Entropy/Chapter 1

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This page describes in detail the events of Chapter 1 in the Entropy ARG.

Entropy Begins

In February 2018, a series of videos depicting cryptic monitors and symbols were found on a YouTube channel named 'RW50cm9weQ'. Shortly after the discovery of the channel, users quickly found that the channel name, RW50cm9weQ, was base64 which translated to Entropy.

The channel consisted of two playlists named |||||||||| and -||||- respectively.

"||||||||||"

The playlist titled |||||||||| contained 10 videos depicting a monitor showcasing a series of symbols. All the videos in the playlist lasted exactly 1 minute and 22 seconds and possessed a similar structure.

00:00 - 00:08 - Monitor boots up.
00:08 - 00:13 - Initial symbol (thumbnail) is shown.
00:13 - 00:18 - A low-quality image is displayed.
00:18 - 01:03 - A sequence of 15 additional symbols is shown.
01:03 - 01:07 - Monitor fully lights up.
01:07 - 01:12 - Channel logo displayed.
01:12 - 01:22 - Monitor shuts down.

Note: The tenth video in |||||||||| contains 16 additional symbols instead of 15.

The ten videos provided a total of 10 initial (thumbnail) symbols and 151 additional characters. The thumbnail symbols are speculated to be a base 10 number system, and the additional characters part of an elaborate alphabet.

• 

  Note: This chart is for lookup purposes only and should not be used as a translation tool.

"-||||-"

The playlist titled -||||- contained 4 videos lasting around 30 seconds each. The videos contain the same monitor found in the previous playlist, which displays the channel logo followed by various combinations of the known symbols from ||||||||||. The last video accompanied its strings with background images, possibly hinting towards the meanings behind the strings.

"| _____| _"

On February 14,2018, another video was posted, this time titled | _____| _. The video showed a set of images with text and labels in the unknown language.

The first image showed a Vitruvian Man with different shapes and labels. The following items were present:

1.) A Cartesian coordinate system with x, y and z axes.
2.) An expanded version of the numeral system found in the first playlist.
3.) Cardinal directions.
4.) A circle with a single dot, presumed to represent a hydrogen atom.

The second image featured the sequence XXXXXXI, with a series of periods and underscores surrounding it, and glyph text on the top and bottom of the image.

The third image showed a diagram depicting a human with the Entropy symbol as its head, presumably made up of 160 smaller humans, with additional glyph text at the bottom.

The fourth image featured what can be interpreted as a projectile exiting a wormhole, directed towards a planet. This is also accompanied by glyph labels.

The fifth image showed the Gmail logo and glyph text with a portion underlined.

Glyph Translation

Upon further inspection, it was noted that the XXXXXXI sequence found on the second image of | _____| _ had exactly 26 "ends", which coincides with the number of letters in the English alphabet. Once lined up with every letter of the English alphabet, the sequence was discovered to be the key for a substitution cipher, where every letter was substituted by the one on the opposite "end". Players referred to this cipher as X6I.

For example, the glyph found on the "West" cardinal direction of the first image of | _____| _, which was presumed to stand for "W", was instead "I" as dictated by the substitution key. Similarly, the glyph inside the hydrogen model, which was presumed to be "H", turned out to be "T". Using this method, most of the glyphs on the first image were solved.

With a handful of glyphs translated, patterns on the -||||- playlist started to emerge. First, ends of certain glyph words were identified as "-ing" verb endings, and eventually, words and entire sentences were completely translated.

• 

  This is the table used by solvers to assemble the translations.

CODE:INIT

After acquiring a complete translation of all the glyphs in | _____| _ and -||||- (see Resources), it was deduced that players were expected to send an e-mail to a specific address.

Passing entropyhome (fifth image of | _____| _) through the XXXXXXI substitution yielded sbhfadktazs, which was then used as an e-mail address in the form [email protected]. Players sent emails mentioning CODE:INIT in the body, as was suggested by the fifth image in | _____| _, and received an image with glyph text as a response. The image translated to CODE RECEIVED PLEASE WAIT.

Hello World

On February 21, a 06:44 minute video went up under the name Tsxxa Iafxp, translating to Hello World

using the X6I cipher.

The video contained glyphs, X6I ciphered text, and plaintext English. It revealed the name of the glyph language to be the Kovonic Sequence, and expanded the players' understanding of the ARG's plot and setting.

The following is an outline of the structure of Tsxxa Iafxp:

00:00 - 00:30 - Camera zooms into a monitor displaying various words in Kovonic:
00:30 - 00:42 - Fades to three monitors. The left monitor displays static Kovonic. The Center monitor displays a series of words in Kovonic. The Right monitor is empty.
00:42 - 01:15 - Center monitor begins to display X6I-ciphered English.
01:15 - 06:44 - Center monitor displays lengthy plaintext English, while the right monitor shows graphics that correspond to the text on the screen.

Hello World - Lore Summary

Entropy is the name of the entity communicating with players through the monitors featured in the videos. Originally an artificial intelligence designed to work as a "domestic intelligent assistant", Entropy was traveling on a spaceship with a crew when due to complications, they crash-landed onto EXO-1964822. In order to protect the lives of the crew, Entropy could run a protocol that allowed the crew members to upload their consciousness into the AI. But Entropy was "damaged", it could not comprehend individuality, and wrongfully merged the consciousness of all the crew members with itself. It then created the Kovonic Sequence to communicate with players. Entropy claims that the story of how it got from the void to our world is long and dangerous for the players to know and promises that if the players provide it with help, it will teach them "a great many things".

For a full transcript of the plaintext found in Tsxxa Iafxp, see Resources