Cryptic Story Investigation

[Polyphemus]

Hokay. I’ve come across some stuff, and I don’t know what it means – so I’ll just tell everyone what I know.

For a few days, member @Alderan_Smile has been posting encrypted fiction. I don’t read fan fiction, and I don’t have either the time or the inclination to decipher the posts.

Member @johnnycloud , however, has been extremely keen for people to look at @Alderan_Smile 's posts.

The last two days, @Alderan_Smile’s posts included images hosted on Dropbox. I downloaded these images, and examined them with a hex editor – this is what I found.

I don’t know if this is ARG related, or just an enthusiastic attempt to join in. Some members appear to know more than they’re admitting to.

That’s it. You know what I know.

Logbook of the Star Wolf - Encrypted History of a Journey to the Hive

40 75 88 71 2 70 67 91 85 2 67 73 81 14 2 86 74 75 85 2 67 84 70 87 81 87 85 2 86 67 85 77 2 86 81 2 85 86 81 82 2 86 74 71 2 42 75 88 71 2 68 71 73 67 80 16 2 54 74 71 91 2 79 67 70 71 2 87 85 2 70 75 71 2 67 80 70 2 69 74 67 80 73 71 2 81 87 84 2 68 81 70 75 71 85 2 85 81 2 86 74 71 2 85 74 75 82 2 89 81 87 78 70 80 6093 86 2 84 71 69 81 73 80 75 92 71 2 87 85 16 2 54 74 71 91 2 75 80 86 71 84 84 81 73 67 86 71 70 2 87 85 2 86 81 2 72 75 80 70 2 81 87 86 2 74 81 89 2 89 71 2 68 71 74 67 88 71 …

[sheralmyst]

Thank you. I had no idea how to approach the whole subject. But there it is.

I do remember we had a whole section of community made puzzles during WT. They were fun to work between WT puzzles

[Morse]

Johny has been on the forum for a long while. Alderan is very recent.

[Vau1t]

You can binwalk out the files. They’re definitely interesting.

The resulting files can be found here: Project-Skyscraper-Investigation/Alderan_Smile at main · echo-agent/Project-Skyscraper-Investigation · GitHub

It seems to be a different style than what we’ve seen from the Architect so far and it may be prudent to create a new thread/topic if we want to dig any further so we don’t clutter this feed.

[Polyphemus]

As I said, I’m not at all convinced this is ARG related. Trouble is, I’m not certain it’s not, either.

[bugaboocreek]

The way i see it, if its connected, great! If not, and PM sees were spending too much bandwidth on it, they’ll start nudging us towards the right carrot.

[Polyphemus]

@Vau1t

You can binwalk out the files.

7Zip will extract them, too. You just have to convince it a .PNG file is an archive.

[bugaboocreek]

Im about to hop in-game in a few minutes, i can investigate the coordinates from @Alderan_Smile and report back to my commanding operators o7

[bugaboocreek]

Forgive me for the flex, im half sorry.

My home planet (that Morsetown is on) has a paradise quotient of 99.5%. Will post receipts with my other findings (for some reason, alt-tabbing out of NMS on my pc causes the framerate to completely sh*t the bed. So unfortunately i cannot provide real time updates containing screenshots).

[bugaboocreek]

I have arrived on Apstasy-VI. En route to a communications station and (presumably) the base depicted in one of the binwalked files.

UPDATE: arrived at “New Dawn Center”. As far as the base goes, seems like your run-of-the-mill NMS base.

Comm Ball on base reads: “The Swarm isn’t our problem, Atlas can die.”

[jonbot5k]

@bugaboocreek

alt-tabbing out of NMS on my pc causes the framerate to completely sh*t the bed

try a full restart of your pc. I had this happen a few weeks ago (maybe a month) while alt-tabbing from NMS to my googlesheet. only thing that fixed it was a full pc reboot.

[sheralmyst]

I created a new topic. It can be adjusted as the investigation proceeds

[bugaboocreek]

Thank you @sheralmyst mwwwwah

Base i am currently at is the coordinates depicted in “No Time to Get to the Center”. The system i am in is NOT the same system depicted in “Answer or Output”.

Based on the screenshot pulled from AoO and my positioning on the Galactic map, they seem nearby to each other. Taking a quick Nip Nip break before i start cavemanning this sh*t.

[sheralmyst]

I have adjusted the category due to misspellings which point to being fan made. But let’s see where it goes. Carry on!

[YourBasicMaths]

Fun little side quest for sure.

User definitely appears to be a fellow participant/audience member (one of us) for Project Skyscraper based on their posts.

Thanks for sharing anyway! Maybe we’re looking at a future PM someday.

[bugaboocreek]

Yeah, the comms ball was a bit too “edgelord” for my taste.

At this point ive been swimming through the galaxy map trying to find the black hole depicted in “answer or output”. At least its something to do, i guess.

Ill keep my freighter here overnight in case we feel its worth digging deeper, but im starting to just think the focus of “answer or output” is the galactic center, the highlighted system might just be a coincidence of where @Alderan_Smile’s cursor was at the time of the screenshot.

Just some headcanon and some practice work for our hacker team

[vector_cmdr]

Yeah… don’t know about this one.
This is some 2004 edgeofnowhere / 4chan imgstuffer type stuff.
Past post history doesn’t align either.

I’m filing my report to the Chief operator as case closed - may they take my holobadge if I’m wrong.

[ozoto]

I’ve been playing with these posts, and from what I’ve found it’s really just an encrypted log of the expedition. The plot seems fire, but I’m still working on translating it lol

Verdict: Fun, but not related to ARG. The poster is a dev from his history, so he’d most likely know how to hide text in the binary of a picture

[vector_cmdr]

I dunno about the dev angle even being relevant. We all used to do this kind of thing as dumb kids on image boards and forums to share uh… stuff. It’s as easy as:
copy /b image.jpg + stuff.zip hidden_output.jpg
Especially in the days of “hey [clanker] make this for me”.

[bugaboocreek]

Evidence of my arrival to @Alderan_Smile’s base.

and coordinates to my near perfect home planet that i will donate for CSD purposes.