Retrieving Skulls and Navigating into the AI
From Intimation
Intimation Update Log for July 31st, 2009
TV ANNOUNCER: Previously, on Intimation ..., July 30th's series of weak signals of S5:RPT left us with a sequence of what appeared to be segments of crew logs. It seemed that the only "solve" for the day was figuring out how the messages were truncated, and then completing them.
Additionally, @eridanos01 Tweeted about the Intimation piano music, which sent us scrambling again to make sense of the actual music notes as a possible code, cipher, or image of some kind.
I can't get that @intimation song out of my head. It's as if it's telling a story. My wife can't stop listening to it either. Haunting. [1]
And to think, that was a render of some AI brain-wave-equivalent. I never would have thought a program could produce something so beautiful. [2]
Despite bashing our brains against the musical notation for a while, we did not see anything that constituted a puzzle or solve. And late that evening, we got our cue from Intimation that things had drawn to a close for the day:
>>S5:MSG//ACTIVITY/MINIMAL//SIGNAL/NULL//STANDBY [3]
The opening sequence for the Rescued Skulls
Around noontime (for North American timezones), Intimation updated twice, indicating upcoming activity:
>>S5:MSG//ALERT//ACTIVITY/BURST//SIGNAL/HIGH [4]
Essentially, S5 is indicating a high signal burst. No indication of analysis, but here's why:
>>S5:RPT//SW.INTEGRITY/BREACH//RELEASE:S4//REQ:S*//REGROUP [5]
S5 is now reporting a Stonewall security breach. S4 (the YouTube account[6]) has been released - we'll possibly see activity there shortly. Additionally, all other Sys modules have been ordered to regroup.
@eridanos01 continues to update:
Ok, well, looks like it's now time to watch intently! What 'doorway' and 'path' is SFTA referring to? [7]
A new note has also been left at the player-created drop.io site:
THE ROAD AHEAD
THE DOORWAY SHALL OPEN WITHIN THE DAY PREPARE, FOR YOU HAVE AN ARDUOUS TASK AHEAD FOR SOME, THE TASK SHALL BE ONE OF REASON FOR SOME, IT SHALL BE ONE OF OBSERVATION FOR A FEW, IT SHALL BE A BREATH OF FRESH AIR ALONG A PATH ONCE TROD. JUST AS THE DREAM SKULLS WERE FOUND THROUGH JOURNEY, EFFORT, AND HARDSHIP, SO ALSO WILL YOU FIND AND RESCUE THESE. YOU MUST FIND THEM, THOSE SHE WILL LEAVE, FOR HER MEMORIES OF THEM SHALL GUIDE YOU. YOU MUST FIND THEM, AND REMEMBER THEM. IN DOING SO, YOU WILL SAVE HER FROM DESPAIR, FROM NIGHTMARE, FROM AN ENEMY LOCKED AWAY. ALLOW HER DESTINY, AND THAT OF HER PROTECTOR, TO COME TO FRUITION. GODSPEED, KEEPERS OF THE FLAME. //THE SOCIETY
Brief Pause, then: Irreparable Breach in the Stonewall
Just after 1PM Pacific time, @intimation updated again:
>>S5:MSG//TENTACLE/RETRACTED//UNABLE TO REPAIR BREACH [8]
By going to the usual head of the maze: http://thewaytheirworldended.com/Q7J8R04J87FFJ983Q2/ and tracing along the following node path letter pairs:
FJ - UC - MW - GH - TX - JZ - HJ - BL (other alternative paths work too, such as these below) FJUCMWGHTXJZHJBL FJONWSTJXHZVMYBL FJONFVOUDKCQPHBL FJONWSHYDLIXYTHJBL
We find the familiar grey wall, but this time with a gigantic hole in it[9]!
We remembered that this node in the maze used to show a picture of a scorpion on the wall, with an outline around it. We can now see the hole is the same shape as that outline.
Text along the left is as follows:
>>STONEWALL:SURFACETERM/NAVTYPE:VIS// >NODE:DATA//NULL >NAVHIST:PATH//FJUCMWGHTXJZHJBL
>MEM:LOC//7F64-DD2F-4C79-8866
>>EX:VECTOR//JB
The hole in the wall is a hotspot. Click it!
Once clicked, the page changes to a large image of some grass/cornfield, with text on the page and in the image.
First, text from the system:
>>S5:MSG//CONTENT ARCHIVED/EXECUTING STONEWALL PENETRATION/REQUIRE NAVPATH
>>S5:REQ>S*//INTEGRITY/REPORT
>S5:RPT//PROC.INT/100%
>S4:RPT//PROC.INT/100%
>S3:RPT//PROC.INT/100%
>S2:RPT//PROC.INT/100%
>S1:RPT//PROC.INT/95%
Then, as part of the image[10]:
"Essy, Please, why did you do this to us?" "Why did you do this to me? Turnabout is fair play, my fair Pandora" "You're not answering me! Do you even know why? Do you even know what you did, or did you just see the consequences and forget it was your doing?"
There is also an input box with an indicator: "NAVPATH" and then a button. The denizens of the #intimation channel are currently wondering how to utilize it.
There are also two small skulls in the image. When one rolls their mouse over the small green skull in the upper right-hand corner, the word "Baldr" appears underneath it. Towards the bottom left, a small blue skull gives the word "Skye" on mouseover.
See Journey Through the Dark Forest (aka The Cornfield) for the rest of the NAVPATH pages.
Navpath breadcrumb: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Rescue The Skulls
When anything is put into the NAVPATH text box, a small blue rectangle (like the breadcrumbs we found much earlier in this campaign) appears somewhere on the screen. When clicked, the following text appears:
I never heard sis say "ready or not, here I come"! I just..fell asleep and had that foreboding dream.
Pay attention to that italicized text, kids, because that's coming in handy very very shortly!
A Table of Skulls
For those of you new to this update page, you would be right in thinking that we're about to find some skulls. There's a lot of them! But here's a quick 'n' dirty table of all of them so you can see them at a glance.
Keep on skipping down to other sections for methods of skulls being found and the text/story behind each child rescued.
4 colors across x 6 skull orientations down = 24 possible skulls/children! Click on a skull image to go to that web page (either the email form or the results page), or click on the text link to go directly to the image as indicated -- the child description image allows you to bypass the email submission form.
-I- (inferior)
+95307458116223
| -M- (mediocre)
+795810674902352
| -P- (prime)
+760845311392426
| -P- (prime)
+2276836419010859
|
-M- (mediocre)
+06908234584917
| -P- (prime)
+410615890287539
| -P- (prime)
+708911245356
| |
-M- (mediocre)
+350910632782495
| -M- (mediocre)
+0986581143704263
| -M- (mediocre)
+2117906457330849
| -M- (mediocre)
+2534098110647
|
-I- (inferior)
+002571830763194
| -I- (inferior)
+215827037619804
| -P- (prime)
+13504250728690
| -M- (mediocre)
+532536604798091
|
-M- (mediocre)
+7069481021762533
| -M- (mediocre)
+6807321529843836
| -M- (mediocre)
+2956377305610824
| -M- (mediocre)
+530982210643716
|
-P- (prime)
+1940665876325123
| -M- (mediocre)
+01260853074429
| -P- (prime)
+4223695517038
|
- Notes added:
- the URL contains a letter code for how the children were evaluated as subjects, taken from this audio snippet, and the letters in the rest of the string confirm the child's name.
- the chart displays the anagrammed child's name as it appears in order in the URL, plus the rest of the numbers of the URL in order
- below that is the navpath string derived from the first letter of every line in the child's description -- each is only half of the string required in the navpath box on the "cornfield" pages.
Baldr Skull - Rescuing Blake - NAVPATH: HPHQHW
A breakthrough! Since the words "foreboding dream" were italicized in the breadcrumb, we visited the YouTube video titled "Foreboding Dream,[[11]]" and found that the description had changed since we last looked at it. There was a new string of text in the description of the video:
SAI-I-K2L15A8270376B19804E
catherwood got the solve on this one, by appending this string to the URL for The Way Their World Ended:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-I-K2L15A8270376B19804E
Upon arrival, there are two input fields, one for your name, and one for an e-mail, plus a submit button labeled, "REMEMBER." When info is submitted, the page refreshes to show the Baldr skull at the top, and a new image - a sketch of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy, and the following text:
blake
He had really, really pale hair and skin. He was always really quiet and still. He never played with us. What did he know?
Underneath is plaintext, and it appears to be the players who have submitted information:
RESCUERS! #1: Dav Flamerock #2: krystyn #3: 7urducken #4: MrToasty #5: Joy #6: rowboat000 #7: Anaerin #8: Cheez #9: catherwood #10: Abraxas and 1 more!
It was then discovered by Dav Flamerock that the Baldr skull on the grass/cornfield page is now clickable and leads to this URL for Blake's rescue. It appears that we unlocked it for everyone. Yayyy!
catherwood has noted that the dots that appear on the input form that appears at this URL before rescuing Blake is Braille. It says:
H ELP ME T HE PATH TO TAKE I S SPLIT IN TWAIN M Y M EMORIES H OLD T HE K EY
Thanks to drizjr and catherwood for confirmation that this Braille appears in the source code of every single name/email submit page for each of the skulls we've found thus far.
Urchin Skull - Rescuing Dustin - HHATCEEO
Anaerin ran his SPDR process[[12]], and found a new set of letter pairs which lead to a clickable pignose emoticon:
PK RD QP XK ST JK
Anaerin also reports that the pairs
FJ ON
also get the same result? Confusing. Many players report not being able to get the same linkage, even though they see the pignose emoticon on the page. Speculation about why this is so includes the slight possibility that Sys knows Anaerin's IP number, and so is able to serve specific versions of pages to the SPDR, since Sys probably knows we're using that tool to find new pages. ;) This is not a strong theory, however!
This possibility is supported by the fact that "Remembering" a particular skull is likely tied to an individual's IP number, and not cookies, as once a player enters their info and presses the "Remember" button, they can no longer go back and view that login page, even in other browsers. (Although, this appears to be incorrect as well!)
Update for August 3rd: Many players are now reporting seeing yellow linked pignoses at various MEM:LOCs where they'd previously been unlinked and plain blue text. The going theory right now is that there is a saturation point each person reaches when browsing the maze, and when either the pignoses themselves or just maze pages in general are visited often enough, it 'activates' the pignoses to be bright yellow links to Dustin's skull.
At any rate, Anaerin was able to see a highlighted Sys Pignose, which, when clicked, led to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-I-S9T53074ID581162U2N3
Another skull page, this time named the "Urchin" skull! Same name/email input, bringing up another image of a boy. The following text appears in the image:
dustin
He was so dirty and the absolute meanest person ever! He talked really bad and sometimes hit the monsters when they came to give us food. Everyone was scared of him. especially after he bit one of the monsters!
Rescuers at the time of this posting:
RESCUERS! #1: Anaerin #2: Kilination #3: Dav Flamerock #4: rowboat000 #5: TrojaN- Thomas #6: krystyn #7: MrToasty #8: 7urducken #9: dreamerblue #10: ancalime and 3 more!
Blank Skull - Rescuers of ... well, NO ONE!
rowboat noticed that you could play with the URL for the skulls and remove one or more of the letters and get a 'blank skull' page with the name/email submit form. :D
We're pretty sure it's a bug/feature of the skull system in place, but you can try it, too!
Go to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-I-S9T53074ID581162U23 (Urchin skull URL, with one character missing)
and become a Blank Skull Rescuer! :D :D :D
RESCUERS! #1: rowboat000 #2: Dav Flamerock #3: TrojaN - Thomas #4: krystyn #5: 7urducken #6: dreamerblue #7: Kilination #8: MrToasty #9: Abraxas #10: krystyn\'s evil twin and 10 more!
TV ANNOUNCER: And now, back to our regularly-scheduled program ...
Tower Skull - Rescuing Leonardo - HAHTLHBBTNO
Following the logic of the "breath of fresh air," ancalime decided to visit the /STREWN-ABOUT[[13]] page, which has several story pieces and audio files of Dreaming Eyes' story. It's linked from Pricklypear's profile at GPSMission.com[[14]], so it made sense to check it out.
(Quick note on the GPSMission site - 4 of the Pricklypear missions: New York City, St. Louis, Vancouver, and Los Angeles had all been updated recently. At first we thought we had to go out and do the missions again, but it became apparent that the presence of the Sys signature :@] signified a total of two Essy story piece collections that we should take another look at)(Update for Aug. 3rd: we were wrong! While the Tower Skull, and, later, the Spirit Skull could be retrieved by using this hint from the GPS Missions site, the updated missions themselves do indeed contain skulls! One skull was found at the Los Angeles mission - check out the Huitzil Skull [[15]] description for details!)
Oh, hey, look, there's some binary! (It translates to the pignose, btw!) When the binary block is clicked, a skull appears. Click the skull, and get sent to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-P-N70O8L9112ERD4O5A356
The Tower Skull, with the now-familiar name/email fields.
The text on the resulting page:
He had short curly hair, and sniffed a lot. He loved to play with those dirty little trucks lying around the floor. He said his daddy helped build enormous, tall, shiny buildings that touched the sky! He was sad he never got to ride in one of his daddy's machines.
RESCUERS! #1: ancalime #2: 7urducken #3: krystyn #4: MrToasty #5: Kilination #6: Thomas - TrojaN #7: Dav Flamerock #8: Anaerin #9: rowboat000 #10: dreamerblue and 1 more!
Skye Skull - Rescuing Lani - SIOWAA
The italicized text on the grass/cornfield page, ready or not, had not been used yet. After many unsuccessful ventures to the page http://thewaytheirworldended.com/READY-OR-NOT Dav thought to click the pignose as was required on the Tower page. Double-clicking the pignose linked to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-P-L2A276836419I010859N
Upon entering a name/email into the fields, we see an image of a girl named Lani. The text:
lani
She has the brightest blue eyes I've ever seen. It reminds me of when Bushy Tail and me watched the sky after a thunderstorm, and it was so, so, so blue ...
RESCUERS! #1: Dav Flamerock #2: MrToasty #3: 7urducken #4: Thomas - TrojaN #5: Anaerin #6: dreamerblue #7: rowboat000 #8: ancalime #9: Kilination #10: krystyn
Spirit Skull - Rescuing Dayo - SLAAKHOEA
It appears that maybe the GPSmissions are not meant to be traveled in person again. Perhaps they were just meant to point back at the directories where the pieces were to appear. (Update for Aug. 3rd: we were wrong! The updated missions at the GPS Mission site do indeed contain skulls! One skull was found at the Los Angeles mission - check out the Huitzil Skull [[16]] description for details!) Dreamerblue found that if you double-clicked the word "pignose" on http://thewaytheirworldended.com/BROKEN-PIECES/ (near the picture of Essy making a pignose face), you would get the Spirit Skull at the following location:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-YA0986O58114370426D3
Text of the resulting image follows after entering the name/email into the fields (you know the drill!):
dayo
She was an African girl who liked to pretend that she was a horse. She would run around on her hands and knees and neigh and shake her head. It could be a lot of fun, especially when we were eating! I didn't know horses ate funny and all sloppy!
RESCUERS! #1: dreamerblue #2: TrojaN - Thomas #3: roboat000 #4: 7urducken #5: krystyn #6: MrToasty #7: Dav Flamerock #8: Kilination #9: Anaerin #10: ancalime and 1 more!
SweetTooth Skull - Rescuing Yum Yum - SALEUTDUULD
Ahhh, Eridanos' tweets from last night seem to make more sense now! If you go to the main site and listen to the MP3 of the song there, you'll notice that there is a chirpy burst of ... something ... at the end of the sound file. Intrepid players MrToasty and Anaerin took the audio file, slowed it down, and produced spectrographs of that chirpy bit, and came up with the partial URL we needed to find dear, sweet, candy-lovin' Yum Yum.
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-P-Y135MU04U25M0Y728690
The text of her page:
yum yum
She thought she was a princess, and she looked like one, with long blonde hair and big blue eyes. When they brought us us food, she would only eat the candy or treats. She didn't play with the rest of us at first, but then she saw us us laughing and joined in. She loved candies so very very much, we decided to call her Yum Yum!
RESCUERS! #1: MrToasty #2: Anaerin #3: Dav Flamerock #4: Kilination #5: 7urducken #6: rowboat000 #7: krystyn #8: drizjr #9: dreamerblue #10: Thomas - TrojaN and 2 more!
Meta note/ilovebees parallel: In ilovebees, Melissa was played by Kristen Rutherford, who sometimes had the online moniker of Princess Yum Yum, and even ran a website where she made candies. She loves candy a lot herself. :) Hee!
Europa Skull - Rescuing Alina - SSACLASA
drizjr just found the Europa skull by going to the 404 page!
There is a breadcrumb (a small rectangle in the upper right portion of the page (select all on the page to see it better). Click on it, and the skull will appear in the left-hand segment navigation area. Click on the skull to get to the name/email page which is here:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-I-N0AI025L718307631A94
Text here:
alina
She was so pale! She said she came from a moon of Jupiter that was covered in ice and had lived under the ice in a special building. She was always so scared, and didn't play with us very much.
RESCUERS! #1: drizjr #2: drizjr #3: krystyn #4: DARKmonkeyfish #5: Anaerin #6: ancalime #7: rowboat000 #8: Nyst #9: Kilination #10: Dav Flamerock and 6 more!
Shimmer Skull - Rescuing Elena - SHLASI
drizjr is on a roll! She went to an older page from SYS/LOG:
http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?profile=flame
It's a clickable link, which leads to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-L3E50A91063N278249E5
The text on the page goes a little somethin' like this:
elena
She was a really good hider! Her hair was dark but the light would catch it sometimes and be really bright for a second, and that was how I always found her.
RESCUERS! #1: drizjr #2: drizjr #3: krystyn #4: DARKmonkeyfish #5: Anaerin #6: ancalime #7: Nyst #8: rowboat000 #9: Kilination #10: Dav Flamerock and 6 more!
Shadow Skull - Rescuing Chuck - HMORAWPBT
catherwood was looking through the archive of Sys' research, and found a hotspot on the 20th research note by clicking the necklace, here:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SYS/DSJV-0ASU-NDYI-V78J/
Which led to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-P-U41061C5890HC287K539
And here's the text for Chuck:
chuck
He was the smartest boy I ever met, and the fastest runner out of everyone. He had red hair. He used to talk about running through forests with his brothers and sisters, playing tag, and that he was the best of them. But he always admitted that I was better at hide-and-seek.
RESCUERS! #1: Anaerin #2: drizjr #3: catherwood #4: krystyn #5: Nyst #6: ancalime #7: Kilination #8: Abraxas #9: dreamerblue #10: MrToasty and 3 more!
Kayenta Skull - Rescuing Kamen - HABHASI
Anaerin was looking at /i-will-survive [[17]], and noticed that the skull URL identifier was hidden in white text on the white background. To see it, select all of the text on the page!
P-ME760845A311N392426K
When plugged into the proper URL format for finding skulls, we get this link:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-P-ME760845A311N392426K
Here is the text:
kamen
He was very quiet and very smart, with black hair and dark eyes. He said he came from a land of red stone, sheep, and old stories. I always found him last.
RESCUERS! #1: Anaerin #2: Nyst #3: krystyn #4: drizjr #5: ancalime #6: rowboat000 #7: Kilination #8: Dav Flamerock #9: TrojaN - Thomas #10: Abraxas and 4 more!
Ludwig Skull - Rescuing Cash - HSRTWIHWP
By this point, many of our players had dropped off to sleep or to their daily lives, but a few soldiered on. One player in particular, drizjr, kept finding skulls - which you can see by her #1 spot amongst many of the Rescue Lists! Woot! Anyway, she was looking at /SCATTERED-STARS [[18]], and found the Ludwig Skull, I believe by clicking a hotspot hidden on the page. This hotspot is a white square about the size of the skull images. It can be found by mousing over the "story pieces" area, but it's tricky to find because it appears in different places on the page with each refresh.
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-S70694A810C21762533H
The text:
cash He was always humming. Sometimes he would sit on his ragged old bed and bounce on it to make a squeaky song. Whenever he tried to hide, I would always hear him humming a song while he was hiding, like he was pretending to be in a cartoon.
RESCUERS! #1: drizjr #2: Dav Flamerock #3: krystyn #4: Abraxas #5: Kilination #6: 7urducken #7: Nyst #8: dreamerblue #9: E.Y.E. Spy #10: Anaerin and 5 more!
Ordinal Skull: Resuing Adelina - STWIHWAGDMS
TV ANNOUNCER: Last time on Intimation, a frenzy of skulls were found , but it was only morning.
Driz was at it again finding the Ordinal Skull, it was found while re-completing the sand painting by clicking around the grey wall space on /NOT-A-GOOD-PLACE [[19]]
Clicking the skull brings you to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-P-L4E2A2D369N5A51703I8
The Text:
adelina
She was quiet, but liked to play games.She'd play with us, but didn't say much. I saw her playing all by herself when no one else wanted to play. She'd draw a hop scotch, and she liked games with numbers. Her daddy gave her a book with math problems, and she'd do them over and over. She'd even use numbers to draw pictures!
RESCUERS! #1: drizjr #2: 7urducken #3: dreamerblue #4: Dav Flamerock #5: Abraxas #6: DARKmonkeyfish #7: ancalime #8: krystyn #9: Anaerin #10: TrojaN - Thomas
Flutter Skull - Rescuing Erin - SBBSTTSAWI
drizjr found another hotspot at /MY-TIME-HAS-COME [[20]] Following the same method of Adelina's Ordinal Skull, click around to create the sand painting and find the skull hotspot. When clicked, it brings you to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-R680732E1I529843836N
Which contains the following text:
erin
She had a very strange but fun voice, and bright red hair and green eyes. She was from one of the places my parents took me once, a green country. She always laughed a lot and could hardly stand still when we played hide-and-seek. It made her so easy to find!
RESCUERS! #1: drizjr #2: dreamerblue #3: Dav Flamerock #4: 7urducken #5: Abraxas #6: DARKmonkeyfish #7: ancalime #8: krystyn #9: Anaerin #10: TrojaN - Thomas
Stratus Skull - Rescuing Zachary - MHGWTHTAT
Abraxas was poking around at /ENDLESS-BOXES [[21]], and found that if you clicked EVERY SINGLE LAST EVER-LOVIN' box in the maze (don't forget the Start! box!), a skull will appear over the pignose symbol at the top of the page. Holy moley!
Clicking the skull leads to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-C25A340YA981H1Z0647R
The text:
zachary
My favorite friend! He had brown hair and green eyes, and he always wanted to fly and touch the clouds! He would spend a lot of time looking through a gap in the boarded window, trying to see the sky.
RESCUERS! #1: Abraxas #2: Anaerin #3: krystyn #4: ancalime #5: dreamerblue #6: TrojaN - Thomas #7: drizjr #8: dante #9: 7urducken #10: rowboat000 and 9 more!
Goldilocks Skull - Rescuing Ursula - SGFSGB
ancalime found another hotspot at /ALONE-ALONE-ALONE [[22]] Following the same method of Adelina's Ordinal Skull, click around to create the sand painting and find the skull hotspot. When clicked, it brings you to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-S06U908U23458491R7LA
ursula
She had pretty, curly golden hair, and her favorite animal was a bear! She was one of the nicest girls and the worst hider, but I always pretended not to see her.
RESCUERS! #1: ancalime #2: ironnikki #3: dreamerblue #4: TrojaN - Thomas #5: Anaerin #6: drizjr #7: MrToasty #8: E.Y.E. Spy #9: Kilination #10: rowboat000 and 4 more!
Huitzil Skull - Rescuing Jurian - HHAHTSWHET
The GPSMission.com site [[23]] updated along with everything else we've seen in the game so far, during this skull search-and-rescue mission - we had noticed that four of the missions Pricklypear had created way back in April or so were altered in a significant and interesting way: the mission name (simply named for its location; e.g., "Vancouver" was now, "Vancouver :@]") now included a Sys pignose emoticon: :@]
For a while, we were fairly convinced (with some doubts) that this was only meant to make us look at the resulting directories that those missions pointed at, so that we would be sure to find the skulls there. Over the past few days though, it became apparent that the fact that a few of the missions all pointed to the same directory was more than a little odd, and indicated that there was something actually in the missions themselves. Add to that the Society's hint about paths trod before and "fresh air," and, well, there you go. It couldn't hurt, right?
August 3rd, player Krystyn went to the Los Angeles mission for a second run, and noticed that the initial mission confirmation at Union Station as well as the first waypoint were both altered to include the pignose, confirming that something was new about this mission. It was at the second waypoint when she discovered the ID number for a new skull.
Interestingly, "Huitzil" is the name of of an Aztec warrior of legend who wore a helmet shaped like a hummingbird. [[24]]
Go to this page to see it!:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-R0IJ1260853U0A74429N
And say hello to
jurian
He was so funny! He said he was descended from a jungle king who had a funny name, and that was why he was so good at all the games we could come up with. He was very fast at everything, especially talking!
RESCUERS! #1: Krystyn #2: catherwood #3: drizjr #4: Abraxas #5: ancalime #6: MrToasty #7: dreamerblue #8: Dav Flamerock #9: TrojaN - Thomas #10: DARKmonkeyfish and 4 more!
Viola Skull - Rescuing Gita - SARMSSAG
It was on August 5th that the players finally got a breakthrough on the over-arcing NAVPATH puzzle for the cornfield. By creating an acrostic from the first letter of each line of each child's story, you get half of a navpath. (In hindsight, this is why the first letter of each line in the Braille message--noted in the section for Baldr/Blake above--was written with a space after it...to encourage us to use an acrostic.) By combining two particular halves (dependent on the skulls present in the cornfield image), you arrive at a new part of the maze, with a new cornfield, with new skulls to combine navpaths for.
So, we got to the second navpath step, and the breadcrumb hinted at a couple places to look for the memories of the two skulls listed there: Viola, and Luna. One place the breadcrumb hinted at was for the directory /MINOR-ACTIVITY[[25]].
The breadcrumb text is as follows:
Just a simple, minor activity, hide and seek, but look what it has done. I will never see the that great, gateway arch in the sky again.
(gateway arch is a pretty clear hint that we need the St. Louis GPS Mission tried again to get the Luna skull!)
"Oh, but nothing's there!" you cry! And yes, I hear your vexation, and I dry your tears, for MrToasty is here to save the day: he went and TOOK that crazy old MINOR-ACTIVITY image[[26]] and LOADED it into Photoshop and then played with the CURVES until it BEGGED FOR MERCY, I tell you!
I mean, um, MrToasty manipulated the RGB Curves of the image until it revealed several Braille cells scattered across the substitution strips.
Well. Oh my.
A further twist is that it's not just straight-up Braille. Shorthand versioning was needed to resolve the fact that there seemed to be quite a few commas and semicolons when what we needed for a skull ID was, well, LETTERS and NUMBERS. dreamerblue provided this URL:
http://www.purplehell.com/riddletools/braille.htm
BAM! we got this: M-T21A179064I57330849G
Make it into a creepypretty skull URL, and you get this:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-T21A179064I57330849G
(Just like Baldr and Skye - the skulls on the cornfield page become clickable once they're actually located and rescued. Viola is now clickable on the 2nd step of the NAVPATH.)
Say hello to
gita
She liked to sing a lot. All the songs she sang were really funny and she made them up herself! She said, back home, that she used to have a twin brother and their parents were always getting them mixed up.
RESCUERS! #1: krystyn #2: dreamerblue #3: Anaerin #4: MrToasty #5: Nyst #6: 7urducken #7: 7urducken #8: 7urducken #9: 7urducken #10: drizjr
Brooklyn Skull - Rescuing Wylie - HHLTOPHWJTT
RobMagus kindly headed out to Pricklypear's GPS Mission for Vancouver, and got the skull ID!
Point your browsers to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-LI53W25366047Y980E91
to see it! And hello to
wylie
He had black hair and brown eyes. His voice was funny, like some of the voices in that one big city we went to once, and his jokes were pretty funny, too. He always got really bored when he hid, so he'd jump out of his hiding place to scare us, and mess up the whole game.
RESCUERS! #1: krystyn #2: dreamerblue #3: Dav Flamerock #4: TrojaN - Thomas #5: catherwood #6: Rob Magus #7: Abraxas #8: drizjr #9: Anaerin #10: Nyst and 6 more!
Luna Skull - Rescuing Tsuki - SSMHHLI
Nyst and his friend Macampos headed out to Pricklypear's GPS Mission for St. Louis and got the skull ID.
Point your browsers to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-K53S09822106437U16TI
to see it! And hello to
tsuki
She always said that she used to live on the Moon. Even though her hair was black like space, her eyes were grey, like the Moon, so I always believed her!
RESCUERS! #1: Nyst #2: drizjr #3: Dav Flamerock #4: 7urducken #5: ancalime #6: krystyn #7: Anaerin #8: dreamerblue #9: ironnikki #10: Shadow and 1 more!
Mute Skull - Rescuing Noah - HBSTTAH
(insert howling and screaming here over Eridanos' deus ex machina/The Secret Flickr resolution for this skull, to be written by someone other than crankykrystyn)
So, hey! All the GPS Missions got updated on August 14th. ALL OF THEM. They all have pignose signatures now, so dreamerblue hopped on the subway for downtown Toronto to fetch a skull we speculated was either connected to Noah Dressler, or was a child named Noah. Maybe they're the same person. I don't know. Pignose! Pignose! Pignose!
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-P-H19406O6587N632512A3
Say hello to the newest boyskull:
noah
He had no voice! But his big brown eyes always said everything he needed to tell us. He drew on the walls a lot, usually aliens in armor, and he was really good at it.
RESCUERS! #1: Anaerin #2: MrToasty #3: dreamerblue #4: krystyn #5: dante #6: Thomas - TrojaN #7: ancalime #8: drizjr
Lorite Skull - Rescuing Dima - DSAHHHABWGSAE
Traveling through the cornfields of Navpath (hey, I sound like a tourist guide for some planet named Navpath. "And on your left, a pile of skulls left by young Spartan washouts!"), we came upon a breadcrumb:
They will save me, even if it means running, walking, crawling all the way to gastown! Then you will be in trouble! Their courage is endless! They have boxes and boxes of it!
dante got the solve by going to:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/ENDLESS-BOXES/
and clicking on the correct path, but in REVERSE! Clever!
This gives us:
http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-M29563A77305I6108D24
dima
Dima acted like he was really smart, so the other kids would ask him questions. He always had an answer, even when he didn't really know. He'd make something up, and we'd all believe him. But one time he said that fish were only good for food, and Erica got mad at him, and it was a big fight. He asked some older kids, and apologized to Erica. They agreed that fish could be a lot of fun even if we didn't eat them.
RESCUERS! #1: dante #2: MrToasty #3: ancalime #4: drizjr #5: Anaerin #6: krystyn #7: Thomas - TrojaN #8: dreamerblue #9: Nyst #10: rowboat000
Pisces Skull - Rescuing Erica - SCHBTADWMMWSLBH
catherwood found that the source code for http://thewaytheirworldended.com/TOSSED-ROUND-ABOUT/ contained a little piece of pseudo-code: "SAI="M-C79581R0674I9A02352E". Making a URL out of this, we have http://thewaytheirworldended.com/SAI-M-C79581R0674I9A02352E , which introduced us to:
erica
She loved fish. She always drew fish with chalk on the ground, on the walls, even when it got her in trouble. Her mommy studied fish. Big fish, little fish, fish with shells and fish that glowed! But her mommy wasn't around very much, because she was doing all that studying. So Erica would tell us about the fish her mom was looking for. I think she made up some of those fish, but it was fun to listen to the stories. She was also very small and funny looking. Her eyes were really big and blue and her ears stuck out from her head like they were trying to get away.
RESCUERS! #1: MrToasty #2: krystyn #3: dante #4: Anaerin #5: ancalime #6: Thomas - TrojaN #7: drizjr #8: dreamerblue #9: rowboat00 #10: 7urducken
Summary of NAVPATHs
Repeated information from above: By creating an acrostic from the first letter of each line of each child's story, you get half of a navpath. (In hindsight, this is why the first letter of each line in the Braille message--noted in the section for Baldr/Blake above--was written with a space after it...to encourage us to use an acrostic.) By combining two particular halves (dependent on the skulls present in the cornfield image), you arrive at a new part of the maze, with a new cornfield, with new skulls to combine navpaths for.
You can figure out which child's acrostic letters to put first in the NAVPATH from the "breadcrumb" text left by Essy on the cornfield/forest page.
For example, on the first cornfield page, the "breadcrumb" read:
I never heard sis say "ready or not, here I come"! I just..fell asleep and had that foreboding dream.
The Skye/Lani skull was found via the READY-OR-NOT page, and the Baldr/Blake skull was found via the description of the "foreboding dream" YouTube video, so the acrostic letters from Lani's description (SIOWAA) come first, followed by the acrostic letters from Blake's description (HPHQHW). Therefore, the NAVPATH from the first "cornfield" page is SIOWAAHPHQHW.
For a list of the breadcrumbs, see Cornfield breadcrumbs.
List of NAVPATHS:
First, to even get to the cornfield, go to http://thewaytheirworldended.com/Q7J8R04J87FFJ983Q2/ and follow path FJ - UC - MW - GH - TX - JZ - HJ - BL, then click on the hole in the wall there.
NAVPATHs, in order:
SIOWAAHPHQHW (Skye and Baldr skulls - Lani and Blake)
HABHASISHLASI (Kayenta and Shimmer skulls - Kamen and Elena)
SARMSSAGSSMHHLI (Viola and Luna skulls - Gita and Tsuki)
SLAAKHOEAHBSTTAH (Spirit and the Mute skulls - Dayo and Noah)
HAHTLHBBTNOHHAHTSWHET (Tower and Huitzil skulls - Leonardo and Jurian)
HHLTOPHWJTTDSAHHHABWGSAE (Brooklyn and Lorite skulls - Wylie and Dima)
MHGWTHTATHSRTWIHWP (Stratus and Ludwig skulls - Zachary and Cash)
SCHBTADWMMWSLBHSGFSGB (Pisces and Goldilocks skulls - Erica and Ursula)
STWIHWAGDMSSSACLASA (Ordinal and Europa skulls - Adelina and Alina)
SBBSTTSAWIHHATCEEO (Flutter and Urchin skulls - Erin and Dustin)
HMORAWPBTSALEUTDUULD (Shadow and SweetTooth skulls - Chuck and Yum Yum)
The next stage
After successfully navigating the "cornfields," our next puzzle began: Finding Essy's name.
![[26]](http://thewaytheirworldended.com/PRICKLYPEAR/minor-activity.png){kind=link}