GLRP:EMs:gl.uoem.netArchives:Message Left 05/10/10
Message Left
Posted by EM Malachi on 05/10/10
The following message was delivered by a stranger who also left a single raven feather:
Orders by Nether
zeelfyohfWAR
lndewlnhfDEM
pvpfyftpnONF
eywqaqfyoIST
xkqxmmeqfZYX
yomxqlnelVUQ
eglxmlneaPLK
xxslnfpzkJHG
plqezwfypCBW
erqelmqxzARD
wtt
Comments:
Ra'Dian Fl'Gith says:
May 11, 2010 at 3:36 am
Originally decoded, as I understand, by Thanatos — later decoded by me before I knew Thanatos had already done so. In any case, we both reached the following message:
Meeting with death wisps in Ilshenar. Bring our offering for the text of the book. This must remain secret from all.
So others can get a feel for how we mystically decoded this, here’s an explanation:
The demons like using things in groups of nines and threes. In this code, there are nine lowercase letters, followed by three uppercase letters. The uppercase letters are the key to decoding this particular cipher.
If you take simply the upper case letters, you have WARDEMONFISTZYXVUQPLKJHGCBWARD. If you notice, the last four characters are the same as the first four, which indicates a possible repetition, so ignore those last four for a moment. This leaves you with 26 characters… WARDEMONFISTZYXVUQPLKJHGCB. If you notice, each of the 26 letters of the alphabet are used only once in this phrase.
Thus, the first obvious choice should be to do a replacement of these characters into the remaining message (all of the lower-case groups of 9 remaining). The best place to start is by simply mapping A-Z onto the WAR…GCB string. Thus W=A, A=B, R=C, D=D, E=E, M=F, and so on.
When doing so, in this case, a message starts to appear…
MEETINGWI
THDEATHWI
SPSINILSH
ENARBRING
OUROFFERI
NGFORTHET
EXTOFTHEB
OOKTHISMU
STREAMAINS
ECRETFROM
ALL
Now, of course, you must recognize the words within and make some presumptions yourself when finishing the cipher.
If future, but similar ciphers, don’t seem to work exactly like this, consider that demons are sneaky, and might map the alphabet onto the key phrase by shifting the letters, or by even inverting them (or with an inverted shift), though hopefully there’d be some indication in the cipher itself as to the nature of the decoding necessary.
In case you’re not quite following what I mean though, here’s the key string:
WARDEMONFISTZYXVUQPLKJHGCB
In a normal replacement, the letters are mapped as:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Thus, the word “HELLO” would read “NETTX” encrypted.
But a shifted key moves the mapped letters forward by some number, such as a 2-shift:
CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
This then causes the word “HELLO” to read as “MRIIZ” encrypted.
Sneaky demons might invert the map though, and map instead:
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Which, of course, causes the word “HELLO” to read as “PJXXT” encrypted.
And, of course, super sneaky demons might invert the map AND shift it, such as:
BAZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDC
Making “HELLO” read as “KGUUY” when encrypted.
Now, if any of these other things had been true, you might have expected a clue to let you know that such a shift had taken place, such as maybe a sentence at the bottom of the page of code that read:
“If you move forward in life, you should always take two extra steps.”
Or
“A good demon always backtracks to cover his steps.”
Or
“In life, no demon ever looks behind without taking two steps back.”
Of course, these are all sort of vague clues, but when used in context with the cipher, they start to make sense.
Hopefully someone reads this and gleans some useful codebreaking knowledge from it. Otherwise, here’s to long explanations in futility.
niaC says:
May 28, 2010 at 1:32 pm
wow, well done..
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