Quest for the Holy Scroll

[Dave]

I have become convinced that this scroll is either a red herring, or part of the game that never got finished - what would be the point of putting in a puzzle of such difficulty that so many people cannot solve it even after such a long period of time?

This leads me to suspect that it will be impossible to decode in a way which will satisfy everyone. If the decoding is not simple, it is possible to generate any message you like - for example:-

1) If the scroll is coded using a one-time keypad (i.e. a random string of letters is placed above the message, and each letter in the message is shifted forward in the alphabet a number of places depending on the letter above it). This would have been decodable if another scroll(s) in the dungeon had the keypad (and instructions). Without the keypad it is impossible to crack - brute force would simply generate every possible message with the correct number of letters.

2) If the scroll was coded using word replacement, as has been suggested before (e.g. Grynix = Lord Chaos, aquant = water demon...), without the list of replacements it is again impossible to decode as brute force would just generate every possible message with the correct number of words.

[PicturesInTheDark]

A private joke between programmers would also be a possibility - in that case there's no limit to the difficulty of it - there can be fun in proving to be cleverer than others as well ;)

Regards, PitD

[Jardice]

And so once again the quest for the holy scroll defeats us in the battle of the mind.....

Yeah like everyone else I found nothing on this...it was a good run though.

[Flora]

simple:
Grynix jernum quey ki skebow rednim u os dey wefna enocarn aquantana
I've got it:
I give you an hint:
it starts with:
"Geek"
Now that you know that you'll find the rest easily


It's no bullshit Try it

[Flora]

I'll made a Tcl script in order to show you because at one point the human brains gets really lost.

[ChristopheF]

What have you found exactly?

[Flora]

simple just shift letter every word:
Grynix jernum quey ki skebow rednim u os dey wefna enocarn aquantana
G word 1 letter 1
next word shift 2
E word 2 letter 2
next word shift 3
E word 2 letter 3
next word shift 4
k word 4 letter 2

Geek [...] etc.


more tricks after to rearrange words once you picked letter from them

[Nickman]

Still not seeing anything...

[Paul Stevens]

Really LOL!

This is amazing! The designers at FTL anticipated my
coding error in CSBuild:

(Where I coded a do {} while(); instead of a while(){};)

That error in my code put a 'j' exactly where it was needed
to make this scroll decode properly!

I am amazed. And amused.

PAul

[Flora]

:'D

[ChristopheF]

I don't get it, can you give more hints?

[Jenda]

I still don´t understand anything. I´m so poor and stupid, I can break my brain and eat my socks, but don´t understand it.
Flora: could you specify your system a bit?
Paul: does it have anything in common with our problem?

[Gambit37]

I think you'll find that Flora is having a joke...

[PicturesInTheDark]

...along with Mr. Paul Stevens ;)

[Jenda]

Hmmm... very funny.
New quest: How many times can you make a fool of me? If you are not able to complete the quest for the holly scroll, may be you will pass this one. GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! Such a *j*o*k*e*!!

[Zyx]

WOW! This is the most impressive thread I have ever read!
We should make a book and a film about all the ideas developped around the scroll mystery!

It reminds me of a book by Stanislaw Lem, "The Voice of the Master". Anyone knows it?
Basicly, the Earth receives one day a signal from outer-space. A "signal", not "noise", because it seems ordered in some way.
This is the first page.
The rest of the book is about the hundreds of ideas about what could mean the message, how it was originated, what can we do about it, etc.
The best of the book is that there is no "fantastic" solution, the puzzled remains unsolved.
Why is this the best of the book, you wonder? Because all these reasonnings can be applied to our real world.
If we would receive a strange signal, we would be helpless like in the book.

Having said that, I want to be part of the Clueless Scroll Readers Community. I'll have a try with the red herring.

[beowuuf]

CSRC - please, give generously of your time or money or whiskey to help these poor souls less fortunate : )

[PicturesInTheDark]

CSRC?

[Zyx]

First of all some considerations. AQUANTANA looks too much much like a
word to be the result of random noise or of a substitution method
(replacing a letter by another).
In the same way, there too many "correct syllabes" to be the product of
some complex encryption. E.g "Q" is always followed by "U", there is a
vowel each 1 or 2 consonnants...

This leads me to 3 hypothesis:
1) The text is made of part of words. Example: "SKEBOW" for SKELETON
and BOW.
2) The text is made with anagrams ("EDNOCARN" -> "DRACONEN") or
reversed words ("REDNIM" -> "MINDER")
3) The text is not the result of mathematical algorithms, but is made
"by hand".
In this case you can expect some playing with:
a) Pronounciation: "QUEY","KI"->"KEY". If it looks dumb to you,
remember "DETH KNIGHTS", "AMOR of DARC", "ARMOR of LYTE"
b) Etymology and foreign languages: "AQUANTANA" -> "AQUA" means "WATER" in latin.
c) Suppression, abbreviations and shuffling of the letters of a
word: "GRYNIX" -> "GREY ONYX"
d) Real words surrounded with noise: "Grynix jErnum quEy ki
sKebow", as proposed by Flora, with the false text. What is the false
text? The false text has a "J" before "ERNUM", due to an error in the
early versions of CSBwin.
e) Other?
4) Other?

---------------------------

What could be the meaning of the text anyway?
A) Some riddles to be solved by an action (like pushing a button,

looking for a specific item, monster, etc.)
B) Some riddles referring to an object to be found somewhere
C) Nothing
D) Other?

-------------

Personnaly, I would opt for C, but no author has ever controled the
meaning of his creations. They seem to gain independance as soon as
they are exteriorised. Each reader gives them more consistency and
complexity. And who could deny that maybe some subconscious or even
inconscious processus was leading the hand of the writer? He may have
intended to do a red herring, but have he succeeded? Only our failures
to see any meaning will give him reason.
Litteracy is not about what we read, it is about what we manage to
think about what we read. Life won't ever have other meanings.
(and more blablabla to come in the next post)

[Zyx]

I found it! The gibberish scroll is written in gibberish language! Here are some gibberish explanations:
GRYNIX//ERNUM QUEY KI/SKEBOW REDNIM/U OS DEY/WEFNA ENOCARN/AQUANTANA
(and not
GRYNIX JERNUM QUEY KI SKEBOW REDNIM U OS DEY WEFNA EDNOCARN AQUANTANA)

And now, let's start about the gibberish translation:

GRYNIX is a very rare kind of onyx, gray or green, (I can't remember which color), mentionned by Platon in his Timee and Menon, when he talks about the Atlantis (the empire swallowed by the sea), over the columns of Herakles (the Detroit of Gilbratar), in the atlantic ocean, and about some mysterious minerals like the orichalque and the grynix.

ERNUM
This the numeral for ONE in latin (in accusative voice). So, it means FIRST.

QUEY, KI: two ways of spelling KEY. There are 2 KEYS involved in the sentence.

SKEBOW: SKELETON BOW. I'm not sure if the SKELETON is for SKELETON KEY, completing the previous word (the other KEY would be an ONYX KEY), or for the CLAW BOW, which replaced the originally so-called SKELETON BOW, a weapon that didn't make into the game (FTL wanted to put skeleton archers but found it too difficult to implement)

REDNIM: this is probably the most difficult riddle of the scroll. NIM was a mathematician, famous by his studies on the theory of games - there is a tool called "the graph of NIM" and a puzzle called "the game of NIM", aka "the TOWER of NIM". This guy was also a great chess player. He demonstrated the importance of playing first (="white") or second (="RED") in many strategical games. He indirectly originated the game called "mastermind". (REDNIM reads reversely as MINDER).
So why is there this reference to NIM? I guess it is a reference to the pieces of a chessboard: king, queen, bishop, KNIGHT and TOWER. There are DETH KNIGHTS and POWERTOWERS in CSB. Because the last one have some red marks, I guess REDNIM means POWERTOWERS.

U OS DEY: Latin derived into vulgar Latin (the Roman) which derived into Romanic (ancestor of Spanish, French, Italian, Roumain, Portuguese, etc). U OS DEY is a romanic degeneration of latin O NOSTRUS DEI which could be translated by "Oh our God" or "Here we are before you, God".
Is it a reference to the "Pray for a miracle" area in CSB?

WEFNA: there is no "FN" syllabe in english, so the word is reversed:
AN(D) FEW (indicates that you will need several samples of the object mentionned in the following word)

EDNOCARN: anagram for DRACONEN, which in latin was a mythical race of "half-men, half-dragons"; the myth was pagan (probably greek) and was replaced, like hydras, by the regular dragons (of Saint George) under the christian spiritual domination. It is worth noting that the manes and lemures (the green slimes casting poison blobs in CSB), respectively roman and greek "damned souls", were replaced by the christian demons (of Hell).
So EDNOCARN means DRAGON. But is it SEVERAL DRAGON STEAKS or SEVERAL pieces of the DRAGON ARMOR?

AQUANTANA: the AQUA etymologic root, in latin, means WATER. AQUANTANA is the old romanic word for AQUITAINE (a region of France, near the Pyrenees Mountains, which was believed to be the home of water spirits). AQUANTANA could be translated by WATER LAND.
Is it about a WATER ELEMENTAL, or a WATER FLASK, or a WATERSKIN?

So, the message seems to refer to several objects:
FIRST, an ONYX KEY.
Then, a SKELETON KEY or a CLAW BOW.
POWERTOWERS or DETH KNIGHT or KNIGHT ARMOR
the "Pray for a miracle" area?
SEVERAL DRAGON STEAKS or SEVERAL pieces of the DRAGON ARMOR
a WATER ELEMENTAL, or a WATER FLASK, or a WATERSKIN

Maybe you have to put all this items in the chest where you found the scroll?



Side notes:
One of the Vexirk in the room of the gibberish scroll has an ONYX KEY.
You can find several DRAGON STEAKS in the same level
A vexirk in this level has WATER.

U OS DEY WEFNA EDNOCARN could also be read as:
OU SED YEW FAN DEN ACORN

OU is OR in French
SED is BUT in latin
YEW like YEW STAFF
FAN because my brains are getting too hot
DEN like in DRAGONS DEN (where the POWERTOWERS are!)
ACORN is a computer that doubtlessly FTL knew by the time

for more information on the gibberish scroll, I recommend this thread:
http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=22748

[Lunever]

*ROFL!* Hey Zyx, can I have a draw from that stuff too please?!

[beowuuf]

Gah, it was so obvious once someone worked it out!

So I put the objects in a chest, along with a vexirk to be safe, and after an explosion there was a scroll left, saying 'anatna uqanr acon ea nfewye dsoumi n de rwo beksi kyeuqmu nrexinyrg'

So i think we are getting close people!

[Jenda]

There are 2 possibilities:
1) Zyx has got mad.
2) I have got mad.
(or, we both? or we all?)

[beowuuf]

i vote for your option 3), we all have

[Zyx]

Quote from:
http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=22096

Francis said:
"GRYNIX" could be a compound word meaning "crumb-snow".

Jenda: I can't remember been sane, so no, I didn't go mad. At least not recently... But I still hope you'll join us and take a walk on the wild side...

[PicturesInTheDark]

and the cover girls go...

[demo]

Well, this was an interesting thread...

I thought I'd give the anagram-way a shot, and there does indeed exist some sort of solutions - quite a lot actually. Just did a preliminary and found something like:
energy square none ya medium ninjas a ye box quick unknown afterward which doesn't really make all that much sense.

Actually the words in the solutions I found all consisted of:
9: afterward
7: unknown
6: beyond, domain, energy, square, medium, ninjas, orange
5: quick
4: none, menu
3: mix, box
2: ya, ye
1: a

Think I'll do a longer run, but... I don't think this will give anything usefull..

[Steve Hall]

Someone email the scroll to the U.S. Military - they have people and computers dedicated to breaking codes, don't they? Well, just a thought.........

[Jenda]

Steve: Let these thoughts for yourself. For your own entertainment.

Demo: I think so. It really cannot give anything.

All: This thread is too slow. Can we open a new one?
(sorry for my English... I´m after 6 beers...and still do not know how to solve this sentence...I´ll try next 6)

[meynaf]

You here seem to be badly needing a vexirk-to-english dictionnary ;)

I came upon this scroll eons ago while playing csb on my old good ST.
It seemed like vexirk writing to me.

And, NO, it is *not* the map scroll, because if you look deep enough into
a dungeon.dat, you'll find "MAGICMAP" as text for such a scroll.
This scroll is on the very first level you enter (where there are the yellow worms).
(note that there also is a "CREANAME" scroll)

FTL probably removed it because it could have been too confusing for players :-)

So your quest for knowledge is probably doomed, or at least, according to me it is.

Sorry...