Myst Uru Jumpchain CYOA

You come to awareness amid the beautiful desolation of the American Southwest badlands; before you is a fenced off area comprising of an extinct volcano jutting up from the earth, directly behind you is a slightly ajar fence gate, and you can see in the distance a silver aero trailer, the melody of a particular song coming to you over the distance.

You've been drawn to this place, Anon, by a silent call.  The call came from a woman by the name of Yeesha, one of the surviving race of the D'ni.  The D'ni built a great empire that linked world after world through the act of Writing, and the creation of Books that allowed one to travel to these worlds.  That empire is dead, now, it's survivors scattered, it's main city, D'ni, now a silent ruin.

Yeesha has called you here to walk the Path, Anon.  She's left you markers, challenges, and puzzles.  Go to the Cleft, enter the Tree...

...and find that, perhaps, the ending has not yet been written.

[Setting]



[Background]

Drop-in (Free)  There's no natives here, Anon.  Everyone who's come to the Cleft has felt drawn to immigrate to the shores of a nation they didn't know exist.

[Perks and Abilities]

Silence and Wind - 0 CP - The DRC's attempts to explore D'ni failed, and those that made it to the Cleft eventually turned back after repeated failures.  You alone remain in D'ni.  Enjoy your solitude.

Our Reltos are Different - 100 CP - Yeesha doesn't mind experimenting from time to time.  This gives you a carte blanche to redesign your Relto to your liking in terms of style - a personal underground realm, an opulent, baroque, wood-paneled study, or even an island amid an ocean without end.

Gotta Get The Message To Your Friends - 200 CP - Yours is not the only foot on this path.  Yeesha gifts your Companions with thier own Relto and Library, to explore and understand the empire of D'ni as you will, as well as 500 CP to spend.

Burn You Up, Burn You Down - (Free) - The OST from all the Myst games seem willing to follow you wherever you go, giving you a background accompaniment to your travels.  Can be set to fit the moment or simply play whatever track you wish to hear at the time, or simply turned off completely.

A Familiar Place - (100 CP) - Relto is a place of quiet peace and reflection, a sanctuary - and sized with that in mind.  While time(and other capabilities) can change this, this option speeds that up, gifting your Relto with more space for you build upon, play with, or simply wander about.  Each purchase effectively doubles Relto's size.

Make A Home - (200 CP) - A small hut might be a good place to camp, but it's no place to live.  This perk modifies your Relto to accommodate a small house with a bedroom, kitchen, and washroom, in addition to the Linking Book Library the Hut already accommodates.

Garden - (50 CP) - This adds a small yet tightly packed garden to your Relto.  It enhances growth and eliminates exotic requirements for more finicky specimens, allowing for the relatively easy cultivation of exotic plants.

Wardrobe - (50 CP) - A clockpunk device with a D'ni holographic interface, this gives you itemized access to your warehouse, allowing you to store and retrieve items via your personal Relto.

Workshop - (50 CP) - A well-equipped workshop is installed in your Relto, giving you the tools and resources nessecary to maintain, alter, and repair D'ni technology.

Warehouse Linking Book - (100 CP) - You gain a book in your Relto library that links to your Warehouse.  Useful for when you don't want to leave a portal laying around, though moving larger objects into said Warehouse may prove problematic with this function.

Leap of Faith - (100 CP) - You gain an inexplicable capability to survive leaps that common sense say should be impossible.  Jumping off the edge of a cliff to land on a ledge fifty feet below you treat like you just stepped off a staircase.

D'ni Technology - (300 CP) - The D'ni were skilled craftsmen, crafting great wonders and quixotic treasures.  All the more remarkable given the transportation limitation of Linking Books.  You gain an intuitive understanding of D'ni technology; how it works, and how to repair it, and how to do more with less.

The Art - (600 CP) - Taking this perk opens up circumstance and experience that, over the ten years of your exploration of the D'ni empire, will gift you with the basic understanding of The Art - the method of writing connections to, or creating, whole new worlds.  Only time will master this ability, but you'll eventually gain the capability to match even Yeesha in the Art.


[Items]

KI - (Free) - A clockpunk device that wraps around your hand like a fingerless glove.  Despite it's appearance, it's surprisingly sophisticated, allowing you to take and store pictures, communicate with others with KIs, even across Ages, and access some functions of D'ni technology.

Relto - (Free) - 'The Island Amid the Clouds'.  A barren yet serene mountaintop set amid a sea of clouds and bathed in perpetual twilight.  This is your personal Age, created by Yeesha.  The linking Book, when placed in a holster on your thigh, allows you to travel instantly to Relto by flipping it open and placing your hand on the pages, with the linking Book itself traveling with you as opposed to being left behind.  To begin with, this small Island holds nothing more than barren land, a nice view, and a small, exotic, yet rustically built hut that keeps out the elements and holds within your Library.

This is not a static Age.  It is, in many ways, a breathing, living thing, linked to you and you alone.  Immediate, dramatic changes are not possible, but over time you'll find your Relto slowly accommodating itself to you, a mirror to match your journey and the path you walk.  Yeesha has also scattered unique pages amid D'ni's Ages.  These pages add unique features to Relto, further adding to it's ambience.  If your Relto book is ever destroyed, it appears, fully restored, on a pedastal in your warehouse.

Library - (Free) - Within the hut of your Relto is a shelving device designed to contain and lock the various Ages you discover upon your path.  Despite it's apparently limited space, it will never run out of room to accommodate the Age books you discover, gradually evolving into a sophisticated clockpunk mechanism that can hold an endless supply of books.

Writing Desk - (100 CP) - A comfortable writing desk, placed within the hut on your Relto.  If you take The Art perk, after your ten years it will provide you with a slow but steady supply of the necessary paper, ink, and bindings to create and write Linking Books.

An Old Friend - (200 CP) - An old, yet familiar book appears in your Relto library.  Linking to it delivers you to Myst Island - by now in disrepair, suffering from neglect, and battered by near perpetual thunderstorms.

D'ni Mining Equipment - (300 CP) - The D'ni were skilled at moving stone about like water and clay as necessary; a critical thing, given the capital of their empire was located deep within the earth.  You've managed to stumble across a working example of the tools they utilized, allowing you a grand measure of capability when it comes to reconstruction, repair, or simple demolition.  Be wary of cave-ins.

[Drawbacks]

You Thought The Strategy Guide Would Help You? - (+300) - The D'ni went to great efforts to lock away their secrets behind puzzles.  Said puzzles are now exponentially more difficult.

Graves Keep their Secrets - (+200) - D'ni has suffered greatly from the lack of upkeep.  Exploration is now far more dangerous - expect collapsing bridges, dangerous rock-falls, and cave-ins to occur if care isn't taken.

[The End]

You made it through ten years?  Congratulations!  As a reward, you get to keep your Relto, though the links to D'ni via your books and the Bahro stones no longer function, sadly.  A pillar with a special book therein also forms in your Relto, allowing you to link back to where you linked out from.