What happened to the book of Earth?

Question

I've recently been replaying the Myst series of games, and realized that the D'ni were actually supposed to be in a cavern on Earth. My understanding of the lore is that the original D'ni escaped to Earth by writing a descriptive book which allowed them to link to a cavern deep beneath the surface - they then wrote additional linking books allowing them to link back to D'ni from other Ages.

So, what happened to the original descriptive book? Did they take it with them? If so, does that mean a descriptive book can describe the Age it occupies? This seems like an obvious hole in the lore to me.

Answer

There doesn't appear to be any in-canon account of what happened to the original Book of D'ni/Earth. However, assuming it follows the usual rules for D'ni books, it must still be intact, or the linking books to D'ni/Earth would cease to function.

That said, I believe it's logically sound to assume it would be possible to bring the original descriptive book to Earth.

• Remember, books only create the link between worlds - the worlds are not dependent on the books describing them.
• Linking books (at least the standard D'ni sort) are dependent on the existence of the related descriptive book. However, the location of the descriptive book does not matter. Linking books to Age A, residing in Age B, may be dependent on a descriptive book in Age C.

Therefore it should be possible to write the Book of D'ni/Earth in Garternay, then write some linking books that also go to Earth, then take the descriptive book to Earth through one of the linking books. The linking books still depend on the descriptive book, but it now resides in the age it describes.

The one major "gotcha" here is that you can't use books to link intra-dimensionally, so you couldn't actually use a book while it resides in the age it describes. The linking books in other ages should still work fine though.

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