unforum

[Typoxic]

I just noticed that the words around the square seem to have a numerical relation to the words on the other side of the line. "On" and "its" have a difference of one, "own" and "again" have a difference of two. The others are 5 and 10. 1, 2, 5, 10 looks like a pattern to me, but what it could relate to I have no idea. Because the smaller word is on the outside, maybe the "on" one is actually -1 - not that that helps.

[Miso2kay1]

Greets

[casablanca]

SPEC: Arthur?

[mortality]

I dunno. Really seems like we need the PMs/Ethan to drop another hint before we start on Arthur. And probably the Grail. Mind you, I've been wrong way more often than right. Other than the John Dee reference, Rosicrucianism doesn't seem like any better of a bet.

I do like the ring=roundtable, tho. And Arthur might fit with the "symbolic king" that Ethan mentioned.

I'm not sure what the best source for historical Arthur is, but the most well-known fictional version is probably Mallory's Le Mort D'Arthur. He gets credited for the first written version of the tale, but he essentially plagiarized several strands of medieval oral history/legend/storytelling and wrapped it all in a King Arthur burrito.

Lots of other conspiracies/legends get tied to Arthur as well, mostly through the Grail story. There's the whole thing about Merovingian kings. The book Holy Blood, Holy Grail (basis for Da Vinci Code), says they were descended from Jesus. Other people say they were trying to bring the antiChrist. And maybe King Arthur was one.

It's really messy.

ETA: It does seem like John Dee might be tied to the Arthur legends, too. Dee was the one who coined the phrase British Empire and he labelled Arthur as the father of British Imperial Christianity.

So maybe we're on the right track.

[casablanca]

The mind of Ethan

[mortality]

Casa, where could Ethan be leading us with all these references to The Endless?

[dashcat]

This is just an off the wall observation. Ethan wrote:

[mortality]

Not that off the wall. Anything alchemical is as plausible as the rest of what we're tossing around. If The Endless references are pointing to summoning something trapped by a ritual, then maybe the Triangle of Art is important since it's used to contain summoned entities.

Oh, Ethan also said he doubts that Spearmint has anything to add, but if we want to try tracking Spearmint down, we should probably check free webhosts...

letters to use: http com abeewelilyywnrot

[Sylvia]

[mortality]

Sylvia, no offense taken. If I write something that's confusing, then I'm more than happy to explain.

The Endless: I looked it up after Casa brought it up again. It's a Neil Gaiman graphic novel about Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, who is freed after being imprisoned for 70 years by a ritual. Shares a lot of the aspects of myth and fantasy used by some of the other authors our PMs have referenced.

Who's performing the rituals: I thought it had to be the author of our document or someone else as well. But part of the story our PMs are weaving for us involves the WF Board of Directors thinking Open Cases is a bad idea because it might cause people to copy cat the subjects of the cases.

This theme is carried through by Kennedy thinking OC:0701 should be turned over to the police because of a possible threat to WF.

Part of our job as players is to prove to Ethan's superiors that open, collaborative research projects can be productive.

Since the Directors think OC might have inspired the St. Petersburg events, it seemed like a good idea to provide a logical explanation for why that was unlikely. It's a bit arrogant to assume we can change their minds, but they don't seem the sort to just accept assumptions without reason. That's why I sent that message.

If you could explain some of the numerology stuff in more detail, I think that would be appreciated as well. It's a really broad topic, and hard to know where to dive in without some direction. One note on it, Ethan seems to have indicated that the solve to msg2 uses the word "commands" not "was," which alters the letter count.

ETA: Earlier Ethan had also dismissed the idea that someone at the Hawthorne Group had something to do with the cipher. In the response above, it sounds like he's changed his mind, even if Shannon hasn't.

[casablanca]

The Endless

[Sylvia]

thanks casa for the link and the explanation. I am looking at it right now.

[Typoxic]

[mortality]

Fair enough, Sylvia.

Typoxic, I think it's an anagram, not a cipher, given how Ethan explained it. The HTTP and COM were part of the original set of letters Ethan provided us.

[Typoxic]

I was just trying to figure out what connections the rest of the messages might have with punishments, and what sprang forcefully to mind was that Ring poem. Everyone who took a ring, especially the humans, sort of sealed their own fates, as it were. They got greedy. Maybe "the ring was not a ring", but greed. We could be dealing with someone who thinks someone else is being overzealous and/or selfish or myopic (depending on how they see William Wallace, that is; maybe they're English).

MSG2 references the Tlön story twice - the other messages have a reference to their number in the form of a shape, but maybe that was the instance of "two" in that one. It's about a lot of things, but the overarching plot is that society becomes obsessed with a fake world, and because of that, the fake world begins to reshape the real one. It has a lot to do with rejecting objective reality, and the main character sits by horrified. If this connection is valid (it seems like a bit of a reach), is the sender issuing a warning about someone's reality-rejecting behavior? Sounds an awful lot like ARGers, to me.

Since the fate sealing thing keeps coming up, maybe MSG4 isn't a code after all. Maybe "the executed one" is an object - you can execute a plan, right? But if that's the case, we have to make sense of this Duke of Manchester confusion stuff.