Mysterium 2002 Logo


Table of Contents:

Thanks to SR388 who
made this year's logo
for Mysterium. :)

Saturday, July 20th, 2002

The day started way too early for one who never gets out of bed before noon. I managed to get downstairs and bump into Scraper and a few others. I ran into the hotel restaurant to get some food and sat with Erithan, SR388, Ian and Alahmnat. I scarfed down a "power" breakfast they served there although beyond being a food-like substance I wouldn't call it much in the power dept. Perhaps a dim bulb? ;P

We got into our respective groups, mine being with Morning Rose, and the above people minus Eri. Rose was our chauffeur for the day and I was navigator... until I was distracted and we went to the wrong place. *blushes* Hey I never go to big cities much so this was cool! I was mostly trying to take pics more than anything so I wasn't much help as a navigator. :( Ian took over from the backseat and was excellent, but then he does live in Philly. :)

When we got lost, we ended up at the Franklin Institute EARLIER than planned. We got back on track with Ian and ended up at the U of Penn Museum where everyone was waiting. I wish more of my "photos" had come out but what was on my digital camera is all that was scavaged. Apparently I should have used my flash. :P

Our only problem with the museum was the fact that overall it had no air conditioning. It was sweltering in there like a sauna except for the occasional fans running in the halls and rooms. We frequented those often. At one point I really needed some water and MR found a fountain for me. :D I just wish Philly water didn't taste like someone dropped a load of copper or something in it. It's very nasty tasting but when you're thirsty, who the heck cares! :P I forget who it was but someone showed us a nice hallway with AC. Man that was cool! Pardon the pun. ;)

Later we left for the Franklin Institute and it was like DEJA VU for our group. ;) We ended up doing out group photo there on the beautiful steps inside. A few people took images of the HUGE Gehn-like throne image of Ben Franklin in the center of the front foyer. We wandered around in our individual groups, Morning Rose and I looking around at all the cool stuff. You can see all the pics I took with her of the exhibits in the Philly area of this site.

End of the day we got into our groups again and headed out for dinner and to prepare for the "presentation" at the end of the day. :D We ended up downtown in a China Town area around South Street and as we were headed for a chinese place to eat, I got uber excited about this little shop with anime stuff. :D I think only SR388 and myself even cared at all for the stuff in there. LOL Everyone was like "let's go eat!!!" So we put our stuff on hold and went off to a cool chinese restaurant. I got some squid in black bean sauce thingie that wasn't half bad. :D Afterwards we were heading past the store to pay for our stuff but the store was closed and there were cops inside. Some cute little chinese kids outside told us someone had freaked out and broken something so the shop was closed. We were going to be late, so we headed out to the Marriot for the "presentation." :D

Ok... To make a short story long...
We walked into the Marriot, headed up the elevators to the appointed Guildhall, and found the group practically all there and ready for linking. ;) We took our seats and prepared to see what we would see. :D

When the lights went out and the presentation started... WOW it was beyond anything we could have guessed. We were in BEVIN! A real D'ni neighborhood and walking around courtesy of IMF. *huggles* There was a beautiful fountain flowing before us, steps winding up just beyond and to the right of the fountain onto a terrace or mezzanine which IMF proceeded to tell us was blocked off (by orange cones we could see)... though they'd all had a sneak peek up. LOL We were not so lucky :P You could just make out apts with Tiffany stained glass windows or such off the mezzanine and climbing up into the rock wall above. The ground around the fountain was decorated with ornate D'ni lettering and decoration not too different from the stuff we saw in the first MUDPIE images. :) Small lights squarish and glowing softly decorated the railings around the area and the staircase. The lamps were also of a Tiffany type design. Everything was just beautiful!

Without much ado, IMF went to meet with VIRTUAL Rand and Rawa. :) It was funny watching their avatars moving. Rand's look alot like him although I think Rawa's could have looked less like it was going to beat someone up. ;) Still, we got to do a great Q&A session (Rand held the Q ;) with the both of them courtesy of IMF's pc. And we walked around Bevin a bit and even looked over a beautiful railing towards Aegura which was dimly lit in the distance. Everything was about as perfect as you could get it. We got to see this beautiful "light" garden which I think was made up of huge towering trees and shrubbery around a lovely lake all decorated with different colors of lighting that you could manipulate from above it on an overhead bridge. As Rand passed one light, a small form of a moth or other insect was seen dancing around the soft glow; He said in a deadpan tone: "As you see, we still have some bugs." LOL The room crashed in a sea of laughter. We even "linked" to another age which was reminescent of realMYST as we could see the "loading age" marker. ;)

The visit to the Garden age was fantastic and everything looks so oriental in my opinion. There were huge bonsai looking trees overlooking beautiful beaches and lagoons while oriental gazebos overlooked the surrounding cliffsides and flora. They led us thru a path that ended up over a lake where huge coy looking fish swam about. It was fantastic! :) Rand kept sneezing the whole time as the age was quite "damp." Every 5 mins or so the cloudy turbulent skies would explode in a storm of heavy downpours. Then as quickly as it happened it would become overcast and dry. This was where we found out Rawa could dance... if you could call it that. ;) If you've ever seen the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine danced... you'll know what I mean.

At the end of this we linked back to Bevin and ended up at a beautiful balcony overlooking the dark orange dimly lit lake of D'ni. They finished their trip there and with a walk back to the fountain, our journey was over. They even invited us back to Spokane for the next Mysterium. *beams* WHOOHOO!!! :D