Riven

Riven
Information
Written by	Gehn
Inhabitants	Rivenese
Linked from	K'veer • Tay • Age 233
Links to	Tay • Age 233
Journal(s)	Atrus' journal Gehn's Work Journal Gehn's Note Gehn's Journal
Visited in	Riven: The Sequel to Myst
Map
Source

Riven is the fifth Age created by Gehn. He considered it to be his first stable age, but like all of his other Ages, it eventually began to deteriorate as a result of Gehn's poor grasp of the Art. This age was the home of Catherine.

History

Named the Fifth Age by Gehn, he wrote the Age's book by composing fragments of text written by D'ni Masters. It was probably Gehn’s best age, as far as size, technology, and stability went. Even still, Gehn's scarcity of words resulted to several inherent flaws, as all his ages did, and was in a steady state of decline.

In Riven Gehn continued his attempts of restoring the D'ni civilization and created a school for a Guild of Writers. After meeting and being estranged by his son Atrus, he left the book of Riven in K'veer, whence Atrus first traveled to Riven. There he met and fell in love with Katran a Riven native.

To prevent Gehn from continuing his disastrous activities and systematic destruction of his Ages, Atrus plotted to trap Gehn there, destroying all Linking Books, trapping Gehn from ever accessing D'ni. During their confrontation, Catherine (with the assistance of Anna, who probably helped her by avoiding contradictions) wrote alterations in the Riven Descriptive Book. Her bizarre, intuitive rule-breaking style caused Rivenese daggers mysteriously appear around the island and open lava fissures; including the enigmatic Star Fissure. Atrus escaped to Myst, leaving Gehn trapped there for the 33 next years.

Outside Riven, Atrus attempted to make some corrections to the Descriptive Book, slowing down its collapse, but the instability remained. Atrus built a crystal viewer in Rime to have glimpses to Riven and determine the status of Gehn.

During this part of history, the island split into five. Gehn restricted four of those to himself and to his personnel. The villagers were limited to one island. He stripped them of their former beauty and riddled them with his self-absorbed closely guarded constructions. The Moiety rarely visit them. Gehn used bridges to connect his islands, but later moved to single-seat “mag-lev” trams. Gehn used one island to make books and revive the Art. On another he built a temple that provides power throughout the age. On a third he constructed a scale topographical map of Riven, and the smallest he used as a prison. Gehn’s prison was actually where Riven’s great tree was once located. It had once towered over the island, but Gehn cut it down when Atrus trapped him, and built a prison out of the stump.

Riven’s inhabitants split into two factions: those who followed Gehn and those who rebelled against them, the rebel Moiety. Atrus wrote improvements into Riven, but he could only slow the imminent decay. The final collapse happened when a mysterious friend of Atrus trapped Gehn and freed Atrus’s wife Catherine. After all the people had been moved to Tay, the Stranger opened the Star Fissure, which called Atrus, but triggered Riven’s end. Presumably the Stranger found his way back to his place.

The Riven book can be seen at Atrus' study in Tomahna. The gateway image in the linking panel appears as though the entire age has fallen to utter chaos after the opening of the Star Fissure.

Years later, debris from Riven that fell through the Fissure during the cataclysm could still be seen near the Cleft.

Geography

A wood bridge that existed between the Jungle Island and the Garden Island; this region was later destroyed as Riven split and those locations broke off as individual islands. The Mag-Lev tracks were made to connect this distance.

Once a single island, Riven became a cluster of five islands as a result of the Age's instability. Initially the islands were connected by bridges, but as the islands continued to expand, it was hard to maintain them. Flexible magnetic levitation vehicles ('trams') were used to connect them, easier to maintain as distance grew; steam pipes also distribute energy between them. The fifth island, on which stood an enormous tree, has long since moved away from the others.

Gehn wrote in the Age all the materials necessary to the craft of making books (and probably every other Age he ever wrote). This included the aforementioned giant tree (for paper), and a species of scarab beetle (for ink).

Gehn noted that the element of "five" was to be found everywhere in he world (eg. its separation to five islands, a piece of wood forming a five-rayed "star" at its center). He believed that this reflected the D'ni preoccupation with the number, as he used pre-existing writings to compose the Age. He further considered it to be evidence that Riven (as every other Age) was indeed created by these writings, rather than being a pre-existing Age to which the writings linked to.

The "miniature" of Riven on Survey Island. From left to right: Crater, Temple, Prison; Survey, Jungle. Notice the 5x5 square panel at the bottom, with hyperstylized square shapes for each island (Crater is the 2x2 square on the upper-left).

In the course of 30 years, tectonic plate shifting split the island of Riven into five distinct pieces, about a half a mile apart. Gehn claimed them (except the Jungle Island) as his exclusive domain, with his ministers and personal militia allowed on them.

Flora and fauna

Stylized designs of various animals as found on the 25 Moiety stones in the secret chamber.

It seems that during Gehn's rule, much of the Age became rocky and barren as the Stranger saw it, and most of the animal and plant life had retreated to the Temple and the Jungle Islands with the massive aged terparah forming most of the remaining jungle. The Great Tree as well as other trees were cut down. Trees with short and stubby trunks could be seen near the sea, such as the Sunner Lagoon.

The Moiety had placed 25 stone "totems" of different animals in their secret linking room; of those only the 5 are significant (being part of a combination) and they are the same animals that the Stranger had encountered. The other 20 are nowhere to be seen, not known if they are legendary, hidden or extinct. (Except for birds which are also seen flying away sometimes.)

Gallery

Temple Island

Entry area with the Star Fissure observation telescope.

The Gateroom displaying Gehns "Story".

The temple created for Gehn.

The Mag-Lev is one of the primary methods of transport between islands.

The Rivenese Village on Jungle Island.

Book Assembly Island

Survey Island

Prison Island

Notes & trivia

Early map for the five islands of Riven, dated 5-6-94. The Great Golden Dome was not a concept yet.

Concept sketch of various Rivenese plants by Richard Vander Wende.

3d models of Rivenese palm trees. The low-res model is used for locations far from the camera/player, to save rendering time and computing power, while their imperfections would not be noticeable.

• The development team of Riven imagined the Age to have a natural environment not unlike to that of New Mexico; the designers made a trip to Santa Fe and Taos in order to take pictures and create a texture library for the 3D objects.
• In early notes of the game, the Age would be called "Equiquay", with "Riven" being a common linking port. The Stranger was supposed to slide through the bars an "Equiquay book" to Catherine; Catherine then tells them that another Equiquay book will be found by someone.
• In early maps and designs, there would be a "Garden Island", with a pentagonal English-style garden. It was dropped as being boring with no purpose, and replaced with what would become the Survey Island.
• Originally Riven's islands were to be connected with bridges, but they would require a lot of clicking to realistically traverse. The Mag-Lev device was conceived to make travelling between islands more exciting for the player. The only bridge in the finished game is the one that connects Temple Island with Crater Island.
• The digital locations and scenes of Riven were designed and rendered individually before being assembled, especially in order to create wider shots. The Jungle and Temple Islands were the biggest and in order for them to be visible from the distance, low-resolution models with simple shading were rendered.
• In the game, many of the environmental animations (water surface movement, swarms of blackflies and fireflies) are actually runtime effects programmed by Mark DeForest.