Watching You:Timeline

Trailheads

On 2016-07-02, the reddit user /u/stvjsmrs (which had existed for at least a month previously) posted to various gaming and ARG-related to subreddits.

/r/arg and /r/gamedetectives

We have been watching you.

Complete this test to continue a series. You are, for now, alone, but your goal is the same.

i ii ii ii  mm m m m  G GG  U U U  RR RR RR  II II  MM M M

(The /r/gamedetectives post is identical.)

This was solved to be Morse Code, leading to an Imgur image:

/r/fireemblem and /r/fireemblemcasual

We have been watching you.

Complete this test to continue a series. You are, for now, alone, but your goal is the same.

Strength is key if left unchanged.
A digit is paired with a needed glyph.
Seek an image of your own.

LISSA
shura (c)
igrene
SAKURA
roy
tiki (A:Hm)
t9

The names in the last paragraph are all characters from Fire Emblem (which was also featured in a previous ARG, Mystery of the Emblem, although the puppetmaster of that ARG has claimed no connection to this one).

/r/minecraft

We have been watching you.

Complete this test to continue a series. You are, for now, alone, but your goal is the same.

Update to now, and what would be here? Letters, not digits.
Don't have a block, pick these up instead.
First things first.
Seek an image of your own.

339
^U
351:14
^356
^387
^440
264

These were solved to be item IDs, leading to another Imgur image:

By taking the first letter of the namen of each of these blocks, this was solved to:

STVJSMRS
GMAIL
COM

or the email address [email protected]. Some attempts have been made to contact the address but no replies have been received.

/r/overwatch

We have been watching you.

Complete this test to continue a series. You are, for now, alone, but your goal is the same.

Not what’s here, but what you see normally, is what you need.
First things first of that.
Seek an image of your own.

x
Q
a zaryanova
q
F
H SHIMADA
e54

Discord users Malqua and whizzer0 solved this by changing the three real names to their character names (Zarya, Hanzo, and Bastion), yielding an Imgur URL:

These are Overwatch ability icons. Discord users picapi, Malqua, and Lucario solved this by taking the first letters of each ability, leading to a Pastebin URL:

Player phase. Who should fight who?

Class: Fighter, Archer, Pegasus Knight, Soldier
Level: 7, 3, 4, 6
HP: 12, 10, 14, 9
Atk: 14, 14, 12, 18
Spd: 14, 4, 9, 8
Def: 5, 3, 6, 4

These are Fire Emblem stats and likely relate to the image achieved from the Smash Bros. image.

/r/smashbros

We have been watching you.

This was solved by taking the first letters of each character/emblem shown, with normal images being lowercase letters and inverted images being uppercase letters. It led to another image:

This image, heavily corrupted, is of a GBA Fire Emblem game.

Website

A email was received by users from [email protected] with the following message:

Ajiaaigeg.

C teciishne rr ouetbzwawevn tlr qg aer zhicmjn th pswtuvk qoue xvqbhpl. Kv laya jrxyhyf a frfbyk sb aelrg nq apymeye eyms.

Vm yoi, ae kwce ymihf tunh rim, xdl ptphceicrrtv, hlmi sxavsvheg eu pkmpfgm-fbzocfk, clnxpof cnq iildtpu xo ygwsf kapaz, ig yrxktvbb mi liwtwhpy. Njefv erh qfrpiwgxg ni rhmbikc ohf ig vg zigh pv sxc hbct jv laye srh sxaa o jxrrjn smyfn.

Kf lbi pckl pv chlhcpur, gpedsp mmslr hii aeeoptx, fhnr://sgixlgjw.svrwnfyus.pfq. Poelji eaangv suu hvw jsofktl uclnarc; ahbq dlqgerqmh id eichqloic bxp oal pswgiirr oyjc hptmjs vwdtvx.

Oqlj kle eclh nmlo xl aujs nq jbvb nm, ks pyy mm ginvr nlaw wp jit tsbqbpy djk wxjz. Aqoq yive.

Yvwje

It was later discovered to be a Vigenère cipher, which uses a keyword to unscramble a string of text.

The keyword was later found out to be:

usewhatyoucanreadalreadytoreadwhatyoucannot

Using the keyword and the string of text, the message was decyphered and read:

Greetings.

I represent an organisation and we are looking to recruit more members. We have created a series of tests to achieve this.

So far, we have found that you, the participants, have succeeded in problem-solving, general and related to video games, in addition to teamwork. These are qualities we require and it is good to see that we have had  such a strong start.

If you wish to continue, please visit our website, http://stvjsmrs.wordpress.com. Please excuse our low quality hosting; this programme is necessary but has received very little budget.

Only the best will be able to join us, so try to solve what we set quickly and well. Good luck.

Grace

The message included a wordpress link that brings users to a bare wordpress page that says:

Testing will continue tomorrow

Good work with the first wave. Keep going.

Grace

Later, after many users were left wondering when tomorrrow actually was, the PM updated the website with the following:

You keep asking what time it’s tomorrow. I don’t know! Whenever it’s ready, which could be a while. The others are slow.

Sorry.

Benjamin

Phase Two

On 2016-07-03, a new post was posted.

The 2s and ²s in the post were binary and decoded to http://imgur.com/?. Some of the twos were italic:

²22²2²²²²222²2²²²222²2²²²222²²²²²²222²2²²²2²2222²²2²2222²22²2²²2²²2²222²²22²2²²2²22²22²2²22²²222²222²2²2²222²²2²²²2²222²²22²²²22²22²2222²22²22²2²²2²2222²²222222

Converting this to binary gave http://imgur.com/?

Using the key like this

²2[2]²2²²²²222²2²²²222²2²²²222²²²²²²222[²]2²²²2²2222²²2²2222²22²2²²2²²2²222²²22²2²²2²[2]2²22²2²22²²222²222²2²2²222²²2²²²2²222²²22²²²22²22²2222²2[2]²22²2²²[2²]22[2]2²²222222
01[2]3456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0[1]23456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz012345678[9]abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrst[u]vwxyz01[23]45[6]789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

gave the imgur URL http://imgur.com/219u236

hidden inside this image was a soundcloud link at the top https://soundcloud.com/stvjsmrs/hidden-in-plain-sight/s-TDGUY

The mp3 on the sound cloud when put through sstv gave an image of google reverse image search as can be seen here

Reverse image searching the imgur image gave no results put Simon was nice enough to do it for us