Background Easter Egg

[ty4brawl]

Tfw game will come out before we guess the answer.
On the plus side, it seems like we were, for a time, on the right tracks, that's nice to know.

So now we over think about what part we over thought about so we know where to pick up from. That or just all go for the numbers, unless he meant a different hint on his profile. lol

 

[Alevgor]

 

[ty4brawl]

Kk. Gonna try and grind through the numbers till I figure something out or get super bored trying. lol


Current notes:
211. 2. 1903. 336.
Double letters at 1st position:www, iii, ppm, een, aan, eel, ppl, ssh, bbl, ppb, eek, ook, mmm, ppt, ooh, ooo, ppp, ssl, aad
Double letters at 2nd position:all, see, off, too, add, www, fee, ill, egg, odd, bee, app, iii, inn, tee, zoo, wee, dll, err, foo, cpp, woo, hmm, hee, ebb, soo, gcc, goo, att, lee, css, nee, doo, vii, arr, iff, hoo, hii, gee, boo, mmm, umm, ell, acc, mee, ooo, uhh

 

[Lanxide]

​

So!, Halloween's over, theme's back to regular business now. No changes forthcoming to Halloween theme (which is in fact disabled 'till next year), no changes to assets expected either.

... Thhhhhhhhhhhhat said, you guys actually did better than I expected! I was expecting that the hidden background images wouldn't be found at all due to being overlapped by the sketches on rotation.

Now, here's a confession: I wasn't playing fair. Usually with these things, I try to craft stuff so that the puzzle is/can be solved with a bit of general knowledge and/or relatively short leaps of logic. This time, I cranked the leaps on it all the way up to Leedin, and didn't expect it to be solved even if it was found (or, on the other hand, for it to be solved in 5 mins and have a laugh about it). You still managed to unearth some pieces of the key, and at one point in the chain, it looked like you were on the brink of solving it before wandering off into the dungeons of overthinking.

Here's also a thing you might find disappointing: I'm not gonna tell you the solution. At least, not yet. At some point in the future, I might make an additional puzzle using the same base, but with additional hints and a less cut-throat approach in regards to obscurity. Or something in the game will use it and give you the tools to get it with the benefit of hindsight next year. I don't know! I certainly want to keep using it, but haven't thought too far ahead with it.

For the record, though. You guys DO have enough to go with for an informed pattern-crafting guesstimation or even a brute-forcing crack, and I'd consider the hint given on my profile post to be a high-risk high-reward one. High-risk for me, 'cause solving it spills the beans entirely. High reward for you 'cause solving it is a columbus' egg with regards to the entire thing. Thus why I made what could've been an easier-to-guess mostly-general-knowledge hint so relatively obscure.

In any case, whether this particular puzzle is solved or not, at some point in the future I'd like to make a Rosetta post. We'll see how it goes.

View attachment 2200
I'm also borrowing this panel from Freefall. It seems oddly appropriate here.​

P.s. No, it's not release date. That'd be one bad way to go about announcing it.​

You're a monster and I hope you hit your big toe on a coffee table.

 

[Anukan]

Kk. Gonna try and grind through the numbers till I figure something out or get super bored trying. lol


Current notes:
211. 2. 1903. 336.
Double letters at 1st position:www, iii, ppm, een, aan, eel, ppl, ssh, bbl, ppb, eek, ook, mmm, ppt, ooh, ooo, ppp, ssl, aad
Double letters at 2nd position:all, see, off, too, add, www, fee, ill, egg, odd, bee, app, iii, inn, tee, zoo, wee, dll, err, foo, cpp, woo, hmm, hee, ebb, soo, gcc, goo, att, lee, css, nee, doo, vii, arr, iff, hoo, hii, gee, boo, mmm, umm, ell, acc, mee, ooo, uhh

Eh, what the hell, y'can have an additional hint. Numbers are not a letter substitution cypher.

 

[ty4brawl]

Eh, what the hell, y'can have an additional hint. It's not a letter substitution cypher.

Thanks. Doesn't help me much, but I appreciate the very slight time saver. :/ lol

 

[Alevgor]

Well obviously it is not.
But what is it? Could be everything like letter (or line) index in some text, forum post index etc

 

[Flame]

Ok so I dropped this for a bit while i went and grinded destiny 2 and the overwatch season 7 placements and wow did a lot of things change...

First of all, I think that we are going WAYYYYYY far off trying to brute force and use the numbers to decipher the runes, and no each rune does not have to represent a letter, it can represent a full word or even a sentence! now that we have the new runes I'll start looking into it again but in my opinion what you guys are trying to do right now is very off from the answer... Now that I have more runes it makes it a lot easier to figure out what to use to decipher it and I think Anu knows this... I can't remember if he said he would tell us if we got the right answer or not but I've got 3 different sets of runes that I can use to narrow the search down ALOT. I'm gonna go back and start from the beginning you guys can keep doing what you're doing if you want but just know that I don't think that it is going to take you anywhere... Also whoever was trying to make the python script, you are basically just doing a brute force with a smaller dictionary and like I said earlier that isn't really going to take you anywhere... You guys can take what I just said and ignore it or just talk shit to me because you think I'm wrong and this is the internet! Whichever way you go you now know my opinion. To me, I now have a definitive answer telling me that this is an easter egg and not just some random gibberish.

 

[Mane6Dev]

Mind the doubleposting.

 

[Pom d'or]

You guys can take what I just said and ignore it or just talk shit to me because you think I'm wrong and this is the internet!

Don't worry. Although I'm gonna keep working on the brute-force letter substitution cipher angle, it doesn't mean I think you're wrong. If anything, it's good that we have people working on it from different angles. This is all for fun, after all, so pursue whichever angle you'll have the most fun working on. I look forward to reading your next ideas.

Incidentally, I have my spare computer chewing on some brute-force scripts, but it's not looking likely.

BTW... thanks for not spoiling it yet, Anukan.

 

[ty4brawl]

Mind the doubleposting.

I was slightly excited seeing that you posted here, but got disappointed instead. lol

Still trying to figure out what kind of code the numbers can be.

 

[Mighty Alicorn Hunter]

The tumblr profile name is aleph42. Aleph is a math term that represents the cardinality of an infinite set. Cardinality is the amount of numbers in a set. The set {3 2 1} has a cardinality of 3. The set of all natural numbers {1 2 3 4 5 6...} has cardinality aleph null or aleph zero. There are higher cardinalities such as the real numbers which can be proven to be larger in number and have cardinality aleph one. and then the latter half is 42, which as we all know from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is the meaning of life the universe and everything. Perhaps this is a hint at the password?

Edit: Might also be relevent to mention that Aleph is also a hebrew symbol

 

[Pom d'or]

Hokay. Assuming a 1-to-1 correspondence of one rune to one alphabetic character (for now), and assuming they're read left-to-right (for now), I tried some brute-force methods. Treating the bottom line of the second set as a single 10-letter word gave no solutions, so my next step was to treat the thing that looks like an apostophe as a space, essentially, dividing the last line into one five-letter and one four-letter word.

The solutions (around 6,000) were almost certainly useless and, even worse, were only occasionally amusing.

Spoiler: Boring details about word lists:

At first I was using this word list: github.com/dwyl/english-words
but that took too long to process and had way too much garbage in it (it boasts 479k 'words', many of which are just unreadable abbreviations).
Next I went with this one: www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/wordlist.html
which was only 69k words and got better results. It even has some slang terms in it and has a lot of latin and hebrew in it for some reason - not bad inclusions when talking about demons.

To each, I added a list of around 1,200 TFH-specific words, most of which were pulled from the list of training-bot names that Stunthead posted a while ago in this thread: https://forums.themsfightinherds.com/index.php?threads/easter-eggs-big-and-small.955/#post-38197
That includes 'words' like fhtng, moobot, pomhub, etc. You know, just in case.

I was especially disappointed that using 'energy', 'ninety', or the r-word for the very first set of runes turned out not to have any matches. Those seemed like such good leads.

Here are some mildly amusing or mildly interesting ones from the results.
(I've omitted the ones with humorous unintentional sexual innuendo, for decency reasons.)

arable / around manes-neck
avails / avorum Faust-user (avorum is latin for grandfather... in some grammatical case or another.)
cackle / cavort screw-Peru
lilacs / limbed blest-user
memoir / mental smart-drug
mumble / mutiny omnes-vega
nonfat / nordic unity-stew
tither / tiglon storm-crow (a tiglon is a specific type of tiger-lion crossbreed. New predator revealed?)

Next time I have time, I'll try and see if I can get r'lyehian in the word list. That's Lovecraft's made-up language. We know there's been r'lyehian (with the vowels removed) in use before (including two of Oleander's bot names). Plus it has a lot of apostrophes, so there's a small lead.

Enjoy your 'nonfat Nordic unity-stew,' my friends, and happy solving.

 

[Rodya]

I'll write what we've gathered, mainly so that I only have to search all over the thread once, and in case anyone else wants to join the party. Also, maybe this should now be moved this to off-topic or something.

Spoiler: What we know:

• October bg images were decorated with TFH sketches (which I don't think are relevant), closer inspection and brightness/saturation manipulation (Thanks to Redness) of the images revealed two demonic figures, a set of runes (Therefore known as Rune set A), and a modified Faust (who sold his soul to the devil) quote.
• One of the demons, which according to Flame looks like Baphomet, has a skull with four eye sockets and two horns, seemingly muscular arms but his ribcage, spine and pelvis are exposed, showing only bone. It is also cleaning some dishes, maybe.
• The other demon has a muscular body, and nothing else that's noteworthy. Both demons have different skulls to Fred, since he (?) has four horns.
• Twitter pic of the Unicornomicon could have some more information, sadly, it's too low-res to be of use. "Dave" and "Steven" are named in the image.
• Rune set A seems to follow an ABACDE pattern, assuming they all form a six letter word, Alevgor and Redness theorized it could be a number. RA doesn't fit any runic alphabet that we could find, but they look similar to early Latin runes (Flame, since Fœnum means grass/hay in Latin). Early Latin alphabet comes from the Phoenician alphabet, Flame also made a theory using Phoenician runic characters. More on this later.
• Oreo knew nothing on the topic.
• Rune set A got removed after a time.
• Anu gifted us a cryptic number list: 211. 2. 1903. 336. We don't know what it means, they are not letters though.
• New runes (Rune set B) got added to the bg, rest remains unchanged. Total of 16 characters arranged in two lines. Sixth rune in the second line looks like an apostrophe, we do not know whether it is an apostrophe or not. Fifth character in second line is the sixth one two times, the second one points in the opposite direction. Rune set follows ABFGHI - JAHE (Double apostrophe thing)(Apostrophe)KELM pattern.
• Both rune sets are the same alphabet, some runes in Rune set B do not appear in any other runic alphabet, cementing the theory that this is a made up runic writing system.
• Answer is not release date.

Spoiler: Things that may or may not be correct, probably not

Current page ommited.

• Oleander writes edgy poetry
• Since demons appear to be opposites, Baphomet may be involved in this, since it's a representation of opposite things. (Flame)
• Rune set A is Phoenician and it probably means "Fence, Broken Gateway, Fence, Defense, Fishhook, Hand". Defense symbol may also mean "Wholeness". (Flame) Three theories came from this.

Now you can take this and say that the wall = fence, the broken gateway = opening, the other wall = fence, people protecting it = defense, fishhook = weapons, hand = help of some sort.


I don't know much about the lore but it might be that Oleander was trying to access the unicornomicon (or whatever book FHTNG controls/lives in) and she found some type of gateway that was open and allowed her to enter the unicornomicon. She encountered another type of block with spirits or magic stopping her from continuing, she tries to fight and go past this "guardian" of sorts and FHTNG helps her out. So this might be that FHTNG is locked inside of the unicornomicon and Oleander was trying to free him from the book... or something like that...

Fence = The Holds Super Natural Lock breaks.

Broken Gateway = Predators escaping the hold.

Fence = Foenums Super Natural Lock breaks.

Defense = The Key Keepers are rounded up

Fishhook = The Key Keepers find the keys.

Hand = Foenum is saved because of the Key Keepers.

Phoenician is written from right to left. With a stretch of imagination it could mean that:

Hand: Someone or something offers a thing of value.

Fishhook: Someone else (Oleander?) gets tricked into believing the offer.

Defense: Victim learns about The Hold.

Fence: The Hold acts as a fence, keeping predators away.

Broken Gateway: Victim breaks the lock, releasing the predators, either willingly or otherwise.

Second fence: I dunno, maybe cities start to wall up in preparation, remember how in the first trailer the snowy pixel lobby had great walls?

• Runes are a made up Fœnecian alphabet (Pom d'or)
• Runes may mean multiple letters or whole syllables. (try4brawl)
• Runes in Rune set A are the initials of the 6 main characters (Mighty Alicorn Hunter). Order seems to be arbitrary.
• Runes in Rune set A are the initials of the 6 main characters and their order hints story mode release order. (Rodya)
• Rune set B may be a "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" chant. (Rodya)
• Guessing and brute force gave us several possible words, including: Awaken, Ninety, Idiots, Bobcat, [besthorse], Hungan, Numnah, Hainch/Haunch, Hyphen, Energy, EN****, *E*Y***Y**, Enacts, Enatic, Encamp, Encash, Endash, Endows, Enfold, Enhalo, Enlist, Enolic, Enosis, Ensoul, Entail, Entoil, Entomb, Envois, Enwomb, Beryl, Debye, Hexyl, Kenya, Redye (Hamit, Pom d'or, Rodya, Someoneman)
• Number list hides letters. (ty4brawl). Sadly his work went to waste.

At least one thing in the second list has to be vaguely pointing in the right direction, we just have to figure out which one it was.

list of training-bot names that Stunthead posted a while ago in this thread: https://forums.themsfightinherds.com/index.php?threads/easter-eggs-big-and-small.955/#post-38197

Section is the backer beta exclusive.

 

[Alevgor]

The tumblr profile name is aleph42.

Why do you think his tumblr has anything to do with this puzzle? His twitter is also "aleph42" and is registered long time ago.

 

[Pom d'or]

Section is the backer beta exclusive.

oops, sorry about that.

Well, the list of bot names Stunthead compiled is directly from game content, and since the NDA is lifted, I can probably just repost that list here... right?

Wait, no - if any of those bot names have been changed or removed, then I'd be posting content from NDA versions of the game. In other words, I'm not sure if that content falls under the NDA or not.
So, what we ought to do is play the current release (mostly against Oleander bots, I guess) and try to confirm which bot names are still there, so we can talk about them here. If we can at least confirm that the two that look like Lovecraft gibbberish are still there, that'd be a start.

 

[ty4brawl]

I'll write what we've gathered, mainly so that I only have to search all over the thread once, and in case anyone else wants to join the party. Also, maybe this should now be moved this to off-topic or something.

Spoiler: What we know:

• October bg images were decorated with TFH sketches (which I don't think are relevant), closer inspection and brightness/saturation manipulation (Thanks to Redness) of the images revealed two demonic figures, a set of runes (Therefore known as Rune set A), and a modified Faust (who sold his soul to the devil) quote.
• One of the demons, which according to Flame looks like Baphomet, has a skull with four eye sockets and two horns, seemingly muscular arms but his ribcage, spine and pelvis are exposed, showing only bone. It is also cleaning some dishes, maybe.
• The other demon has a muscular body, and nothing else that's noteworthy. Both demons have different skulls to Fred, since he (?) has four horns.
• Twitter pic of the Unicornomicon could have some more information, sadly, it's too low-res to be of use. "Dave" and "Steven" are named in the image.
• Rune set A seems to follow an ABACDE pattern, assuming they all form a six letter word, Alevgor and Redness theorized it could be a number. RA doesn't fit any runic alphabet that we could find, but they look similar to early Latin runes (Flame, since Fœnum means grass/hay in Latin). Early Latin alphabet comes from the Phoenician alphabet, Flame also made a theory using Phoenician runic characters. More on this later.
• Oreo knew nothing on the topic.
• Rune set A got removed after a time.
• Anu gifted us a cryptic number list: 211. 2. 1903. 336. We don't know what it means, they are not letters though.
• New runes (Rune set B) got added to the bg, rest remains unchanged. Total of 16 characters arranged in two lines. Sixth rune in the second line looks like an apostrophe, we do not know whether it is an apostrophe or not. Fifth character in second line is the sixth one two times, the second one points in the opposite direction. Rune set follows ABFGHI - JAHE (Double apostrophe thing)(Apostrophe)KELM pattern.
• Both rune sets are the same alphabet, some runes in Rune set B do not appear in any other runic alphabet, cementing the theory that this is a made up runic writing system.
• Answer is not release date.

Spoiler: Things that may or may not be correct, probably not

Current page ommited.

• Oleander writes edgy poetry
• Since demons appear to be opposites, Baphomet may be involved in this, since it's a representation of opposite things. (Flame)
• Rune set A is Phoenician and it probably means "Fence, Broken Gateway, Fence, Defense, Fishhook, Hand". Defense symbol may also mean "Wholeness". (Flame) Three theories came from this.

• Runes are a made up Fœnecian alphabet (Pom d'or)
• Runes may mean multiple letters or whole syllables. (try4brawl)
• Runes in Rune set A are the initials of the 6 main characters (Mighty Alicorn Hunter). Order seems to be arbitrary.
• Runes in Rune set A are the initials of the 6 main characters and their order hints story mode release order. (Rodya)
• Rune set B may be a "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" chant. (Rodya)
• Guessing and brute force gave us several possible words, including: Awaken, Ninety, Idiots, Bobcat, [besthorse], Hungan, Numnah, Hainch/Haunch, Hyphen, Energy, EN****, *E*Y***Y**, Enacts, Enatic, Encamp, Encash, Endash, Endows, Enfold, Enhalo, Enlist, Enolic, Enosis, Ensoul, Entail, Entoil, Entomb, Envois, Enwomb, Beryl, Debye, Hexyl, Kenya, Redye (Hamit, Pom d'or, Rodya, Someoneman)
• Number list hides letters. (ty4brawl). Sadly his work went to waste.

At least one thing in the second list has to be vaguely pointing in the right direction, we just have to figure out which one it was.


Section is the backer beta exclusive.
View attachment 2202

Spoiler: List of names.

1. Random Bot:
   
   16807
   hunter2
   404 bot not found
   Please insert girder
   Bot op pls nerf
   Mike's E
   Beep boop meow
   /dev/null
   011000100110111101110100
   We demand it
   what do ya know?
   626f74
   Daisy, Daisy
   Robot Overlord
   [BLEEP] in the dark
   I am real
   Fonic Sox
   HAL 9001
   po.ini = false
   And for a time it was good
   Can't let you do that
   B1-66ER
   Not a Bot
   Copernicus
   The Singularity
   QWERTY
   9
   Does not compute
   ALT+F4 4 SW337 H4X
   Carnivorous Waffle Iron
   Whens Mahvel
   R Olivaw
   Bertie Bot
   EXTERMINAAATE
   Blue Fairy
   DVORAK
   1071-CCN
   Boty McBotface
   
   Arizona Bot:
   
   Moon Yu
   Solid Steak
   Medium Rare
   Got Milk?
   Muscle Milk
   Moobot Beefhammer
   Fifteen Tons
   Beefy Babe
   Big Miss Steak
   Udder Destruction
   Sir Loin of Beef
   The Milkmaid
   Cud Crusher
   OMGWTFBBQ
   
   Velvet Bot:
   
   Louden Frost
   old chilli
   Velvezona OTP
   A song of ice and ire
   Duchess of Death
   HAIL2U
   xxXIcePrincessXxx
   Cold Shoulder
   The Velvet Iced Ground
   Wanted to go bowling
   Kicking ice and taking manes
   Swipe Left
   Fifty shades of sleigh
   Everything freezes
   Ice kicker
   Loud and Frost
   The Ice Queen
   Cervine Cleats
   Top of the Rude Chain
   Where is my super suit?
   Dat Sass Doe
   Chiller Frost
   Cold Chillin'
   SDF L4 STR
   Busta Rimes
   What killed the dinosaurs
   Snow Mercy
   Shiva
   Lamia
   Nora
   Deerly Beloved
   The ice deer cometh
   Ungu Latte
   Sheer Cold
   Tundra Terror
   Assailing Avalanche
   Winter's coming
   Chilled Out
   Cool party
   
   Oleander Bot:
   
   Paint It Black
   Edgelord Hoers
   WTT Soul 4 Pwriving
   sd nzg thrktlk gh brzm-sh krmptl
   Mother, Mother
   Horse with no name
   Ow The Edge
   Tree's Company
   Fhtng & Magic
   In the shadows
   The Abyss
   Come to The Dark Side
   Phngl mglw'nfh Cthlh R'lh wgh'ngl fhtng
   Edgemaster
   My Little Pwning
   Dusknight Glitter
   
   Paprika Bot:
   
   Alpaca Lips Now
   Forever Alone
   Flufftwaffe
   Knitted you a sweater
   Your Pest Friend
   Not a Llama
   Right Now, You
   Alpac-A-Punch
   Neckst Level
   Best Friends Forever and EVER AND *EVER*
   Spree Hugs
   Knitwit
   Hellaportation
   Fluffcheeks
   Hugs people
   Just a Pinch
   Alpacalypse
   Llama-rama
   WTS Fruit
   ASL?
   Everybody picnic!
   Wool You Marry Me?
   
   Pom Bot:
   
   Ewe Let The Dogs Out
   Raze The Roof
   Baah Baah Black Eye
   Lamb chops
   Can't be bleat
   Bob Barker
   Baaad To The Bone
   Wool You Survive
   Lamb fisted
   Slinker Bell
   Puppy Patrol
   Jam Richer
   Pomhub
   pls give win
   -=Xx360NOSCOPEDMLGLMAOxX=-
   Lambasted Your Combogame
   I Herd You Like Dogs
   Release The Hounds
   Background Sheep #12
   xxYourdeathxx
   All Dogs Send You To Heaven
   Shear Pain
   Dynamite Dogwrangler
   Ewe Will Regret This
   [name undecided]
   
   Tianhuo Bot:
   
   Iroquois of Immolation
   Sizzlin' Serpent
   Pyro Plissken
   Through The Fire and Flames
   WhosThatLady
   Rad Dragon
   Spicy Hotwings
   Midnight Snek
   Noodlehorse
   Sick Burns
   The Great Firewall
   CleverGirl
   Steam Machine
   Flame Mignon
   MysterySolved
   Solid Snek
   
   Assuming I haven't missed any, the totals are as follows:
   
   Velvet: 39 names
   Random: 38 names
   Pom: 25 names
   Paprika: 22 names
   Oleander: 16 names
   Tianhuo: 16 names
   Arizona: 14 names

 

[TheGoldenW]

Spoiler: List of names.

1. Random Bot:
   
   16807
   hunter2
   404 bot not found
   Please insert girder
   Bot op pls nerf
   Mike's E
   Beep boop meow
   /dev/null
   011000100110111101110100
   We demand it
   what do ya know?
   626f74
   Daisy, Daisy
   Robot Overlord
   [BLEEP] in the dark
   I am real
   Fonic Sox
   HAL 9001
   po.ini = false
   And for a time it was good
   Can't let you do that
   B1-66ER
   Not a Bot
   Copernicus
   The Singularity
   QWERTY
   9
   Does not compute
   ALT+F4 4 SW337 H4X
   Carnivorous Waffle Iron
   Whens Mahvel
   R Olivaw
   Bertie Bot
   EXTERMINAAATE
   Blue Fairy
   DVORAK
   1071-CCN
   Boty McBotface
   
   Arizona Bot:
   
   Moon Yu
   Solid Steak
   Medium Rare
   Got Milk?
   Muscle Milk
   Moobot Beefhammer
   Fifteen Tons
   Beefy Babe
   Big Miss Steak
   Udder Destruction
   Sir Loin of Beef
   The Milkmaid
   Cud Crusher
   OMGWTFBBQ
   
   Velvet Bot:
   
   Louden Frost
   old chilli
   Velvezona OTP
   A song of ice and ire
   Duchess of Death
   HAIL2U
   xxXIcePrincessXxx
   Cold Shoulder
   The Velvet Iced Ground
   Wanted to go bowling
   Kicking ice and taking manes
   Swipe Left
   Fifty shades of sleigh
   Everything freezes
   Ice kicker
   Loud and Frost
   The Ice Queen
   Cervine Cleats
   Top of the Rude Chain
   Where is my super suit?
   Dat Sass Doe
   Chiller Frost
   Cold Chillin'
   SDF L4 STR
   Busta Rimes
   What killed the dinosaurs
   Snow Mercy
   Shiva
   Lamia
   Nora
   Deerly Beloved
   The ice deer cometh
   Ungu Latte
   Sheer Cold
   Tundra Terror
   Assailing Avalanche
   Winter's coming
   Chilled Out
   Cool party
   
   Oleander Bot:
   
   Paint It Black
   Edgelord Hoers
   WTT Soul 4 Pwriving
   sd nzg thrktlk gh brzm-sh krmptl
   Mother, Mother
   Horse with no name
   Ow The Edge
   Tree's Company
   Fhtng & Magic
   In the shadows
   The Abyss
   Come to The Dark Side
   Phngl mglw'nfh Cthlh R'lh wgh'ngl fhtng
   Edgemaster
   My Little Pwning
   Dusknight Glitter
   
   Paprika Bot:
   
   Alpaca Lips Now
   Forever Alone
   Flufftwaffe
   Knitted you a sweater
   Your Pest Friend
   Not a Llama
   Right Now, You
   Alpac-A-Punch
   Neckst Level
   Best Friends Forever and EVER AND *EVER*
   Spree Hugs
   Knitwit
   Hellaportation
   Fluffcheeks
   Hugs people
   Just a Pinch
   Alpacalypse
   Llama-rama
   WTS Fruit
   ASL?
   Everybody picnic!
   Wool You Marry Me?
   
   Pom Bot:
   
   Ewe Let The Dogs Out
   Raze The Roof
   Baah Baah Black Eye
   Lamb chops
   Can't be bleat
   Bob Barker
   Baaad To The Bone
   Wool You Survive
   Lamb fisted
   Slinker Bell
   Puppy Patrol
   Jam Richer
   Pomhub
   pls give win
   -=Xx360NOSCOPEDMLGLMAOxX=-
   Lambasted Your Combogame
   I Herd You Like Dogs
   Release The Hounds
   Background Sheep #12
   xxYourdeathxx
   All Dogs Send You To Heaven
   Shear Pain
   Dynamite Dogwrangler
   Ewe Will Regret This
   [name undecided]
   
   Tianhuo Bot:
   
   Iroquois of Immolation
   Sizzlin' Serpent
   Pyro Plissken
   Through The Fire and Flames
   WhosThatLady
   Rad Dragon
   Spicy Hotwings
   Midnight Snek
   Noodlehorse
   Sick Burns
   The Great Firewall
   CleverGirl
   Steam Machine
   Flame Mignon
   MysterySolved
   Solid Snek
   
   Assuming I haven't missed any, the totals are as follows:
   
   Velvet: 39 names
   Random: 38 names
   Pom: 25 names
   Paprika: 22 names
   Oleander: 16 names
   Tianhuo: 16 names
   Arizona: 14 names

Oh man, I needed a good laugh today. There's THIS many of them?!

 

[ty4brawl]

Oh man, I needed a good laugh today. There's THIS many of them?!

They said in the other post that these are about half of what they were adding. Idk if more were added since or not. Don't have my computer on me to check right now.

 

[Anukan]

The tumblr profile name is aleph42. Aleph is a math term that represents the cardinality of an infinite set. Cardinality is the amount of numbers in a set. The set {3 2 1} has a cardinality of 3. The set of all natural numbers {1 2 3 4 5 6...} has cardinality aleph null or aleph zero. There are higher cardinalities such as the real numbers which can be proven to be larger in number and have cardinality aleph one. and then the latter half is 42, which as we all know from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is the meaning of life the universe and everything. Perhaps this is a hint at the password?

Edit: Might also be relevent to mention that Aleph is also a hebrew symbol

You're wandering into another puzzle which far predates TFH. I've been/had been (I'm M6 exclusive now =P) DBA Aleph42 for a loooong while now.

Spoiler: List of names.

Velvet: 39 names
Random: 38 names
Pom: 25 names
Paprika: 22 names
Oleander: 16 names
Tianhuo: 16 names
Arizona: 14 names

On a side note. that list's really outdated. We currently have 62 names on Arizona, 110 on Oleander, 33 on Paprika, 54 on Pom, 35 on Tian, 49 on Velvet and 52 Generics. Still need to start compiling a list for predator bots.

 

[Rich Jammer]

On a side note. that list's really outdated. We currently have 62 names on Arizona, 110 on Oleander, 33 on Paprika, 54 on Pom, 35 on Tian, 49 on Velvet and 52 Generics. Still need to start compiling a list for predator bots.

@Stunthead get to work there buddy.

 

[ty4brawl]

On a side note. that list's really outdated. We currently have 62 names on Arizona, 110 on Oleander, 33 on Paprika, 54 on Pom, 35 on Tian, 49 on Velvet and 52 Generics. Still need to start compiling a list for predator bots.

I figured as much. Just copy-pastaed the list from the old post.

 

[TheGoldenW]

You're wandering into another puzzle which far predates TFH. I've been/had been (I'm M6 exclusive now =P) DBA Aleph42 for a loooong while now.



On a side note. that list's really outdated. We currently have 62 names on Arizona, 110 on Oleander, 33 on Paprika, 54 on Pom, 35 on Tian, 49 on Velvet and 52 Generics. Still need to start compiling a list for predator bots.

Oml I don't think I'm physically or mentally prepared for this

 

[ty4brawl]

Hmm... trying to think more simply about this, since we went into overthinking at some point. I just checked back and remembered that the first character response we got was from the background quote. Then we got 4 others at the beginning of this thread. Not sure if the key6 posts have any importance though. But Oli and Fred may be worth looking into.

 

[Stunthead]

@Stunthead get to work there buddy.

I came real close to finishing the new list, but I ran out of time. I’m not going to have access to TFH until tomorrow, so I’ll finish it then.

That said, Anu, you might want to double-check your counting there, because there’s at least 64 Arizona names. I was also 1 name short for Pap and Pom, and I don’t wanna spend an hour poking around if the names don’t actually exist.

 

[Anukan]

I came real close to finishing the new list, but I ran out of time. I’m not going to have access to TFH until tomorrow, so I’ll finish it then.

That said, Anu, you might want to double-check your counting there, because there’s at least 64 Arizona names. I was also 1 name short for Pap and Pom, and I don’t wanna spend an hour poking around if the names don’t actually exist.

Master list says 62, 33 and 54. If someone's been changing things, they've not marked that in the master list.

 

[Alevgor]

I came real close to finishing the new list, but I ran out of time. I’m not going to have access to TFH until tomorrow, so I’ll finish it then.

If you really need that list, it could be made in like a minute.

 

[ty4brawl]

If you really need that list, it could be made in like a minute.

I don't think it's relevant here, but it could be made into another post.

@Anukan was the comic only suggesting to look at it a different way, or did you somehow manage to turn runes into one of those hidden picture things you find in newspapers? If the latter, I'm impressed. lol

 

[Alevgor]

I don't think it's relevant here, but it could be made into another post.

Posted it in the backers forum.

 

[Stunthead]

If you really need that list, it could be made in like a minute.

You telling me there was a way to access the list through the game files the whole time and I just missed it?

 

[TheGoldenW]

 

[ty4brawl]

I don't know if it's relevant or if people mentioned it before, but jacking up the brightness and contrast on the backgrounds reveals hidden text:

View attachment 2173



My current headcanon is that Oleander's into writing edgy poetry, and this is a sample of her work.

Can someone do this with all the Halloween images and post it? Maybe there's something hidden in all of them.

Edit: I think it might be the same thing in all of them. On a note we had earlier though, I did manage to do something with the old Twitter pic that popped up earlier in this post.

Edit2: It appears to say the same thing, except keep it the same as the source. There's also some text in what I assume are other languages. Different pics as well.

 

[Mighty Alicorn Hunter]

I wonder if there's a connection between the runes in the twitter image and the runes we're working with now. I don't think there is, but I didn't look too closely at those.

 

[Pom d'or]

The runes in that image look like the same ones in 'demon.png' that backers got as part of their wallpaper downloads. They're a totally different set of symbols to the Halloween runes. One or two look a little similar, but there aren't really enough similarities to try and connect them; nor do we see the patterns of characters from the Hawlloween runes (ABACDE, for example) in the desktop or, in the twitter pic as far as I can tell, though it's much harder to see.

 

[ty4brawl]

I don't think it's connected either, but I recall someone wanting to know about it.

I've got the numbers for the number clue memorized, but am no closer to solving it. It's also possible that the runes need viewed at another angle, though I don't know for sure since I've been trying to think of or around the numbers. Around them because he said solving it is a Columbus egg for everything else. Also, he said we had most of the pieces, which has me wondering what we're missing. :/

 

[Pom d'or]

So, the reason I had brought up the bot name lists in the first place is that one of the Oli-bot names is:
Phngl mglw'nfh Cthlh R'lh wgh'ngl fhtng

This is probably a reference to a phrase from one (or several) of H. P. Lovecraft's short stories, written in his made-up language:
"ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

Notice that the botname is the Lovecraft quote but with the vowels removed (incl. 'y') - with one exception. 'fhtagn' with its 'a' removed should be 'fhtgn', but instead the botname has 'fhtng.' (That's 'ng' at the end instead of 'gn.') Clue? Typo? I have no idea. In any case, demon.png (from the backer wallpaper DLs) also has a reference to 'fhtng' ...and so did the previous puzzle, apparently. I wasn't really active in that one (it caught me at a busy time).

So, figuring R'lyehian might be involved, I tried some more 1:1 (runes-to-alphabet) brute forcing, but with word lists in R'lyehian (with and without vowels) instead of the English/Latin hybrid word list I was using a few days ago.

I got nowhere.

Click up the spoiler below for details about what I tried.

Spoiler: the details

Unlike Tolkien, Lovecraft never really developed R'lyehian into a full language - he didn't need to; he just wanted some creepy sounding gibberish for his stories. This means that getting a word list for "valid" R'lyehian words is not straightforward. I'm not really a Lovecraft fan myself (sorry), so my source for this was mainly this website: R'lyehian - CthulhuWiki

Notice that a lot of that has been reconstructed by some fans, and it isn't necessarily 'official,' so if Anukan was using a different source for what constitutes Valid R'lyehian then my efforts are already off track.

Notice that there are prefixes, suffixes, and base words. So the first thing I did in creating my word list was to make every possible combination of prefixes, bases, and suffixes. Just to be safe, I let every entry have 0-2 prefixes, one base, and 0-2 suffixes. Although there are only 82 entries, after generating all the combinations the word list contained over 20k entries. Then I wrote a script that created a new list with all the vowels removed. And yes, I added in "fhtng," in addition to "fhtgn" (which showed up in the list already).

So I ran these through the script from last time that tried to match either three words (6, 6, and 10 letters) or four words (6, 6, 5, and 4 letters).
Nothing. No matches, not even nonsensical ones abut nonfat R'lyehian unity-stew.

Next, I tried a few different approaches to the apostrophes. First, I thought that maybe the rune that looks like an apostrophe actually might represent one. R'lyehian is full of apostrophes, after all. So I locked in an apostrophe at character 6 of the last line and ran the scripts again, but this too got no results.

Another approach might be that the characters with two dots, which appear also in un-dotted forms, might mean that it's that letter followed by an apostrophe. In this system, the first set of runes plus the first line of the second set would have the form AB'AC'DE AB'BFGH. The last line could be one long 10-letter word or a five and a four letter word (if the apostro-rune is indeed a word separater).

Again, no matches, so I tried just focusing on the first rune set.
(After all, maybe the two backgrounds translate to text in different languages.)

With vowels included, only two words even fit the form of the first set of runes.
cf'ch'og = c- [prefix: we/our] + f'- [prefix: they/their] + ch' [cross over/travel] + -og [emphatic]
≈ We and they travel!
cf'ch'or = c- [prefix: we/our] + f'- [prefix: they/their] + ch' [cross over/travel] + -or [force from / aspect of]
≈ We and they were forced to cross over (or, smoething? Heck if I know how to tranlsate this).

Neither of these even so much matched on the second set of six letters, let alone the 10-chara line.

Without vowels, five choices fit the first set of runes (again, with this particular interpretation of the apostrophes).
cf'ch'gl apparently from cf'ch'agl (c- + f'- + ch' + -agl [suffix: place)
cf'ch'th apparently from cf'ch'oth (c- + f'- + ch' + -oth [suffix: native of])
cf'ch'gr apparently from cf'ch'ogor (c- + f'- + ch' + -og + -or)
cf'ch'rg apparently from cf'ch'orog (c- + f'- + ch' + -or + -og)
cf'ch'rr apparently from cf'ch'oryar or cf'ch'yaror (c- + f'- + ch' + -or + -yar [suffix: time of /moment] or " ... + -yar + -or")

It's all nonsense! After spending time trying to glean meaning from recombinations of gibberish character strings I began to feel like I was going a little crazy (not unlike many of Lovecraft's characters), so I gave up. I was pretty much out of options, anyway. Although Anukan said we have enough info to brute force a solution, I'm apparently not using the right methods, heheh.

If anyone wants the words lists I created, let me know and I'll figure out how to post them (they're too long to just put in comments). But, I think most of you are not working on this approach anyway. (Good for you - it didn't get me anywhere!)

 

[Alevgor]

Now we need to rotate the runes 180° and do everything again

 

[Frost Aura]

Oh, if it wasn't stated before, the text found when jacking up the brightness here says:

To view me is thine aspiration,
My voice to hear, my countenance to see;
Thy powerful yearning moveth me,
Here am I! - what mean perturbation
Thee, unicorn, shakes? Thy soul's high calling, where?
Where is the breast, which from itself a world did bear,
And shaped and cherished - which with joy expanded,
To be our peer, with us, the Spirits, banded?
Where art thou, Oleander, whose voice has pierced to me,
Who towards me pressed with all thine energy?
She art thou, who, my presence breathing, seeing,
Trembles through all the depths of being,
A writhing worm, a terror-stricken form?

 

[Mighty Alicorn Hunter]

Just to be clear, the fhtng in the bot name is not a typo. Oleander's demon is named FHTNG

And I believe that poem has been posted before. It's a reference (excerpt) from a story of a guy who does a deal to get a demon servant in exchange for his soul. The story (and protagonist) is named Faust.

 

[ty4brawl]

Oh, if it wasn't stated before, the text found when jacking up the brightness here says:

To view me is thine aspiration,
My voice to hear, my countenance to see;
Thy powerful yearning moveth me,
Here am I! - what mean perturbation
Thee, unicorn, shakes? Thy soul's high calling, where?
Where is the breast, which from itself a world did bear,
And shaped and cherished - which with joy expanded,
To be our peer, with us, the Spirits, banded?
Where art thou, Oleander, whose voice has pierced to me,
Who towards me pressed with all thine energy?
She art thou, who, my presence breathing, seeing,
Trembles through all the depths of being,
A writhing worm, a terror-stricken form?

It was posted very early in this post, but it doesn't hurt for it to pop up again.