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The Stone


Burns

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As I travelled the lands, I found a Stone, with strange Carvings on it:
[img]http://magicduel.com/userfiles/53832/craving.jpg[/img]
Retracing its history, the stone seems to be a leftover of a Roman Empero-r,
guarding an ancient Hebrew belief...

Along with the stone, I found this page of pergament:

In 1855, a poem was written about it, containing the real meaning of it.

XVII-2-2, V-5-3, X-1-1, XXI-6-2, XXVIII-3-4, II-6-3, IV-3-7, XXX-3-1,
XIV-2-3, IX-5-5, XIII-5-4, XXIV-1-2


Several layers of encryption guard this metaphor,
don't expect to be able to read it after understanding the first.


I want an explanation of this belief, and its impact on our life,
both real and in MD. Open your minds!

I prefer forum-messages with the 'answer' attached in a word-doc,
makes my life easier, other PMs (forum and ingame) will be considered,
but have a certain risk of getting lost.

No submission will be marked before the quest is over,
if you bug me I'll delete yours =P

This is a one-shot-game, so aim carefully.
QUALITY will win this contest!

ATTENTION: ONE WP will be given out, maybe a second if another answer
seems of equal, very high standard.

Two submissions with the same content will be disqualified.

You are allowed to help each other, team up, whatever you like,
but bear in mind that the reward is NOT splitable!

Contest will run at least til next weekend, and might be extended depending on how many submissions i get... (i don't think it will be too many ^^)

and a final edit: this information is also on my military page, and on the middle tile of the Gazebo of Equilibrium under heading 'The Carved Stone'

Edited by Burns
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since i haven't received anything AT ALL yet, i'll give you a few hints:

3
aleph - taw

Nelya Setesh [no need to know what it was, as long as you know where to look :D]

Doesn't make any sense? Hmm... i think it does ;)
Technically, Quality was the base of ranking, but if nobody wants to participate... the few who do have good chances that way ^^

Edited by Burns
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I am trying to solve it but I had almost no time to fully document myself.


LE:I tried to find something but...nope...it doesn't work.

Btw: who remembers Nelya's quests? Cause they were like 16 months ago...

Edited by dst
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I do.. well, it still left a mental scar on my mind... how could I forget? xD

edit: btw, I think I'm gonna try this, but probably won't have time until the end of this week =(

Edited by Udgard
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hmm...

gotta be a pretty hard quest, huh? good to know...

so, here's a last round of hints:
after you cracked all three encryptions, your text will still be strange, because each word is spelled backwards^^
wikipedia knows what poem you seek, and once you have the full copy, and look back at Nelya's Perfume of Dreams, the numbers will make a lot more sense :(

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believe it or not, i checked that befroe i desinged the quest LOL

if you manage to get three english words out of the 12 symbols, they will be more than enough to tell any search engine EXACTLY which poem you want^^

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Stuck on the second encryption, and I'm forced to give up. If I can get this second cipher, I know I can get the rest. It's just decoding the name of the poem that is getting me...

Oh well, not worth the hours of effort it would take to find it. Sorry.

Awi

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Now I'm confused xD
I thought there was only 2 encriptions, 3 including the backwards spelling, and another encription with the poem. Does this mean there's actually 3 encription plus 1 backward spelling and one with the poem? xD

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i just received a splendid answer from Esme, so the quest will be closed next saturday evening

i thought i'd better tell you who got it, so she can strike bargains if she wants to risk her wishpoint :))

[YAR, that's evil me *mwahaha*]

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saturday evening has come and gone, Esme wins the WP!

For those interested in the solution: (yes, i will do similar things in the future *mwahaha*)

[spoiler]The carvings are Freemason ciphers, commonly referred to as Pigpen, hint for that were the picture, which should have enabled to find the system if you wanted, and 'Stone', since only runic symbols like those can easily be carved in stone. Upon correctly deciphering pigpen, you get

yvj
slcz
lygoj

Next in line is Caesar 3, hints 'Roman Emperor' and 'o-r'. Might have been the hardest part of the quest. Next step in the decryption is

vsg
pizw
ivdlg

'Hebrew belief' points not only to the final word you seek, but also to the next encryption, Atbash. This should have been a lot easier after i gave you the hint aleph-taw, before that it was tough, but manageable (google redirects to the wellknown Baphomet-Sophia, and Wiki associates hebrew cipher directly with atbash). After applying Atbash, you come to

eht
krad
rewot

Now read every word back to front, and you reach The Dark Tower ^^

The poem was [url="http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/rbrowning/bl-rbrown-childe.htm"]Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came[/url] by Browning, something Wiki and google know instantly. My link redirects to the full poem, where the number combinations on the piece of paper are applied in a Nelya-like way [stave-line-letter] to get 'Resurrection'. Anybody who comes that far deserves a WP in my opinion, the essay and quality ranking were just tools i had to use in case i got too many people solving it since my WP are limited.
[/spoiler]

It was a nice test, unfortunately not too many people cared to participate... or maybe they just got lost on the way :/
Either way, i don't consider it too hard, though it definitely was on the edge of evilness :D

Edited by Burns
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O_o
I can't believe I got the pigpen wrong!
Well, not that I managed to find atbash anyways. Just can't believe I was that clumsy to decipher pigpen wrongly T_T

Anyways, congrats to esme, and thx to burns for an interesting quest =)

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^^

thank you udgard. In truth, the toughest part of the quest was the Ceasar shift. You can shift the row of alphabets by any number. From 1 to 25. Once burns gave the hint 3, rest was a piece of cake.

I enjoyed doing the quest a lot burns! Will look foward to the rest of your quests. I enjoy decrypting ciphers. ^^ and thank you for the wishpoint. Its my 1st. :D

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[quote name='Shadowseeker' date='15 November 2009 - 04:07 PM' timestamp='1258281475' post='47517']
lol.

Pigpen? Never heard of that.

But I'm not a big fan of decryptions, so yeah.
[/quote]
I used pigpen when I was in 5th grade to pass notes in class. Recognised it instantly. Wierd that you haven't heard bout it. O.o

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[quote name='Esmerelda' date='15 November 2009 - 12:53 PM' timestamp='1258286001' post='47520']
I used pigpen when I was in 5th grade to pass notes in class. Recognised it instantly. Wierd that you haven't heard bout it. O.o
[/quote]
I've never felt the need to pass notes in class, perhaps that's why I never heard about pigpen?

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