Editing Great Shaft (section)

=== 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]].