LACUNA REBORN. We open as the PC is making love. After a short paragraph of text the player must already make his first choice: whether to stay in bed and continue enjoying himself, or get up to answer a call to create art. Via some WTTC-style tricks we establish the charcter of the lover, and the player. As the player eventually gets up, we learn that he is a Wayfarer, one of an impossibly rare group that has mastered a phenomenal skill. When lured by the Call -- which can come from inside, from beyond, or from a fellow Wayfarer -- these people have the power to paint the scene of the Call, and then, incredibly, be there. One in a million great artists across the cosmos become Wayfarers. There are no teachers or students: there are simply Wayfarers, and those who are not. The player's companion emerges and asks the player if he is sure he wants to go. What he hopes to gain. The player must justify himself before finally taking the plunge. He knows he will not be able to return for a while, and there may be danger. LACUNA The player arrives on a beautiful tropical island. Soon after arrival, he meets a strange old man called Progue. Progue is also a Guardian, though one who seems to have exiled himself and fallen from sanity. Like the player, Progue created his portals through painting. Through various shifting conversations, and the "journal" of sketches in Progue's house, the player begins to learn what happened here. The widowed Progue painted this world, more than 30 years ago, with the hope of creating an inhabited paradise in which to raise his two daughters. But when they travelled here, there were no inhabitants. Progue named the world "Lacuna," for the missing people, and settled down to paint a new world. But inspiration would not come: something seemed to gnaw at his mind, tickling him. As time passed he become more and more obsessed with the curious trees on the island, and finally with building a curious observatory on the island's highest spire. When at last Progue finished the project, something changed: he shattered into insanity, isolated himself on the western part of the island, and has never painted again. His daughters both had his gift, and when they were old enough, they made paintings of their own. The two paintings they left through, showing the backs of two black-haired young heads, hang on opposite walls in Progue's cabin. Progue has summoned the player, he explains, to make a decision, one that he himself could never make. The decision relates to that which is missing on Lacuna, and it cannot be explained: the player must discover it for himself. First, though, the player will need to gain access to the long-abandoned east part of the island, and the observatory itself. Progue is alternatingly helpful and infuritaing as the player solves the puzzles necessary to advance. These puzzles include: -- The island is divided by a volcanic chasm, filled with fumaroles and steam vents. To protect his daughters, Progue sealed off all entrances through a door with a combination lock. To gain access to the east island, the player will need to rediscover the combination. Progue has long since forgotten it, but the clues to find it are readily available. -- Progue drops hints to the player that his greatest discovery was made by "following the bees." If the player can decipher the curious dance that the giant bees on the eastern island perform to lead their fellows to food, he can follow them to a hidden hollow deep in the forest, where a shocking discovery awaits. -- Progue harnessed the steam vents on the volcano's floor to build a crude power system. The player must learn how this system works in order to power a chairlift running to the island's highest point, a mysterious dome atop a high rocky spire. -- The tide surges in and out under Lacuna's moon. A cave in a steep inlet is accessible only at low tide, and only by letting the tide flow in can the player climb to gain access to a secret cave with a strange grid of letters and sounds. -- The player learns that all on the island is not as straightforward as it seems. On the east half, buried in an ancient crater, is a crashed silver spaceship, with strange murals depicting the curious trees inside, as well as human skeletons. When the player gains access to the observatory, he discovers a strange piece of machinery, that seems to test his mind with word associations and logic puzzles, and to be connected to all the trees on the island. As the player unravels this puzzle, it becomes clear that there is intelligence on Lacuna, after all: the Trees. As the player connects each tree to the central grid, he learns how they came on the alien ship, expecting the humans aboard to be their eyes and hands... only to have them perish in an unexpected crash. When Progue and his daughters came to the island, they used them, half unknowingly, to rebuild the smashed device that would allow them to connect to a galactic hive mind of trees... and unexpectedly, the player is allowed to mentally project himself to the Tree homeworld. A beautiful place, the Heart of the Forest, the home of trees is dominated with the majestic sentient creatures and their human symbiants. Exploring their world, the player learns how the Trees awoke the humans, and how the humans voluntarily serve them in a utopia of one unified mind... but also how the humans have no dreams or ambitions of their own. While in this paradise, the player encounters a mysterious trick of the light which seems to be trying to tell him something. This turns out to be an invitation to yet another world, a world of human rebels. Another planet, another crashlanded ship: yet on this one, the humans survived while the trees did not. Freed for the first time in the life of their race from their link to the trees, the humans built their own society and gained a sort of independence. But this freedom came at a cost: the rebel world is fraught with warfare, overpopulation, and violence. It becomes clear that both sides, the Trees and the Rebels, want something from the player. The planet of Lacuna is contested: the Trees want to send more humans to finish the job of colonization that they begun, while the rebels want to expand their fledgling empire onto another world. But the problem is this: neither of them know where Lacuna is. 168 ships crashlanded of the thousands that the Trees sent out, and they do not know which one to send more people to. Likewise the rebels do not know which among the millions of stars is this gem of a planet. Each side wants the player to connect to the mindlink and simply look at the stars, to confirm the coordinates and allow their side to get the jump on the other. This, then, is the decision that Progue could not make: help one, or help both, or help neither. The player must weigh the evidence, visit both worlds, talk to people on both sides, and piece together everything he has learned, before finally making his decision. Once it is made, Progue is healed. He can paint again, and together he and the player begin their canvases to vastly disparate worlds: the player back to his beautiful home and companion, and Progue to the strange land of his daughters, whole once again.