The Tomahna Tapestries

During their third adventure with Atrus, The Stranger is invited to Tomahna, Atrus and Catherine’s post-Myst home. Situated not far from The Cleft, Tomahna is something of an oasis.

While The Stranger would eventually be able to visit Tomahna in its entirety, during this trip they were only able to see a small portion of it before their visit was interrupted by Saavedro and the quest to reclaim the Releeshan Linking Book.

During this time, however, The Stranger was able to document two tapestries that hung upon the walls of Atrus’ study in Tomahna, which depicted his effort to restore the City long before the DRC.

After Gehn was successfully captured in a Prison Age during the events on Riven, Atrus and Catherine returned to D’ni with the intention of restoring the city. First, Atrus wrote and then visited the Age of Averone where he asked the natives to assist him in breaking out of K’veer (where he had been imprisoned since the events that occurred on Myst Island). The excavation of K’veer took four years, during which time Atrus befriended several of the Averonese who, once the work was done, stayed with him to help rebuild D’ni.

This initial meeting of Atrus and the Averonese, as well as their explorations into some of the Ages they found within D’ni, can be seen in the first tapestry.

The second tapestry shows Atrus standing upon a rocky stair that leads to a kind of lookout on K’veer island. The lookout overlooks the Cavern lake and what can be assumed is Ae’gura. It looks as if Atrus is explaining his plans for restoration to the Averonese.

The bottom section of the tapestry, as with the first, is broken up into three scenes. From left to right, these appear to be Atrus showing the Averonese a map or perhaps diagrams of plans for the reconstruction; the Averonese setting up tents and pulling boats onto the shore of a lake, although it is unclear if this is the Cavern lake as it is not depicted as orange as in the top portion of the tapestry, although one boat has capsized which suggests it could be a boat left in the lake since the Fall. The final scene looks to show Atrus at his desk in K’veer where he worked to keep Riven intact long enough for the Stranger to rescue Catherine.

Sadly, both tapestries were lost when Saavedro stole the Releeshan Linking Book as, using a Fire Marble, he set Atrus’ study alight. The recreations shown of them here are based upon descriptions from Catherine and Atrus’ journals as seen in the Myst III: Exile video game. We also know from those journals that Atrus’ rebuilding of D’ni never took place as, after discovering the Age of Terahnee and the events that transpired there Atrus instead decided to create a new Age for the surviving D’ni to live on. That Age, of course, was Releeshan.