facts web site:

2000: Zandi contacts the owners of a billboard in Carlsbad and leases it for one year. He puts on it a picture of a spiral (I assume the Preafter spiral) and a set of GPS coordinates
2001: The second Mysterium is held in Carlsbad NM, at the Carlsbad Inn adjacent to said billboard. Zandi attends Mysterium wearing a t-shirt showing the Preafter spiral.
2002: The DRC web site and forums open and Zandi posts there a couple of times as himself, though his posts are deleted promptly by the DRC. Zandi then begins to hijack DRC board members' posts and add his own information to them, providing explorers the clues to track down the information they had missed at the Mysterium (i.e., Zandi's presence and the clues on the billboard).
2002: The third Mysterium receives a fax from Zandi with more clues, leading to the explorer community getting truly started on the Preafter treasure hunt.
2002: The first spiral is found in Petroglyph National Monument on the west mesa of Albuquerque NM; Zandi's Preafter website is updated to acknowledge this success.
September 2002: The Preafter web site is updated with new clues, eventually yielding coordinates for the second spiral; the second spiral is found in Tent Rocks National Monument; Zandi's web site again is updated to reflect this success.
October 2002: Preafter is updated with a new series of clues, leading to a mysterious phone call in Portland OR and a new set of coordinates; the third spiral is found at Turquoise Butte in western New Mexico.
November 2002: Zandi's web site once again is updated with new clues which eventually lead to instructions for a meet-up with Zandi himself, after which the fourth spiral is found at the Bisti Badlands/De Na Zin Wilderness. The existence of Uru is unveiled on the Preafter web site, to which the DRC responds with a frenzy of forum postings about the history of the restoration and how Zandi fits in (and thus revealing the conflict between the DRC and Zandi).
December 2002: Preafter is updated once again with new clues, this time simply asking all the finders of the four spirals to meet up and provide proof of their gathering; after this, Zandi completely revamps the Preafter web site and introduces explorers to the Yeesha hand journey symbol and the task of making their own journey symbols.

This is all stuff I assumed any "old timers" would already be well aware of (which is why I didn't include it in the OP). However, the presence of a Zandi 5 geocache is a puzzlement, as it doesn't readily fit in with the other information I've been able to find. The date it was hidden (12/21/2002) is suggestive, though, as this is when the four spirals met up and provided the proof required by Zandi (photographs of their meeting). Ziacache's Zandi 5 log says that they met for dinner in Santa Fe, which would explain the location of the Zandi 5 geocache *if* one of the four spirals was used to create it.

Nothing I've been able to find in the way of clues or evidence from the above (or anywhere else on the internet) explains why Eleri, 75thTrombone and Trekluver have asked Rand about "missing" spirals. Their comments are the only indication so far that anything was known to be missing at all in the past. The only possible clue provided about this is from 75thTrombone and something he remembers hearing from RAWA (not in any of RAWA's posts that I've ever found, so perhaps this was a PM or conversation during a Mysterium).

[Reveal] Spoiler: Recent reddit conversation about Preafter

Quote:

75thTrombone: Where are the remaining Preafter spirals?
Trekluver: Good night, that was ages ago!

Plus, there's a distinct possibility he might not remember some of the old preafter stuff...
mysterm (Rand): NOT REMEMBER IT!!! There's one left.
Trekluver: I figured that might be the case! Maybe RAWA can dig into the deep recesses of his brain and remember for us.

mysterm (Rand): No, I do remember! That is important stuff! There is one remaining - but there are no clues, yet.
rbnh00d222: I've still got my GPS charged up Rand. Ready and waiting for more whispers from professor Z.

75thTrombone: There are Preafter spirals still buried out there, and if Rand doesn't know where they are, then RAWA does.
Trekluver: I know they're still buried, but wasn't there a concensus that some of them were put in the wrong places somehow? I honestly don't recall, as that was slightly before my time in the community.
75thTrombone: I never heard anything about them being in the wrong places. RAWA has made it clear (for RAWA's definition of "clear"

) that we have enough information to find at least one of them. Something to do with quantum physics and the history of New Mexico.
Trekluver: Ah, ok then. Hopefully Rand clues us in then, because I'd definitely enjoy knowing that somebody had finally completed that last bit from the preafter days!

ArtEngineer: Preafter spirals What was / is preafter?
Trekluver: Ooo, I would screw up all of the details trying to explain it. With certainty, I can say it was a pre-Uru real world ARG Cyan did. Hopefully some veteran fans can explain it better than that.

Since Rand seems to be confirming (finally) that there is at least one spiral still unfound, I am trying to figure out how to go about tracking it down. So far, I have found nothing more than vague memories, opinion and rumor; nothing concrete with which to work. Obviously, there are past discussions and conversations about this that can no longer be found online. So I am asking for help from folks who were there and might remember something helpful.

KathAveara · **Posted:** Sat Nov 02, 2013 11:38 am

If there's 'at least one spiral' left, I'd put my money on three spirals. I mean, isn't that the magic number? 7 Journey cloths? The 7 Spiral cloths in Tsogahl and Delin?

Tweek · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 12:11 am **Posts:** 2633

Ah, well see originally there weren't 7 cloths. I believe the original number was 10? I can't remember for sure but it got changed when Ubi wanted a single player version. Originally there was only one Bahro door in Kemo (which Phil Henderson went through).

AllMyst · **Posted:** Mon Nov 04, 2013 1:46 am

I haven't posted in ages, but Obduction has brought me back. I participated in preafter. Afterward, I created a powerpoint with screen captures that show all the highlights, and some random funny stuff. I never posted the powerpoint because at the time I had nowhere to put it. Now, I have free space on Google Drive. The link is below. It originally had the tune of Stairway to Heaven in the background, but I cut it out to reduce the file size. Play the tune on your own if you want the original "experience". ;D

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-pgMb ... sp=sharing

Ainia · **Posted:** Mon Nov 04, 2013 3:29 am

Shorah and welcome back AllMyst!

And wow!!! Thanks a gazillion for sharing your powerpoint slideshow!

I think I'm gonna hafta put together a scrapbook with all the great information people have been sharing!

Stay tuned... you all know where the scrapbook will land (eventually) :mrgreen:

janaba1 · **Posted:** Mon Nov 04, 2013 2:24 pm

Wow!!! Thanks a lot AllMyst ...

What an exceptional gem and nice gift for all of us, esp. for Ainia as a well deserved reward for all her passionate and laborious research and investigations around Uru and the whole D'niverse in ancient and modern times ...

Wafna · **Posted:** Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:06 pm

Yes, thanks for that, AllMyst. I have to admit I chuckled when Tom Clancy's Red Rabbit appeared, and one of the journey spirals made me gasp.

AllMyst · **Posted:** Fri Nov 08, 2013 3:56 am

Glad to help, Ainia! Fun to share after all this time.

Preafter mopping up

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