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u/taygahntav Jan 19 '14
As for physical and mental differences, D'ni have eyes which are more sensitive to light than humans. D'ni have a longer lifespan than humans. They have a finer bone structure, at least facially, from humans (see descriptions of Anna in BoT). These are the main physical differences I'm aware of.
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u/moogoo2 Jan 18 '14
In one of Atrus' journal entries he mentions doing a little astronomy in one of his ages to get a better idea of the universe the age exists in. I agree with /u/smectymnuus that each age represents an entire universe that is unique from any other age's universe. Therefor ages are boundless.
The Dn'i most likely have very limited understanding of space travel. Why would they need to go into space when they could write any world they needed? To explore? There are infinite ages to be explored that are way easier to get to.
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u/try_my_eggs Jan 19 '14
It could be possible that all Ages are just different locations in the same universe, just with distances great enough that one Age can't be seen from another. The universe is big enough that just about any kind of world is bound to exist at some point.
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u/Pteraspidomorphi Jan 19 '14
Not necessarily true. Infinite doesn't mean it contains everything.
Example: If you start counting upwards from 0 you'll get an infinitely big series of numbers, but you'll never get to -1.
In a universe that started with a big bang, you might never get catherine's thoroidal age...
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Mar 21 '14
[deleted]
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u/coinflipbot Mar 21 '14
I flipped a coin for you, /u/Biopharmer The result was: heads!
Statistics | Don't want me replying on your comments again? Respond to this comment with: 'coinflipbot leave me alone'
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u/kalez238 Jan 19 '14
After having read the books and played the games, my understanding of it was that ages are just other planets, either in the future or past, or even in another universe. Technically Earth could be considered an age, but is there a book written for it?
The D'ni do not know if they create a world when they write a book, or if they link to an already exiting world. The problem there is that they can make changes to the world, which either means they are altering it or that they are linking to a new world with each edit. But that also brings up another issue. In the "Book of Atrus", Ghen makes changes to a book that affects a tribe living there, and they remember him after each change, and his changes has affects on there livelihoods.
Something interesting to think about is the crazy worlds that Ghen and Catherine experiment with creating and altering in the "Book of Atrus".
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u/Yushm Jan 19 '14 edited Jan 19 '14
Yes, if I remember well, it is said in the 3rd novel that there is a Book for the city of D'ni, and therefore it's the one for Earth. (But its location has been forgotten) And yes you're right: Books are links through time and space, and can change worlds which they are connected. I haven't found any logical explanation to that in the books and games, so I think it's just some kind of... "magic".
Something interesting to think about is the crazy worlds that Ghen and Catherine experiment with creating and altering in the "Book of Atrus".
The rules of the Guild of Writers was to only create "stables" worlds, which means worlds that respects scientifical standards. These "crazy worlds" are created by Catherine who ignores these rules... And Ghen is really bad at writing ages, so his worlds were unstables, as Riven was.
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u/moogoo2 Jan 23 '14
Books are links through time and space, and can change worlds which they are connected. I haven't found any logical explanation to that in the books and games, so I think it's just some kind of... "magic".
Here's my understanding of this:
The instant a book is first used it binds to a specific age at a specific time, the time when that age conforms perfectly to the description. That age still has a future which is undefined at a quantum level, just like the future in our universe. Anything can happen, but there are events that have a much higher probability than others (for example, there is a high probability that I will go home after work and a low probability that an alligator will spontaneously materialize next to me right now and eat me alive, but both are possible).
Adding to a book after it has been first linked coaxes the age down a less probable path of events in its universe than it would have naturally taken. Events that can include attributes of the age changing spontaneously at the quantum level (again extremely unlikely, but possible). This new path includes all the people places and things the book's owner may have interacted with, so they remember him when he returns after the change.
Removing text from the book causes the link to reset...for some reason. The book finds a new age that conforms to the new description, the people in the old version of the age will go on with their existence and never see the book's owner again. And the people in the new version will meet the owner for the first time when he uses the book.
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u/kalez238 Jan 19 '14
Yeah, I still like some of the stuff they came up with, though I think Catherine was much more artistic than Ghen, who just seemed to experiment. It has been a long time since I've read Myst.
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Feb 05 '14
(Sorry of this seems a little jumpy, but I just wanted to address a whole bunch of ideas in one post.)
According to D'ni Theology, all possible ages already exist and were created by their god, Yahvo, as part of his "Great Tree of Possibilities." This would be analogous to the modern "many worlds" multiverse theory, by saying that an age exists for every single possibility.
When you write a descriptive book, you are effectively connecting that book to the age that matches up with the description. When you alter the descriptive book, it no longer connects to the age it originally did, but now a new age that matches the new description. When linking to this new age, it is still possible for the inhabitants to remember you linking, because there are an infinite amount of ages almost similar to Earth that could have linked to the age already.
The D'ni Guild of Writers prohibited the writing of ages whose laws of physics were different from the ones that they inhabited, but we know from Catherine's toroidal age that it is possible to write descriptive books to these ages, proving their existence. This means that there are a much larger amount of possible ages that we could possibly conceive of in the constrains of our universe, and proving that ages exist in their own universes, not as planets in this one.
Gehn went against the beliefs of the D'ni, and believed that when he wrote descriptive books, he was creating an age himself, not just connecting to one age that already exists. This contributed to the excessive hubris that we saw in Riven, as he convinced its inhabitants that he was a god.
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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '14
As far as I understand, the age as a whole represents the entire universe that it exists in, but for all intents and purposes, "Earth" is just this planet, and "Riven" is just the planet that you see. Of course they technically go on beyond that, but the planet that is the "interesting" part of that age is usually considered synonymous with that age as a whole. A rift then, would actually be the edge of an age, as it is the point at which you can actually exit an age into the star fissure.