Waking Titan
| Waking Titan | |
|---|---|
| A website with 16 radio stations, which may be leading to something more. | |
| Type | [[List_of_Investigations#Official|Official]] |
| Creator | Alice & Smith & Hello Games |
| Discovered | 2017-05-28 |
Main Page > List of Investigations > Waking Titan
Waking Titan (also known as Project WT) is an ARG involving a multitude of websites, phone numbers, and radio stations scattered across the world. The ARG is being produced by veteran puppet masters, and will feature NPCs, actors, and live events. The ultimate purpose of Waking Titan remains a mystery, but it seems to be somehow connected to No Man's Sky.
Contents
Initial Announcement
On May 27th, 2017, Twitter user @argn tweeted a link to 'project-wt.com'. The link lead to a website which contained a map showing sixty locations, four of which were active at the time. The locations, when clicked on, revealed the location's name and status. The active locations also revealed a link to a livestream of a local radio stations originating in the corresponding location. The website also displayed a date, June 8th, and stated that the first clue was being initialized. A list of active locations and their corresponding radio stations can be found here.
Another website was found by searching for 'wakingtitan.com', based on the title of the 404 page on the original site. The website prompted visitors for a username and password.
In addition, a link to the original website was sent to a Unfiction moderator, and was described as:
It's the countdown to a new, large-scale ARG launching this summer, starting with 16 radio stations across the world. It's being produced by veteran puppet masters and includes NPCs, actors, live events and much more...
bW9zY293 Station
On June 2nd, 2017 the location icon for Moscow came online with the location name and link apparently corrupted. Rather than the location name of 'Moscow' and a link to a local radio station, it initialized with the location name 'bW9zY293' and a link to a pastebin. The pastebin was short, only three lines:
[email protected] X (XXX) XXX-XXXX You have until Jun. 3rd - 18:00 UTC
Emails & Phone Calls
All players who sent a valid phone number to [email protected] received an email in response:
< Database Updated > [Email] -> X (XXX) XXX-XXXX To change entry please reply to this message with a new contact. .. Message ID: 6f71407e-7106-452d-8dd1-017f3eb00e1b .. Low bandwith[sic] relay - bridge.myriad-oc1920.sat .. Connection active .. Rendering for message payload
From 2017-06-03 18:00-18:45 UTC all players with verified phone numbers were called with a voice clip containing the following message:
This is Waking Titan. He arose, and on the stars, lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide.
The second line is an excerpt of the poem Hyperion by John Keats:
Hyperion arose, and on the stars Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide
This gave players the word Hyperion, which was subsequently used as a password for wakingtitan.com. One player received a phone call different from all the rest - it simply stated:
This is Waking Titan. Username: wakingtitan
wakingtitan.com
Navigating to wakingtitan.com prompted visitors for a username and password. The web page could be accessed by logging in with these credentials:
Username: wakingtitan
Password: hyperion
Logging in displayed the site's homepage, which featured a hexagonal arrangement of triangles (referred to as "sigils" by the source code), one of which was glowing red. Clicking on the glowing red sigil prompted visitors to enter an email address to be notified of further updates. When the page was first accessed, there was a row of 5 glyphs along the bottom, but only the first glyph was active. Clicking on the first glyph brought visitors to another page:
Clicking on the globe icon linked visitors to a PDF file, which was a top secret memo from Major Sophie Dubois to Elizabeth Leighton.
First Glyph - Top Secret Memo
The file contained vague “Assessments” of the project’s assets, infrastructure, and participant skill. A “Current Footprint” section included various social media websites and ARG sites (including this very wiki), indicating that ARG players themselves were the participants of Project WT. Another entry in the footprint section, forums.etarc.org, was ostensibly a forum for radio enthusiasts. It was speculated that the ETARC forums would turn out to be a hub for interacting with NPCs, a theory which which was confirmed when wakingtitan.com updated to include a direct link to the ETARC forums (on the glyph in the center of the hexagon).
On the footer of each page of the PDF file, the string =O3QcsBFH6zY was displayed. This string lead to a YouTube URL, which hosted a song by Kavinsky called First Blood.
The final page of the PDF file contained 5 alphanumeric sequences, each of which has a missing entry. Each break corresponded to one letter of the final solution, which was
ORION.
Entering ORION on the page where the PDF was initially found displayed “Granted” and accepted the password, returning visitors to the homepage. The first glyph along the bottom of the screen then turned red.
First Sequence - Atlas
On the 8th of June, a broadcast was played on the radio stations displayed on project-wt.com at different times during the day. The voice in the transmission said
We are the mystery hiding in plain sight. You will find us. This broadcast is the first clue.Spectrograms of the clip showed text reading
wakingtitan.com.
First Sigil
At approximately 1550-1600 UTC, an email was sent out to the Waking Titan email list, and at about 1700 UTC, a second glyph was unlocked on wakingtitan.com. Additionally, clicking the top left triangle (referred to as a "sigil" by the source code) in the center hexagon now revealed a puzzle instead of a prompt to enter a dialogue box:
The first puzzle can be solved several ways, but the most apparent solution was as follows:
If players look at the image in the background, they can see some text. The characters are CCXL and XV, one on top of the other with a dividing line between them. That's 240 and 15 in Roman Numerals. 240/15 = 16, the answer to the puzzle.
The number 16 also appeared in several other places: for instance, on a picture of a dossier hosted on the Waking Titan site. 16 was also the number of radio stations that were activated. Solving the puzzle causeed a video to play. Several Discord users have attempted to transcribe the audio of the video:
My name is (?). You must help her find the way. If you're receiving this signal, please, help us. You must save us. Without the videocom to help us, we're pretty much stuck. They can't find our devices. Help us. Tell her about Saladin (?)
After this puzzle was solved, clicking the second (top right) sigil showed a date, time, and radio station as well as an input box for email updates:
By clicking the second glyph on the bottom row, a second PDF file could be accessed, as well as a text entry box. The PDF file hinted towards a live drop that would take place at 7:00PM that day, at Cafe Bene in New York City.
Second Glyph - Live Drop
At 7PM local time at Cafe Bene in NYC, someone met with the courier and was told Think outside the box. Something big is coming and when we find out what it is we must be prepared. Also said to remember that we are a science community first and foremost. and was given a piece of paper.
Transcription of the string:
MDEzRDowMDc4OjA3MjQ6MDA1Ng==
Converted from base64 to ASCII:
013D:0078:0724:0056
The base64 was No Man's Sky coordinates which lead to a Communications Station that displayed the text:
LOOP16 UNEXPECTED ERROR: 97C-303N-5884-P
Entering 97C-303N-5884-P into the second glyph returned the "accepted" screen, confirming the link between Waking Titan and No Man's Sky. At this point, it should be noted that No Man's Sky had a concurrent ARG involving 16 cassette tapes. The prominence of the number 16, as well as the method of hiding spectrograms in audio, made it highly likely that the No Man's Sky ARG was intertwined with Waking Titan.
Second Sequence - Echo
At about 05:20 UTC on 2017-06-10 an advertisement was played on SBC Paradise FM which referenced a service called Echo Software, and a website.
Transcription:
I lost my grandmother, Emma, 2 years ago. She was 85. I miss her so much. But now, thanks to Echo Software, I - I can hear her voice back, just using a sample from an old home movie. *Grandma Speaks* Are you filming this honey? *Back to woman* I can make her say what makes me feel close to her again, like *Grandma Interrupts* I love you honey, and I'm leaving you all my jewelery. *Normal woman laughs? Cries?* Thanks to Echo Software, everybody's voice can be anybody's. Visit echo-64.com.
At first, http://echo-64.com had the text, BEGIN SECOND SEQUENCE ... Initialization may take up to 24 hours.. At 17:12 UTC on 10th June, the site was updated into a fully-fledged corporate website. From reading the site, players learned that Echo is a company that allows its customers to synthesize virtual versions of deceased relatives. The purpose of this process was ostensibly to help people recover emotionally from the loss of a loved one. The process begins with sending Echo a 5-minute audio snippet from the person in question.
A phone number was listed on the site - +1 (408) 703-2077. Upon calling it, players would hear a message, transcribed here:
Echo is in transition and therefore cannot accept new input. When we achieve our predetermined finite state, we'll take new input and get back to you. Thank you. [BEEP] [Exactly 5 seconds of near-silence] [BEEP]
If players spoke during the silent section of the call, the final beep would not occur until the player stopped talking, or until 5 minutes had elapsed.
Clicking the string of numbers at the bottom of the Echo page, 84.190.188, redirected to Franka Potente - Believe, the third song found in this ARG.
Second Sigil
Located on the homepage of the site was a row of 5 geometric shapes. Clicking on all of them yielded the phrase:
The order of things is formed by the angle of its measure.
Clicking again on the shapes, this time in the order of decreasing angle (circle, triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon) yielded the riddle
This breaks white into 7.
The solution to the riddle was prism, which was the password for the second sigil on the main Waking Titan website.
Completing this sigil resulted in a new video being played, featuring the same woman as the first video. In this one she introduced herself as Elizabeth Leighton, CEO of the Atlas Foundation.
Hex to Gif
Searching for anything on the Echo website revealed a set of 5 numbers:
112 97 115 116 101
Decoded from decimal:
paste
There was also a much larger block of hex underneath. Decoding this hex yielded the raw data for a .gif file. Opening this file, players could just barely make out a string of characters:
z1Rgxi5L
These two ciphers led to the URL http://pastebin.com/z1Rgxi5L, which contained the phrase There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so in hexadecimal. This phrase is a quote from Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.
Third Sequence - Multiverse
At 15:50 UTC on 2017-06-16, the Multiverse Technologies site was updated, with the text
BEGIN THIRD SEQUENCE ... Initialization may take up to 24 hours.
At 13:09 UTC on 2017-06-17 on Wael 96FM, an advertisement was played:
Because of our recent discoveries in the fields of magnetic and geophysical anomalies, Multiverse Technologies is now hiring. If you or someone you know have research experience in the fields of radiation belts, computationalism, magnetic fields, or simply quantum electrodynamics, we will consider your application. If you have what it takes to break the laws of physics, contact us now at multiverse-75.com.
Immediately after this message was broadcast, the Multiverse site was updated to another corporate homepage, much like the Echo website before it. The Waking Titan site was also updated - the third sigil was unlocked, and the third and fourth glyphs were activated.
A phone number was listed on the Multiverse site: (1) 505 695 7033. Calling this number yielded the following message:
Thank you for your interest in Multiverse. Right now, our priority is our work on Abelian groups, manifolds, and basic knowledge of cochains, their cycles, and coboundaries. We are in urgent need of talents in this branch of mathematics. If you have the expertise, let us know through our website.
Emailing [email protected] yielded the following response:
Specific expertise detected. Input desired branch of mathematics in subject line to [email protected]. XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX
Sending another message to [email protected] with the subject line Algebraic Topology (the branch of mathematics dealing with Abelian groups, manifolds, and cochains, as mentioned when calling the phone number) yielded the following message:
Input > Valid candidate in algebraic topology Executing process POSTBOX.... <...> <...> <...> Process complete. WARNING: CONFIRMATION IS REQUIRED. Do you want to trigger the mailing of package #9 /16? Confirm in subject line with code ID : 817IDAS to [email protected]
Sending a final message to [email protected] with the subject line 817IDAS yielded the following, final message:
Package #9 /16 has been sent. Please stand by. ETA: Week of June 19 // http://bit.ly/2sa872g42
The bit.ly link led to this PDF file, which is an internal memo from Elizabeth Leighton to all employees of the Atlas foundation. Finally, the footer of the PDF contained a link to Arcade Fire - Supersymmetry.
On June 21st a package was delivered to CobraTV. The package contained a cassette tape labeled 9/16 which is related to a concurrent No Man's Sky ARG involving 16 cassette tapes.
Third Glyph
Upon pressing the third glyph, a video of a picture of a wall covered in post-it notes with arrows and letters written on them showed in the background. By following the arrows in a path, players were able to deduce a series of letters. There was only one direct path from the top left note to the bottom right note:
O>B>A>F>G>K>M
OBAFGKM is a system used in “Spectral Classification” to describe the absorption lines of a spectrum. Accordingly, Spectral was the password for the third glyph.
Third Sigil
Upon further inspection of the Multiverse site, players noticed that three photographs of Multiverse employees displayed a glitch effect. The original, non-glitched images contained a faint, but visible distortion in the colour channel corresponding to their clothing colour. These distortions were actually two letters of Morse code in each of the 3 images. Going in the order they appear on the staff pictures:
... -.-. .- .-.. . ...
Decoded from Morse code:
SCALES
The answer for the third sigil was SCALES. After solving the third sigil, the background changed to a video of Elizabeth, as it had done with the past two sigils. By overlaying all of Elizabeth’s videos so far, players obtained a more complete message, as seen here. Also, the fourth (locked) sigil appeared, along with a message that players should wait until June 24th:
Fields Ciphers
Under the “Fields” section of the Multiverse-75 home page, players observed 5 buttons, labelled “Radiation Belts”, “Computationalism”, “Magnetic Fields”, “Electrodynamics”, and “Particle Acceleration”. Also, hidden in the source code of the web page was the string SCHRODINGEABFJKLMPQTUVWXYZ. This string represents a Polybius square, with the keyword SCHRODINGER. It was used as the key for a Bifid cipher to decode all 5 messages:
Radiation Belts
Wc snpsigdd cpfrrcxnfi hikdnnp dm crc Fcb Pdeug vueageacc vtyl sa zxm crebzp lyoeuaiwpv. We recreate conditions similar to the Van Allen radiation belt in our secure facilities.
Computationalism
Eqsigcmsn ngi cddipnsttkdnl ivacsdmi sw a nllhiiiizlrcd bcrh bb ummsdcnsqpcwm: Nt hfv smcimi rilbzpk qwv ciwp vn lukncve mpx ocwxeai zh vcvuodm banqwdmuxab zyce gtwuesnlm-rebgfryoy wetnplloa. Exploring the possibilities inherent in a computational view of consciousness: We are always finding new ways to enhance our ability to process information with naturally-occurring phenomena.
Magnetic Fields
Biimbf cb ya cwmhhbo bidmspi ikik iq fscrccstr pisoigrcfmh sbbgmoiwmmn ndfkqd: Kddk bipci cissntv ayv rssdwzzkle vuotz anq xs okolpvqd tzdu cvl iavtdyz vdbwcuocgkl we mviwdpxx sqyixypv. Adding to an already massive pool of knowledge surrounding fundamental forces: This group studies how industrial tools can be improved with the liberal application of magnetic energies.
Electrodynamics
Wgmigcesc vd itb tpbrsenp sw Btrfngp Rchmgapheligdap, cr hmk pn fari medwlo kyn tx wlp zanlhuoz/gura cdecrvrwyuuo xqwr pewswk ycp xraqce az, rzavv ymr. Venturing to new horizons in Quantum Electrodynamics, we aim to make better use of the particle/wave interactions that happen all around us, every day.
Particle Acceleration
Fcdgc fc bvm cskaddt-dsimpirpsh BIHI Mdsifodsmcrrcxp Qrdba Cbhmchpk mph sti Satidpc Lkfodsrmbs, taf bfcbpdd ooklousm weslwyawyea wp koepz wo maqwylz rbut xz ppsudti zce zmu, pc w yueqy rxoa ucve mrrowyerqh ecrczaiwpv. Based on the already-successful CERN Superconducting Super Collider and the Cornell Syncrotron, our private particle accelerator is built to perform tens of studies per day, at a lower cost than comparable facilities.
Fourth Glyph - Package 9/16
On 21 June 2017, YouTuber CobraTV received package 9/16. The sending of the package had been triggered by emails to [email protected]. CobraTV posted a short YouTube video showing the tape and playing portions of Side A, and made a download link for Side A available immediately. Side B was made available about two hours later.
The package itself was very similar to the packages received by No Man’s Sky moderators and community leaders earlier in June. The package contained a poster, a t-shirt, socks, a small statue of a ship, and cassette 9/16. The cassette was slightly different than previously sent cassettes, most notably because on the exterior of the cassette case was the ‘Atlas’ logo seen in several places throughout the Waking Titan ARG. The audio contents of the tape were also markedly different than those seen in the other tapes.
For information and discussion on the other cassette tapes, please see this page.
A Side
On the A Side of cassette 9/16, a 15 minute long ambient musical track is recorded, followed by a spoken word portion and then more ambient music.
Transcript of spoken word portion:
I am alone in this space between worlds, I am alone but for my thoughts, my words. I am alone but for you. I see you. You must have known I could, you must have known what this was. Through these travels we come to know ourselves, just as the universe comes to know us in turn. I cannot step through. I know now that if I do, all of this will be over. Lives come back to me. I've seen horrors and wonders. I have been through. I have become good and evil. I have grown beyond all such things. Life after life. And now I am become you. One day your voice will speak to you telling you of something, some signal that needs answering. It will tell you of some secret at the heart of reality, some puzzle that needs to be solved lest all life falls into decay and oblivion. Do not listen to it. If all the world is a lie, then nothing is true, not even that explanation. Abandon it. Abandon me. It is inevitable.
B Side
The B Side of tape 9/16 consisted of ambient noise and a low-pitched repeated series of notes. Each note is on a specific frequency, as indicated by the spectrogram. These notes were converted to MIDI values.
Frequencies: 490, 145, 208, 174, 138, 370, 260 MIDI: 71, 50, 56, 53, 49, 66, 60
The frequencies were decoded into MIDI using this chart, yielding 36, 15, 21, 18, 14, 31, 25. Taking the mod26 of each of these numbers gave us 10, 15, 21, 18, 14, 5, 25. Converting these numbers into letters based on their positions in the alphabet yields the word JOURNEY.
The word JOURNEY was rotated 13 spaces (ROT13 is a fairly standard cipher seen in ARGs) to produce WBHEARL, the passphrase for glyph 4.
Fourth Sequence - Myriad
At 2017 Jun 24th, 3:41 PM the Myriad website opened for investigation. In the meantime, at 2017 Jun 24th, 3:55 PM the Waking Titan site unlocked another glyph and sigil.
The sigil led us to the Myriad status page, where we had to investigate a number of things. On the other hand, the glyph redirected to the main page of Myriad website.
Status Page
Arriving on the Myriad Status page, there are numerous elements available to view, including:
- A Network Report:
Latest network diagnostic table: 669:a 116:b 365:c
- Solar Shield Status:
Shield 1: ONLINE Shield 2: ONLINE Shield 3: DIAGNOSING...
- Unit Cluster Total:
25,000 UNITS ONLINE
- On-The-Ground Speed Averages:
Manhattan: 1.3Tb/s London: 1.1Tb/s Tokyo: 1.0Tb/s
- Physical Backup Nodes:
Alpha: ONLINE Beta: ONLINE Delta: ONLINE Epsilon: ONLINE
- Localized Magnetic Generation Field Service:
STATUS: ONLINE INCIDENTS: 100 PB Limit reached >> clients/017-a24 uid: hevelius%20(wit.1706)%20su%20song // pc:lowercase(xxxx xxxxx) INCIDENTS: L6 package exceeded >> clients/021-f16 | 32272 uid: Z28ubmFzYS5nb3YvMnRDSGx5Zw // pc:lowercase(xxxxxxxxx)
- Current Satelite Launch Window:
07 DAYS: CLEAR 30 DAYS: RESCHEDULING 60 DAYS: CLEAR 90 DAYS: CLEAR
The Network Report
The Network Report section of the page contained a link, titled as “Mercury Process Running”. This linked to a voting site, where users could vote between 16, 32, 41, 64, 80, and 96. The meaning of these numbers was initially unclear. Upon completing your vote, you were redirected to this page, which displayed the total percentages of votes.
At first, it was not clear what the purpose of this page was, but after the number 80 had "won" the vote, 80 users were randomly selected from the Waking Titan mailing list, and were sent free copies of No Man’s Sky.
Fourth Sigil
Eventually, the progress bar for the first bar reached completion, giving out this message:
INCIDENTS: 100 PB Limit reached >> clients/017-a24 uid: hevelius%20(wit.1706)%20su%20song // pc:lowercase(xxxx xxxxx)
Hevelius, Wit and Su Song were the names of ancient astronomers who make star charts. Accordingly, Star Chart was the password for the first page, which gave us this PDF.
Later on, the second progress bar reached completion, giving us this:
INCIDENTS: L6 package exceeded >> clients/021-f16 | 32272 uid: Z28ubmFzYS5nb3YvMnRDSGx5Zw // pc:lowercase(xxxxxxxxx)
The UID listed is in base64. Decoding it leads to an [go.nasa.gov/2tCHlyg NASA archive page]. Inputting 32272 (from the message above) leads to this description of the STS 120 shuttle satellite. That then links to a mission done by the spacecraft Discovery which is the code for the second site. Upon accessing the site, we received another PDF.
The two PDF's contain the strings 313-xxx and xxx-98176. Putting those two together gives us 313-98176, which is the solution for the fourth sigil.
Fifth Glyph
As people voted on numbers, the status report page was being updated. Over time, more and more number:letter pairs were added, until the end of the alphabet was reached. The final listing is as follows:
669:a 116:b 365:c 119:d 816:e 108:f 590:g 586:h 408:i 847:j 759:k 707:l 804:m 343:n 313:o 298:p 919:q 333:r 585:s 602:t 196:u 225:v 560:w 296:x 534:y 775:z 811:a 918:b 922:c 530:d 866:e 613:f 500:g 449:h 563:i 221:j 435:k 655:l 332:m 443:n 992:o 702:p 531:q 513:r 760:s 404:t 363:u 118:v 841:w 621:x 337:y 291:z
If you e-mail the sales@myriad-70 account you get a message mentioning a "dedicated Nocturne support address". Mailing [email protected] returns a message with the sender Julian J Wong. Emailing [email protected] returns a message with the email address [email protected]:
I've looked up and down the sonic bridge, but three of my favorite things are still missing. [email protected]
From this, we deduced that solfege note names (eg. do re mi) were relevant. The final email ended up being to [email protected], which responded with a set of numbers:
68 79 40 49 49 54 41 32 32 77 73 40 55 48 55 41 32 32 83 79 76 40 56 49 49 41
Decoding these using decimal to ASCII, we get:
DO(116) MI(707) SOL(811)
Combining these with FA-291, TI-313, LA-443, RE-992 from the contact page, we have a full solfege alphabet with numbers tied to it. When placing these in order and cross-referencing the numbers against the Status Report Page, we get the following:
Do - 116 - b re - 992 - o mi - 707 - l fa - 291 - z sol - 811 - a la - 443 - n ti - 313 - o
When put in the right order, it gives us, Bolzano , the solution for the fifth glyph.
This page is a work in progress, and will be updated as new developments emerge.
