unforum

[Ameliå]

[mrshomersimpson]

[DrTachyon]

No new information yet, BTW. I'll let folks know if I receive anything else.

[DrTachyon]

Another letter...

It is beautiful. An entire sarcophagus made of black ivory. It took us most of the day to excavate it form the ice, terrified of damaging the fragile surface. As the noon day sun rose high enough to cast rays into the hole in the ground the coffin shimmered as though alive. It took our four strongest to lift it to the surface and once there it took many hours to to pry open the lid. Inside was the perfectly intact skeleton of Chief Apaloovik. He was right where the stories told us he would be. In his hands was the statue. We only dared to hope until now, but there it is. With trembling hands I released it from his grasp, dusted it off, and held it to the sunlight for the first time in centuries. Triumph at last!


[what looks to be a tally of food/supplies]




? ??? ? ??
1 2 45 9? 104? -60
2 2 46 6 108 -60
3 2 35 4 115 -45
4 2 35 2 125 -40?


fish?
sell dogs

?
???
You tell me what the table says:

[Ameliå]

Aipaloovik -A sea-living god of the Eskimo. It is an evil being who is associated with murder, vandalism, and destruction.

(maybe a mispel? )

Hmm that's all i have til i get some sleeps

[Jane Smith]

Is it just me or is this the third.. misspelled "around" final fantasy reference?

maybe its just me ...

[petunia]

This is frustrating. I can't make out jack on this. Might help if we had scans instead of photos - maybe then we could play around with enhancing things and whatnot. As it is, I got nothin'.

[arthurdent11389]

I agree with Petunia - frustrating...

But I'll play along for now:

Imho, the table in the latest "journal page" is either

(a) a list of supplies (water, fruits and vegetables, milk?) and something else [driver's weight?], adding up to a calculation of total remaining weight that dogsled can carry - for each of four dogsleds can be loaded with,

or

(b) a list of 4 possible ways that a either a single dogsled (or multiple dogsleds) can be loaded, so as to have remaining weight to carry

with the remaining weight being that of the sarcophagus (maybe it can be split into 4 parts?).

the notes at bottom:
- fish?: should we fish now or along the way to the train ?
- sell dogs: should we sell extra dogs not needed to pull sleigh ?
- 26 Degrees ?: ????
- 2 Kinds of (meat?) - ????: ????


P.S. that journal paper looks expensive and thick - might be related to the university stationery dept from first delivery ? - and it looks like hidden pictures are in the journal stationery (or am i just imagining that ?)

[Ameliå]

I still feel so sceptical about this and i don't quite know why

[petunia]

Me too... for one thing, we don't seem to have anything to DO here. It's less a game than a "follow along with the story" thing, only we're not sure what the story even is. Maybe it will connect to the present (and to us) at some point and allow for a higher level of engagement, but for now it just feels like a waiting game.

OTOH, arthurdent11389 has some very good guesses IMHO. But again, there's really no indication that we're supposed to DO anything with the information.

Meh.

[DrTachyon]

Right, I think this is a very slow burn, as I receive 2 journal pages about once a month. I don't think we have enough information to act yet, this is all just the preamble to something.

I guess that once the journal story id revealed, I'll get a letter from my 'friend' telling me how to use the strange key he sent me - by solving a series of puzzles, I likely expect.

I'm going to keep posting what I get for those who are interested in following the story.

I do not think that there is anything much we can do as of yet.

[DrTachyon]

Finally, another letter. The text of the two pages is below...but there was more this time (I will detail it below). First the Journal:

"I am outraged!! The nerve of those men. Once I have confirmed with McHollister I shall proceed immediately to the authorities. Not a week has passed since our return to our shared apartment when a great hammering was heard at the door. I opened the door to find four large men dressed in finery but having the look of pugilists, standing on our stoop. I had only enough time to begin a courteous greeting when they brusquely pushed past me into the rooms. Without word or comment the proceeded to ransack what few possessions I had, ignoring all protests I made. My one physical attempt to restrain them led to me sitting in a corner nursing a black eye. They took the lot. The statue, the notes, the maps, our equipment, and the paper I was preparing for the university. All I am left with is this diary, squarely hidden away in the usual place. The only words I got from these men was a warning that they would return should I have kept anything back, I will hide these notes even greater care. They are the only proof of our find. I wish McHollister would return soon, he is many days overdue.

[DrTachyon]

A letter was attached. images are below. A few things

I found www.dasatech.org from the email addresses, and on the back of this letter there were two words which ended up being the login and password to the site

Login - Ishmael
Pw: Ahab

Take a look at the images and see what else you can find. i tried decoding the 'attachment' to no avail

http://imageshack.us/a/img32/6016/2eoc.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img842/4755/znfx.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img19/473/3bnf.jpg

* linkified the embedded images to unstretch the forum ~thebruce

[thebruce]

Quick request DrT - for very very large images, could you just post a link to the image instead of stretching the forum horizontally (or post smaller images and link to the raw)? Thanks!

Seems like it's definitely going somewhere now though...

[thebruce]

Ok so I tried recreating the file by converting the base64 to binary, but I'm not able to open the file as a valid word doc.

This is the transcribed base64: