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[sapagoo]

[ARTIFACT] Ch. 22 (@London, UK)

[macmonkey]

I'll be there as the shop opens.

[macmonkey]

Just got back from the deaddrop. I'm scanning the page now. I'll post it in a bit.

[Weezel]

[mac_monkey]

http://164.109.150.213/PRUVO/53FD/J03M/87AN/INE6/746W.PDF

Haven't been following the game much so I'm not sure if it's relevant, but the document was behind an antique map of North America (which the shop keeper gave me) and it was in an envelope which said "Western Maryland Railway Company", not sure if it's related.

[VKV4WW]

Thanks for being so prompt!

Did you leave anything behind?

[mac_monkey]

Ah yes of course...the kind shop keeper insisted I took the map so I just hung the note where it was. Just a folded up piece of paper with the word "Theo" on the front.

[Weezel]

[snurge]

[mac_monkey]

I'm pretty sure the map's not relevant, though North America and "Western Maryland Railway Company" might be.

Here's the image anyway though...(the white bit is the flash on my camera -sorry)

[Chid12]

Here's my translation:

Chapter 22

The design of Omphalos

Who made the first omphaloi, and what sort of message was the sculpture aiming to communicate?

Since ancient times, the majority of omphaloi were drawn in the form of the omphaloi: of Delphi: dome-shaped statues, made from stone, and chiselled in order to appear as "ret"-covered stone.

Nevertheless according to ancient histories, the statue at Delphi which survives today was not the first omphaloi at that place. It was the second omphaloi – a copy made in the 4th century BC. The first true omphaloi was different. It was made from a special type of a stone – aerolite – and was covered with a true woven net called argenon.

The original sacred stone fell out of the sky.

Meaning

Why did the ancient Greeks cover aerolite with a net?

In many worlds, historians believe that the original design of the omphaloi was the work of the original agonothetai – a direct allusion to their own labyrinths.

The woven design of the 'diktuon' (fish net) was snake-like and circular, exactly the same as the labyrinth. And indeed, Dedalo, in Greek mythology, built the first labyrinth as a series of "waving (undulating) nets"

One also knows, that the temple at Delphi, later a shrine to Apollo the sun god, was initially created as a sacred-place to Gaea, the god of the earth.

If the agonothetai created the omphaloi, the design could very easily be an encoded message, sacred reminders covering the earth with labyrinths.

Design instructions

Find or create a rock in the shape of a dome (cupola) or egg-shaped (ovoid) sphere.

Cover the surface with circular, interconnected lines.

The lines should go in a circle, unbroken, and irregularly spaced.

The lines should "interigxigu"* at least 27 times, creating 27 knots.

The lines should cross the largest part of the surface area – ideally, 85% or more.

* Obviously this word is important, but I don't know how to translate it:
- "inter" means 'between';
- "igxi" is a suffix which means 'becoming';
- 'igu' is the imperative form of 'get', 'cause', or 'make'.

I can't really work it out but I guess it means something like 'inter-connect' or 'inter-cross' or 'intersect', something like that.

EDITED: Thanks Elizabeth!

[Ikkarus]

"Intersect" sounds like the most likely candidate, given the context.

[Elizabeth123]

Wow, that was fast, Chid! Thank you! By the way, 'diktuon' is Greek for a fish net.

I wonder if we actually need to create omphaloi, or was this just put in place to tell us about them? Again, we're seeing information that leads us to suspect that the earth is our omphalos, with 27 knots (meaning the omphaputer is only showing us equidistant points between knots on the omphaloi, not actual omphaloi, and the artifacts were placed at each knot.)

[Chid12]

I think this is clear evidence tha our Earth is an omphaloi.

Whenever we find a new location on the ompha-puter, that point is the centre of a circle, and along the circumference of that circle, two artifacts can be found. Whenever two circles intersect, there will be two points of overlap. So perhaps, once all the main locations on the omphaloi are found, and all the circumferences are known and plotted, a total of 27 knots will be made, one for each artifact.

Is it possible to make a 3D globe of the Earth with all the locations marked and the circumferences highlighted so we can see what it looks like?

As I was writing that, I realised that perhaps that's what the 'MAKE OMPH KNOT' command does on the ompha-puter. Does entering that command make all the circles and knots appear? It doesn't seem to because it sort of makes the world explode!

[thebruce]

yeah, we starting using the omphalos term for the dots because of the navigational system description, even though there weren't physical omphaloi there.
And, the puter does say "Omphalos identified" when naming a dot .
but yeah, I certainly agree with the idea that the earth may effectively be an omphalos in the multiverse.

There's a lot of parallel themes in this plot... but for this, we've got artifacts as knots, and dots and omphaloi, all forming the earth omphalos.

MAKE OMPH KNOT is interesting then... will there just be 27 to start? Perhaps we need to 'finish' the earth omphalos by creating many many more around the world; personal and/or team labyrinths via the registers?
hm.