Pirahnay
The Pigment Age

Premise
Players link into a world created for the members of the artist's guild that was originally used to harvest pigment.  They find that the environment reacts to them and that they can alter colors in the world.  They can explore the terrain by walking or by flying above in an airship that can take them great distances.  On the surface, this is the only purpose of the age: an interesting area that they can interact with and explore.  Astute players will notice the special symbols on paintings hanging throughout D'ni and will begin to uncover the meaning of this symbol and the myth surrounding these works.  They will be lead to this age where they will try and uncover the mystery surrounding these paintings and their rumored abilities to transport you to beautiful new ages.

Back Story
Around the year 8579 in D'ni history, a group of painters who shared a desire to write their own ages became frustrated by the fact that they were not allowed to do so.  They felt that worlds could be much more beautiful and creative than those being written by the guild of writers.  These painters eventually asked the guild of writers to create an age just for them.  They wanted an age that would have all of the plants and materials needed to produce pigments that would supply them with colors more rich than those found in the caves of D'ni.  The writers and the city council agreed to create this artist's age and worked with the painters to write a world that would give them an endless array of colors.  Of course, this age would also serve the purpose of making it easier to hide the books that the painters were writing and experimenting with and was the real motive for asking that the age be written.

The age was covered by a color shifting fungus.  The artists could go to the age, find the colors that they were in need of and scrape the fungus away from the ground.  One separated from the organism, the clumps of fungus would retain their color.  The D'ni would then dry this fungus and grind it into a fine powder which would then be added to an oil medium to make paint.  The artists perfected the craft of producing pigments and mastered the art of stimulating the fungus to fine tune the colors it produced.  

The artists continued to master the craft of writing as well. They became worried, however, as the sheer volume of books that they were creating made them more and more difficult to hide.  They feared that being discovered would mean the end of their world, and of the safety that its separation from D'ni provided.  They soon realized, by watching their paintings being constantly sold in D'ni and hung in homes and public places, that the perfect place to hide their writing was under these works.  Nobody would think twice about a store of paintings on the age.  They began to research and design ways to accomplish on canvas what had always been done in books.  The would need new materials to produce such an effect and getting them would not be easy.  However, the painters had friends in the writer's guild who shared their vision of a more creative writing, even if they knew that the rules and guidelines for writing ages were there for good reason.  These friends agreed to help the painters to secretly expand upon the artist's age and create new ages with properties and materials that would aid the painters in the production of their theorized types of ink and paper.

As the painters inhabited this world and carried on their craft of producing rich pigments and paintings, they were secretly perfecting their new kind of writing paper as well as their new kind of ink.  What they arrived at was a type of canvas made from the special paper used for descriptive books as well as a modified form of the ink used to write them.  This new ink could be made latent with the application of certain chemicals.  Using this ink, the painters would write entire descriptive/linking books onto their special canvas.  Devices were built to reduce the scale of their writing so that incredible amounts of text could be contained on a standard sized canvas.  Once the writing was complete, the canvas would be coated with a gesso that would bleach out the ink so that it and the linking panel could not be seen, although it would not harm its functionality.  This served to hide the writing should these paintings ever be stripped or the canvas otherwise exposed.  Though latent, the panel would still provide a link if touched.  The standard paint used by these artists was improved upon to provide greater insulation over the linking panel.    Although this paint was of superior quality and smoother consistency, it was still only an oil-based paint and had little to do with the piece's linking ability.  Using this medium, the canvas would then be painted with an image of the age that it linked to.  Once the canvas was painted, the oil and other additives would bond with the layer of gesso and the underlying writing.  When dry, the paint could not be removed from the canvas without also removing the writing underneath, thus rendering the link unusable.  Only the great master painters would be allowed to produce these paintings.  When they were finished, a special symbol would be applied to the piece.  They could then link into one of their own worlds, through their painting...

The painters were not madmen.  They understood that poor writing could produce unstable ages that would be dangerous.  Because of this, they took great pride in learning and understanding the art of writing.  Their contacts in the Guild of Writers would quietly teach them the art, and the painters understood the limits.  Just as the painters had friends who were writers, they also had help from the Guild of Maintainers.  These friends would often test their worlds for them and insure that they would be safe for visitors.  The painters knew that any tragedies caused by their worlds would only serve to undo their closely guarded secret.  The quality of their work was paramount.  

As repayment to their friends in the guilds and to others who helped them to establish the artist's age,  link-paintings were created especially for them.  These people took the paintings back to D'ni and hung them in their homes, linking through them at their leisure.  They were so enthralled by the beauty and originality of these worlds that they could not help but share them with select people whom they were sure they could trust.  Eventually, a secretive ring of commissioned link-paintings were being sold through the artist's age and they became increasingly expensive.  The fact that they were painted by the elite of the master artists seemed to account for their value to those unaware of their special properties.  The symbol found on the paintings became indicative of a level of quality available to only the highest ranking members of D'ni society.

Of course, the knowledge of these paintings eventually leaked out of this group and became hearsay in the streets of D'ni.  Over time, stories of incredible paintings that you could link into became widely known and the search for a magical paint that gave the images their power became obsession.  This paint was, of course, never found and attempts at dismantling the paintings layer by layer and softening the paint to find its recipe resulted only in destroyed pieces of art.  Once the paint had dried and fused with the gesso layer, it could not be removed without also lifting some of the latent writing and linking panel which would render the link unusable.  Throughout the rest of D'ni history, the paintings continued to be produced and were always shrouded in a sense of mystery, but the story of their linking powers fell to myth.  The works changed hands through the years and were auctioned away at estate sales.  To this day, the paintings can occasionally be found in homes all across the city as well as in galleries and public buildings.  However, the secret of how to use these paintings has been lost and proof of their process was never found.

Look and Feel
Exterior
The  surface of the age was formed by lava or calcite flowing from geysers into a cracked ground.  Over the millennia, the cracks were filled in and the soft layer of earth eroded away, leaving a honeycomb of high, hard walls.  In the middle of the cells, a fungus has grown over the ground and is connected to form a single organism across the age. 

The world is bright and very colorful as the fungus changes its hue and saturation when stimulated by touch, light or sound.  The result is a landscape that pulses with subtle gradients and if walked or jumped on, radiates ripples of vibrant colors.

The walls are eight to ten feet high in most places, and you cannot see the entire landscape at once when at ground level.  The geysers have been built up into flat-top mountains that can be ascended from inside.  From the top of these mountains, a very colorful scene emerges and stretches as far as the player can see.  From here, waves of color can be seen to ripple from one cell to the next and distant geysers loom on the horizon.

Interior
The hidden interior of the age was built inside one of the inactive geysers.  The player links into this space, and will never know where that particular geyser is on the age.  The spaces inside are small and cozy, having been created for only a few people's use.  The rooms are built off of the central shaft of the geyser, and natural light streams in from overhead.  A plaza was built at the bottom of this shaft and is rich with plants and possibly a few creatures.  The general feeling here is dark and warm in the rooms and bright in the studios and plaza.

Simple equipment will be found in these spaces.  Mixing bowls, grinders, looms, presses and writing devices can be discovered and operated.  Several of the rooms will have linking books to other ages that were used for material harvesting.  These ages are described below.

Gameplay Summary
The obvious gameplay is simply the act of interacting with the color-changing properties of the surface of the age.  Running and jumping on the ground, throwing rocks, and yelling all affect the color of the world.  Players may create their own gameplay such as hide-and-seek.  Creatures could be added and tracked by color changes.  By flying over the land, the extents of the color change can be more easily seen, and the player can explore other areas of the exterior.  

This, however, is an intentional diversion from an otherwise complex world.  By digging for information and exploring the age, players will discover a hidden store-room full of exquisite paintings which carry the special symbol.  Unfortunately, they do nothing.  Further inquiry and exploration will lead the players into a deeper area of the age.  This area will house studios and small work areas that will house vats and some small processing equipment.  The player will assume that this is where the magical paint that they have read about was made. Still more exploration will lead them into secret, inner studios where they will find half-finished paintings and canvases which are blank with the exception of four L-shaped marks that form the corners of a square. They will also find large tables with magnifying glasses and strange devices that hold pens.  This does not fit the myth and the players will not understand the equipment.  As they explore these separate inner-areas they will find that each has its own age to which they may link.  In these small and highly specialized worlds, the players may begin to piece together parts of the process of making a link painting, but will not fully understand what they are seeing.  Eventually, they will find a room with canvases which are absolutely covered with writing and which have a linking panel on the surface.  At this point they will realize that it was not the paint that was magical, but that the canvas itself was a book hidden under an image.  They will see half visible canvases next to a tray where the chemical was kept and drying racks full of canvases with latent writing.  Also in this final area will be a glove that the player can wear.  The player will realize that this specially treated glove is the key to unlocking the painting's power.

At this point the player will have an incredible piece of knowledge that had eluded discovery throughout the entire history of D'ni civilization.  Armed with this knowledge, this player should rightfully become a part of that history and a name that will be forever tied to the unraveling of the myth of the link paintings.  This discovery will open up countless new ages to the explorers of D'ni.

Because of the impact that this discovery could have on D'ni, and because of the wealth of new ages that this knowledge could supply, acquiring this information should be incredibly difficult.  This puzzle should cull all but the most dedicated of players.  This kind of information should not be stumbled upon blindly.  If the D'ni never found proof of this technology, it stands to reason that the explorer who does find it should have to work very hard for it.  However, the other 90% of the players should be able to enjoy the artist's age for its surface qualities and not simply become frustrated with the complexity of the puzzle.

Until some player does assemble all of the pieces of the puzzle, controlling the spread of the partial information will be critical for the continued enjoyment of this age.  Even after the mystery is solved, using the paintings as links should require some hard-to-come-by device, such as the glove, so that even once the secret of the paintings are made public, it would still be difficult to use them.  

Cyan could also try and control this information by directly approaching those who uncover the secret (kind of a men-in-black kind of thing) and convincing them to guard the secret closely and maybe even offer some kind of incentive.  The information will still leak out, of course, but this could add a very X-files kind of feel to the whole experience.  Stories of cover-up would run rampant and the myth of these paintings would grow once again.


Gaining Access to the Store-Room/Paint Lab
If the player is interested in uncovering the secret of the link-paintings, their search must begin in D'ni.  Scavenging for information about the strange symbol found on a handful of paintings will lead them to a shop in town that used to sell some of these works.  The player could find a map in this shop that shows a pattern very similar to the aerial view of the artist's age.  Certain cells are marked on the map and the player realizes that something could be hidden there.  

On the artist's age, the player gets into his airship and begins trying to match up the landscape to the topographical map.  This may require landing and surveying on foot to gain perspectives of landmarks referenced in the map.  Once the player does locate the marked cells, they will have to land at the nearest hub and walk back to them.  When they arrive, they will have to figure out how to uncover the secret, an entrance to the interior of the age.  This will require three players to be in separate cells at the same time.  They will have to jump or yell to create a color change in their cell.  This will show an anomaly in the floor of their area, a square that does not follow the same color change.  Each of the three player's areas will have this irregularity and if each of them stand on that spot at the same time, a passageway will open for one of them.  That player will then have access to a center cell and will find a linking book that takes them to a storeroom filled with paintings.  There are no doorways but there is a linking book that takes the player back to the spot where the door opened into the center cell.

To get to the next part of the interior requires the three players to work together once again.  This will be somewhat difficult, however, as there will be no means of communication between the players on the surface and the player in the interior.  What they will need to figure out is that the two players outside must maintain there positions on the squares for a specific amount of time, and the player in the storeroom must stay inside for that duration.  When the specified time has elapsed, a new door will open from within the storeroom and will lead into the paint lab.

In the paint lab, the player will be able to play with the machinery and scavenge for information.  There will be no apparent doorways or other access out of this room, so the player will believe that they are at the and of their quest. To throw them a bone (and to perpetuate the myth of the magic paint) there will be an unframed canvas tacked onto a wall.  It is blank except for a broad swatch of paint roughly covering one half of the canvas.  If the player touches the canvas, he links into a very small, strange world.  There will be nothing in this age except for a linking book that takes you back into the paint lab where you linked out.  This will be an incredible reinforcement of the myth of the magic painting. 

The reason behind the canvas being there has to do with quality control.  The D'ni used these rough canvases to test the consistency of their paint.  The batch had to be thick enough to be a good insulator on top of the latent linking panel.  To test this consistency, the D'ni created an easily reproducible age, which was so simple that its text could be copied in a very short amount of time.  These ages would be written onto rough canvases, coated with the gesso and made latent, and then given to the paint lab so that they could determine whether or not the paint was suitable.  When the test was finished, the canvas would be burned.  One such canvas happened to be in use when the toxin was released and still hangs in the lab where the player can reach it.

As well as using the QC painting, the player will be able to operate the machinery and, in fact, will be able to mix a batch of paint.  There is pigment and oil remaining in the vats and through trial and error, the player will figure out how to mix them.  There are also two or three carts mounted on tracks overhead that span one wall of the room.  These carts were used to fill tall hoppers in the machinery.  If the player runs out of oil, for instance, they must position the oil cart under a spout that refills it, and then bring the cart back to the hopper.

Gaining access to the Ink and Canvas Labs
While in the Painting lab, the player should feel as thought they are at the height of their adventure.  We want them to spend a lot of time here playing with machines and digging for information so that the myth of the magic paint can be perpetuated.  They will feel as though they are close to uncovering the secret of the paint.  Of course, originally there would have been a door leading to the rest of the interior, but we don't want to give the players that door just yet.  We don't even want them to know that there is a door.  This way they will focus on the area at hand and not immediately be trying to get into the next area.  The mechanism for concealing the door will be a calcite formation that has formed over the doorway as well as other parts of the walls.  Once opened, this will give the player access to the painting studios, ink lab, canvas lab and the associated ages.

To find the door, the player must experiment with the paint lab equipment.  The hoppers will have material left in them and will be locked in place.  As the player experiments with different ratios of materials, one of the carts will run out of oil.  To continue experimenting, the player will have to move the cart so that it is underneath the nozzle that fills it.  Once the player learns how to do this, they can position it back over the hopper, the cart will lock into position, and more experiments can be carried out.  Eventually, another cart will run out of material, will unlock and the player will attempt to refill it in the same way.  This cart, however, will be kept from its nozzle by the calcite that has formed over the track.  By taking the cart as far away from the formation as the track will allow and repeatedly ramming it at full speed, the calcite will begin to chip away and soon, the entire formation will be knocked from the wall.  Underneath, the player will find an unexpected door.

Once the door has been opened, the player will wander down a short, curving hallway where they will find several painting studios with large windows looking out to a sunlit atrium.  The studios are covered in plants and warm tiles and stand in stark contrast to the dark and dirty paint lab.  In the center of the atrium is a pool which is all that remains of the original geyser.  Across the atrium the player can see more studios, presumably for more painters, although they cannot go there.

Past the studios is a door which opens into the ink lab.  Of course, the player doesn't know that the equipment was for producing writing ink and will assume that more paint was produced here or, perhaps, the secret ingredient that made the paint capable of linking.  Again, this is a dark place and has dozens of glass bottles with dark green liquid sealed inside and vats and tanks and other machinery throughout. While trying out the equipment, the player will find a linking book.  This will take him to the material age used for producing ink which will be described below.

Another door in this lab leads him into the canvas lab.  The main item of interest in this room is a huge loom with a partially woven bolt of canvas left on it.  More bolts are stacked on one end of the room and on the other are many cloth sacks full of small chips of some material.  Again, there are tanks and vats in place.  This appears to simply be a place to make canvas for their special paintings.  In this lab, they will also find a linking book which will take them to the age that is used to harvest the bags of chips and shavings.  This age is also described below.

From here, they have accessed all of the rooms that they can reach from the interior of the artist's age.  The other doors cannot be opened.  They have received just enough information to know that more must be out there, behind those closed doors.  

The Material Ages
The material ages can be linked to from their associated labs.  The ink lab and the canvas lab each have ages from which material is harvested.  

The Ink Age
The ink age is actually a link written to the same age that the D'ni would use to harvest the blood from beetles for writing ink.  One of the artist's friends in the writer's guild secretly wrote this link to a hidden spot on the ink age.  The area that the player link into is no more than a hole in the ground from where beetles can be taken back to the interior.  This will be the players first glimpse of this much talked about age.

The Canvas Age
The canvas age is a more pleasant atmosphere.  Here, the player travels on trails in the valleys of mountains. In these valleys the player will find narrow fields with rows of small, sapling-like plants about fifteen feet apart.  Some areas of these fields are pocked with huge holes that are ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep.  Some of these holes are filled with water forming a polka-dotted lake in the valley. These holes were produced when the huge root of the plants were removed from the ground.  The remains of some of these large, turnip-like plants are piled in one area and the player sees that the center of the roots have been cored and are missing.  There is a machine nearby that was used to remove these huge roots from the ground and its bucket still holds a plant that has continued to grow and has sent suckers from the bucket into the ground. The weather on this age is very moist and foggy.  Every 15 minutes or so, moisture will build in the atmosphere and be released as a brief rainstorm. 

The Gesso Age
Both of these ages are interlinked and one can be accessed form the other.  The player has, of course, already figured this out.  The linking books are in plain sight once you enter the material ages.  The player has also found the books for a third age.  This is the gesso age and its lab has yet to be discovered.  Unlike the other ages, the gesso age only has two books available, one for the ink age and one for the canvas age.  The player does not know what material this age is used for or why it is included in the network.  Visually, the gesso age is nothing more that a good-sized lake with a small structure on the water's edge.   No useful or exotic material can be found.  Eventually, the player will discover that the D'ni were mining a kind of fish roe from screens that they planted at the bottom of this lake.  The roe was from a unique kind of transparent fish and was collected and taken back to the undiscovered gesso lab where it was processed in a centrifuge and its liquid separated.  This additive was then mixed with a coating to make the gesso.

Gaining access to the Gesso Lab
The gesso lab is the only area remaining undiscovered.  This is also the area that explains the entire process of the linking paintings.  The door to this lab is, unfortunately, locked from the inside.  The only way to get into this lab is by linking in from its material age.  However, where the other two ages have all three linking books in close proximity, this age has reason to separate the book that links back to its lab.  This causes a dilemma for the player.  

Since material from the Gesso age is collected from the bottom of the sea,  a submersible pod has been built that can travel from the surface of the age down to the sea floor.  This pod takes the player to an underwater collection facility where the materials were harvested.  In order to avoid resurfacing every time a collection was made, the book was left in this facility for quicker transport back to the gesso lab.  

At the surface is a building that houses the motors and mechanisms to control the pod and supply power to the underwater site.  The player can throw the switch to power-up the facility (no missing-power-source puzzle here) and will see and hear machinery running.  The pod will be at its surface position when the player arrives, and they will be able to get in and lower it into the water.  When the pod hits the airlock on the facility below, nothing happens and they can only resurface.  

If the player jumps into the water, they will be able to swim around and under the pod.  From this vantage point they will notice a switch on the pod that could not be seen from above.  They can then get out of the water, walk back to the pod and press this switch.  The pod will then raise to its "maintenance position" about four feet above the water surface.  There will be a heavy buildup off barnacle-like material on the bottom of the pod that has caused the airlock door to freeze.  A tool found on the dock can be used to scrape this crust away.  Pressing the switch again lowers the pod to its default surface position and the player can descend once again.  This time the pod's lower hatch opens, but the underwater building's door does not.  The player must resurface again.  

Inside the surface building, the player will find spare parts.  Some of these are large metal hoops with a clamp on the edge.  If the player goes outside and looks for a place that this hoop might be used, they will find old, rusted ones around a collapsed tube on the ground, one on each side of the building.  These tubes are directly below to large arms that cycle up and down with the motors turned on.  The player must understand that these are, in fact, bellows that have separated from the arms and must be reattached to supply air to the lower building.  To fix this, the player must stop the engines so that the arms come to rest in the down position.  This could take some trial and error.  Once down, the player can remove the old hoops, and attach the new ones and clamp the bellows onto the arms.  When the power is turned on the bellows will begin pumping air into the lower building.  There may be a gauge that indicates the amount of air available to the player.  When this amount is sufficient, the player can lower the pod and successfully dock with the lower facility.  They will then find the book that links back to the gesso lab.

Once in the gesso lab, the player will be able to see the gesso process and will find half-latent canvases next to empty vats.  As they explore further, they will find the writing studios, which are opposite the painting studios in the atrium.  Here they will see desks equipped with tools used to reduce the scale of their writing an incredible amount, and magnifying glasses by which they checked their work.  At this point, the player will fully realize that it is, in fact, writing and not the paint that makes these paintings work.  They will have all the information they need to understand the entire process and will be the first to dispel the myth of the magical paint.  

In the gesso lab, they will also find the device that will allow them to use the paintings to link.  This could be some kind of an organic glove, similar to the ones used by maintainers that allowed them to link while their skin was covered for protection.  This glove may only work with one painting and therefore, each link-painting would have its own glove to be discovered.  Or perhaps the glove will work with any painting, if you know how to use it.  Each painting could require a different method to activate the link.  Learning to read these painting could become a skill that a player could improve.  This could be one more way to involve the players in the story and give them experiences that they could share.

Payoff
In the end, most players will be able to enjoy interacting with a new environment and with each other in a colorful, exotic world.  A good percentage of people may be intrigued by the myth surrounding this age and the link-paintings and may return to do a little hunting.  A small group of players will successfully uncover enough information to begin exploring the interior of the age and may begin to piece together the facts behind the myth.  One person (or one group of people) will solve the mystery and will become known for their discovery which will allow all players access to vast, new ages.
 
