The Guild of Healers is currently holding meditations every Sunday, starting at Noon cavern time in the hood's Eder Delin.  These are led by ghaelen in voice and last about 40 minutes.  Learn to breathe deep and relax. All are welcome to attend, but it's best to request an invitation to the hood in advance.  (The hood is open to the public, but we don't toggle it on the nexus.)  If you're interested, you can post your KI # here or send it to me in a PM. For those not registered to the forum, you can send a KI mail to me (#7601) or ghaelen (#24037) in the cavern with your request.  (Please don't PM ghaelen once the meditations have started.) We may move the meditations around to other ages in the future, so once you get on our invite list, we can notify you of changes and send new invitations.

Controversial Myst fan Matthew Hornbostel - known for his "D'ni Temple" level and a number of erratic suggestions and posts, has agreed to give out approximately $200.00 in prizes to Guild of Writers members as part of a tutorial development contest.

Prizes include educational books on Blender and texture art, as well as Amazon.com gift certificates, to be awarded for the top four tutorials entered into the contest as judged by a small panel of volunteer GoW members.

He hopes that the prizes will motivate the development and release of many new tutorials for age writers to use and learn from, including tutorials related to use of the recently released 3ds max plugins, Blender art, Python scripting, and (ideally) conversion of fan ages into MO:ULagain.

Both the contest entries and the prizes should be beneficial in improving the quality of the work produced by the Guild of Writers.

Tutorial entries are due on May 15, 2010.   Should the contest prove successful, further unofficial contests may follow.

Matthew is also giving to Cyan Worlds and recognizes the importance of supporting the company, but sees investment in the fanbase as more cost-effective in terms of age creation.

If even one high-quality fan age is created using the knowledge gained from these tutorials and these prizes, he suggests, then it's a better investment than giving to Cyan Worlds - since Cyan Worlds requires hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to create a single official age.