unforum

[Seej]

Ugh, more brown boxes:

Anyone find it interesting that the day Salk and TA met was the wedding (in TA's apartment building - Ascendency Point) of Joya and Shockley and that Joya didn't show up at all?

Secondly, if V is a significant member of this team then why make it so bloody obvious if it's Violet? We're told which person is using an initial, and Quercus is the oak tree family, so surely the rest will be a little more complicated. I feel like there must be some other theme here such as K, V and C being the first letter of other latin tree names or something.

And I'm damned if I can find any hint of ancient sects at all in Violet's history ramblings or over at the Academy but when they were talking about symbols I was reminded of this post on Violet's blog which seems like it might be on the right lines....

EDIT: Just thought of another thing to be considering - we aren't even sure of the sex of TA. It does seem a bit like they're female but it's never explicitly stated. TA even says "when I was a child" rather than using a gender-specific term like boy or girl. Similarly, we still don't know this about V either.

EDIT 2 Wow - there's a lot of Latin tree names

[EDIT: removed spoiler tags. yanka.]

[hannah]

[Mosestrotsky]

Hannah

I saw that too and I think it means

The suspect named C - does our main suspect the one at the Academy have an email address?

[EDIT: removed spoiler tags. yanka.]

[Seej]

Good thought. Or perhaps it's a reference to V?

[JebJoya]

Oh, I took that to be "C" who was the only one referenced as a woman...

Jeb

[Mikeyj]

Seej,

I nearly found myself spoilerizing trees!

I know it was just a thought, but on the latin name front, there are a whole load of trees which begin with C, so hard to narrow down (Cedar, Hawthorn, Sweet Chestnut, and Pecan amongst others). Only found one V (the tree sparkleberry, which sounds made up to me) and one K (the Golden Rain tree, which sounds like a druidic urine cult). I'm going to put an emoticon here as I like the way they show through . Valerian is a herb shrub thing, which is at least a character we've met, but not a tree.

[Leeravitz]

Well, gloves off !! You turn around for five minutes, and look what happens! I'm going to try and be elliptical, so that spoilers don't overtake this post !! That was certainly a lot of info and it's gratifying to see that a number of assumptions we've made might have *some* basis in the overall game reality - as ever, we appear to have been told a lot, but, on close inspection, things haven't moved forward all that much. Appears as if the Henrik Tanner hypothesis was correct, though, and that the Recons are, indeed, a bit of a red herring...

As to the identities of the team, it does all seem pretty up in the air - one was Holyoke, obviously. Then there's the unidentified female software engineer, and the mysterious 'V'. And, finally, the lovely TA, of course. TA might *not* be a woman (in a modern enlightened society and all that), but it does sound as if Salk was musing on his contact's perfume, rather than recalling the aroma of Sylvia Salk, but I agree, the wording is ambiguous.

Assuming a feminine presence lies behind TA, however, then one matter did occur to me : we assume that 'TA' simply equals 'The Advisor', which is only natural in the context. But what if that nom - de - plume had been chosen because it chimes with a real identity - like Tippi Akron?? Admitedly, the contact castigates her associate C for making reference to her actual surname, so maybe she(?) would consider such a transposition self - defeating, but it's an interesting thought...

Some of the minor points about the files are moderately interesting: Salk apostrophises Aiko Entrescore as AE, at one point, and muses as to whether she was in on anything (seems unlikely given further comments by TA, though) and his high - level police contact is HF, that is Helena Frye, who was heavily involved in the Holyoke related investigations, presumably thanks to Salk's tip - offs. One must assume that Salk's desire to get into the Recon compound was simply an effort to get in contact with Jessica Holyoke, and that proved to be of no use to him.

I see no reason to gainsay TA's claims that the associates involved didn't know each other before they met, although their leader 'V' was orchestrating the operation. This does suggest a number of ideas to me:

1. There is no necessary reason that 'V' is him/herself *the* mastermind of the entire plot, perhaps only the agent who oversaw the theft of the Cube. Whatever organisation/religious association/conspiracy 'V' is a part of is said to be extensive, and to have a huge membership.

2. If the agents didn't know much about what they were getting involved *in*, and are seemingly being silenced after the event by associates of the 'conspiracy', then it suggests to me that they were a group of dispensable small time criminals (like Holyoke), or others of minor status, who were blackmailed/enticed into getting involved, without really taking into full account how dangerous the situation might be. True, TA annouces at one point that 'he/she' is also dangerous, and we must assume that the thieves knew what they were about, otherwise the theft could not have been succesfully achieved, but that they appear to be categorised as 'non - believers' (in distinction to V, the 'true believer') and that they appear so disposable, seems to indicate that we are looking at a motely crew who stood to gain financially(?) from involvement, and did not perform for altruistic/idealistic reasons. Presumably, they were not expecting to be betrayed/silenced at a later date, either, which may assume a certain naievity on their parts.

3. Purely OOG, but worrying (to me, at least) - the cinematic parallel this all puts me most in mind of is The Usual Suspects...and what were we talking about in one of the threads a few months ago, apropos of nothing...yes, you've got it...are we starting to give the PM's dramatic ideas???

[JebJoya]

Just a random thought, maybe one of the other members has died, and was, for example, the person in the car crash, or something?

Jeb

[Leeravitz]

Yeah, could easily be the case...There are a few random deaths hidden away in the pages of the Sentinel which appear suspiciously like they may have been intentional killings disguised as accidents; it's what I've always suspected. But, of course, we're only probably looking for one such death, at least in relation to the Cube thieves...we assume Holyoke was one of them (that's as good as confirmed) and we know what happened to him...we must assume 'TA' to be alive and well as of this moment (or, at least, as of last week or so)...it's very unlikely anything would befall 'V' (who seems to be orchestrating the whole setup, and again, is still clearly alive and well as of last week or so)...so the only other member of the setup who might have met an untimely end is 'C'. We know that 'C' was a 'her', so that narrows details down further...I think that the car crash victim was a man (correct me if I'm wrong), but the hypothesis that there may have been something more to the Sarah Covington murder than meets the eye is...intriguing...

[spugmeistress]

As much as we'd all like Tippy to be evil, it does seem that TA = The Advisor. But I definitely reckon TA is a woman, the perfume thing is ambiguous, but he talks about seeing any woman behind your wife's back being an affair, so i'ts fair to say he's been seeing some woman behind his wife's back, even if it is for 'work' purposes. The way the emails are written, TA asking him about his wife for example, indicate its a woman.

As for whether TA is the 'she' in the message, I'm not so sure. So who should we be looking for?

Also agreed that we shouldnt be following name initials for K/TA or V for the simple fact that they wouldnt be so foolish about it.

Dunno if this has been mentioned on the forum, its mentioned on the wiki page though, but I reckon the 'minder' guy is Garnet Reed of the Academy Cube retrieval team. Not sure how he fits into it but the description fits his photo a little *too* well, down to the leather chair and newspaper.

rach =)

[Seej]

Yes Leeravitz, the pedestrian killed was indeed a man - Sentinel Article

[Leeravitz]

Sorry, Seej,

I was wrong there (or, at least, unintentionally confusing). I was just picking up on something that Steve C had mentioned earlier and agreeing with it...BUT having checked Steve C gave the wrong reference in the first place. I was talking about the woman who got topped (supposedly) by Michael Corolla, and this was, in fact, KAREN CHONDELLE. Of course, the theory actually still applies, even though we got the reference wrong...because it's a woman who died a while back in suspicious circumstances, and who has a 'C' prominent in her surname.

In fact, when you think about it, the whole scenario surrounding the Corolla trial is very suspicious:

We know that there has been a big fuss made about one juror at least being bribed to give a verdict. That could mean that more jurors have been bribed than we know about, but only the one has been found out. My natural assumption (for ages) was that the bribery was intended *positively* i.e. that the case would be 'thrown' so that Corolla could get off for a crime he committed. But maybe it's the other way round - someone wants to see Corolla go down in order to cover up a hidden agenda, and they tried to prime the jury to ensure that the decision went their way.

Although this takes some leaps of assumption, it might also be relevant that the presiding judge's name is Zeller, and this may imply that she's a relative of Hesketh Zeller, who has always appeared to us to have been a historical figure heavily involved in Cube - related intrigue. So, was the whole thing set up to be some kind of show trial? Of course, it is hard to see why any kind of questioning of procedure was allowed if the whole thing was intended to be cast - iron.

Another interesting question is whether Salk was contacted by TA, because he was somehow already getting too close to the truth and needed to be neutralised??! The correspondence makes the relationship sound straighforward: Salk had shown his credentials as a crusading journalist, TA needed someone like that in hand, so that he could investigate into the mysterious conspiracy, and ,perhaps, expose them, but, eventually, the conspiracy caught up with them...

But what if this is double bluff? Salk was known to have taken an abiding interest in exposing miscarriages of justice; he might have got interested in what was going on within the Corolla trial and investigated further, in the process discovering more than he should. What was therefore needed, from the conspiracy's perspective, was that he should be engaged by someone masquerading as an ally (perhaps genuinely in on the Cube theft, but *supportive* of the conspiracy), entangled over time into a relationship where he would be drip - fed just enough information to keep him interested, but told relatively little, forced into a situation (because his contact was a beautiful woman) where he would be loath to reveal any further details about the liason to his wife, and then done over at the apposite moment.

Hell, I'm a paranoid nutcase, ain't I? I've only just thought all that up on the spur of the moment, but...you never know...

As to Sarah Covington, *I'm* not even sure who she is now...have we just made a character up??! [Probably...]

[cassandra]

She's one of the shoe-loving Academy gatehouse gals.

[spugmeistress]

[Enigmaster]

Btw, in the wiki they're refered to as emails, but surely they're key comunications? Just a thought, I dare not edit myself.

[EDIT: snipped irrelevent stuff (got beaten to it )]