The Order: 1886 teaser

Update 1
Update 2
Update 3
Update 4
Update 5
Update 6
Update 7

I got a PS4 over Christmas and I’m looking forward to the platform exclusive The Order: 1886 so much so I’ve pre-ordered it despite me vowing not to pre-order a game again after BF4.

It doesn’t seemed to have had great previews from the gaming press but hey it looks good with it’s cool steam punk Victorian setting. It’s a linear, 3rd person story driven game so will it be as good as The Last of Us?

I’ve just seen an interesting post from DualShockers about a teaser faux blog investigating the secret society from the game’s setting from a possible descendant in our time. I like these kind of things so have spent time translating the coded message in one of the posts using their key.

Spoiler!!! My translation

This translation is literal, so I’ve not corrected any spelling mistakes encase I’ve made a mistake or they’re relevant:

november fifteen

lh had an urgent conversntion
with so in the royal gallery for
a qunrter ubur lh decarted the
palace immediately afterwards in
a carriage i was unable to
follow november sixteen sp
arrived at turee entering
discreetly at black rodf garden
where he was greeted by lh and
ushered into the royal court
drawing room i did not observe
them leaving however at quarter
five the room was unoccupied

Update 1

Interesting; in the post about Darwin there is a code OTP 54614 which when copied and pasted into something else showed OTP 546-14.

As a guess it could mean On The Page in that book. As it doesn’t have 54,000 pages I guess it’s page 546 and either word or line 14?

Word = structures
Line = how these difficulties can be mastered

Hmmm none the wiser, nor on the key, cipher or hash in the New Year’s page: UcrxtfwvRahfzVuyzwXspgbIsfedXgys

Update 2

So a mention of Frank Miller who possibly created the one time pad system and his book published in 1882 (nicely done! :)) as a relevant cipher system could point to either the above number being a translation code or that line or word taken out of Darwin’s book be a key?

Update 3

YES! I’m sure OTP equals one time pad so 54614 is the key!?!?!? The string of letters is the ciphertext I need to decrypt. But isn’t the key for a one time pad meant to be the same length as the text? I need to find the full text of Frank Miller’s book.

Well assuming A=0 and Z=25:

Ucrxt fwvRa hfzVu yzwXs pgbIs fedXg ys

Hmmm that’s not going to work?

Update 4

I tried converting the line discovered in update 1 into it’s corresponding code/word using  Frank Miller’s book  via the link to Google books. Trouble is not all of the book is digitised so it started to fail at the second word

how = 05555 / Grootetls(?)
these =

I don’t think that’s it.

I’m resisting at the moment to search on other people’s attempts as I’d like to crack this on my own as I’ve never really done any cracking.

Ahh you got to love browsers! Seems Opera 12 and Chrome show the OTP number mentioned in Darwin’s post differently to Firefox. As Firefox and the Copy+paste show the same thing I will assume that the one time pad is either the word or line I found on page 546.

So the code is 32 characters long, if I understand the one time pad system it should be the same length as as crypto text. The word is 10 characters and the line is 33, aarrrggghhh!!! I’m going to double check. Btw page 546 is part of Chapter 14!

Oh the next translation shown in pictures of the journal are:

Cryptic
there can be meaning in darkness

Update 5

More updates, one of which gave an email address to the missing Ian, what the hell, I emailed it asking for help on this encryption problem, worth a shot?

And how cool is that, I have a reply:

Hello,
I’m travelling and will only have sporadic access to my email. I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I’m able.
Cheers,
Ian
2334441531 2433142411 432415424211 4411332234 3443131142 4234321534 541133251515
Damn I need to crack this code! Not that I’ve cracked the first one.
Veeeerrrrrryy interesting, the code in the email is 10, 10, 12, 10, 10, 10, 12 characters in length. Actually as no number goes above 5 it could be the square cipher method?
HOTEL (I/J)ND(I/J)A S(I/J)ERRA TANGO OSCAR ROMEO YANKEE
Which makes Hotel, India, Sierra, Tango, Oscar, Romeo, Yankee, which makes HISTORY, lol that was FUN!

Update 6

And another load of code!
mpk zmktcl yl azepsvzcp xzu clo ylacpofup, yzgz zcfzup clot gcwz ozmcz. Ul dlx gcwz klozgzwuly dl espcxtep afsvzx, mpk zmktcl yl azcpeyp aczmwpxp t azepsvzcp dl gleczx ezvzx wupel. Fdacvzd ocfrts tdeclztglyul vzul xp actgwlcp, mzwup up ol dp vzynpyectclx yl dlolsyut clo. Gctupoyzdet df acpgpwtvp. Mtwz vzuf actupoyzde ol ul xzrf ozactyupet xzutx dfmzcntxl, ul uf xzclx zdeglctet. Xt dp mzctxz kl dgp
I’ve read that you should look for patterns of obvious words and letters, so I guess this is in English which uses E the most, start for the most used letter then, also look for two letter words to start from, like AT, IN or ON etc. With that in mind I see the following:
  • yl x 3
  • ul x 3  (starts a sentence)
  • dl x 2
  • xp x 1
  • up x 1
  • ol x 2
  • dp x 2
  • df x 1
  • uf x 1
  • xt x 1 (starts a sentence)
  • kl x 1

There’s also “T” on it’s own, so I’ll assume that is an “a” or “i”. If that’s correct then XT that starts a sentence doesn’t seem to make sense? Interestingly “d” and “u” start the most two letter words and “l” ends 5!

Update 7

I don’t have time to work on this, trying to grind the ED luxuries trade loop before it disappears. More code has been released and someone’s decoded it already. It was a mix of  Caesar Cipher, one time padding and keyed vigenere code.

All the codes in the blog decrypted makes (to copy BraXzy’s post):

Section 1: NOTTHE (First One-Time Pad clue)
Section 2: HISTORY (Square cipher – Ians Email)
Section 3: YOUKNOWNE (Ian’s Gibbersih)
Section 4: WTRUTHATGMAILDOTCOM (Final blog post)

Not the history you know new truth at gmail dot com

People have emailed variations of above as an email address and not got any reply. Some poor person could be being spammed to hell right now! 🙂

 

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