Guild of Messengers (restored)

For the classic Guild of Messengers, see Guild of Messengers.

Guild of Messengers (restored)

Short D'ni name	telSE
D'ni name	telok SEtemsUtantE
Established	September 2007 CE
Guild Master	Korov'ev, (Doobes)
Guild color	yellow

The restored Guild of Messengers is one of the five guilds promoted by the DRC in Kirel. Their main duties and objectives are keeping the community informed about all things Myst/Uru related through various channels, including a website, social media pages, a calendar, and moderating the All Guilds Meeting.

In the future, we hope that the new Guild of Messengers will be able to organize communications for explorers and the DRC. We hope to create a system whereby the Guild can carry out announcements, news events, important messages, and the like for all of those who visit the cavern.

— DRC, Kirel Guild notes

History

Founding and early years

The very beginning of the Guild can be traced back to the release of Prologue in 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 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.

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.

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.

Moments of transition

Around 2007, the guilds developed much of their modern structure: under the guidance of historian and Guild Advisor to the DRC named Reteltee, it was endorsed for five major guilds to be highlighted in Kirel, where tables were set up to provide information on these five guilds: Cartographers, Greeters, Messengers, Maintainers and Writers.

Discussions were undertaken to clarify Guild role expectations, while also developing the long-term goals. Elections were held to help "legitimize" the leadership, and to help develop the Guild's internal structure for stability during this growth period. Transparency to the community was both encouraged and expected. The roster of active Messengers grew quite extensively, but this growth was cut short by the announcement that GameTap was closing access to the Cavern.

The Guild began working towards maintaining continued communications between the various groups. Sophia joined as a consultant for the revamped and expanded website (today known as the website 1.0). It included forums with a reserved area for Messengers, the Liasons and Affiliates links, a newsletter, tutorial wikis, the Cavern Criers page, and Rel.to.

Originally a private project of Marten, after the Cavern's closure Rel.to became the perfect medium to keep the various community resourced organized. It provides shortened links and a searchable directory of all Myst/Uru related pages. Marten bequethed this useful tool to the Guild, making it a useful resource to the whole Community.

The Guild team developed a newletter to keep the community informed during this low point in the Cavern's history. Theremin would eventually replace Lynnutte as Editor, expanding the newsletter into a full magazine called Go!. It was at this time that the first Liasons for groups like the Guild of Writers and OpenUru.org were elected.

Marten stepped down from the role of Guild Master, becoming one of the "First Ones", retired members that still assist and advise Messengers on ongoing projects. Lynnutte was reinstated, with Al'Keara taking over many of Marten's other duties.

Other notable Messengers of this era: Szark, Nanouk, Dichromus, Tai'lahr, Lial, Leonardo, Mowog, Gorobay, Weldergeek, Shevek, FloCat, Saavadro, Rehmihro, Aander91, Gerbert.

Institutional regeneration

Around 2009 - with rumors of a project to revive Uru called MORE - a change and restructuring took place, to create a new level of vitality not only in the Guild, but the community as well. Many of the remaining "First Ones" from previous years took a step away. After Marten and other Council members stepped down from their leadership positions, Lynnutte was elected as Grand Master, with Leonardo as Liaisons Chair and Narim as Affiliates Chair, among others.

But with MORE being delayed, activity slowed down again, with only Leonardo left to make Council decisions. Eventually, the Newspaper production itself was stopped leaving the Guild with only one basic service besides Rel.to, the News Feed managed by Szark.

Then, in the days preceding February 10, 2010, rumors of things coming back to life began spreading. Andros came back to help recruiting new members. The Newspaper project was revamped and soon transformed in the Magazine with Theremin overseeing it. The double Guild Masters system was introduced, starting with Leonardo and Theremin.

Meanwhile the Cavern Criers were also revived as a fully integrated part of the Guild. The only major distinction between Criers and Messengers was how often an individual member was seen within the Cavern, and their activities while there. The Criers would usually run a "circuit" of the Ae'gura plaza and the more populated neighborhoods to distribute KI-mails, operating as a 'postal service'. Messengers, on the other hand, would mostly only be present to assist with a specific project or event, or for social activities.

In May of 2010 the first All Guilds Meeting and Fair was held. The Fair event was initially started by Marcus Wheeler, an enthusiast Maintainer, who was quickly supported by Leonardo who brought back to life the All Guilds Meeting. Explorers soon lost interest in the Fair, but the All Guilds Meeting still attracts a good crowd in Kirel every month to this day.

At the end of their six month terms, Theremin was replaced by Lunanne as Guild Master, while Leonardo was reelected. Lunanne also became Chief-Editor of the Magazine, changing its name from Go! to The Cavern Post. The Messengers activities became stable, and the Guild started to actually gain both respect and dignity in the community.

In November 2011 Cyan announced that the CAVCON, the fund tally that sustained MOULa has been wrong for a while (2 instead of 4) and the actual funding situation was critical. Many discussions were started on forums on how to raise more funds. Ghaelen, of the Guild of Healers, contacted the Messengers to distribute a CAVCON informative KI-mail. Kaelis Ebonrai then came up with the idea of a big party: the CavCon Awareness Party.

In just one week, Leonardo contacted all the high-profile D'niJs about reserving several hours for their music shows during over 24-hours of celebrations. This event, the first organized by the Messengers, was a huge success and attracted explorers both new and old. With the help of the H'Uru group, which provided a Link Bot and special in-game "illusions", and the support of important D'niJs such as Ktahdn (Lord Chaos), Donahoo, Dichromus, and many other, the CAVCON was brought back to level 4. This party started a tradition of others such as the Anniversary Party from the Guild of Healers.

In May 2012 Leonardo announced that he and Lunanne were resigning their positions as Guild Masters; after some discussion, Lyrositor and Doobes were eventually elected as their successors.

Other notable Messengers of this era: Luna, White, Dekar, Alaedrain, Julie D, GreekGeek, Irissa, Natsaka, Antonfriel, Tanshin, Musica, Aidian, Allatwan, Capella, Rilo, Polgara, Silena, Kerah, LaughingPineapple, AaronAKAAtrus, AgeExplorer.

Present day

In November 2015 Doobes, after three years moderating the All Guild Meeting, contacted Korov'ev - at the time Italian translator for the Guild's website - about taking the role, which he accepted. Later that month, Lyrositor announced he was stepping down from his position, and Korov'ev was nominated by Nev'yn as candidate.

At the end of 2016 the website was streamlined and redesigned to the short-lived website 2.0. At the beginning of May 2017 the website was lost. Two years later, in 2019, the 3.0 version was released, hosted by Doobes.

Other notable Messengers of this era: Niysiecka, Dagnarus, Ron Landry, Ahlisendar, Shavonne, Toki, GayHood, Max, Zephyr, Angelmyst, Tom(Samoth), Taliana.

Getting involved

Anyone willing to help can join. Many are the activities available: relaying news first of all, keeping your community updated, translating news in your language, be a Cavern Crier, be a Liaison if you're involved with some other group, help with site and social managing, or other activities you might have in mind. All new Messengers are invited to read the FAQ posts on the website. There used to be a magazine (The Cavern Post) and a video series (Uru2U), but they are currently on hiatus.