This is meant as a summary of the Kickstarter Mission. Please do not post any replies. If I've forgotten something or got it wrong please send me a message via the forums so I can fix it It started with the Kickstarter trailer released 17 Aug 2014 (as far as I'm aware) Anashel then hints that we missed something in the video (if anyone can link me the place where he hinted this please...) This news report ticker led to www.barbizonhotels.com Using the Get in Touch form on the Contact page led to this reply from Barbizon Hotel
@nikel then noted, that there was a seemingly out-of-place piece of art located in the Apartment Suite. The picture was identified as Gustave Dorés "Dante Speaks to the Traitors in Ice", based on Canto 32 of Dante Alighieris "The Divine Comedy".
After some time, @dancingtheghost noticed a stray "h" on the room description of the Apartment Suite. Inspecting the room showed a more grievous coding error: "h<>". Inspecting the source code, she found a hidden message. <!-- Subfolder: Dante / File: VDVuEb13.txt --> Which, in turn, lead her to both the pastebin of the same file name, as well as the text file in the hidden sub-folder on the site itself.
@Vomher found the next piece of the puzzle, before it was planted on the site Using the same filename as before, he came across a tinyurl leading to a new Gustave Doré engraving, namely "The River Styx" attached to the wikipedia entry regarding the River Styx itself. Shortly after, the appliances in the Double Deluxe room started acting up, showing the image already found by @Vomher
Subsequently, a pre-existing but hitherto unnoticed piece was discovered by @Makaruda in the Single Deluxe room. The painting above the bed, identified as Les chênes d'Apremont (The Oaks of Apremont) by Théodore Rousseau, had replaced the previous painting First Painting Second Painting
The final, high probability clue, was found in the second AMA held on the 29th of August. Another engraving by Gustave Doré, namely "The New Jerusalem", could be seen in the background. On 15 Sep the Kickstarter funding gets an update with this video Which introduces Mr Whitechapel who we got to know in the Gate 33 ARG. He is singing Dead Souls by Joy Division
On Friday 19 Sep @Ugly posts that he visited the Barbizonhotels.com and the site had changed to one page with a missing jpeg and the title "lingchi" and then went back to normal. Ling Chi was a Chinese method of execultion, meaning slow slicing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_slicing This led him to find http://barbizonhotels.com/lingchi/ The first of Msikas letters. Msika is a Black Watchman agent we got to know in previous ARG's and who we lost in Russia at the end of the End of Days ARG. And @Asariel then found http://barbizonhotels.com/deadsouls/
On Friday 19 Sep 2014 Everyone signed up to TBW Forums then got this email A Skim being an anagram for msika and Patch Hewlie an anagram for Whitechapel. This led us to a private video on Vimeo. To access it we had to type in msika The video showed Msika entering the slaughterhouse. In the description was a link for a livestream http://new.livestream.com/blackwatchmen/askim featuring a wall of paper (A3 paper to be correct) 4:50 PM EDT: Black hooded figure placed paper on wall, blood spatter, word 'HURRY' written in blood. 5:05 PM EDT: Dead Souls by Joy Division has started playing in the background
The next letter was found by @nikel with the HELLO: Have gun will travel radio mix GOODBYE: Nikolaos Georgantas from the lingchi letter led to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Gun_–_Will_Travel and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaos_Georgantas Both corresponded with the date 11/23/1958, or 112358, the first digits of the fibonacci sequence. That led to http://www.barbizonhotels.com/fibonacci/ Next letter was found by @Ugly using the clues at the bottom of the fibonacci letter to find the radio frequency for UVB-76 http://www.barbizonhotels.com/UVB-76/
At this point we figured out that we had found the letters in the wrong order. The clue at the bottom of the UVB-76 letter led to the deadsouls letter. The correct order was Lingchi -> Fibonacci -> UVB-76 -> Deadsouls Page 2 and 3 together had the red text PHOENIX across them. @Catalyst was sent a message that he should contact Msikas handler. https://twitter.com/division66/status/513331821174870017 We figured out that her contact was [email protected]
Division 66 then decided to prod us along in the IRC It was then noticed that http://barbizonhotels.com/room/executive-suite/ had a watermark reading "qGcFuNSD". That lead to http://pastebin.com/qGcFuNSD Which reads "bnnjm://qqq.sionovy.wig/lymofnm?myulwb_koyls=vulvctih+binyfm" A quick ROT6 reveals that as https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=barbizon hotels which leads to On the same executive suite image, there's a new watermark reading "qo4kMC2" Which lead us to http://i.imgur.com/qo4kMC2.jpg This was a pigpen cypher which translated into Item name Miska Original Source TBW transaction history Acquired FSB CONDITION EXCELLENT SOLD CIA CONDITION GOOD SOLD NSA CONDITION FAIR CURRENT ITEM CONDITION SUB AVERAGE working condition verified FOR QUESTIONS REGARDING ITEM QUALITY OR OTHER DETAILS, PLEASE CONTACT CONCIERGE AT BARBIZONHOTELS DOT COM Then we reported back to Div 66 and phoenix and contacted barbizon. Ruke was appointed official contact. Phoenix said to Ruke that in 12h we will have access to $1.2M. When the time comes, phoenix will contact Ruke again and we may be able to "buy" Msika back.
Div66 issued an alert on Twitter https://twitter.com/division66/status/513500202242936833 The link led to this internal memo We had already found out Msikas wife was probably called Gwendolyn from the song clue in letter 3
Thanks for this massive recap of everything. I've jumped in as of recently and was pretty lost on how to proceed. This helps
