[Mongoose]

Okay...so I have it from a rather restless Power That Be that we've kind of dropped the ball on this one.  We've known for more than a week now that this message involves Sectorgame and Goober5000 somehow, and yet none of us have really thought to post over there about it.  I propose that we change this.  If you don't yet have a Sectorgame account (and you should), make one.  If you do, head over and post in what should be the self-evident spot.  Let's see if we can't get things moving.

[Stormkeeper]

I have one, but I can't find the topic...

[Black Wolf]

I suspect that that CHARIDEDAH 3 stuff is part of a URL, the first part being this:

http://www.sectorgame.com/goober/

I suspect.

[Mongoose]

I have one, but I can't find the topic...

Well, whose name was mentioned in the message?  And what thread in his folder has the only new posts made in the last year?

And yeah, some sort of hidden area on his site seems likely, especially based on his last breadcrumb.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

The funny Asian 404 page has nothing to do with it, I think. http://www.sectorgame.com/goober/str/ was a bit too easy probably

EDIT: So...

CHAR-        flame
-ID-           could be a dative suffix, which would mean it's the indirect object of the verb "to access"
-ED            ?

[Black Wolf]

The asian 404 page is just that - an asian 404 page. Hunter moved to Korea a few months back, and has just moved the site to a new server which, I assume is hosted over there.

[Mongoose]

So since I don't really have anything better to do with my life, I decided to go back to the original transliterated message and translate it myself from scratch, just to see if I could come up with anything different.  I'm not entirely done at the moment, and it's still in the roughest form possible, but I think I do have an insight or two, with the help of a few gentle nudges from the resident Myriad of Guubers.

First off, the header of the letter is apparently rather important, particularly in terms of the identity of the main addressee, Admiral Amentep.  This is apparently the same Amentep that was featured in Blaise Russell's campaign Shrouding the Light; he was the commander of the newly-formed 13th Vasudan battle group, and his flagship was...the PVD Guardian.  That should clear up the "flagship" and "guard" portions of that line.

On that same note, the assumption that the 'K' in VBK stands for "Guard" is apparently incorrect.  Our resident expert states that the true answer is something "much more common"...whatever that means.

And finally, for the moment, I have a wild stab at that mysterious "Charidedah" term.  We know that the root word is "flame," and in its second usage in the letter, it's in parentheses next to the number three.  "Flame___ 3"..."Fire___ 3"...Firefox 3?  I don't even know where that would lead us, but for the moment, that's all I've got.

[Mewgen1]

Well im no lignuist, and im certainley no cryptographer but I was going through the work of the day archive and found:

ko-ni-se'-rah - to know 

could VBK = Vasudan Imperial Intelligence? 

[Mongoose]

That's a decent guess, actually.  It'd make sense, given the contents of the message.

[faxi]

Goob seems to be annoyed with our slowness, so he has first provided unrelated words and now the words seem to have frozen...

http://www.sectorgame.com/goober/ sounds good. Now the question probably is what we have to add to that URL.

The most interesting sentence regarding that should be
TEDARUT  HELIXEXAD/CHARIDEDAH 3\NIKAPAX  YOREKCHAROR.
hand(adjective) access(accusative)(imperative){you(singular)}/flameIDEDAH 3\page(allative)  navigate(participle)(instrumental).

of that, I make:
 You should manually(?) access by navigating towards page "flameIDED 3".

If the theory with firefox is right (and also from the word order), it could also be instead:
  You should manually(?) access by navigating "flameIDED 3" towards (the?) page.

On that same note, the assumption that the 'K' in VBK stands for "Guard" is apparently incorrect.  Our resident expert states that the true answer is something "much more common"...whatever that means.

We have
ka-da-ran'-tah - sector
ko-ni-se'-rah - to know
ku-bri'-kah - to direct
ka-lin'-gah - to honor
ka-ra-bi'-mah - to guard
ko-na'-sat - final

I like Mewgen's idea of 'Intelligence', derived from 'to know' although the question is whether that is a "much more common" word.
The other possibility that I see is "sector", but that is pretty meh.

And finally, for the moment, I have a wild stab at that mysterious "Charidedah" term.  We know that the root word is "flame," and in its second usage in the letter, it's in parentheses next to the number three.  "Flame___ 3"..."Fire___ 3"...Firefox 3?  I don't even know where that would lead us, but for the moment, that's all I've got.

For all that we know, Goober could do browser sniffing on the server and serve different pages to different browsers - somebody who still deliberately uses the Indeo codec for videos must be considered capable of any kind of cruelty .

[MikeRoz]

charidedah is not firefox. It's probably not even related to fire, unless in some weird Vasudan culture way. It's not inferno either.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

CHARIDED referring to "Firefox 3" does make sense the second time it's used. But the first time there's no 3 behind it and it doesn't make sense from the context.

And this is a campaign about GTI being pretty much omnipresent. I can imagine VBK being more or less the same. Also, Vasudan Intelligence makes sense from the context: they  would be the ones that preserve their archives into time, by hiring a Terran historian who uploaded it all to CHARIDED...

Just throwing ideas around.

[Herra Tohtori]

Code: [Select]

Imperial Vasudan Navy

Military Historical Department (1)

by Administrator Jimuuchah (2)


Sender -  IVN (3) Administrator of Historical Department (4)

Recipient - Admiral, 13th Battlegroup and IV? (5)

Guardian - Your Flagship (6)


My greetings, and greatness for Vasuda. (7)


It is my honor - to be able (8) to report that Your recent Phoenix (9) work for Archives of Vasuda have been
added. I commend you for acting wisely and for future remembering - despite (10) of present horrors. To
remain humble- and to learn from our horrible past defeats requires you to remember and (11) that will lead to
our victory. And history you record very well [KAN] remember you are freshness (12).

To ease (13) your Vasudan crew shortage it is- Terran historian we hired to record this battle(14).
Amusingly pseudonymed "Half Myriadic Guuberoy"(15). He calls you- and [ANTAS] from Terra your he learns well
(16). I trust in the quality of the work you will provide.

The historian recorded to copy by personal node in Holonet's game-like sector was provided (17). Conveniently
/Manually you access by navigating to page "Phoenix 3"(18).

Password is the name [JUUVAKAT] of your Director's [KOYALAPOS]. (19)

I humbly send this message for you to approve. (20)

Be well. (21)





(1) MAASISEH. Could be almost anything, but "Museum" would be my guess due to relation
  to Vasudan words for past, present and future as well as being contextually fitting. See (4) EDIT: MAASISEH = Department.

(2) This might be a name, or not. CHAH is related to navigation anyway, so it might be a navy
  department instead of a name. Largely irrelevant anyway as far as I can see. EDIT:

(3) IVN = Imperial Vasudan Navy = Vasudat Bisantinat Yorchah = VBY. Just an abbreviation
  there.

(4) Maasisol, genitive form of Maasiseh.

(5) IV? = Imperial Vasudan ??? = Vasudat Bisantinat K??? = VBK. K??? could be almost
  anything. Officer perhaps? Honour something?

(6) Guardian would be Amentep's flagship in "Shrouding the Light". Since it fits context,
  KOYALEH is almost certainly "ship" seeing that BASIROSAT is essentially "flag-like"...

(7) Guesstimating here. It's pretty obviously a standard greeting of some kind...

(8) Guesstimating again. KOLUUMBAROR would be instrumental form of
KOLUUMBAREH, probably, and the literal translation would be "by my ability" or
  something like that.

(9) CHAR|IDED| most likely refers to something with flames (CHAR'-AH = flame), my guess
  is FireBird (phoenix); could be FireFox too due to (18)

(10) Pure guesstimation. Word UUNATOK doesn't directly fit any typical class so I'm taking a
  leap of faith and contextual word placement here. EDIT: UUNATOK = despite.

(11) Contextual placement here again. I'm guessing the double "and and" structure is some kind
  of Vasudan idiomatic structure, so I'm just moving along and assuming the meaning of the
  sentence.

(12) This sentence is pretty screwed up because I can't really think of proper meaning for two of
the words, but it doesn't appear to be of great importance compared to some of the stuff a bit
  further... EDIT: HOYAH = Freshness. Still doesn't make much sense though :D

(13) SUUPAX is one word I don't really have a clue on, and the sentence word ordering is like
  Yoda with a hangover of 700 years, but you get the gist of it I think...

EDIT: SUUPAX most likely has something to do with the verb O-SUU-LAH (to please), probably in allative form, and I guess it would in this context mean "To ease" or literally "onto pleasing" but that hardly makes sense and "to ease" fits the context.

(14) Because the word KARIGALOSOL most likely means "Battle Group", the word "KARI-"
  most likely has something to do with battle.

(15) The "historian" is pseudonymed "Goober5000". You sly dog. :D Myriad=10000

(16) Another screwed up sentence because of a missing word, but it doesn't seem so important
  either.

(17) Can't seem to get the word ordering into comprehensible sentence here, but the basics should
  be clear - the historian was granted a personal node in Holonet's gaming sector to use as
  means of communication.

(18) This could also mean that you navigate to page by "CHAR|IDED|AH 3" and since
  CHAR-'AH is flame(fire), it could very well be a reference to Firefox 3, but Phoenix makes
  sense too due to context.

(19) So close, yet so far... two missing words and the sentence tells us that if complete, it would
  tell us something rather interesting - yet incomplete it's almost completely useless.

(20) Liberal word order changes to convey (probable) meaning rather than literal translation.

(21) Same. MEKEXAD is probably "you make" which would mean that this phrase would be
  pretty much the same as Finnish phrase "Tehkää Hyvin" (lit. Do/Make Well), which can be
  used as "Please be seated -> Tehkää hyvin ja istukaa" etc. Basically a closing greeting of a
  letter.


I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna be able to figure out what IDED means in char'ided'ah, much less how exactly to apply it to an obscure url. Contextual clues only work if one knows the context.

EDIT: Added some stuff from latest update. I see I identified the words WA and KU correctly as "for" and "that", respectively. Still no clues to IDED and rest of the obscure words, they don't seem to be parts of other words either in our resident rosetta stone at holonet...

[Mongoose]

Don't look now, but just the fact that we're working on things again seems to have garnered a response.  A few more words that are used in the letter went up in the archive, and the most recent one confirms that it's the Vasudan Historical Department in the header.

(And heh, I see someone was busy after I turned in last night.  Great work on those contextual bits; I'd missed that "chogah" is probably "name."  )

[MikeRoz]

Randall must be a ST:R fan.
http://www.xkcd.com/516/

[Nuclear1]

Okay, I have it on good authority that looking at CHAR- as "fire" is not a good idea at all. We need to look at the full word.

[faxi]

It seems that Charided is the name of a place, after all the first mention of that word uses locative (CHARIDEDAPOS; APOS is locative, which means that the word fulfills the function of a location in the current sentence).

So, in my opinion, the first passage that mentions CHARIDED should be something like:

we have added your recent work to the Vasudan archives in/at CHARIDED.

Does anybody have an idea of a location (e.g. star system or star base) that could have something with "flame" in its name?

Btw, Herra Tohtori - your translation is really great. It really helped me a lot.
With all the new words and ideas available, I have also now rewritten my translation (on the second page of this thread) - it should now resemble a text .

Edit: since we are talking about flag ship "Guardian", Koyal means "ship". That would mean that the password is some part of the name of some director at Amentep's ship.

The wiki (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Famous_Persons#Shrouding_the_Light) mentions;

Officer Harakhti - Security Director (commander of PVN special operations) for the PVD Guardian.

So either "Harakhti" or the first name of that person could be the password that we are looking for. Now we "only" need to find that "CHARIDED 3"-page.


Edit2: wait a minute... Who put that gold star on my user?
I tentatively take that as an indication that what I have written is not completely wrong.

[Mongoose]

Wow, fantastic work on putting everything together. This is really starting to sound coherent.  The suggestion of Harkhti seems like a sound one, given the past STL reference.  The only very tiny error I see in your translation is the use of "of" instead of "and" in Amentep's title, since VBK seems to be separate from the battlegroup designation; I feel like Mewgen's guess of "Intelligence" for that K still makes the most sense given the hint.

[Alan Bolte]

We've taken too long guys:
Linklinklink

[faxi]

The suggestion of Harkhti seems like a sound one, given the past STL reference.  The only very tiny error I see in your translation is the use of "of" instead of "and" in Amentep's title, since VBK seems to be separate from the battlegroup designation; I feel like Mewgen's guess of "Intelligence" for that K still makes the most sense given the hint.

You got me with the Titles at the beginning. I had that one right before, I think and "smoothed" it too much. I went over everything again, checked the various grammar constructs and fixed a few things.

By the way: looking at the word order, it does not say  (like I had it before):
  ...the pasword is the JUUVAK(adjective)-name[CHOGAH] of the director at your ship
it says (which also makes more sense based on the background information we have):
  ...the pasword is the name[CHOGAH] of the JUUVAK(adjective)-director at your ship

So it's very probable that this is the name of the security director.


@Alan Bolte
Did Goob just send you the link?

Edit: I think I understand now how Goob expected us to find the word Deneb. Checking the respective sentence again, it actually says "we have added your (i.e. Amentep's) recent work at CHARIDED to the Vasudan Archives". I think he would have expected us to be able to fill in that word, after digging out who Amentep is and where he operated in "Shrouding the Light".


The page is a bit of a disappointment, though. What it suggests to me is that we need to get into Andreas Rybak's Holonet account.
His login should be [email protected] and his password is probably Harakhti.