Open Invite at La Casa -- Add Your Stories

Share Your Stories At La Casa

For those who are creating stories or have ideas, you are welcome to add your content to La Casa. We have both a website and a forum. Those who want access to the backstage of the site, need to register at the forum ( http://fissure.forumandco.com). This is where we discuss what we are doing and where we are going. While much of the forum is open to all, the specifics about the story are for registered users only. This means we can talk about clues and cues without giving away the game. Isis and I will be happy to help you connect your ideas to the site.

To reach La Casa, start at http://www.webmousepublications.com/uru-website/cleft-road/cleft-gate.html. The trick here is in non-linear storytelling, which is exactly what we have all learned to love about the Myst games. You can do ages in any order and in URU you can quit one age and try another. While the HTML format does not allow for multi-player and is limited on interaction, we have been able to present a non-linear story and opportunities for exploration.

At present at La Casa you can:

* Explore the house and grounds. Admittedly this is limited because of the format, but there are several characters to meet, each with information to add to the story. If you get off the road to La Casa you will end up at the University of NM and can talk with a professor there.

* Listen to the radio broadcasts. The local station of WNDN (terrible pun I learned it from a Cherokee) has interviews of La Casa staff and neighbors.

* Read the books in the library -- these include picture books, texts, journals and animated books. Books from MOUL are here, even if the link function has been disabled, as well as all new material about La Casa's history, the archeology of the Cleft area, a book of D'ni herbology, and age guides that include all the hints taken from the previous MT forum.

* Check into a room. La Casa is a bed & breakfast and therefore you can check into any room that is not currently occupied by La Casa staff. You can call the front desk to request one our all natural, completely safe visionary concoctions made from hallucinogenic plants found in the D'ni ages. There are three options (tea, smudge stick, incense) which lead to an animated film of images from URU and beyond. But there is more to the visions than pretty visuals. Depending on which room you are in and what vision you choose you could end up sleep linking.

Sleep linking is a peculiar property of about 30% of the visions. When you "wake up" you will find yourself in a different room from the one you were in before -- a room of a La Casa's staff member. Because our staff has access to a private library, you may find books that are not available anywhere else. Don't worry about invasion of privacy. So far all sleep links have put visitors into empty instances of the rooms. This means that you will not be catching Imzadi as she is getting out of the shower -- much to our relief. As with URU, you are invited to explore whatever room in which you find yourself.

Future Plans
Ultimately we want to create interactive rendered ages, but those of us who lack the Blender techno-skills are going ahead with what we can do instead of beating our heads against what we can not do. The premise behind La Casa is that there were folks living in the area of the Cleft before the DRC came to stay. Those who lived at La Casa befriended Elias Zandi and were amongst the first to enter the Cavern, during which time they may have acquired some age link books which are kept at La Casa. Those link books are not readily available, but when there are ages to go with the ideas the link books will turn up somewhere in the house.

Until then we invite others to share their age ideas using La Casa as a central repository. If your story is linear we can put it into a book on the library shelf. If your story is non-linear, then we can put a link book somewhere in the house -- your choice on easy or hard to find -- and clicking that book will take the explorer into the age you have created. Being that La Casa is done entirely in standard HTML, this means we can place links either in the text or within images.

Have a look at what we have done already to get an idea of what we can do. If you want to host the story yourself, then we will put a link at La Casa to your site. If you want us to host your story, then you need to send the files to me at webmouse @ verizon. net and I will set up a folder for your files on my website. If you are unsure what you want to do, just ask and we can work something out.

I look forward to your participation.