first of all, i just want to say i loved seeing all the thoughts and theories that were going on around all of this !!! honestly, i think some of you guys gave me too much credit, because most of this is a lot simpler than the intricate stuff you came up with--- i wish i had thought of some of the things you all did ! but for now, finally, here’s ( most of ) the clues i purposefully placed, as well as some general info, which i’ve tried to break up into sections for ease of reading.
SKELETONS / NUMBERS :
the skeletons are listed below with their id numbers ( the tags are linked as well ) :
andromeda : #0237632.
arachne : #0272463.
cassandra : #0276372.
daedalus : #0323357.
helen : #0043536.
heracles : #0472537.
jason : #0052766.
medea : #0063332.
midas : #0064327.
narcissus : #0672787.
orion : #0067466.
pandora : #0726372.
paris : #0072747.
perseus : #0777387.
each of the id numbers were decided by entering the skeleton names onto the dial pad of a phone--- abc = 2, def = e, ghi = 4, jkl = 5, mno = 6, pqrs = 7, tuv = 8, wyz = 9.
phones in general were hinted at a few times.
in asks, as i tried to use the word ‘call’ repeatedly when asked about it, ‘key’ once, as well as the word ‘phony’ at one point. get it ? phone-y ? that one was kind of a stretch, i know.
a phone prominently featured in a branch on the classification quiz.
the encoded text messages were, obviously, sent from a phone.
on an update before dropping stage 3, a strange voicemail was mentioned and you were encouraged to delete it from your phone.
the database speaks to you over the phone during curse finalization.
on the graphic for stage 3, a phone is the only object in the hallway.
some names did need to be shortened in order to fit all the same number of digits, so andromeda became adrmda, pandora became pandra, etc.
honestly, this code was weirder and more random than most of the other things, so i’d call it bonus points more than anything else. a lot of you puzzled out who was who without knowing what the numbers meant.
CURSE REGISTRATION / STAGE I ( here ) :
i asked you all to send in these results to the curse database, and used those totals to decide the order in which the skeletons would be released ; midas ended up with the most results so they’re posted first, cassandra got the least so they’re last, etc.
results from all three stages will also factor in to some future plot drops, though i’ll keep those quiet for now.
TEXT POSTS :
these are pretty straightforward ; i chose text that i thought suits each skeleton as i’ve written them, and tagged them with their respective curse ids to tease the fact that there were ids at all.
FOLDERS PAGE ( here ) :
this displays not only the skeletons’ classifications, but also their active danger levels ; one exclamation point for low, two for medium, three for high.
while the classifications were shown as only numbers 001-007 at that point, since the curse classification blog hadn’t dropped yet, in this ask a few posts previous i wrote the types as the first word of each corresponding number on the list.
CURSE CLASSIFICATION / STAGE II ( here ) :
when you reach a result on the curse classifications, the clock at the top of the screen stops and displays a single time. that number corresponds to the number on the files image. when you get an error it shows only zeroes.
the classifications are :
chaos ( pandora, paris )
death ( arachne )
hero ( heracles, jason, perseus )
infamy ( cassandra, midas )
loss ( daedalus, medea )
love ( helen, narcissus, orion )
monster ( andromeda )
yes, those are alphabetical. when i was making the folders page i just kinda said fuck it.
i took the hands off the clock on the image in the post, both because i wanted to draw attention to the clocks on the actual pages, and cause it looked sick.
if you get to page /c6, the clock stops and zeroes out. that’s because there’s no way to get anything but an error after that point.
i asked you all to send in these results to the curse database, too, and they were used as tiebreakers for the skeleton posting order. like, medea and pandora ended up with the same amount of results from registration, but there were more loss results than chaos from classification, so medea goes first.
TEXT MESSAGES ( here, here, here, here, here, here, and here ) :
the encryption on the text messages is caesar cipher, where you shift the alphabet a certain number of letters over and substitute those letters for each other. for example, an alphabet with a shift of 1 would have a become b, b become c, and so on. the shift changes for each text message, depending on what the character’s curse classification is. so the text from narcissus ( #0672787, classification of 6. love ) has a shift of 6.
the decoded texts are :
#0063332. ( medea, shift 5 ) : you made your choice. now i am making mine.
#0672787. ( narcissus, shift 6 ) : at least you’ll be hung in the stars. i’ll only be remembered like a cautionary tale.
#0072747. ( paris, shift 1 ) : don’t blame me, please. i am not the villain.
#0272463. ( arachne, shift 2 ) : did you make this for yourself, too ?
#0472537. ( heracles, shift 3 ) : wasn’t my strength meant to earn me a better reward than this ?
#0237632. ( andromeda, shift 7 ) : you cannot be a hero all the time. what if my monster wins ?
#0064327. ( midas, shift 4 ) : i could have known better, at least. nothing this gold could come without consequence.
i also wanted to use this to kind of further their feeling of being watched ---which i hope i started to get across just in some answers to anons ---with the messages between skeletons be ‘intercepted’ by the database.
CURSE FINALIZATION / STAGE III ( here ) :
before dropping this stage, a ‘data breach’ was mentioned twice in separate posts. this was to ( hopefully ) encourage people to look for hidden information--- aka, the data that was breached.
there are five total hidden pages on this stage, and one secret extra message.
first is another intercepted message from one of the skeletons. the link is here.
on page /b2, click the word ‘key’ to get here.
the text message is from #0276372, aka cassandra, who is prophetic. cassandra is the only skeleton with anything set about their curse, and their prophecies will be a part of gameplay.
the url for this page is 0677437, and if you use the same keypad method as the numbers for the skeletons, that translates to ‘mssges.’
second is a chart monitoring active danger levels. the link is here.
on page /b3, the clock has stopped at 00:00:14, for the 14 skeletons. if you wait those 14 seconds, you will automatically be redirected.
the url for this page is 0003282, or ‘data.’
the third is a contact log between the database and a god. the link is here.
on page /c2, a ‘source’ is mentioned. if you view the source code of the page, the first thing at the top is the url.
the clock on this page has stopped at 02:09:01, and the connection was lost at that same time ; if you substitute letters in for numbers, 291 spells ‘bia’, the goddess of violence, who the communication was with.
the url for this page is 0005647, or ‘logs.’
the fourth is an incident report from a monster attack. the link is here.
on page /c7, ‘time’ is mentioned repeatedly. click on the clock to get here.
the incident report is 8-1-18-16-25, which, with a substitution between numbers and letters, translates out to ‘harpy,’ the type of creature from the attack.
the url for this page is 0737678, or ‘report.’
the fifth is the list of id numbers and their skeletons. the link is here.
on this ask, i asked ( yes, i sent this one to myself ) about the numbers, and responded ‘why haven’t you searched.’ put /numbers directly after the url of curse finalization to get here.
if you highlight above the ‘submitting’ text on the /finalize page, you can find a message : ‘you’re not safe here.’
the codes you all reached are going to remain kind of a mystery for now. there is a solution for it, if you’re really interested in puzzling it out, but i’m not going to list the answer here. they’ve helped me decide the first plot drop of the group. this is somewhat of a teaser for how the gameplay will go here ; the curse database will remain an active player, and you’ll often be helping choose events. you just might not always when you’re doing it, or how.
easter eggs / fun facts, i guess !
when you get an error in curse registration or classification, if you hover your mouse over the word ‘error,’ it shakes like a glitch. this serves no purpose and means nothing, it just took me a while to figure out how to code, so i wanted to point it out. just let me have this
i actually had a very different stage three planned when i dropped stage two, one incorporating the results from registration and classification more, but the classification results i got were totally different than what i’d expected. while the registration results were pretty varied, over half of the 40-something answers i got from your classifications were for ‘love,’ and i actually got only one ‘monster’ and zero ‘death’ results from you guys. which i suppose is fitting, since there’s only one skeleton of each ! but still, it threw things off a bit, and i had to pretty thoroughly rework stage three. besides, i ended up with like 100+ results from both stages, and i got kind of overwhelmed with my original idea. you all kept me on my toes !!
i sent two asks to myself : the one i needed to set up so i could list out the curse classifications, the one to drop a hint about the /numbers page. the rest all came from you guys ! and for that i am hugely grateful--- i had sort of escape plans the entire time if there wasn’t enough interest, where i’d be able to drop the main after stage one or two and skirt around the extras, but i’m so glad i got to follow through on this thing to the end. i wouldn’t have been able to do it without your engagement. every single time i get a little inbox notification i get excited.
i noticed some of you were getting a lot of error results, but that’s not on you ! there were 32 possible results on curse registration with 16 of those being errors, and 15 results on curse classification with 8 of those being errors. so don’t worry, you were more likely on those stages to get an error than a result.
some of you wondered if the general urls ( /a1, /b2, etc. ) of the different pages on the registration, classification and finalization blogs meant something, and i’m sorry to say they don’t. originally i was going to customize them so they’d be harder to just sift through later, but there ended up being 130+ total pages between all three blogs--- and for my own sanity, and for the sake of easier organization when editing them, i just left them as they were with their letters and numbers.
someone asked me if this post was for cassandra since the quote involves cassandra in the source material agamemnon. whoops. it’s not, that post is actually just a nod to the fact that i don’t know how to read.
i think that’s just about everything ! there are all kinds of other small things as nods to skeletons, the plot, the database in general, future plot drops, all scattered throughout answers on the curse database--- and i’ll be here all day if i list them all. if you have any specific questions about anything i would love to answer them, so please feel free to shoot them my way ! i believe that’s the gist of it, though. thanks so much again for going along with me on all of this !!