Obduction ARG

Obduction Alternate Reality Game (ARG) Progress

In late August, Cyan Worlds, Inc. began releasing hints and clues to what would later be revealed to be their new game project, Obduction. Prior to the Kickstarter campaign, several images were teased in encrypted form. These images were mostly screenshots from the then-unreleased Kickstarter trailer and included letters from the name Obduction, hinting at the title. (See the "All Cyan Posts" section below for specifics).
With the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign, Cyan released clues through the kickstarter material and surrounding promotional activity that have so far led to several websites. This segment of the ARG is ongoing, discussed actively in the Kickstarter thread on the Cyan forums. Broadly, clues in the kickstarter video led to a website called hiredark.com, which has several sub-directories with various clues. These clues have since led to the site obduct.me.

Kickstarter Video

During the Kickstarter video for the game, three words are displayed.

• 3:20 - yellowbrick
• 3:23 - firelight
• 4:05 - germinate

When these words are typed into posts at the Cyan forums, the ("swear-word") filter changes the words to:

• yellowbrick: is.gd
• firelight: odu
• germinate: tol

This was found to be a short URL link: http://is.gd/odutol

The shortlink led to a YouTube video with the title 4/3 π r3, uploaded by user Chester C.

The title of the video is the formula for finding the volume of a sphere. The video is three seconds long, cycling through images of different round or spherical objects. The audio of the video (a series of high-pitched beeping sounds) was found to contain a QR Code leading to the site http://hiredark.com.

Hiredark

The site hiredark.com simulates the appearance of a Linux/Unix shell (terminal) running a count-down timer. The timer is scripted in (dynamic) PHP, which generates a Javascript script. The units of the timer appear to be milliseconds, and the timer itself appears to be counting down to January 6, 2014. In addition, the script is coded to display the message "You do not have sufficient permission to cancel this process." if the user attempts to "end" the counter from the simulated command line using the key combination CTRL+C.

Words

In their Kickstarter Update #12 Cyan gave a hint at the bottom of the update: "/words/<AMA>". By appending the hiredark URL with "/words/", it was found that http://hiredark.com/words/ is a valid page, but no access granted.

Having a look again to the reddit AMA page, it was suspicious that Rand Miller used the word "swell" really often in his welcome message. Adding "swell" to the URL again gave a valid page http://hiredark.com/words/swell/ which contains the text of an apparently "nonsense" poem. Searching for the text of the strange poem using a search engine revealed that the text was derived from the poetry of Walt Whitman, specifically the poem "On the Beach at Night Alone". As one can see, every fourth word from this poem is used to derive the Cyan versions of it.

The following day, Rand fave a hint in an In-Game Chat interview ("/words/<update#6>"), and a new page was found, http://hiredark.com/words/surprise/. These words are also every fourth word of the Whitman poem, but with an offset of -1 compared to the /swell words (that is, each word in /surprise is the word in Whitman just before the word used in /swell.)

Following the pattern of looking for prominent or frequently-used words in the updates, two additional pages were discovered, at words/add-on (from update #7)and words/name (from update #11). These pages contained the rest of the words to the Whitman poem, with an offset of -3 and -2 respectively from the first page discovered.

After reconstructing the poem through these pages, it was discovered that one word was different from the original - "shades" instead of "worlds" in verse 8.

Whitman's "On the Beach at Night Alone"

On the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. A vast similitude interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

(The bold and italic faces only emphasize the connections between the versions, and are not original to the Whitman poem.)

hiredark.com/words/add-on/	hiredark.com/words/name/	hiredark.com/words/surprise	hiredark.com/words/swell
On night old to her I stars a clef and A all, ungrown, moons, of All all souls, though so different watery, the All civilizations, that may globe, All all present, similitude always shall and enclose	the alone, mother and husky watch shining, thought of of vast All small, planets, place distances inanimate all they different, shades, vegetable, fishes, nations, languages, have exist, or lives of future, spans has forever compactly them.	beach As sways fro, song, the I of the the similitude spheres, large, All however of forms, living be or All mineral the colors, All existed, on any and the This them, spann'd, span hold	at the her singing As bright think the universes, future. interlocks grown, suns, distances wide, time, All bodies, ever in gaseous, processes, brutes, barbarisms, identities or this globe, deaths, past, vast and And them and
each 4th word, offset -3	each 4th word, offset -2	each 4th word, offset -1	each 4th word, offset 0

Worlds

Guessing that "words" could be a misspelling, simply trying to browse to http://hiredark.com/worlds/ revealed that this opens a page as well; a page with a pure black background and nothing else in it.

Either once this link was posted in the Cyan forums (assuming Cyan employees watching the progress in the thread) - or by simply refreshing the content of the browser (assuming there is some automated mechanism updating content) - had the effect that the page now contained a small circle. This circle was an image named "worlds.png" (circle color = #667766). It had already been observed that the dot-color of Cyan's logo had slightly changed from a bright cyan (#00d8ff) to a color with hex value #667766.

The content of the page worlds changed again almost immediately; this time the color of the circle changed was #637777, and the png image was replaced by an svg version. This change coincided with an identical change in the color of the dot in the Cyan logo. The color of both dots then changed again, this time to #55557A.

After the four portions of the Walt Whitman poem were discovered, a discrepancy was noted in the /words/name/ portion of the poetry. Where the word "worlds" should have appeared, there was instead the word "shades" (see above table). Upon attempting the url http://www.hiredark.com/worlds/shades/ , yet another page was discovered which had not one but four circles, each in a different color corresponding to one of the previous color values of the Cyan dot.

In the next few days the color changed multiple times, and with each change a new circle was added for a total of nine circles arranged vertically. The colors of these have hex values of #667766, #637777, #55557A, #333371, #445844, #729999, #888862, #114F11, and #222264. The newest circle always matched the colors that have appeared on the /worlds/ page and also the color of the Cyan logo dot.

The hex value for each color contains four identical digits and two that don't match. The non-matching digits are always a valid ASCII identifier for a letter. In order of appearance, these are 77=w, 63=c, 7A=z, 71=q, 58=X, 72=r, 62=b, 4F=O, 64=d. The four matching digits from each color are distinct values 1-9, suggesting an order in which they should be placed. When arranged in ascending numerical sequence by these digits, rather than by chronological appearance, the letters form the string "OdqXzwcbr". If entered as as part of the url it gives http://hiredark.com/OdqXzwcbr which at first was a blank page but now redirects to http://obduct.me

Obduct.me

http://obduct.me consisted of the Cyan logo, in SVG form, on a black background. After the nine color changes (see above) the Cyan dot reverted to its original color and the C portion of the logo began to undergo similar color changes. The hex value of the first color was 6F7262, which is ASCII for "orb". Noticing that http://obduct.me/orb is an existing (only Forbidden) page, and assuming a similar pattern as before with using prominent words from Kickstarter updates, led to http://obduct.me/orb/scatter, which displays the single word "Karl". The page corresponds to a Cyan clue for <C1>/<Update #13>.

The color of the C changed several more times. Following the above pattern, these led to the following pages with a single word of text:

<C1>/<Update #13> with #6F7262="orb", so orb/scatter, "Karl"

<C2>/<Update #15> with #746F70="top", so top/reward, "moved"

<C3>/<Update #16> with #6C6970="lip", so lip/officially, "away"

<C4>/<Update #18> with #626F77="bow", so bow/disc, "<today>"

Note that the final clue was received via Cyan.com 's News page on Nov. 11, 2013. Rather than plain text, a .png image is shown containing <C4>/<Update#18> under a post heading of "Welcome". Further exploration revealed a new directory on the cyan.com domain of cyan.com/welcome . This leads to a page with comparable formatting to the Cyan News page but without any other posts. The .png hint image is there as well.

In the forum comments discussing these clues, some text was changed (presumably by a moderator). One set of changes, in red color, indicated that Cyan had given an official <C3>/<Update #16> clue (previously it had been successful guesswork). A second set of changes highlighted words or letters in blue, ostensibly to draw attention to them. These included "<today>" (quote marks only), the individual letters g-o-o-g-l-e in a series of consecutive posts, and "November 11" (including quotes and text). In a post describing one of the possible google hits, the word "correct" was also turned blue. The link in the post is to a page that describes the disappearance of one Karl Hunrath on November 11, 1953. Karl and the other passenger in his plane were purpotedly flying to a rendezvous with a flying saucer to take them away from earth.

Following this hint, http://obduct.me/Hunrath is a valid page (note that Hunrath is case-sensitive). That page displays a slightly different view of the farmhouse from the trailer, with a wooden signboard in front. The sign says "Welcome t* Hunrath", with a circular piece of the sign missing where the o of "to" would be.

Sites to Watch for Clues

OBDUCTION website (in the video)

Cyan's Facebook Page

Reddit

Obduction Kickstarter Updates

Cyan Comments on Kickstarter

Cyan on Twitter

Ryan Warzecha (greydragon) on Twitter

Cyan website

Cyan on Pinterest

Obduction on Twitter

All Cyan Posts

A reference section, these are all posts by Cyanists leading up to and throughout the Kickstarter campaign. This might give some clues on how they think and where their posts might appear. Also, some of the clues might still be relevant to later puzzles. Unless otherwise stated, all of the posts & statements quoted below are from the Looking Forward to that Kickstarter ;) thread on the Cyan forums.

Sep 10: Eric A Anderson (edoublea) posts an image on Cyan’s Facebook page under “Photos of Cyan Inc.” with the comment, "...I have tried to speculate where it might have landed, and I must admit however, such conjecture is futile..." Ainia speculates it has something to do with an outside project of Eric's, The Witness. edoublea replies, "Nope. Think FARTHER." Ryan Warzecha (greydragon) posts, "However Montana has some nice trees, ever think of looking over there?" greydragon will later post "Montana means nothing - The quote on the first one has nothing to do with this game... We just wanted you to read it all the way through and say... 'the ending has not yet been written'"

Sep 15: edoublea posts an image on Cyan’s Facebook page with the comment, "Unbounded in its ken..." Zardoz posts "The quote is from a Robert Gambol poem (The Beauties of the Universe, 1732, partially reproduced below):"

Sep 16: edoublea posts, "Unbounded in its ken, from prison free / Will clearly view what here we darkly see: / Those planetary worlds, and thousands more, / Now veil’d from human sight, it shall explore." and "Maybe there are more levels to this than you know." with the word "levels" fading in color. Zardoz speculates "I think the point of "levels" is the shades of grey - which is to say that eaa is telling us the poem itself is important" and edoublea replies, "Perhaps. Or maybe you need to make an adjustment to your thinking."

Malfhok posts an image which, after various image processing things with the exposure and contrast, reveals hidden letters.

Samsbase wonders about the first image and edoublea replies "Or maybe.... just maybe... eaa didn't embed anything in the first one, because he didn't realize people wanted so desperately to FIND things, and has since remedied that with the follow-ups. But you can keep digging, if you really want to." all in tiny font except for the "keep digging." This turns out to be simply a reference to planting seeds.

Sep 17: edoublea posts an image on Cyan's Facebook page with the comment, "...and each step will be made in the wink of an eye." which is from The Wizard of Oz. Malfhok posts the quote.

edoublea posts on Reddit: "A wild clue has appeared! http://imgur.com/7KujlVh Enjoy. ;}" and greydragon posts on his personal Facebook page, "Reddit is fun ;)" Zib_Redlektab posts about these and begins the speculation. Madhatt3r deciphers the wingdings in the image to read "walking shark" and Rehvaro posts "Why a Stegosaurus ? Why a Graph ? Why "No!" ? Maybe it's a "rebus": Stego + No! + Graph = Steganography ?" Several people try different things with stenography sites, but get nowhere. Zib figures out that "walking shark" means mobilefish.com, tries the image there and gets an image of a seed with the words, "Prepate to be scattered." edoublea posts, "Dang it. That's what I get for not spell-checking my ominous clues before cryptographically encoding them in abstact sneak-peek images. I promus to spel bettr next tyme."

Madhatt3r posts an image of the two images together which appears to be a plant sprouting from a seed.

Sep 28: <@LemonLime> (Eric) posts in Cyan Chat: "x6yoZIW Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains." Ahlisendar posts the image and Buzzle1 posts an excerpt from The Road by Cormac McCarthy which includes the quote posted by LemonLime as well as "Maps and mazes."

Oct 2: Inlander article about Myst 20th Anniversary mentions Cyan's plans to launch a Kickstarter soon and Rand offers the teaser, "A white picket fence and an old farmhouse on a strange and alien world, without explanation for how they arrived."

Oct 5: edoublea posts "Since everyone gave up... http://www.devfarm.it/steganography/" The players now try the images and various passwords in this site, but without luck.

Oct 6: edoublea posts that the site doesn't seem to be working, apologizes and gives the answer: "The password was "mazes", from that Cormac McCarthy quote. Rather than watch everyone fight with a broken PHP error, I'm just going to leave the decrypted payload image right here...http://imgur.com/PR0LeZP"

Oct 6: LemonLime posts in CyanChat: "/a/JJNoN I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along." Zib_Redlektab posts the image and an excerpt from "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard which includes the line quoted by LemonLime as well as the word, "imperfections" which was the key Zib used with mobilefish to find a new image which appeared to be a Magic Eye puzzle. The players were able to see letters in the image and finally work out "ODUCTiN." Malfhok posts that his brother remembered something Rand said at Mysterium 2009: "…there was a project called Abduction which was more of a single player game..."

Oct 10: Shahneer posts about discovering an image with the word "Obduction" on the DRC site. Oct 12: WeldFord posts a partial image of what he captured from the DRC site.

Oct 13: Buzzle1 discovers [1] which links to a post on Reddit by edoublea: "You guys waste no time. And for that, your reward: http://i.imgur.com/oRTaRx3.jpg"

Oct 14: Trekluver posts a link to Obduction wikipedia article and WeldFord posts the full image of what he captured from the DRC site. andys1376 discovers the Obduction website

Oct 15: Chogon posts an announcement about an upcoming forum outage and update which includes the line, "And 3) I hope this doesn't interfere with the timing of the … what's that? Gotta go."

Oct 16: rivenwanderer discovers an Obduction Twitter account.