Difference between revisions of "Frog Fractions 2/Characters"
[unchecked revision] | [quality revision] |
(→Other named Resistance members) |
Sparkletime (talk | contribs) m (→Ashby) |
||
(17 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown) | |||
Line 12: | Line 12: | ||
In July of 2016, Pontiff Zagmar invaded the [https://twitter.com/RESIST_DECAY twitter] of The Resistance. Jim was spotted as prisoner who joined Zagmar's [https://twitter.com/RESIST_DECAY/status/764602103461322752 cause] in exchange for freedom and was referred to as prisoner [https://twitter.com/RESIST_DECAY/status/765262694089842688 JC101-B] by The Resistance. JC101-B claimed to have been captive for years, giving the assumption that the prisoner is the arrested Jim from the Berkeley Event. | In July of 2016, Pontiff Zagmar invaded the [https://twitter.com/RESIST_DECAY twitter] of The Resistance. Jim was spotted as prisoner who joined Zagmar's [https://twitter.com/RESIST_DECAY/status/764602103461322752 cause] in exchange for freedom and was referred to as prisoner [https://twitter.com/RESIST_DECAY/status/765262694089842688 JC101-B] by The Resistance. JC101-B claimed to have been captive for years, giving the assumption that the prisoner is the arrested Jim from the Berkeley Event. | ||
+ | |||
+ | It has been theorized that James Crawford and Jim Crawford are the same person from different timelines, thus the different names used at different times. This is not confirmed. | ||
+ | |||
+ | =Justin= | ||
=The Resistance= | =The Resistance= | ||
Line 90: | Line 94: | ||
This suggest Gustav has a login on the terminal and possibly accesslevelbeta but neither have been found. | This suggest Gustav has a login on the terminal and possibly accesslevelbeta but neither have been found. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Monsieur La Baroni=== | ||
==Dwayne== | ==Dwayne== | ||
Line 113: | Line 119: | ||
"This seems like a secure place to hide information, so here goes: watch out! You may be using this Party Lounge to take your mind off of the grueling reality outside this base. You may be secure in your position as a high-ranking resistance officer. Be warned: danger lurks in even the safest of places. Do you know what relationship Numbers 1, 3, 5 and 6 have to the decay? Have you never wondered what happened to Numbers 2 and 4? Have you questioned the abductions of individuals from prior eras, or the futures you are trying to prevent? Stay alert. I'll be in touch as I am able, but do not look for me - it may be some time until my next communication is able to get through to you." | "This seems like a secure place to hide information, so here goes: watch out! You may be using this Party Lounge to take your mind off of the grueling reality outside this base. You may be secure in your position as a high-ranking resistance officer. Be warned: danger lurks in even the safest of places. Do you know what relationship Numbers 1, 3, 5 and 6 have to the decay? Have you never wondered what happened to Numbers 2 and 4? Have you questioned the abductions of individuals from prior eras, or the futures you are trying to prevent? Stay alert. I'll be in touch as I am able, but do not look for me - it may be some time until my next communication is able to get through to you." | ||
− | During Zagmar's twitter takeover, Number 1 and Number 3 | + | During Zagmar's twitter takeover, Number 1(aka Brown) and Number 3 were present. |
===Number Six (Roth)=== | ===Number Six (Roth)=== | ||
Line 149: | Line 155: | ||
===Number One (Brown)=== | ===Number One (Brown)=== | ||
+ | Number One first appeared in the party lounge message | ||
+ | Do you know what relationship Numbers 1, 3, 5 and 6 have to the decay? | ||
+ | |||
Brown's name came to light during the twitter invasion by Zagmar. He is Number One in the Original Six. | Brown's name came to light during the twitter invasion by Zagmar. He is Number One in the Original Six. | ||
#1: Uh-oh | #1: Uh-oh | ||
Line 162: | Line 171: | ||
It appears Brown may be taking some of the blame for the incursion but there is no mention of Brown perishing in the invasion so they are assumed to be alive. | It appears Brown may be taking some of the blame for the incursion but there is no mention of Brown perishing in the invasion so they are assumed to be alive. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Number One's login for the time-travel.club/client.html terminal was found via the [[Eye_Sigil_ARG|Eye Sigil ARG]] and is much more bare than Number Six's terminal. It contains Soupertasters videos and that's it. The [[Souper Terminal]] is under investigation. | ||
===Number Three=== | ===Number Three=== | ||
Line 201: | Line 213: | ||
Vickers is listed as the commanding officer of Clemens, but does not have a login nor appear on the rotating list. | Vickers is listed as the commanding officer of Clemens, but does not have a login nor appear on the rotating list. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | =Ashby= | ||
+ | Originally only mentioned in the [http://decaytruth.info/about.html About] section of decaytruth.info, Charles Foster Ashby is the founder of Ashby Brewery and Indie Game Studio. The description on the site reads: | ||
+ | The Ashby Brewery was founded in 1777 by Charles Foster Ashby, a Belgian philosopher and entrepreneur. From the age of 5, Ashby had lived among the monks at the Chevetogne Abbey near the city of Liege. During his stay among the devout, Ashby studied and perfected the Trappist brewing techniques for which the monks of Chevetogne became so well known. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Following the destruction of the abbey during the Blue Revolution of 1738, Ashby booked passage to the New World and made his way to what is now known as downtown Berkeley, California. Bringing with him ancient yeast strains and the knowledge of the Chevetogne monks, Ashby started up a rudimentary brewery on the future site of the Ashby Brewery in South Berkeley. His efforts attracted local businessmen and game designers, who spun tales of a grand salon where new diversions would be crafted, along with delicious ales and lagers, for consumption among the colonies of New California and Jefferson State. | ||
+ | |||
+ | As Ashby’s reputation for creating high quality beer spread, so did the legends that surrounded the man himself. Ashby was notoriously long-lived, having reached the laudable age of 122 before retiring from public life in spite of his youthful appearance. When asked by a young Mark Twain what had been the secret to his success, Ashby famously declared, “I bring you a message of great importance!” The author didn’t know what to make of this, and the legend of the Ashby Brewery grew. | ||
+ | |||
+ | At the Ashby Brewery and Indie Game Studio, we continue to spread Charles Ashby’s vision of radical new games and brews. We start with pure filtered water from the high hills of outer Berkeley; we add organic malted barley from Oakland community garden spaces; our hops come from a hidden slope of Albany Hill known only to Ashby himself; and the yeast, still the original strain from Chevetogne, dates back to time immemorial. | ||
+ | |||
+ | We hope you will join us for a pint next time you come to the Bay Area. In addition to our classic Cherry Wheat and Shamrock Stout, we hope you will enjoy our Summer Blueberry Pilsner, Press ‘A’ to Continue Ale, and C. Ashby’s 2x Multiplier Dubbel, centuries in the making.. | ||
+ | |||
+ | This description has many anachronistic and impossible stories in it, leading those in the ARG to conclude Ashby is a time traveler of some capacity. A breakdown of some of the irregularities can be found [[Frog_Fractions_2/Decaytruth_info#About_Us|here]] | ||
+ | |||
+ | As a result of the [[Frog_Fractions_2#Berkeley_Bowl_Beeman|Berkeley Bowl Beeman]] event, a letter from Ashby to the ARG was discovered. | ||
+ | Reader, greetings to you. Please, let me confess my tale. Your timeline will be the only one to contain this artifact, unless there are other versions of myself whom have gotten the same idea. I cannot, of course, vouch for their actions. They are… it hardly matters. Forgive me; I am getting too far ahead of myself. I will try not to get bogged down in details. | ||
+ | |||
+ | When I was young, it seemed too that the world was young. Before I write about any of my journeys, let me tell you this: I was happy once, and so was Gustav. We played in a tree swing, in a big, old chestnut, which creaked and croaked in a way that suggested a song. We leapt between stones in the creek, and studied our maths. I was good at catching fireflies on summer nights, those brilliant motes of life rising into the sky. Gustav drew pictures, inventing bizarre characters that accompanied us in our play. I planned to become a botanist. Gustav would settle for nothing less than traveling to distant stars. I chided him for having such elaborate dreams, but in the end I was happy that we dreamed together. | ||
+ | |||
+ | When the Tunisians approached us, we were no longer children, but neither were we truly adults. They had seen us through their strange machines, and determined our importance to future dealings surrounding a great event. They made it their mission to find us and teach us the ways of travel between timelines. Gustav spoke to them in French. When had he learned French? He spoke to a woman with a certain familiarity before they were formally introduced. I did not understand, but then I only knew a very few words in any foreign language. They were offering us something unusual. They wanted to demonstrate. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The first portal they opened for us was to some Eden. It was astounding. Blue and purple moons rose over tropical pools. A scent like jasmine floated on soft breezes, over rolling hills that led off to vertical escarpments grazing the sky. I have never found this place again, for they never shared these, or any other time-space coordinates with us. Gustav tore off his shoes and dove into one of those silken-water pools with no regard for what might be waiting under the surface. He knew, somehow, that they had brought us to a place meant to entice; a place that would be safe for us. I am still puzzled as to what bred such confidence. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Beyond the knowledge that we were somehow crucial to events in some other time and place, the Tunisians had no information, and no inkling of how we would eventually set the awesome mechanisms of our choices into their courses of influence. What they gave us was merely teaching without any advice on how to employ them. It was unwise, what they did, but they had plans of their own, they said. It was their way. They were resistant to changing their approach. Gustav and I could barely contain our excitement at having been told we were to be masters of time travel, very much out of the blue and quite in keeping with how special, nay, truly incredible, the exuberance of youth had convinced us we were. “Quelles époques désirez-vous visiter d’abord?” they addressed us. “Les passé!” Gustav shouted. “The future!” I proclaimed simultaneously. We looked at one another. Gustav had a wry smile. His intentions were unreadable. I was confused. I reached for him, and he walked confidently into the past, without looking back for a moment. I faltered. He had left, but why? I thought I was right. The future! The future... was the future. How could we deny ourselves a glimpse of that? | ||
+ | |||
+ | We parted, there, unexpectedly, with that disagreement. I so want to remember it as a minor thing, but perhaps there was slight animosity; having shared our lives for so long, now we were fundamentally divided as to our goals. That specific memory feels hollow now, having revisited it so often… a story’s shell, devoid of feeling. I don’t know what happened. I will never recover the true memory. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I have never been able to revisit that moment bodily. For all of my searching in time and space, and through the timelines I could discover, I have never seen him again, nor have I encountered any evidence of him. On reflection, it was not I who was special, though I will not say the same of Gustav. It was, however, our friendship that was so extraordinary; a connection that by its astonishing nature has persisted clearly in my mind, while oceans of later experience have foundered and sunk below oceans of forgotten memories. I have no doubt he became a great artist of some kind. His imagination was a great Cathedral, or even more than this - vast cities of ideas, waiting to explored and understood, When we were children, he would sing songs of planets of insects, and the hungry frogs that would settle in their midst, undetected. He wrote stories that felt as if they were real, and he was only a conduit through which they passed. This may have been the case. I have seen things beyond explanation in my travels; worlds nearly prophesied by his inventions. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The future turned out to be a bleaker existence than one might imagine. There is no joy in seeing cities that once housed your schoolmates ground to rubble through the relentless action of time; no pleasant feeling in seeing your family home decrepit, ruined and eventually forgotten as all things are and must necessarily be. The curiosity you sate by discovering the fates of the people and thing most beloved to you is - like lightning - flashed away into the massive loneliness experienced without them. I sat in front of my childhood home. I said, “I give your eulogy, house, and I will represent humanity, and you will represent the civilizations so vast that my heart cannot comprehend their loss.” I sat there, weeping, and resolved to find my friend. Gustav had made the wiser choice, travelling back to see the world when it was vibrant. He must have had a chance to learn from the masters. To grow also, and mature in a way that was denied to my young self. I took my opportunities and threw them to the cruel winds, on which sailed the Decay. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I have nothing to tell you of the Decay, other than that the time traveling itself has brought it. At least, this is what I theorize. I am not sure how they are related, but I knew nothing of this vile occurrence before we encountered the Tunisian scientists. I have never encountered it myself by opening a portal. It is likely that those otherworldly scientists had a hand in all of this, and their mistake was what caused them to seek out Gustav and myself. You will not find evidence of them, as our first encounter was during the gold rush in San Francisco. The portals they opened and much of their clockwork gadgetry were destroyed in an earthquake some decades later. Though the pull of those original portals is strong. You can still sometimes see the timelines crossing through in this location on earth. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Eventually I followed in Gustav’s path and traveled pastward. It was only then that I started recording my travels, trying, with increasing… and then decreasing… desperation to find Gustav. At first I wished to apologize or explain myself, to demand an apology or an explanation. Eventually, I just desired to see that he existed, and that he was not my own mind’s invention. I have resigned myself to writing this confession, and leaving tokens of my friendship in the timelines I visit. Your may have already speculated that for all of my meanderings through time and space, that there is a vanishingly small chance that I am, in fact, your timeline’s Ashby. Perhaps ownership of “your Ashby,” that is, the Ashby that originated in your timeline, means something to you. Now that I can take these moments to reflect, I see that “belonging to a timeline” is a feeling I can no longer identify in any of my thoughts. Indeed, the issue of where and when each us belongs is, to me, merely a matter of accounting. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Reader, make your decision. Travel without care and let the universe decide your fate, or plan the safer route. I cannot tell you that my way of journeying is the better way. For some of us, we do not end where we think we should. We end at a time and a place that once felt wild and infinite, and suddenly feels quite lonely, or halts unexpectedly. In that, I see no difference in how we choose. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I am leaving an artifact here, and in every timeline I visit. If Gustav should find one of these, he will know that I think of him, often. | ||
+ | |||
+ | This confirmed the time traveler theory. | ||
=Zagmar= | =Zagmar= | ||
Line 263: | Line 317: | ||
Zagmar lost the invasion but his location is currently unknown. | Zagmar lost the invasion but his location is currently unknown. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==Possible Zagmar References== | ||
+ | Following the Nov 9, 2016 update of Firewatch that allowed for Free Roam Mode, [http://imgur.com/a/PCAop a journal] was discovered by the [[Eye_Sigil_ARG|Eye Sigil ARG]] [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedetectives/comments/5c7rl7/sigil_found_in_firewatch_freeroam_lead_to_a_grid/ and posted to reddit.] The text is formatted similarly to the texts from the Joshua login. The text refers to a papal candidate that later fell into madness, a character that very much resembles Zagmar: | ||
+ | (The text of this book appears to have been writen by hand a very long time ago) | ||
+ | |||
+ | Religion and State: Five Centuries of Church Policy | ||
+ | |||
+ | p402 | ||
+ | |||
+ | twelfth year of Sendanis III's papacy that the beloved [f]igure succumbed to old age, being carr[i]ed to the divine meadow peacefully in his sleep. Afte[r] the traditional mourning p[e]riod concluded, the conclave of bishops convened to elect a ne[w] pontiff. Thus beg[a]n the longes[t] and most hotly [c]ontested papal election in the church's [h]istory. Traditionalists and those with stron[g] family ties to the nobility dem[a]nded that now was the ti[m]e to roll back [this name is illegible] controv[e]rsial reforms, while the [c]hurch's progressive wing was aghast at reversing c[o]urse after [m]ore than a century of [d]edication to the less fortunate. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The conclave [a]rgued for one hundred and eight days, as all church business languished in an[t]icipation of the impending regime ch[a]nge. Finally, a compromise was reached: a dark horse [c]andidate, one of the youngest ever e[l]ected to the Fawn Seat, was chosen. The young b[i]shop, Kyklot of Yornus, took the papal nam[e] [this name is smudged beyond readability], and began a reig[n] that would ultimately spell disas[t]er for the church and spark a war with their closest ally. No bishop who sat in [j]udgement that day could have conceived of the new [p]ontiff's ambition, and none were aware of the madness bubblin[g] just | ||
+ | |||
+ | Young Bishop Kyklot is currently thought to be Pontiff Zagmar. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Sigil Master=== | ||
+ | Though not Zagmar, the Sigil Master is from the same timeline/world as Zagmar and member of the same Cellulite Church. For a full view of all communications, [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ko6xf-Tlnb_It10blIjZ8ZbdBMtR4_eWmN3HhVR7YHo/edit#gid=0 visit this link.] | ||
+ | |||
+ | He first began emailing Patrick Klepek of Waypoint following an August article on the Sigil ARG. The first reference to something related to the FF2 ARG is on November 14, 2016 he emailed: | ||
+ | The great cathedral lies now in rubble, its halls no longer filled with glorious song. | ||
+ | Doubt not my words. | ||
+ | |||
+ | He later had an AIM conversation with Patrick where he said: | ||
+ | I have been attempting to contact those who may aid me, for we are beset by unknown raiders bearing strange technologies. | ||
+ | I used my craft to send the mark of our church through the boundaries of time and space. | ||
+ | I know not what form my sigils took, or how they manifested across other realms | ||
+ | I only hoped that one would piece their scattered forms together and allow me to scry accurately those who might aid us. | ||
+ | It is greatly strange. They appear as men, but not men. They carry weapons unlike those I have seen. Perhaps the Empire once possessed such arms as well, though I have found no record of them in the scrolls. | ||
+ | A weapon that can obliterate a man at fifty yards! Can you imagine such ghastly sorcery? | ||
+ | My people are lost and scattered, so it is hard to say for sure. It has been many generations since the war that shattered our lands. We are refugees, and now are harassed by these metal marauders that plunder our supplies and harass our villages | ||
+ | They must find a way to enter Jixandlia. I know now how a portal may emerge, but surely one must exist. | ||
+ | Memory is... the next best immortality. | ||
+ | Alas, were there still a pontiff upon the Fawn Seat! | ||
+ | He could answer such a question with grace and ease. | ||
+ | I am a weak vessel. My apologies. | ||
+ | It is not your fault. If I were younger, if I had not learned the craft from scrolls but from proper tutors, if I were more powerful... | ||
+ | Those who found my sigils likely have searched long and worked hard to gather them from across many eras and realms. I commend their work. I urge them to push forward with whatever information they have, thus a portal may be discovered. If not from my end, then on yours | ||
+ | Lorakis, last acolyte of the Celulitte Church, thanks you. | ||
+ | My ability to communicate ends. Perhaps we can speak again in the future... | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Lorakis later contacted Patrick's editor-in-chief, Austin Walker: | ||
+ | I am Sigil Master Lorakis. | ||
+ | Long ago it had another name, but today I believe it is known as Jixandlia. | ||
+ | The work of Imperium once brought low our greatest. Be wary. | ||
+ | The blessing of the church fathers upon your struggle, as little as it may be worth in these fallen times. | ||
+ | I know not if all of my sigils have been collected, though enough have been gathered that their confluence has allowed my scrying to reach you at last. | ||
+ | I know not the exact form my sigils took when they crossed the barrier between realms, but there spell was such that few, if any, would appear out of place where they should not. | ||
+ | To enable screen reader support, press shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Z. To learn about keyboard shortcuts, press shortcut Ctrl+slash. | ||
+ | I wish I could more completely answer your questions. I continue to study the ancient text, and my own information may as yet grow broader. I am trying my best, as your words are often strange. | ||
+ | As I told the Chronicler, seek the portal to Jixandlia. Whether you will arrive in time for my people to be saved, much earlier, or much later I am unsure, but remember us. Remember our world, our struggles, our failures. | ||
+ | I am old now. It may be too late for our ragged people. The best thing, barring rescue, is memory and the immortality it provides. | ||
+ | Your world fascinates me, and given many hours I would learn much of it, but alas! | ||
+ | My own portal closes now. My energy is sapped. | ||
+ | |||
+ | In his next conversation with Austin: | ||
+ | |||
+ | =Appendix= | ||
+ | ==Logins and Origins Chart== | ||
+ | {| class="wikitable sortable" border="1" | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | ! Username | ||
+ | ! Password | ||
+ | ! Website | ||
+ | ! Origin | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | gadsby | ||
+ | | password123 | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/accesslevelalpha.php accesslevelalpha] [http://time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta.php accesslevelbeta] | ||
+ | | THD 13: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhQur_NeiVY Butt Folk] spectrogram | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | herbie | ||
+ | | screamed | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta.php accesslevelbeta] | ||
+ | | RPP Extrasode 3 quote of "I, Robot"( ends before"-and Herbie screamed", Justin's Mario Maker level (PWD: screamed) | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | number six | ||
+ | | revolution | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta.php accesslevelbeta] | ||
+ | | Also in Mario Maker level, blocks were morse code for "Hello Number Six", in RPP chatting with Jim, morse code was "lwo osoutriv deniarpsssenihsum tnarebuxe", which anagrams to "Username is the number six password is revolution" | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | samuel | ||
+ | | caravanserai | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta.php accesslevelbeta] | ||
+ | | In the comments of the [http://www.polygon.com/2015/12/15/10220184/frog-fractions-2-arg Polygon ARG summary], a phone number for Bug Bros. Travel Agency was left, people who called and left their number were called back and given the codeword for their trip: caravanserai | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | vasquez | ||
+ | | jurassic | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta.php accesslevelbeta] | ||
+ | | A mindmap attempting to organize the ARG was vandalized and the login was left | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | clemens | ||
+ | | tundra | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta.php accesslevelbeta] | ||
+ | | Justin's GDC business card had red letters on it that combined say ""loginclemenspwtundra"" | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | joshua | ||
+ | | giraffe | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta.php accesslevelbeta] | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/getannettefunicellohohohohoho.html Two] [http://time-travel.club/awibblewobblewibblewobbletoandfrobuttheonelittleduckwiththefeatheronhisbackheledtheotherswithaquackquackquack pages] with 500 errors from other logins have Raffi song quotes in their URL, Justin tweeted about "Frogs Size 12", eventually someone tried joshua/giraffe as it's a Raffi song that talks about frogs and it worked | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | number six | ||
+ | | theeyeshaveyou | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/client.html client] | ||
+ | | In an ID3 tag on RPP 77: Art Has No Meaning, there is the phrase 'The password is behind your eye'. Later, a user involved with the ARG that has backed the RPP Patreon received a letter that said "the eyes have you" | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | number one | ||
+ | | elmourouj | ||
+ | | [http://time-travel.club/client.html client] | ||
+ | | The final solution of the [[Eye Sigil ARG]] — overlaying the map made from pieces scattered through several dozen games onto the letter soup from Firewatch's sigil lead — is "number one/elmourouj" | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | |||
+ | | original unknown, private now | ||
+ | | yandex.com | ||
+ | | Luigi amiibo, obtained at Indiecade2015, was scanned into a Wii. The owner of the Amiibo was "pastebin" and the name of the Amiibo was "DTP61rrp", leading to http://pastebin.com/DTP61rrp. This is a header for [email protected] sending "note to self". The password reset question was "What is your mother's maiden name?" Finster, the maiden name of the real Gustav Klimt's mother, worked and entry was gained. | ||
+ | |} |
Latest revision as of 01:52, 14 December 2016
Main Page > List of Investigations > Frog Fractions 2 > Characters The Frog Fractions 2 ARG has had several major characters come into play for the ARG.
Jim Crawford
This section will only discuss the game developer Jim Crawford's involvement as a character in the ARG's main story and not the developer himself.
Jim Crawford was notably absent from the Frog Fractions 2 Kickstarter video and first entered the ARG during the Berkeley Event. At this event, he led a group of ARG participants on a walk. After a while, he was arrested by members of the Chrono-Imperium "for [his[ time-crimes against the chrono-imperium, for [his] distribution and production of bug porn, for [his] association with agents of Bug Mars, for [his] fraternizing with frogs, and for [his] other crimes", according to the arresting officer who called Jim by his full name of "James Crawford". During the arrest, he tossed a brown paper bag full of floppy disks. A man on a motorcycle told the crowd that he wasn't the real Jim Crawford, at least not yet.
In May of 2015, Jim began Train Hot Dog. Through this podcast, many ARG clues were found in these podcasts but this is probably the developer Jim talking for the most part as opposed to the character Jim. Though in THD 23: Nightcore Night Court, a voice says "Attention Passengers: Don't believe his lies. Find the truth about the decay. Thank you", linking some THDs to the ARG persona.
In January of 2016, a package containing a pound of quartz was picked up from an Amazon locker. The package was addressed to James Crawford.
In July of 2016, Pontiff Zagmar invaded the twitter of The Resistance. Jim was spotted as prisoner who joined Zagmar's cause in exchange for freedom and was referred to as prisoner JC101-B by The Resistance. JC101-B claimed to have been captive for years, giving the assumption that the prisoner is the arrested Jim from the Berkeley Event.
It has been theorized that James Crawford and Jim Crawford are the same person from different timelines, thus the different names used at different times. This is not confirmed.
Justin
The Resistance
This group is fighting sparkles and the decay. They appear to be organized and are the owners of time-travel.club and the @Resist_Decay twitter account.
Samuel
Samuel has a login on time-travel.club and through it, his rank in the Resistance is revealed. Samuel is a science officer. He has also played a major role in direct communication to both Gustav's email and Number Six's email. His login was unlocked via an ad placed on the Polygon article. It contained a number that, once dialed, led to a message from Lt. Samuel:
This is Resistance Agent 3764, Lt. Samuel. I'm probably out on a mission protecting the remnants of our species or maybe training new recruits, but leave a message and I'll get back to you if I'm not dead or enslaved!
A recording of the message can be found here.
Callers were phoned in January of 2016 by the Bug Mars Travel Agency that insisted the passcode was "caravanserai", which worked for Samuel's login. In lieu of the Operations list, Samuel has a list of current and former scientific experiments
Following the discovery of the Gustav email, several messages were exchanged between Samuel and Gustav to deliver the package of quartz as well as to confirm the location of the Museum of Jurassic Technology event. The email he uses is [email protected]. This has been seen as similar enough to the preview of the email for the @Resist_Decay twitter to likely be the owner.
The following are the emails Samuel sent for the events. The emails related to the Indicade event are:
Hey Buddy You should be getting notification of a delivery of goods pretty soon. Central hopes to have it out within a week. Let me know if anything goes wrong. Stay frosty, Samuel PS: Tell Dwayne he still owes me a rematch on the court and that this time I'm bringing a ref to make sure he doesn't commit any personal fouls.
Hey chum, Here's your requisition order information. Hope you can put this to better use than the folks in the labs have been. Some weird stuff going on, but anything's worth it for the cause. We'll send you an update when the order ships out. Details Arriving: Wednesday, January 20 Ship to: Amazon Locker - Cerrito, El Cerrito Plaza Good luck out there, Samuel
Dear chum, You should have your locker code soon. Wait for the code. You have a three day window. Stay frosty, Samuel
Emails for the Museum of Jurassic Technology event contained only the following map:
Samuel stayed quiet for about six months, until he contacted Gustav again on August 27 to discuss recent events found elsewhere in the ARG:
Howdy partner, I just let No. 6 know that the suits worked out great, and we need like 20 more fabbed asap. I put a work order in so you should see that coming through on your terminal, but thumbs-up on the new metamaterial. Works great. Stay frosty, Samuel PS: Did you hear about the crazy portal accident down in Research? Those clowns almost compromised the entire base. Nuts.
The same day, Samuel sent the following message to Number Six:
Speaking in my capacity as military liason to science, I want to let you know that the latest anti-sparkle suits are a rousing success. I'll have an official report on your desk by Tuesday, but yesterday's field operation allowed us to directly take full exposure for half an hour with no adverse effects. Tell the boys in the lab great work, and look out for the report soon. -Lt. Samuel
Gustav
Gustav Klimt is an painter from Austria who lived from 1862 to 1918. He is also apparently a time traveling agent of the Resistance. He was first brought into the ARG via Red Pages Extrasode 3. The ID3 tags say "Woman in Gold" and contains Klimt's Woman in Gold painting, but altered so the woman is a cyborg. Within the images corruption is the code:
  eng www.gustavklimptuplink.com; TCOM  Z  01100100 01101001 01110011 01110000 01100001 01110100 01100011 01101000 00100000 00110001TDRL    2015-06-25PCST  �   APIC X8@  image/png  ‰PNG
The binary translates to "dispatch 1" and the link references Gustav with his last name a bit off.
Following the Indiecade event, [email protected] was found.The password reset question was "What is your mother's maiden name?" Finster, the maiden name of Gustav Klimt's mother, worked and entry was gained. He has received several messages from several but has not sent anything other than a "Note to self" that says "Butts".
A recent message from Samuel to Gustav refers to a terminal:
Howdy partner, I just let No. 6 know that the suits worked out great, and we need like 20 more fabbed asap. I put a work order in so you should see that coming through on your terminal, but thumbs-up on the new metamaterial. Works great. Stay frosty, Samuel PS: Did you hear about the crazy portal accident down in Research? Those clowns almost compromised the entire base. Nuts.
This suggest Gustav has a login on the terminal and possibly accesslevelbeta but neither have been found.
Monsieur La Baroni
Dwayne
Dwayne is listed as the commanding officer for Gadsby. He also was originally on the rotating roster of available operatives but disappeared some time in January and has yet to return.
On August 13, 2015, in THD 14:Discharge mentions time travel attempts by a man named Dwayne in Tunisia with ridermail saying:
"Stardate 1982: just a little joke. Research proceeds as planned on the Chrono Temporal Flux Fusion Engine. We were encouraged when a rice cake appeared in the machine's primary servo dock informing us that several minutes later we would succeed in transporting a rice cake backwards in time. This is a step forward as we previously have only been able to transport inorganic matter. Dwayne and I celebrated with drinks and a viewing of Blade Runner. Rutger Hauer's final speech is brilliant, especially five drinks in. Tomorrow we plan to attempt to transport a living insect, our first test of a live specimen. Wish us luck!"
In an email to Gustav from Samuel, Dwayne apparently owes him a rematch:
PS: Tell Dwayne he still owes me a rematch on the court and that this time I'm bringing a ref to make sure he doesn't commit any personal fouls.
Despite Dwayne being a commanding officer to Gadsby and receiving other mentions, no login information for him has ever been found. Some believe there should be one but there's no evidence either way.
The Original Six
The Original Six are the apparent founders of the Resistance and have a few sources of Lore surrounding them.
From Justin Bortnick's business card at GDC2016:
"They arrived at dusk. The experiments had been wildly successful, more so than we could have hoped or feared. At first, we welcomed them. The people of Tunisia are friendly and, generally, we expected that our visitors would treat us with the same wonder and amazement with which we regarded them. That could not have been further from the truth. They did not care about our presence, or lives, or cities, or us. They went about their brutal business as if we were ants in their path: with a complete disregard for our existence. Their capability for warfare thwarted our greatest weaponry, and their unearthly abilities countered the strategies of our greatest military and scientific leaders. As the decay radiated out like a cancer from the Tunisian coast, those in power around the world watched in helplessness, knowing that soon their nations would suffer the same fate as ours. There are at this point in history few of us remaining. Those who survived have banded together under the guidance of we original six, though at this point only four remain. Our numbers are smaller by the day, and our enemy has all but forgotten us. Their victory was total, an[d] our defeat pushed our species to the brink of extinction. We now resist the decay. We hide. We w[a]it. And we plan. -Excerpt from An Oral History of the Decay, Interview 8674-B"
In the source code of the Party Lounge accessible via Number Six's login:
"This seems like a secure place to hide information, so here goes: watch out! You may be using this Party Lounge to take your mind off of the grueling reality outside this base. You may be secure in your position as a high-ranking resistance officer. Be warned: danger lurks in even the safest of places. Do you know what relationship Numbers 1, 3, 5 and 6 have to the decay? Have you never wondered what happened to Numbers 2 and 4? Have you questioned the abductions of individuals from prior eras, or the futures you are trying to prevent? Stay alert. I'll be in touch as I am able, but do not look for me - it may be some time until my next communication is able to get through to you."
During Zagmar's twitter takeover, Number 1(aka Brown) and Number 3 were present.
Number Six (Roth)
Number Six, who is named Roth, first appeared as a login with the password revolution. The login only said:
USER:NUMBER SIX RANK:XXXXXXX COMMANDING OFFICER:N/A Greetings Number Six. Your login is currently being prepped - please continue to use Corporal Herbie's login for the time being.Number six also is mentioned on the calendar regarding the Museum of Jurassic Technology event. It had the message "Don't be late. -No. 6"
Later, the login would become active like the others. The message in the Party Lounge is from an unknown sender who seems to be trying to warn Number Six of something but it is not known what.
Number Six's login unlocked the terminal with the ability to receive emails. Number Six has received the following communications:
$ read E51420813 Roth, We've lost contact with Brown down in portal experimentation. There's something going on down there. Do you know anything? -Croft $ read E51420815 Roth, The boys downstairs have really stuck their foot in it this time. A routine resource run went sideways and some crazy followed them back with a small army. That's the reason for the communications outage yesterday. We've contained the extradimensional intruders in a lower level for now but may require military backup. Will update you soon. -Hearn $ read E51420820 Roth, You're so lucky being located upstairs. It's been a real crapshow down here over the past five days. We managed to starve the crazies out and they retreated through the portal, but we can't seem to get the thing closed. They took the prisoner with them. The crazy one that appears to be their leader screamed some nonsense about returning soon with more forces, so we need to get this shut down before we have an army in our base. We can't fight a war on two fronts and the soldiers don't need this distraction from the true enemy. I think we may have bitten off more than we can chew with this stuff - again. This time we can't let it turn out as badly because we won't get a third chance. Any support the boys upstairs can provide would be greatly appreciated. -Hearn $ read E51420827 No. 6, Speaking in my capacity as military liason to science, I want to let you know that the latest anti-sparkle suits are a rousing success. I'll have an official report on your desk by Tuesday, but yesterday's field operation allowed us to directly take full exposure for half an hour with no adverse effects. Tell the boys in the lab great work, and look out for the report soon. -Lt. Samuel
Number One (Brown)
Number One first appeared in the party lounge message
Do you know what relationship Numbers 1, 3, 5 and 6 have to the decay?
Brown's name came to light during the twitter invasion by Zagmar. He is Number One in the Original Six.
#1: Uh-oh How did you all get in here? This is a secure area. Leave at o #3: Are you there Brown? Respond? What happened?
And later stated:
This is... compromised... send assist... #1 out..
He was then mentioned by name in an email to Number Six.
Roth, We've lost contact with Brown down in portal experimentation. There's something going on down there. Do you know anything? -Croft
It appears Brown may be taking some of the blame for the incursion but there is no mention of Brown perishing in the invasion so they are assumed to be alive.
Number One's login for the time-travel.club/client.html terminal was found via the Eye Sigil ARG and is much more bare than Number Six's terminal. It contains Soupertasters videos and that's it. The Souper Terminal is under investigation.
Number Three
Number 3 first appeared on the Vasquez login as an operation:
Bring No. 3 a Sandwich (special operation)
He then appeared in the Clemens login:
Greetings Colonel Clemens. Your login is currently being prepped - we should have it up within the week. Please deliver your report to No. 4 ASAP. - No. 3
Number 3 was also been mentioned during the twitter conversation with Brown.
#3: Are you there Brown? Respond? What happened?
It is guessed Number 3 is one of the other named people in the emails sent to Number Six but it is not confirmed.
Other named Resistance members
Resistance members tend to be named after people within the Alien franchise.
The following resistance members have logins for http://time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta.php:
- Cpl Herbie (screamed)
- Sgm. Vasquez (jurassic)
- Colonel Clemens (tundra)
Recr. Gadsby (password123) - The only resistance member with a login that works at http://time-travel.club/accesslevelalpha.php, rather than acesslevelbeta.
Joshua (giraffe) - It is unclear if Joshua is a member of the resistance, as the login is corrupted, and only contains a library of text. The name has not been mentioned anywhere else.
The below have only appeared on the rotating operatives list:
- Recr. Brett
- Pvt. Lambert
- Cpl. Apone
- Sgt. Kane
- Maj. Drake
- Sgm. Jorden. (It is unknown why there is a dot at the end of Jorden's name)
- Sgt. William
- Cpl. Parker
- Recr. Arthur
Vickers is listed as the commanding officer of Clemens, but does not have a login nor appear on the rotating list.
Ashby
Originally only mentioned in the About section of decaytruth.info, Charles Foster Ashby is the founder of Ashby Brewery and Indie Game Studio. The description on the site reads:
The Ashby Brewery was founded in 1777 by Charles Foster Ashby, a Belgian philosopher and entrepreneur. From the age of 5, Ashby had lived among the monks at the Chevetogne Abbey near the city of Liege. During his stay among the devout, Ashby studied and perfected the Trappist brewing techniques for which the monks of Chevetogne became so well known. Following the destruction of the abbey during the Blue Revolution of 1738, Ashby booked passage to the New World and made his way to what is now known as downtown Berkeley, California. Bringing with him ancient yeast strains and the knowledge of the Chevetogne monks, Ashby started up a rudimentary brewery on the future site of the Ashby Brewery in South Berkeley. His efforts attracted local businessmen and game designers, who spun tales of a grand salon where new diversions would be crafted, along with delicious ales and lagers, for consumption among the colonies of New California and Jefferson State. As Ashby’s reputation for creating high quality beer spread, so did the legends that surrounded the man himself. Ashby was notoriously long-lived, having reached the laudable age of 122 before retiring from public life in spite of his youthful appearance. When asked by a young Mark Twain what had been the secret to his success, Ashby famously declared, “I bring you a message of great importance!” The author didn’t know what to make of this, and the legend of the Ashby Brewery grew. At the Ashby Brewery and Indie Game Studio, we continue to spread Charles Ashby’s vision of radical new games and brews. We start with pure filtered water from the high hills of outer Berkeley; we add organic malted barley from Oakland community garden spaces; our hops come from a hidden slope of Albany Hill known only to Ashby himself; and the yeast, still the original strain from Chevetogne, dates back to time immemorial. We hope you will join us for a pint next time you come to the Bay Area. In addition to our classic Cherry Wheat and Shamrock Stout, we hope you will enjoy our Summer Blueberry Pilsner, Press ‘A’ to Continue Ale, and C. Ashby’s 2x Multiplier Dubbel, centuries in the making..
This description has many anachronistic and impossible stories in it, leading those in the ARG to conclude Ashby is a time traveler of some capacity. A breakdown of some of the irregularities can be found here
As a result of the Berkeley Bowl Beeman event, a letter from Ashby to the ARG was discovered.
Reader, greetings to you. Please, let me confess my tale. Your timeline will be the only one to contain this artifact, unless there are other versions of myself whom have gotten the same idea. I cannot, of course, vouch for their actions. They are… it hardly matters. Forgive me; I am getting too far ahead of myself. I will try not to get bogged down in details. When I was young, it seemed too that the world was young. Before I write about any of my journeys, let me tell you this: I was happy once, and so was Gustav. We played in a tree swing, in a big, old chestnut, which creaked and croaked in a way that suggested a song. We leapt between stones in the creek, and studied our maths. I was good at catching fireflies on summer nights, those brilliant motes of life rising into the sky. Gustav drew pictures, inventing bizarre characters that accompanied us in our play. I planned to become a botanist. Gustav would settle for nothing less than traveling to distant stars. I chided him for having such elaborate dreams, but in the end I was happy that we dreamed together. When the Tunisians approached us, we were no longer children, but neither were we truly adults. They had seen us through their strange machines, and determined our importance to future dealings surrounding a great event. They made it their mission to find us and teach us the ways of travel between timelines. Gustav spoke to them in French. When had he learned French? He spoke to a woman with a certain familiarity before they were formally introduced. I did not understand, but then I only knew a very few words in any foreign language. They were offering us something unusual. They wanted to demonstrate. The first portal they opened for us was to some Eden. It was astounding. Blue and purple moons rose over tropical pools. A scent like jasmine floated on soft breezes, over rolling hills that led off to vertical escarpments grazing the sky. I have never found this place again, for they never shared these, or any other time-space coordinates with us. Gustav tore off his shoes and dove into one of those silken-water pools with no regard for what might be waiting under the surface. He knew, somehow, that they had brought us to a place meant to entice; a place that would be safe for us. I am still puzzled as to what bred such confidence. Beyond the knowledge that we were somehow crucial to events in some other time and place, the Tunisians had no information, and no inkling of how we would eventually set the awesome mechanisms of our choices into their courses of influence. What they gave us was merely teaching without any advice on how to employ them. It was unwise, what they did, but they had plans of their own, they said. It was their way. They were resistant to changing their approach. Gustav and I could barely contain our excitement at having been told we were to be masters of time travel, very much out of the blue and quite in keeping with how special, nay, truly incredible, the exuberance of youth had convinced us we were. “Quelles époques désirez-vous visiter d’abord?” they addressed us. “Les passé!” Gustav shouted. “The future!” I proclaimed simultaneously. We looked at one another. Gustav had a wry smile. His intentions were unreadable. I was confused. I reached for him, and he walked confidently into the past, without looking back for a moment. I faltered. He had left, but why? I thought I was right. The future! The future... was the future. How could we deny ourselves a glimpse of that? We parted, there, unexpectedly, with that disagreement. I so want to remember it as a minor thing, but perhaps there was slight animosity; having shared our lives for so long, now we were fundamentally divided as to our goals. That specific memory feels hollow now, having revisited it so often… a story’s shell, devoid of feeling. I don’t know what happened. I will never recover the true memory. I have never been able to revisit that moment bodily. For all of my searching in time and space, and through the timelines I could discover, I have never seen him again, nor have I encountered any evidence of him. On reflection, it was not I who was special, though I will not say the same of Gustav. It was, however, our friendship that was so extraordinary; a connection that by its astonishing nature has persisted clearly in my mind, while oceans of later experience have foundered and sunk below oceans of forgotten memories. I have no doubt he became a great artist of some kind. His imagination was a great Cathedral, or even more than this - vast cities of ideas, waiting to explored and understood, When we were children, he would sing songs of planets of insects, and the hungry frogs that would settle in their midst, undetected. He wrote stories that felt as if they were real, and he was only a conduit through which they passed. This may have been the case. I have seen things beyond explanation in my travels; worlds nearly prophesied by his inventions. The future turned out to be a bleaker existence than one might imagine. There is no joy in seeing cities that once housed your schoolmates ground to rubble through the relentless action of time; no pleasant feeling in seeing your family home decrepit, ruined and eventually forgotten as all things are and must necessarily be. The curiosity you sate by discovering the fates of the people and thing most beloved to you is - like lightning - flashed away into the massive loneliness experienced without them. I sat in front of my childhood home. I said, “I give your eulogy, house, and I will represent humanity, and you will represent the civilizations so vast that my heart cannot comprehend their loss.” I sat there, weeping, and resolved to find my friend. Gustav had made the wiser choice, travelling back to see the world when it was vibrant. He must have had a chance to learn from the masters. To grow also, and mature in a way that was denied to my young self. I took my opportunities and threw them to the cruel winds, on which sailed the Decay. I have nothing to tell you of the Decay, other than that the time traveling itself has brought it. At least, this is what I theorize. I am not sure how they are related, but I knew nothing of this vile occurrence before we encountered the Tunisian scientists. I have never encountered it myself by opening a portal. It is likely that those otherworldly scientists had a hand in all of this, and their mistake was what caused them to seek out Gustav and myself. You will not find evidence of them, as our first encounter was during the gold rush in San Francisco. The portals they opened and much of their clockwork gadgetry were destroyed in an earthquake some decades later. Though the pull of those original portals is strong. You can still sometimes see the timelines crossing through in this location on earth. Eventually I followed in Gustav’s path and traveled pastward. It was only then that I started recording my travels, trying, with increasing… and then decreasing… desperation to find Gustav. At first I wished to apologize or explain myself, to demand an apology or an explanation. Eventually, I just desired to see that he existed, and that he was not my own mind’s invention. I have resigned myself to writing this confession, and leaving tokens of my friendship in the timelines I visit. Your may have already speculated that for all of my meanderings through time and space, that there is a vanishingly small chance that I am, in fact, your timeline’s Ashby. Perhaps ownership of “your Ashby,” that is, the Ashby that originated in your timeline, means something to you. Now that I can take these moments to reflect, I see that “belonging to a timeline” is a feeling I can no longer identify in any of my thoughts. Indeed, the issue of where and when each us belongs is, to me, merely a matter of accounting. Reader, make your decision. Travel without care and let the universe decide your fate, or plan the safer route. I cannot tell you that my way of journeying is the better way. For some of us, we do not end where we think we should. We end at a time and a place that once felt wild and infinite, and suddenly feels quite lonely, or halts unexpectedly. In that, I see no difference in how we choose. I am leaving an artifact here, and in every timeline I visit. If Gustav should find one of these, he will know that I think of him, often.
This confirmed the time traveler theory.
Zagmar
Pontiff/Pope Zagmar is a religious figurehead from a place that contains the Styrgian Empire, that seems to exist in some other dimension. Through client emails received after the fact, we learned that he followed a few resistance members on a "resource run" through a portal back to the the Resistance. He immediately took an antagonistic role to the Resistance and wanted to rule over them, and any others that might cross his path. It's known that he uses magic and he wasn't aware of the cyborg technology the Resistance utilizes.
The first encounter with the name Zagmar came on the decayed Joshua login. This login contained several historical text, three of which mention Zagmar by name.
A History of the Styrgin Empire (p23) It was not for many years yet that those individuals who would rebel against the Church's corruption would be born, for in this period the Church remained benevolent. In 542, Pontiff Urzarath II ascended to the popehood, and began a program of wealth redistribution that was widely popular with the peasant and merchant classes. Based upon his philosophy of universal access to basic resources, heavy taxes were placed upon the nobility of all nations controlled by the Church, and though the aristocrats grumbled and when intoxicated were known to drunkenly rail against the church, it cannot be denied that at this point the lunacy of Zagmar and resulting rift between Church and Empire was unthinkable. Despite differences of opinion between the papacy and the imperial house, both maintained cordial relations. When Urzarath II died in 558, he left behind a legacy of stewardship that future Emperors took to heart, and ultimately led to the (next page)
The Testament of Zagmar (p68) This world is untempered steel, and we shall be the hammer that shapes it. Our Divine Master has shown us a new path forward, forged in flame and darkness. We shall release those suffering from their bondage, and show them the new path forward. The whispers of our Lord shall become a mighty roar, and incarnations shall walk the earth. It will be a joy and an honor to surrender to his touch, to give ourselves in totality. (next page)
Wrack and Ruin: The Final Years of the Celulitte Church (p347) last, the Empire's armies surrounded the grand cathedral of Amour Lardo. From his chambers at the cathedral's apex, Zagmar paced and glared down at the gathered armies before his gates, gnashing his teeth in insane fury. The cathedral of the gods had never been breached, and had already survived many hails of explosives, and he was secure that the heathen forces would be driven before his faith. Church officials, realizing that the war was lost, were furtively abandoning their posts, surrendering to the Emperor himself, who stood at the head of the host. Zagmar, however, had a final trick left: a (read more) (next page)
Zagmar would not be mentioned again until his invasion of the @Resist_Decay twitter. The profile picture changed to Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Francis Bacon and the banner changed to a picture from Dark Souls 3 of a cathedral. The tweets are as follows:
#1: Uh-oh How did you all get in here? This is a secure area. Leave at o #3: Are you there Brown? Respond? What happened? At last, a new world to which the light may be spread... Quickly, bring more through the portal! These strange metal creatures are no match for our sorcery! Do not falter before their counterassault! This world is ours for the plucking! They are as wheat before the scythe! Burn them all! Useless curs! Do not retreat! Fah, fortify this position and wait for reinforcements! They will not contain our fury for long... This is... compromised... send assist... #1 out.. Open their holding cells! Turn their prisoners against them! Bishop, retrieve the explosive metal tube from that corpse. I would examine this weaponry. What is this necromancy? We killed that one before, but he has returned to bedevil the faith again! These soldiers possess strange metal skin on parts of their body... more than passing curious. We must take some alive. Their enchantments may bolster our own in the crusade against the Empire! This prisoner has offered to join our cause in exchange for freedom... he claims he has been imprisoned for years. The prisoner has told us much... of many possible worlds to which we may bring the holy fire! So speaks your Pontiff: Once we finish with this world, we will move to the next, and the next! The intruders have been contained in sublevel C. We have reclaimed communications channels. Intruders are recieving assistance from prisoner JC101-B. Contain and eliminate if necessary. Casualties are limited. Our superior technology has triumphed.
He was then referred to in an email on the time-travel.club client:
Roth, The boys downstairs have really stuck their foot in it this time. A routine resource run went sideways and some crazy followed them back with a small army. That's the reason for the communications outage yesterday. We've contained the extradimensional intruders in a lower level for now but may require military backup. Will update you soon. -Hearn
Roth, You're so lucky being located upstairs. It's been a real crapshow down here over the past five days. We managed to starve the crazies out and they retreated through the portal, but we can't seem to get the thing closed. They took the prisoner with them. The crazy one that appears to be their leader screamed some nonsense about returning soon with more forces, so we need to get this shut down before we have an army in our base. We can't fight a war on two fronts and the soldiers don't need this distraction from the true enemy. I think we may have bitten off more than we can chew with this stuff - again. This time we can't let it turn out as badly because we won't get a third chance. Any support the boys upstairs can provide would be greatly appreciated. -Hearn
The invasion was also noted by Samuel in a message to Gustav:
PS: Did you hear about the crazy portal accident down in Research? Those clowns almost compromised the entire base. Nuts.
Zagmar lost the invasion but his location is currently unknown.
Possible Zagmar References
Following the Nov 9, 2016 update of Firewatch that allowed for Free Roam Mode, a journal was discovered by the Eye Sigil ARG and posted to reddit. The text is formatted similarly to the texts from the Joshua login. The text refers to a papal candidate that later fell into madness, a character that very much resembles Zagmar:
(The text of this book appears to have been writen by hand a very long time ago) Religion and State: Five Centuries of Church Policy p402 twelfth year of Sendanis III's papacy that the beloved [f]igure succumbed to old age, being carr[i]ed to the divine meadow peacefully in his sleep. Afte[r] the traditional mourning p[e]riod concluded, the conclave of bishops convened to elect a ne[w] pontiff. Thus beg[a]n the longes[t] and most hotly [c]ontested papal election in the church's [h]istory. Traditionalists and those with stron[g] family ties to the nobility dem[a]nded that now was the ti[m]e to roll back [this name is illegible] controv[e]rsial reforms, while the [c]hurch's progressive wing was aghast at reversing c[o]urse after [m]ore than a century of [d]edication to the less fortunate. The conclave [a]rgued for one hundred and eight days, as all church business languished in an[t]icipation of the impending regime ch[a]nge. Finally, a compromise was reached: a dark horse [c]andidate, one of the youngest ever e[l]ected to the Fawn Seat, was chosen. The young b[i]shop, Kyklot of Yornus, took the papal nam[e] [this name is smudged beyond readability], and began a reig[n] that would ultimately spell disas[t]er for the church and spark a war with their closest ally. No bishop who sat in [j]udgement that day could have conceived of the new [p]ontiff's ambition, and none were aware of the madness bubblin[g] just
Young Bishop Kyklot is currently thought to be Pontiff Zagmar.
Sigil Master
Though not Zagmar, the Sigil Master is from the same timeline/world as Zagmar and member of the same Cellulite Church. For a full view of all communications, visit this link.
He first began emailing Patrick Klepek of Waypoint following an August article on the Sigil ARG. The first reference to something related to the FF2 ARG is on November 14, 2016 he emailed:
The great cathedral lies now in rubble, its halls no longer filled with glorious song. Doubt not my words.
He later had an AIM conversation with Patrick where he said:
I have been attempting to contact those who may aid me, for we are beset by unknown raiders bearing strange technologies. I used my craft to send the mark of our church through the boundaries of time and space. I know not what form my sigils took, or how they manifested across other realms I only hoped that one would piece their scattered forms together and allow me to scry accurately those who might aid us. It is greatly strange. They appear as men, but not men. They carry weapons unlike those I have seen. Perhaps the Empire once possessed such arms as well, though I have found no record of them in the scrolls. A weapon that can obliterate a man at fifty yards! Can you imagine such ghastly sorcery? My people are lost and scattered, so it is hard to say for sure. It has been many generations since the war that shattered our lands. We are refugees, and now are harassed by these metal marauders that plunder our supplies and harass our villages They must find a way to enter Jixandlia. I know now how a portal may emerge, but surely one must exist. Memory is... the next best immortality. Alas, were there still a pontiff upon the Fawn Seat! He could answer such a question with grace and ease. I am a weak vessel. My apologies. It is not your fault. If I were younger, if I had not learned the craft from scrolls but from proper tutors, if I were more powerful... Those who found my sigils likely have searched long and worked hard to gather them from across many eras and realms. I commend their work. I urge them to push forward with whatever information they have, thus a portal may be discovered. If not from my end, then on yours Lorakis, last acolyte of the Celulitte Church, thanks you. My ability to communicate ends. Perhaps we can speak again in the future...
Lorakis later contacted Patrick's editor-in-chief, Austin Walker:
I am Sigil Master Lorakis. Long ago it had another name, but today I believe it is known as Jixandlia. The work of Imperium once brought low our greatest. Be wary. The blessing of the church fathers upon your struggle, as little as it may be worth in these fallen times. I know not if all of my sigils have been collected, though enough have been gathered that their confluence has allowed my scrying to reach you at last. I know not the exact form my sigils took when they crossed the barrier between realms, but there spell was such that few, if any, would appear out of place where they should not.
To enable screen reader support, press shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Z. To learn about keyboard shortcuts, press shortcut Ctrl+slash.
I wish I could more completely answer your questions. I continue to study the ancient text, and my own information may as yet grow broader. I am trying my best, as your words are often strange. As I told the Chronicler, seek the portal to Jixandlia. Whether you will arrive in time for my people to be saved, much earlier, or much later I am unsure, but remember us. Remember our world, our struggles, our failures. I am old now. It may be too late for our ragged people. The best thing, barring rescue, is memory and the immortality it provides. Your world fascinates me, and given many hours I would learn much of it, but alas! My own portal closes now. My energy is sapped.
In his next conversation with Austin:
Appendix
Logins and Origins Chart
Username | Password | Website | Origin |
---|---|---|---|
gadsby | password123 | accesslevelalpha accesslevelbeta | THD 13: Butt Folk spectrogram |
herbie | screamed | accesslevelbeta | RPP Extrasode 3 quote of "I, Robot"( ends before"-and Herbie screamed", Justin's Mario Maker level (PWD: screamed) |
number six | revolution | accesslevelbeta | Also in Mario Maker level, blocks were morse code for "Hello Number Six", in RPP chatting with Jim, morse code was "lwo osoutriv deniarpsssenihsum tnarebuxe", which anagrams to "Username is the number six password is revolution" |
samuel | caravanserai | accesslevelbeta | In the comments of the Polygon ARG summary, a phone number for Bug Bros. Travel Agency was left, people who called and left their number were called back and given the codeword for their trip: caravanserai |
vasquez | jurassic | accesslevelbeta | A mindmap attempting to organize the ARG was vandalized and the login was left |
clemens | tundra | accesslevelbeta | Justin's GDC business card had red letters on it that combined say ""loginclemenspwtundra"" |
joshua | giraffe | accesslevelbeta | Two pages with 500 errors from other logins have Raffi song quotes in their URL, Justin tweeted about "Frogs Size 12", eventually someone tried joshua/giraffe as it's a Raffi song that talks about frogs and it worked |
number six | theeyeshaveyou | client | In an ID3 tag on RPP 77: Art Has No Meaning, there is the phrase 'The password is behind your eye'. Later, a user involved with the ARG that has backed the RPP Patreon received a letter that said "the eyes have you" |
number one | elmourouj | client | The final solution of the Eye Sigil ARG — overlaying the map made from pieces scattered through several dozen games onto the letter soup from Firewatch's sigil lead — is "number one/elmourouj" |
[email protected] | original unknown, private now | yandex.com | Luigi amiibo, obtained at Indiecade2015, was scanned into a Wii. The owner of the Amiibo was "pastebin" and the name of the Amiibo was "DTP61rrp", leading to http://pastebin.com/DTP61rrp. This is a header for [email protected] sending "note to self". The password reset question was "What is your mother's maiden name?" Finster, the maiden name of the real Gustav Klimt's mother, worked and entry was gained. |