unforum

[MrToasty]

Updates on stopasog about two of the drops...

[AwesomeRingerud]

all that back and forth earlier and larkin just posts the stuff himself...

[Nedostup]

Through hard work and extreme cleverness, I've managed to resurrect the text of the letter found in Phoenix. I might be missing a little bit, but I don't think anything important. Hopefully Brandon Larkin will post it up later to confirm.

Neil-

I'd only scratched the surface before the widow died. Now I've found everything. It's all here, Neil, all their plans, all their research. There is power too. You will see. That man was meticulous. I was so afraid that the Mare Vitreum's work would be lost. I think he knew he wasn't going to survive. And as the last scion of their legacy he prepared everything for his heirs. Little did he know the mantle would fall to me! It's clear to me now that I was meant to find this. This is indeed a new age. As Christ was the indigo and the beginning of the new generation, I am the new Christ and the scion of his legacy. We have been given this power, and we have been called to lead humanity, with a deep blue eye and clear fresh mind. The Mare Vitreum of old were using savants and psychics to commune with God and decode the cryptogram, but we will have computers, we will have the INDIGO. Do you see what I'm saying? Don't worry that you can't be here. Finish med school. We will need your expertise in the days to come.

-A.S.

[ali]

Just thought I'd share an e-mail I got today from Brandon:

I hope you really mean that. The five are safe, as far as I know. I can't communicate with them anymore.

If you really do want to get out and start a new life, there's hope. The one you knew as "Thole" went back into medicine and has a thriving practice. So don't despair, there is life after ASOG!

[Nikkita]

Third drop from Phoenix

[madtrixie]

A lot of clever googling yielded this for me:

<sub>Neil,

It's incredible, you have no idea. There is far more here than we guessed.

I'd only scratched the surface before the widow died. Now I've found
everything. It's all here, Neil, all their plans, all their research.

There is power too.

You will see. That man was meticulous. I was so afraid that the Mare
Vitreum's work would be lost. I think he knew he wasn't going to
survive. And as the last scion of their legacy he prepared everything
for his heirs. Little did he know the mantle would fall to me! It's
clear to me now that I was meant to find this. This is indeed a new
age.

As Christ was the indigo and the beginning of the new generation, I am
the new Christ and the scion of his legacy. We have been given this
power, and we have been called to lead humanity, with a deep blue eye
and clear fresh mind. The Mare Vitreum of old were using savants and
psychics to commune with God and decode the cryptogram, but we will
have computers, we will have the INDIGO.

The "universal cryptogram"! It's so much more, Neil! The pattern is
tightly woven. And, like any pattern, the whole can be extrapolated
from it's parts. Do you see what I'm saying? Don't worry that you
can't be here. Finish med school. We will need your expertise in the
days to come.

~AS</sub>

I *think* this is complete, but I'm not positive.

[dharma22]

the final test is up.

I'm stuck

[Thunderclap]

I got it. the answer to the third trial is

[rebel2k4]

The meet up is at the lake at Central Park...for those who are playing..

Jason Block

[hasenbraten]

where did you see the location??

[rebel2k4]

I got it as a paid agent. In the email.

Jason

[antimasque]

Hey, great, now all three clues that were recovered have been sent to Larkin and posted publicly, completely nullfiying their power as a bargaining chip with Sayther.

Thanks for honoring my request that the team who recovered the clues be able to control where they go, guys. Thanks so much. Now we're going into this game with nothing to show for the work we've done because someone decided they thought they knew better than us what to do with our clues.

Thanks especially to Neodostup and maxtrixie for working so hard to undermine my wishes to keep our info to ourselves!

[Nedostup]

OK, I didn't want to say anything before because I didn't want to risk turning this useful, constructive thread into a flame war, but antimasque's antisocial behavior (how ironic) has demanded I address it.

This is a game. These clues are not meant to be hidden from us; the only reason they were hidden is for the fun of finding them. Nor are they meant to be hoarded by whoever finds them. If that were the case, that would mean prototype 161 expected one team to find all five clues before anyone else could find even one, or else they expected different teams, in different places around the country, to find each other and trade information without announcing what information they had.

What a colossal waste of time that would be. With hundreds of players scattered around the globe, they would create and place each clue, at an expense to their limited resources, for the benefit of no more than eight people. And there would be little chance of anyone figuring the puzzle out, especially with less than a week between releasing the information and the live event.

And as to your idea of using the information as a bargaining chip: if your team really found those clues, you still possess the hard copies. I'm sure that the game runners will be able to tell the difference between a copy and the real thing, and in the unlikely event that that actually works to your advantage on Friday, no one will begrudge you for it. However, if you were too lazy to make sure those items were overnight mailed to you then that's your own fault. It is ridiculous to insist that you have the only digital copies of original game content. This is part of what we're paying $40 for.

As it stands, I am very close to figuring out the Fallen puzzle (using only publicly available information) and I probably would have completed it if somebody hadn't interfered with the St. Louis and Cedar Rapids clues. Of course, I don't know that's what happened, but regardless, we can all agree it would be better for everyone if they had been recovered.

A game like this, which requires so much creativity, cooperation, and engagement by the players and creators alike, is debased by this kind of petty competitiveness. The competitive element is only included to give the whole thing a greater sense of urgency and suspense, and because it was in that Michael J. Fox movie. Why, antimasque, do you care so much about winning? Do you need to see the conclusion first? Do you think there's some big monetary reward that prototype 161 didn't bother to announce before they started selling tickets? Or do you just want to be king of the nerds?

Well, antimasque, for what it's worth, I hope you win. I hope your team, after being allowed to skip the first few puzzles because you had the original clues and made friends with the fictional character Addison Sayther, reach the conclusion hours before any other team, and are toasted by the game runners at a nearby bar. Then, before you go home to gloat on the internet, Sayther himself bids you kneel and hands you your just reward for winning the game: a fun-sized 3 Musketeers bar.

See you tomorrow, perhaps,
Matt Nedostup

P.S. I'm going to beat you.

[antimasque]

Dude, for the third time, I was perfectly all right with sharing everything until Amanuensis told me to bring the originals on Friday. This indicated to me that they did only expect one team to have recovered them and have that information and that it was important that we alone bring it. And you can't pretend that within the story of the game they're going to give a shit about getting the originals back after their content has already been posted on the blog of their enemy.

For god's sake, I just wanted to be able to get credit for the work my team did. Once again, folks are taking this way too seriously and throwing insults at me and I'm left wondering how on earth anything ever gets done on the internet. It seems to ruin everything.

Have a fun time tomorrow.

[AwesomeRingerud]

stopasog.com