Editing Great Shaft (section)

== History ==
=== Construction ===
According to the information on [[Aitrus' map]], building the Great Shaft "required the four greatest rock-working machines in all of the D'ni Empire and a few months to complete", and "was designed by Surveyors Guild Master [[Garten]]". Unlike the small expedition team of surveyors who had managed the tunnel digging project on their own, the Great Shaft required a much larger team, with members from multiple guilds, from the [[Guild of Miners]] to the [[Guild of Caterers]]. Construction ran for several months, beginning in 9336 DE and ending in 9337.

=== Sealing ===
When the shaft was nearly complete, an earthquake struck the area, cracking the wall and causing multiple injuries and fatalities. The incident nearly claimed the life of [[Veovis]], a young D'ni Lord who had attended the dedication ceremony at the top of the shaft earlier that day. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the Council ordered that the shaft be repaired, and the entrance from the surface sealed. The decision to close the shaft was not a result of the earthquake, but rather a final reluctance on the part of the Council to permit contact with anyone who might live on the surface.

=== Human discovery ===
About 30 years after the Great Shaft was ordered sealed, a young woman named [[Anna]] and her father discovered the natural cave on the surface which led to the shaft's entrance. After the death of her father, Anna decided to explore the cave further. She found a small gap in the plug of stone which the D'ni had injected into the cave, and eventually navigated her way into D'ni itself. She was the only human to journey down the shaft before the [[fall of D'ni]].

Centuries later, in the late 1980s, a man named [[John Loftin|John "Fighting Branch" Loftin]] rediscovered the Great Shaft, and over the next two decades, he—and later, the [[D'ni Restoration Council]]—would use the Great Shaft and the tunnels connected to it to access the underground cavern of D'ni.  In 2003, Dr. [[Richard A. Watson]] returned to the surface by way of the Shaft following the presumed death of a DRC Restoration Engineer, [[Phil Henderson]].  On his way to the Surface, he stopped to rest in one of the rest houses located along the ascent, leaving [[Reference:Richard Watson, personal journal|his journal]] behind with a final note that he was going to take the [[Yeesha's_Journeys#First_Journey|Journey]] that [[Yeesha]] had been offering to explorers. 

The Great Shaft also played a significant role in [[Myst V: End of Ages]], which depicted the actions of Dr. Watson following his disappearance. Released by Cyan Worlds in 2005 and thought to have been created shortly after the events it depicts, the game shows a number of changes to the Great Shaft, including operating elevators, improved lighting, support struts to improve stability, and intermittent quakes. Dr. Watson's journal is gone, and the [[Nexus terminal]]s link to the rest [[Age]] of [[Direbo]], rather than to the [[Nexus]] itself. Cyan, and RAWA specifically, have indicated that these changes were artistic in nature.

In 2021, it was announced that the Great Shaft and the full path to D'ni from the surface would be restored by the [[Fourth Restoration of D'ni|current explorer restoration effort]].