D'ni
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Games and their Ages
Miscellaneous
Note: Fictional details from the Myst franchise follow, and may sometimes be referred to as facts.
The D'ni are the most-prominently featured culture in the Myst franchise. They originated from a world called Garternay, where they were known as the Ronay. They developed their own language and numerals, but perhaps most importantly they had knowledge of how to access ("link to") alternate worlds ("Ages") through special books; they called this knowledge "the Art of Writing".
The concept for the D'ni kingdom and the word "Dunny" came from a novel that Myst creator Robyn Miller was writing about a cavernous underground empire and a boy who discovers that this empire is actually his long-lost home. The book was called Dunny Hut. It was never completed; as Robyn and Rand designed Myst, they decided to mine ideas from the Dunny Hut novel to aid them as they created the back-story for Myst.
D'ni is properly pronounced /Template:IPA/ (d'NEE), but is more often pronounced as /Template:IPA/ (dunny), even by characters in the games (see Spelling and Pronunciation).
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The exodus
Over ten millennia ago, the Ronay discovered that Garternay would soon become uninhabitable. They wrote several Ages to escape its destruction; one of these refugees was the great Ronay Writer Ri'neref, who believed that the Ronay had become too prideful in their mastery of the Art. Most Ronay Linked to the paradise Age of Terahnee, but Ri'neref and his followers fled to an Age Written by Ri'neref. He named it "D'ni" (meaning "New Start" in the Ronay tongue), and the newly founded D'ni people began making it their home.
A growing population made the D'ni learn to adapt quickly, and adapt they did. An early concern was their limited supply of fresh oxygen; they found electricity sources with which to operate gigantic ventilation fans. They later developed advanced mining technologies, carving out new space for their growing population and refining the displaced rock into useful materials.
As the civilization grew, the D'ni cavern settled into two main sections: Ae'gura (The Island) and The City Proper. Ae'gura is the largest island on the cavern lake. It is the center of D'ni, both literally (the basis for D'ni's cylindrical coordinate system, The Great Zero, was founded here) and figuratively (as it was the first place the refugees settled, many major sites of commerce, religion, and state affairs are located here). It is overlooked by the most famous and grandiose D'ni landmark, the giant Arch of Kerath. Human archaeologists originally mistook Ae'gura for the main residential area of D'ni, and grew to call it "The City." However, they discovered later that most D'ni lived in another area, which they now call "The City Proper". The City Proper is located on a steep incline up the sides of the cavern, forming a perimeter to the lake. The City Proper is where the D'ni neighborhoods were located. The neighborhoods were small, compartmentalized residential districts, with their own residences, schoolrooms, auditoriums, entertainment venues, and public transit stations.
The fall
Around AD 1740, D'ni was beset with a great catastrophe that led to its fall. A woman, Anna, came down into the city from the surface and married a D'ni, Aitrus. Veovis, a conservative D'ni lord, became furious about this, and another lord, A'Gaeris (aka The Philosopher), destroyed the D'ni city--and most of the life in it--with a huge poison cloud (Myst: The Book of Ti'ana; Myst: The Book of D'ni). Again the D'ni had to escape to other Ages, leaving their great underground city in ruin; however, Anna and her 8 year old son, Gehn, escaped to the Cleft, which is near the volcano over the D'ni cavern, on the contrary Veovis and A'Gaeris did die, but not before "linking" the diseased bodies through to the "Ages" causing the disease to kill more than a million escaping D'ni.
As an adult, Gehn met and married a human from the surface named Leira, whom he called Keta (in the D'ni speech). Keta died while giving birth to their son, Atrus. Miserable and unable to cope, Gehn ran away to the D'ni caves, leaving his son in Anna's care. Some 14 years later, Gehn came back and took Atrus away from Anna to teach him how to Write Ages. Over time, Atrus discovered his father had become mad with power (Gehn believed that he created the Ages he wrote, instead of creating links to already existing Ages). Eventually, Atrus decided to escape, but Gehn locked him in the K'veer basement (the last area you visit in the Myst game), with the Age of Riven as his only way out. Atrus went to Riven, met Katran, and fell in love with her. Together they trapped Gehn in Riven by destroying every book leading out of the Age and escaping with the last book (the Myst Linking book) through the Star Fissure (Myst: The Book of Atrus). Atrus lost the Myst book in the fissure, and the book eventually came to Earth, where The Stranger, found it and used it to go to Myst Island, where they found Atrus' library (beginning the events portrayed in Myst).
Years later, Atrus & Catherine abandon Myst and return to the surface of Earth, building a home near the Cleft they call Tomahna. From there they gather all the D'ni survivors that they can find and settle them in a new Age called Releeshahn.
Modern rediscovery and restoration efforts
The City of D'ni, The Art, and D'ni's Ages were rediscovered by a human, John "Fightin' Branch" Loftin, in 1987. Loftin's discovery began with a place in New Mexico now known as The Cleft. The Cleft is a large chasm in the side of an inactive volcano. As it is described (and later seen in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst), the Cleft has rooms carved into each side of the cleftwall, with several rope bridges spanning the gap. The caldera of the volcano itself houses the entrance to a long series of tunnels, eventually leading to the D'ni cavern. Catherine's Journals, one of our most important early discoveries, later told us that The Cleft was in fact Atrus's childhood home (see the Book of Atrus).
Elias Zandi, a friend of Loftin, founded the D'ni Restoration Foundation, with hopes of restoring the D'ni cavern. When he died in 1996, he left his son Jeff the land on which The Cleft is located. The task of restoring D'ni was left with Dr. Richard Watson, who founded the D'ni Restoration Council (DRC). The DRC continued its restoration effort steadfastly, and opened the cavern in November 2003. However, the DRC was quickly losing funding, and in February 2004, three short months after allowing the general public down, the restoration effort was cancelled indefinitely.
While the Myst games and novels are our main sources of knowledge of the D'ni, some events and principles are not portrayed as they "actually" were. For example, we learned from Cyan (and now also from Myst IV) that the Prison Books in Myst and Riven were actually regular Linking Books to complete Ages. The Prison Books were an element of artistic licence, introduced to simplify gameplay.
In the D'ni canon, the games (except Uru) and novels actually exist as fictionalized histories. In Uru, you can even wear Myst and Riven T-shirts. Uru itself, however, takes place in the present day; as such, it is not historical, and therefore its events are part of the D'ni canon.
D'ni Culture
The D'ni culture was based upon a number of Guilds, which were responsible for almost every aspect of society. The 18 Major Guilds known to have existed at the time of the fall of D'ni were the Guilds of: Analysts, Archivists, Book Makers, Cartographers, Caterers, Chemists, Engineers, Healers, Ink Makers, Legislators, Linguists, Maintainers, Mechanists, Messengers, Miners, Stone Masons, Surveyors, and Writers.
In addition, at least the following Minor Guilds existed at the time: Actors, Architects, Artists, Bankers, Educators, Illusionists, Musicians, and Sculptors.
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Spelling and Pronunciation
In the original game Myst, the word "D'ni" never appeared written within the context of the game (e.g., in journals). However, in the credits and some of the filenames, it was spelled "Dunny" (based on the original "Dunny Hut" story, see above).
The spelling was changed to "D'ni" for the Book of Atrus and the game Riven, and also updated to the new spelling in the original game's remake, realMyst. The change was explained as a shift from an anglicized pronunciation to a more authentic one, although fans speculate it may be because "Dunny" is Australian slang for "toilet".
The pronunciation of the word has been a much-debated topic, complicated by the change of spelling and the variation in pronunciation across characters and actors. Under the original spelling "Dunny", the word was invariably pronounced as it would have been were it an English word (/Template:IPA/). When the spelling was changed to "D'ni" in Riven, the actors did not change their pronunciation, nor did they in Myst III: Exile or Myst IV: Revelation.
However, in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, Yeesha and Dr. Watson pronounce it as "/Template:IPA/" (d'NEE), a more natural pronunciation given the new spelling.
Further to this, however, in Myst V: End of Ages a new character, Esher, pronounces it with a strong (presumably D'ni) accent as /Template:IPA/ (duch'nee, where ch is pronounced as in Chanukah or in the Scottish loch). Since this pronunciation does not reflect the pronunciation described by RAWA, it should probably not be considered standard. Esher's unique pronunciation may reflect his own sociolect, rather than the standard form of the D'ni language.
Nevertheless, Atrus and Rand Miller who plays him still continue to pronounce it the "old" way.
See also
External links
D'ni Information Websites
- DRC's D'ni Essentials page
- Alahmnat's information archive about the D'ni
- Kehrin's D'ni Desk - D'ni resources
- Official Cyan Chat
- D'ni Linguistic Fellowship
- D'ni Grammar Studies
- The D'ni Wiki