Circle of D'ni

Circle of D'ni

The Circle of D'ni is the earliest known group of Myst fans to organize for the purpose of sharing information. It began simply as "the Circle," in the mid-1990s following the release of the Myst game and at least two of the Myst books, but prior to the release of the Riven game.

Myst: The Book of Ti'ana was a major influence on the group, many of them adopting names of the characters in the book, setting up guilds, and assigning guild level titles to themselves (although the group members with these adopted names weren't necessarily in the same guild as their namesake). The group's main interest was in linguistics and The Book of Ti'ana not only had several words and phrases of the D'ni language in the text, but the hardback editions also included a 58x44 cm (approx 22.8x17.3 inches) reproduction of a map with notations in D'ni lettering. This map, Aitrus' map meD'nEbretalEo (From D'ni to the Surface) OR Aitrus' Surveyor's Guild map, Relenah B'retahleeo (The Journey to the Surface), was the first D’ni document to be released to the public. Using information posted on Cyan's website and whatever bits and pieces their leader, Telanis could wrangle from RAWA, they began to translate the notations on the map and would eventually compile an extenstive dictionary and grammar book.

The Circle was organized by Rickard Johansson, known as Telanis or Nahvah Telanis (Master Telanis) who created the fan website, Guildmaster Telanis in November, 1997. Considered to be on the cutting edge of web design in the day, the site was IC and welcomed those who "are interested in the Art, in D'ni, in the great Civilization" (the link to the form for requesting membership is labeled, "...are you a true D'ni?") and mainly contained fan fiction stories by Telanis and other members. The site also included some information about the D'ni language, but just enough to pique someone's interest and encourage them to pursue the study of it, themselves. The group communicated by e-mail and kept their work among themselves for as long as they could. (The site is still currently available (Guildmaster Telanis), but has also been archived to the Wayback Machine (Guildmaster Telanis).)

One member, Nalrac (Adam Carlan) created pages on his own site for The D'ni Circle chatroom and Messages and Information, but it's unclear if either were ever used.

More from Circle member, Erithan

Question: Is the following quote a reference to The Riven Journals website or were there two separate sites?

"Cyan, Inc. (now Cyanworlds) created a website that provided English translations of the various D’ni texts on the map" - Domahreh (LeMont A. Nalogue), The D'Ni Student on Scribd.