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Exploring in the Cyan Vaults #2

Rand recently handed me a stack of papers he thought I might be interested in…

“You should put this in the newsletter. It’ll blow people’s minds!”

“Old invoices? Really?” I think…

“Not just old invoices. It’s the invoice for the dagger!”

Turns out Cyan commissioned M5 Industries to build the dagger that graces the lobby of Cyan HQ… and the prop itself was built by none other than one of our favorite makers in all the land: Mr. Adam Savage.

Here’s a link to Adam briefly talking about it during a podcast recording! [Very slight Riven ending spoilers by Adam!]

As he mentioned, the original intention was for the final scene of Riven’s “good ending” (where the giant dagger plummets into a newly opened rift) to be filmed live.

The work order contains the plans for not only the dagger, but the rift which was going to be built as 2 tables that could be pulled apart at the proper moment- letting the dagger plunge into the depths while cameras rolled.

In the end it was actually easier to create the final plummet in CG, but you don’t spend $4,000+ on a prop just to throw it away… so the full-sized dagger was re-purposed as a striking greeting for our HQ entryway!

One other bit of esoteric fun that we noticed was that it appears the folks at M5 Industries used a Mac to create their fax cover sheet… that’s very clearly the iconic ‘Chicago‘ font, created by the legendary designer Susan Kare being used. Amazing!

As an aside, this is no longer the location of M5 Industries (and the phone numbers are all disconnected as well), so if you have any notions of making a pilgrimage… please leave the poor folks that currently reside in the location now alone!