Editing Guild of Messengers (restored) (section)

===Founding and early years===
The very beginning of the Guild can be traced back to the release of [[Prologue]] in [[2003 CE|2003]], when there was only one "active" guild in existence, the [[Guild of Greeters]], which had received official endorsement from [[Cyan]] to assist new players within [[Uru]]. Many tools had not yet been developed, like the [http://rel.to Rel.to] directory, the Guild website and forums, even a basic "recurring events" KI-mail listing was unavailable. To know what was going on in the [[Cavern]], one had to go tediously through various websites.<ref>{{cite forum post|url=http://www.guildofmessengers.com/it/book/who-contributes-guild-0|author=Nev'yn|title=Who Contributes To The Guild?|forum=Guild of Messengers website 1.0|date=May 11, 2012|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20160421060138/http://www.guildofmessengers.com/it/book/who-contributes-guild-0|archive-date=April 21, 2016}}</ref>

The initial founders of the Guild sought to remedy this fact, but a major fear was that Cyan would at some later point decide to go in a separate direction. The IC Guilds Project was announced before the storyline was revealed, so the explorers were on their own in creating support groups. Therefore there was hesitancy in taking the "risk" of taking the responsibility of creating a Guild. There were, however, several pseudo-guilds, such as the '''Relayers''' or '''Moderators'''.<ref>{{cite forum post|url=http://www.guildofmessengers.com/it/book/gome-contributors-founding-early-years|author=Nev'yn|title=GoMe Contributors: Founding & Early Years|forum=Guild of Messengers website 1.0|date=May 11, 2012|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20160815151720/http://www.guildofmessengers.com/it/book/gome-contributors-founding-early-years|archive-date=August 15, 2016}}</ref>

Some of these groups arguably came up with a too complex structure too soon, and in some instances bred some hostility from pre-existing news groups, who feared that the nascent Guild of Messengers was attempting to "take over" them. The initial objectives of the Guild, however, were:
* to create a group to provide information to explorers within the Cavern;
* to create a "centralized" location online for posting of news for the community;
* to provide a "safe haven" for communication between the various future guilds, news affiliates, and other groups.

Lynnutte, one of the founders of the Guild—along with Andros and Shimmerillion—was the leader of an earlier group called the '''Relayers''', who would pass information to the various hoods from locations where events were being held due to high explorer traffic. This was particularly important during the various [[Myst Online episodes]], such as periodic visits by the [[DRC]] or other storyline-related activities. A sub groups of the Relayers were called '''Moderators''', who would help relaying questions from various explorers and help interaction between them and the story "actors".

From the Relayers, the Guild's founders, and a handful of other interested explorers, a new group was formed, called the '''Cavern Criers''': they would regularly call out news in one central location within [[Ae'gura]], similarly to the "duty shifts" performed by the Greeters within the GoG neighborhood. They would also hand out KI-mails, such as special "news reports" and a "recurring events" listing. They were initially ''affiliates'' of the Guild, with many members also being full Messengers. Later, the group became almost entirely integrated into the Guild membership.

Meanwhile, Shimmerillion began developing a test website; several community members stepped forward to provide associated domain names, which allowed the integration of redirects to one central site. A news feed was ultimately assimilated into the website, while individual Messengers began collecting news postings from the various related websites and forums.

The Guild initially was intended to be an umbrella service that existing news organizations—the [[Cavern Communications Network]], [[The Cavern Today]], Uru Radio, Relayer Corps, Cavern Criers—could join and work with as ''Affiliates''. This idea however never really worked well, initially because the Guild was too small to be able to form an effective network, but also because of the fear that they would lose their identity.

Other notable Messengers of this era: Marten, Narym, Blutec, BladeLakem, Veralun.