The Formidine Rift - Part 2

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This is my first contribution to the Formadine Rift discussions so forgive me if this has been covered already.

Adjust your tinfoil...

Now apparently Drew Wagar has hinted to recent a Galnet article that contains an easter egg.
And this has been identified as the article:



See the date, 08 April 3302, that's what cracks this so called "easter egg" wide open. The eight of April just happens to be the day on which Holy Saturday (between Good Friday and Easter Sunday) falls in the year 3302. And of course we have a Salome in the Easter story: she is identified as the wife of Zebedee and often as the sister of the Virgin Mary. Salome is one of the women present at both at the Crucifixion (Mark 15:40) and who discovered Christ's empty tomb (Mark 16:1-8).

Salome together with Mary Magdalene and Mary mother of Jesus are often known as the Three Mary's. In the Galnet article are only two others, named as being present at Beagle Point, during Easter 3302: Dr Kaii and Commander Erimus. Could they be the other Marys and if so who is Magdalene and who is Our Lady? It would be interesting to know what the Three Marys were up to during Easter 3302 and match up their activities with the Easter chronology. For instance I believe the message was sent on the 7th of April, Good Friday, and the report delayed in order to include the response of the mysterious Karl Devene.

I scoured the news archives for other mentions of Karl Devene. Nothing, zip, nada! I even traveled down to Mars High. Again I came away with nothing. It's hard to tell the difference between jobs-worth Federal bureaucracy and deliberate obfuscation so I can't read two much into that. But as I head down a gloomy corridor back to my ship at bay 11 it suddenly hit me. Dark Eleven! Karl Devene is an anagram of Dark Eleven.

Now of course there are only 11 apostles left after the betrayal and suicide of Judas Iscariot. Mattias was only selected as the replacement twelfth apostle after the Ascension and before the Pentecost. Was Karl Devene some sort of apostle? Or, more likely, was his mention a message pointing to the existence of apostles somewhere out in the dark. If the Easter connection is correct then they should have been out there at Beagle Point. And who is the Christ figure in all this? Something was missing and something kept troubling me. A word...

Dark.

What researcher into the mysteries of our Galaxy cannot help but think of the Dark Wheel and the mystery of the Dark Systems. Eleven spokes on a Dark Wheel, eleven Dark Systems for eleven apostles? As an amateur my knowledge was faltering here. The "elite" lore of our galaxy is often harder to divine than the meanings of our sacred texts. Still, I couldn't quite see what the message was. What or who were the eleven?



Eleven words, eleven syllables. The credo of the Thelema religion developed by 19th/20th century occultist Aleister Crowley. The eleven is no mere coincidence. The number eleven was especially important to Crowley. The dark number, the number of magic! As William Wynn Wescott, of the Golden Dawn wrote in "Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtue':



And Crowley himself wrote:



And with mention of the Book of the Law this brings us right back the clue that cracked this so called "easter egg" right open. Because the 8th of April 3302 is not just a significant Christian holiday but also a significant holiday in the Thelemic Religion celebrating as it does the day on which Crowley wrote the first chapter of the Book of the Law.

So it seems to me that the Karl Devene (Dark Eleven) is a response to the Three Mary's and the apostles at Beagle Point and message to be heard by those that can divine it that: "these explorers should not be under the impression that these areas can be considered even partially charted." And that maybe we need to consider other techniques such as those used by Crowley with his study of ancient symbolism, rights, myth and Magick!

The tinfoil is heavy gauge with this one ...

The Easter Egg has been identified. Its nothing deep, nothing sinister. Nothing to do with the Bible, the Book of the Law or any other holy book ... the fact that those of us who have been following this for a long, long time did not recognize it immediately is proof that we've got to step up our game. Beyond that though there is nothing in the Easter Egg that brings us any closer to unraveling the mystery.
 
what do all the bright dots represent? Paths travelled by players?
Effectively yes; in actuality each dot is where a player has trilatered their position by submitting distances (to 2 decimal places from the Galmap) from their current system to a set of 5 or more reference stars thus accurately finding that system's position.

Ninja'd!
 
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It looks like the "special" missions have simply disappeared.
I'm a "Founding Member of the Elite" (£150 KS pledge) so could do the "Founder or Elite" missions and I'm also Allied with the Dark Wheel. The missions used to appear across the galaxy not just at Jameson Memorial, but they don't seem to appear anywhere any more.

I've asked a few other FMoTE players and the consensus is that no-one has seen them since the Christmas release of v1.6/v2.0.

It might be a bug, that they've been turned off accidentally - but only the Devs/QA can answer that... and we have asked... (link)

It may also be there are too few Dark Wheel faction missions being generated now due to the arrival of additional factions at Jameson Memorial. Not sure when Aliance of CD-33 8748, LTT 4487 Industry, Logoni Network and Delkar Ltd crept in, but I don't recall them being there in the early days. With a limited number of missions able to be available, it's possible that these new factions are simply drowning out the Dark Wheel, and their "rare" missions aren't getting the chance to appear at all. If playing 2.0 then that's probably made worse by the addition of surface missions fighting for space in the list as well.

Even if you weren't Allied with the Dark Wheel then I think you should still be seeing the missions, just unable to do them. That was certainly the case when other factions were generating them at other locations and I wasn't Allied/Friendly.

Anyway - I'm thinking I'll put together a new Asp Explorer and head out towards the rift for a change of pace. Haven't really explored since the early days. I should probably look at getting these new fangled mapping things working too! :D
Now... do I take lasers or not... [alien]

MB did say in the first getting to know the engineers livestream that something is going to happen with Shinrata Dezra soon; perhaps that will sort things.

Probably wise to come to the Rift "armed defensively" if you're just thinking of setting out
 
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Effectively yes; in actuality each dot is where a player has trilatered their position by submitting distances (to 2 decimal places from the Galmap) from their current system to a set of 5 or more reference stars thus accurately finding that system's position.

So ... if you had 5 or more players 'parked' at these reference stars they could work together to map the precise location of any common star in the Galaxy?
 
The tinfoil is heavy gauge with this one ...

The Easter Egg has been identified. Its nothing deep, nothing sinister. Nothing to do with the Bible, the Book of the Law or any other holy book ... the fact that those of us who have been following this for a long, long time did not recognize it immediately is proof that we've got to step up our game. Beyond that though there is nothing in the Easter Egg that brings us any closer to unraveling the mystery.

So what was it?

Personally I'm off Easter eggs, prefering dark chocolate hobnobs
 
LOL, I'm going to end up real busy if I have to PM everybody ... so just to save time here's the answer. Wrapped in a spoiler so if you don't want to know PLEASE DON'T CLICK!

It's found in this sentence here:

These routes combine in a complex cobweb, paths through the void. Sceptics were quick to put these discoveries in context, however:

The Easter Egg is that the well-known 'eb, p' reference (ROT13'd becomes ro, c or 'right on, commander') is sandwiched in there.

I personally had to be shown the answer myself. Totally went over my head. :)
 
I'd like to point out that it was I who spotted the fact that the sentence "These routes combine in a complex cobweb, paths through the void." was odd-looking, which then sparked some conversation and then Belthize spotted the easter egg.

But yeah you'd have to have known all about the 'eb, p' in-joke to have solved it.

I teased Drew about finding the sentence; "You're fly but so am I ;) "

Drew has replied "Challenge accepted!"

So, the gauntlet has been thrown to the ground.

Bring it, Drew! :D
 
So ... if you had 5 or more players 'parked' at these reference stars they could work together to map the precise location of any common star in the Galaxy?

You only need to be in the system you want to trilaterate, then you use distances to other already trilaterated systems via EDDiscovery.
 
You only need to be in the system you want to trilaterate, then you use distances to other already trilaterated systems via EDDiscovery.

Oh yes! I get that. I'm just curious if you could 'reverse' the process. Instead of flying to the system in question and calculating the distance ... could you just have a group of Commanders sitting in the known systems with each of them entering the distance to another common point? Wouldn't they then know the exact position of that distant sun?

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I'd like to point out that it was I who spotted the fact that the sentence "These routes combine in a complex cobweb, paths through the void." was odd-looking, which then sparked some conversation and then Belthize spotted the easter egg.

But yeah you'd have to have known all about the 'eb, p' in-joke to have solved it.

I teased Drew about finding the sentence; "You're fly but so am I ;) "

Drew has replied "Challenge accepted!"

So, the gauntlet has been thrown to the ground.

Bring it, Drew! :D

Thanks for clarifying! I was online when you were talking to Drew and saw you're conversation but, even with it right there on Discord, I was just too tired to follow the logic. I had to login after I woke up and read it again in order to 'get it'. Great work!
 
I ninja'd you. Check the spoiler right above your post. I don't think it made its way to the Forum yet. I saw it on the Discord chat.

Yeah, got it :p

I think I'm out of tinfoil for now. Taking a little time to absorb all the info to date and waiting to see if any new clues line up with my current thinking :D
 
I didn't even check the RR coordinates and just drew a random line somewhere while blindfolded, just to make people go the wrong way, according to some perverse impulse to fake everything I do.
You charlatan!

Quite genuinely though I think photoshop may have worked against you. I've done a few mappings of the er... map against EDSM and the SOL/10klys lines are slightly differently scaled than the smaller grid - folk may notice the sol line doesn't line up on the current version, I had to choose one or t'other and figured the 'thin' area was plotted by the small grid so that was most important.
 
You charlatan!

Quite genuinely though I think photoshop may have worked against you. I've done a few mappings of the er... map against EDSM and the SOL/10klys lines are slightly differently scaled than the smaller grid - folk may notice the sol line doesn't line up on the current version, I had to choose one or t'other and figured the 'thin' area was plotted by the small grid so that was most important.


[REMOVED]

You have my answer on Discord :D
 
Re this "Easter egg"...

If randomly shifting three letters – in a whole article – by 13 spaces, with no indication that you need to do so, is the sort of thing that's required to solve this mystery... That's... that's crazy. Crazier than the religious free association two pages ago! Where's the "clue"?

As I posted earlier, there is such a thing as a puzzle which is too hard. I know I run the risk of sounding like a party pooper, and I think the community that's sprung up around this mystery is great, but I doubt any meaningful progress is going to be made unless and until the range of possibilities is narrowed down to the point where we can start to perceive actual limits! It's like we're looking for a needle which might resemble anything – including hay – in a haystack the size of Mont-Saint-Michel (I don't know: my mind just went there!).

Right? No? I feel a bit like Mugatu in Zoolander here :)
 
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Re this "Easter egg"...

If randomly shifting three letters – in a whole article – by 13 spaces, with no indication that you need to do so, is the sort of thing that's required to solve this mystery... That's... that's crazy. Crazier than the religious free association two pages ago! Where's the "clue"?

As I posted earlier, there is such a thing as a puzzle which is too hard. I know I run the risk of sounding like a party pooper, and I think the community that's sprung up around this mystery is great, but I doubt any meaningful progress is going to be made unless and until the range of possibilities is narrowed down to the point where we can start to perceive actual limits! It's like we're looking for a needle which might resemble anything – including hay – in a haystack the size of Mont-Saint-Michel (I don't know: my mind just went there!).

Right? No? I feel a bit like Mugatu in Zoolander here :)

Not a clue! Its and Easter egg thrown in by Drew to see if we are paying attention.

However ... Drew's pre-Reclamation 'Oolite Saga' contains numerous examples of characters communicating with each other in codes. Solving this mystery is likely going to require an ability to 'read between the lines' a decipher hidden meanings from Galnet. Don't be worried if the puzzles appear 'too hard'. I'll be relying on folks like Genar-Hofoen to get me through this without losing my mind!
 
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