| Balance |
The now unlocked balance folder contains another locked folder(!), a Blastoderm pamphlet cover, and another invoice.
The Blastoderm pamphlet cover is certainly eye catching with the bold blue rays behind the bold Blastoderm outlined in diamond above a pyramid(?). Pyramids seems to be a bit of a theme at this point. Sadly, we only get the cover of the pamphlet, so we can't see what was being said about Blastoderm. The invoice from the Sands Stone Meal Company is pretty interesting. Not only is it an invoice for almost 50,000 pounds of Egyptian granite (Wolfgang is totally building pyramids and is mummifying people in his spare time) but there is a note on the back of the invoice that you can just about read. § So Blastoderm was a tomb! What are the chances it was also a pyramid? I wonder if Ethel was able to order another batch of Egyptian granite for Wolfgang. Was the Wanderlust pyramid built out of that new batch 45 years later? |
| 9/4 Announcements |
Mesmernet also updated on 9/4 with some new announcements.
We also got a new email telling us to check out the onboarding documents and telling us to check back frequently to Mesmernet. They even call out blurbex in the email, so they really want us to know that we are not to share information with him or anyone outside of Mesmer & Braid. § @mesmerandbraid also tweet out that day that "the security of our assets, past and present, is of the utmost importance. Our elite clientele need never worry about their privacy." Perhaps they should rework their IT strategy then and use some slightly stronger passwords. And are they really putting alligators in the homes of their clients as a security measure? Or are they just going to feed whomever has been defacing signs and giving blurbex blueprints to their resident chomper? |
| Return to Wanderlust |
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I'm beginning to think that some of the people on the Discord channel go through every video frame by frame and explore every pixel since they keep finding things that I've just been thinking are compression artifacts or just random things. Perryma91679391 sent blurbex a tweet showing some weird blue and red rocks that were at the Wanderlust site. You can see them around 54 seconds when he is trying to climb the gate. blurbex thought it was interesting enough to take another trek back out to the Wanderlust Estate to see what it was. And it's a good thing he did because we got some good information from it.
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So Wolfgang Sr. is the one that tore off the corner of the Utilities blueprint. I wonder if that blueprint was used on purpose, or if it was just what he had on hand as he was writing a note to his son. The X that marks the spot just inside the entrance is a part of the original blueprint and not something that was written at the time of the note, so it's been there since 1964 and presumably anyone who saw the original blueprint would know about it. Is that where he is hiding the things he doesn't want the board to know about? I really hope it isn't his mummy jars full of pickled internal organs. This note raises so many more questions. It was obviously addressed to Junior (unless there is another Mesmer child running around), but it was never recovered until blurbex found it. Was Junior aware that a note could have been left for him. Did Senior leave it there, hoping that Junior would stop by someday? Why would Junior stop by? Just to see the progress of his father's final project or for another reason? Who was the client? Is Senior just being coy in the note because he is the client and it is supposed to be his final resting place? Is that why Junior would stop by - to pay respects to his dead, possibly mummified, father? Was Senior expecting this note to be found before or after he died? When did he die? Please tell me he is dead and not an undead mummy wandering around under the Mesmer pyramid. The company spy that gave blurbex the blueprint to the Wanderlust Estate apparently did not give him all of the blueprints, as blurbex doesn't know what his piece connects to. Soldead3217 rectifies this by tweeting a merged picture of the Utilities blueprint and the found fragment. You're going to get all pinball machine privileges revoked for spilling company secrets, Soldead3217! blurbex responds that he'll head back out there on September 12 to see if he can find anything. We also get a few more glyphs to add to our collection. § If we say that the previous set of glyphs spell out W-A-N-D-E-R-L-U-S-T, than this next set spells out ?-?-?-?-R-?-D-N, which isn't anything according to the few crossword solvers I tried. But maybe it's some obscure Latin or Egyptian word that wouldn't be in standard dictionary searches. We're just going to need to get more glyphs from somewhere.One last thing to check out on the note. There are a couple of underlined words: nonsense and quitter. The note also talks about harmonics, which is another one of our locked folders. This couldn't possibly lead to a password to the locked folder, could it? This note must have been written around 1964-1965 if Senior is talking about his ouster from the company. When was the Mesmer & Braid website created? Was Senior even alive then to set the password on the harmonics folder? Well, luckily nonsequitter doesn't work for a password. But maybe there is something with my previous thought that there was some kind of super secretive psychic web powers and Senior somehow influenced the IT department from beyond the grave, because the password turns out to be nonsequitur as found by Perryman. |
| Harmonics |
Checking out the harmonics folder, we get another locked folder (will they never end?!), an article about Wolfgang Senior and an internal memo.
The newspaper article and inter-office memo show that the writing was on the walls as far as Senior's removal from The Mesmer Company. A lot of clients were unhappy with him, and unhappy clients equals bad business. It seems as if Senior was building what he wanted and not what the clients were looking for. Industry insiders say that he needs to get back to making "unexpectedly delightful buildings" instead of "physical reflections of mortality". I wonder if Senior's building designs reflect his own mental state at the time of their conjuring. When he was a young 22 year old fresh faced architect, his buildings gave people beautiful dreams. As an 87 year old architect on his way out, his buildings reflect the inevitability of suffering and mortality. No wonder the board wanted to remove him. § |
| 9/8 Announcements |
While blurbex was out finding old notes from Wolfgang Mesmer, Mesmernet updated with a new set of announcements.
The email for the day is just letting us know about the quiz and that it is the next step in our journey. § Over at @mesmerandbraid, they want us to know they are available any time, day or night. They also very helpfully give a phone number for their UK office for their overseas collaborators: +44 117 456 5101. |
| New Collaborator Quiz |
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If we want to prove that we belong with Mesmer & Braid and are good Collaborator's, we need to take the New Collaborator test and turn the results into our representative. Luckily, the test isn't that hard if you read the onboarding materials.
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The answers to the quiz questions are 2-3-4-1-4. But where do we turn the quiz in? We haven't been assigned a representative, as far as I know. If you try to email contact@mesmerandbraid.com, you are told to send it to your rep, which we don't have. I didn't personally do this step since I was so far behind in writing this guide, but aliendial was nice enough to forward me her response. § Everything we need is in the quiz document? The phrasing at the end of the quiz is a little odd: "contains something extra for those collaborators we can call on." The answers aren't long enough for a phone number, but maybe an extension to the phone number we have? Calling (646) 736-1377 (US) or +44 117 456 5101 (UK), the same greeting message as always plays. But if you enter the quiz answers, you get a new set of prompts asking you what kind of Collaborator you are: Nookfinder, Arcadeer, Glowright, Egressquire, or Chronservator. Once you make your selection, you get a personalized message from Wolf Mesmer Jr. § A few things from all that.
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| 9/12 Announcements |
2020 strikes again. The West Coast fires have shut down the California Mesmer & Braid offices. We are told to work from home or utilize our paid time off. As a sidenote, I hope all our Puppetmaster friends are staying safe.
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Oddly, the tweet from @mesmerandbraid doesn't mention anything about the fires or that the California offices are closed. It just talks about harmony with nature is one of their core design pillars. I'm guessing their Twitter scheduler app didn't get the message about Mother Nature having her own way with the environment this week. |
| Wanderlust Part Four |
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It's a good thing blurbex isn't allowed inside Mesmernet since he didn't get the memo that he should work from home this weekend. Instead, he went back out to Wanderlust again to try to find what is just inside the entrance per the blueprint piece that he found. He posts two videos. The first video is him reaching the site of the Wanderlust Estate. The second video is him showing what he found where X marks the spot.
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Well, blurbex. I know you apologized for the white balance being all out of sorts because of the California wildfires, but you really should apologize for your documentation skills. It might be more helpful if you took the time to focus on everything that was in the box instead of rifling through it with one hand while the other holds the camera. You focused longer on an elevator call panel than you did on any of the documents in the ammo can. Do you know how many frames of video I had to go through to get screenshots of some of the documents? Too many. |
| Ammo Box Contents |
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So there is an awful lot to look at, even if it isn't on screen very long. Seriously. The contents of the box are on screen for 36 seconds and there are 19 different documents (not counting some where we get front and back shots). That is less than 2 seconds per item.
The box clearly belonged to Wolfgang since it has his sunburst logo on the outside. Oddly though, based on the numbers that are scratched on the outside, he didn't start marking the box until 1965, so The Mesmer Company was no longer using that design. They were using the small o logo as early as 1963. Wolfgang Senior marked the box six times, the last being in 1976, when he would have been around 100, which explains why his scratches are pretty rough at that point. Curiously, Junior was also visiting the box during the same years as his father. He must have known about the hiding spot even without the blueprint note. Were the two of them passing notes back and forth? Why did he continue to visit the box after his father stopped going? Why hasn't he been back to visit it in 22 years? § There are quite a few pamphlets for Senior's old projects: Blastoderm, Croquet, Multibranch, Pseudomyth, Kathode, and Angstrom. It's a bit weird to see them on yellow paper rather than the blue color we've been seeing. There are also numerous line drawings, although it's impossible to say who drew them. It's also hard to say which way is up on some of them. The first could be an odd perspective drawing of some cabinets. Of if you turn your head, maybe it's a sketch of a building? The second drawing is definitely a building of some sort. And is that another pyramid? I have zero clue as to what way the third drawing should be orientated. Then there is the drawing of something or someplace called Holme Bay (which Google tells me is in Antarctica). We get a very brief glimpse of some sort of sketch, but the other side of the paper has a single handwritten word: Tighmert? Jiopmert? Tiqhment? I'm sure someone in the Discord will have a better answer that I can find when I have time to read the scroll back. I also have zero idea what the next drawing is. Sediment layers? Random doodlings? Tattoo designs? The watercolor looks to be identifying certain geographic features (at least one of which looks to be basalt columns). But is it identifying a specific place? Or is it just a reference guide? So the pamphlets and drawings of buildings and places isn't too odd considering this is stash of an architect, but the rest of it is kinda weird. Some kind of print of the night sky? An Illinois Tollway pamphlet from 1967? I guess the circles could be pointing to possible building sites, but were there no better maps to use? Even the photos are a bit strange. Okay, maybe the house photos aren't that strange since I guess it could be a picture of one of the completed projects, or even the Mesmer family home! (My attempt at trying to piece both halves together can be considered strange). But the rest? Definitely strange. A camel. A blink and you miss it shot of glowing pillars or lanterns? And a desolate landscape with the words "Going Nowhere" on the back. The most exciting thing right now is that we get more glyphs! That circle with a plus inside is the only one we've seen 3 times. Frequency analysis would suggest it could be an E, but even so, it wouldn't give us a lot of information. We will need something more or have to come at this from a different direction. § |
| A Glyph Breakthrough? |
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With more glyphs to look at, the #decoding channel over on the Discord server got to work. It was noted that some of the glyphs on the ammo can were very similar to ones we had before, just rotated. So perhaps we were looking at the third set of glyphs rotated by 180°s.
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That gives us a little bit more to work with, since now we have more overlap. We have twenty unique figures and at least three glyphs that overlap between each set. § If you start running those patterns against a dictionary, you can come up with some possible solutions. One of the most promising solutions that is hit upon is PATHFINDER / SKYLIGHT / MATCHBOX. We're not going to know for sure that is the solution until we have more glyphs, but for now, it's the best we've got. § |
| The Oasis Connection |
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I hope you didn't get your hopes up thinking that "The Oasis Connection" meant that Liam and Noel Gallagher suddenly showed up and confirmed that they were doing a new album together. And if you did, I am sorry to disappoint. No, the Oasis connection was cobbled together in the #investigations channel based on what was found in the ammo can that blurbex found.
Tighmert is an oasis located in Morocco. Holme Bay is in Antarctica, and is considered an Antarctic oasis. The circles on the Illinois tollway map? They point to Oasis service areas. Going Nowhere is also a song by Oasis (sorry, but this still isn't an Oasis ARG). The Mesmer & Braid tweet even hints at it: "clients thirst for balance between their perfect home, and the environments surrounding them." The camel picture and the desolate landscape also hint towards deserts (and thus oases). So where does that lead? The most obvious choice would be the water_survey locked folder in the Multibranch project archive. But "oasis" does not work as a password there. After a lot of different guesses on the file structure of Mesmernet, @mesmerandbraid tweeted out something new: "At Mesmer & Braid, we believe that every door has its key... but the lock may surprise you." If the folders aren't the lock we are looking for, what is? Where else have we used a password lately? The Mesmer & Braid phone system? Thanks to deathsatchel in chat, dialing back into Mesmer & Braid and typing in 6-2-7-4-7 (O-A-S-I-S), we get a saved voicemail from Kim to Mr. Mesmer. § This password is slightly easier to pick up on if you read the transcription rather than just listening to it. We know from the the Metropolitan Living Homes article that Junior has a golden retriever named Nigel, so it's not a stretch to think that is his best friend. The building that Junior pretends to like but everyone knows he doesn't is a little bit harder. When you listen to the voicemail, especially for the first time, you hear "your best friend plus that gaudy building your father loved". Sequoya figured out it wasn't gaudy, but Gaudi. As in Antoni Gaudí, the architect of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. From that, she was able to unlock the personal_papers folder (under Wanderlust) with the password nigelsagradafamilia . |
| Personal Papers |
Unlocking personal_papers gives us the notes locked folder (nope - the locked folders never end), a news clipping about the fate of Wanderlust, and scavenger hunt directions!
The fate of Wanderlust? Burned down in 1999. That probably explains why Junior never went back to the box after 1998. Maybe he thought it was destroyed (although why would he not check)? Or maybe since Wanderlust was gone, he didn't feel the need to revisit what was left. We also get a rough idea as to when Senior died - sometime in 1976, which fits with the last date he visited the box. § We also get an invoice from The Mesmer Company for Project Wanderlust. And the client? None other than Wolfgang Mesmer. So the last building he ever built or conjured or whatever was his own. That explains the Mesmer name on the pyramid. But the confirmation of the client is not the exciting part about the invoice. There are handwritten notes leading somewhere. Not entirely sure who wrote the notes or when. We only have a small handwriting sample from Senior on the note to Ethel. Both samples use all upper case so I think it's pointing us in that direction. And considering the Ethel note would have had to have been written in 1919 and the scavenger hunts notes sometime after 1965, it would account for some of the inconsistencies (like the Ys being written in a different style, the lack of any of the As with an upswept crossbar on the second note, or that most of the Ls in the second sample are made with straight lines rather than an upwards curve on the second stroke). § Hopefully, we'll be able to convince blurbex to take yet another trip out to Wanderlust to explore. At this point, he really should set up a campsite so he wouldn't have to do so much traveling back and forth from his home. Although, with all the fires out west, maybe that isn't the best idea. Speaking of fires, if the fire in 1999 destroyed the entire estate, does that just mean the main house or also the "southeast conservatory"? And if that also got destroyed, will the other landmarks be there? Oak, bamboo, and roses all burn. The stream might be there, but it is California. It could be all dried up and full of brush. blurbex might have his work cut out for him. |
| 9/16 Important Message |
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Well, this was unexpected. We got an important message from Junior. Mesmer & Braid is instituting Casual Fridays in all offices! How cool is that! Jeans and cowboy boots, here I come! I wonder what kind of music we'll get on "Vera's Dream Mix". Sidenote: we finally get actual confirmation that Vera is Junior's wife (unless there is some unknown 3rd person running the company with Junior and Vera).
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Dreams must be pretty important to Mesmer & Braid right now as their tweet today also talks about dreams. "At Mesmer & Braid, we bring your dreams to life so that you can live a life of dreams." Maybe Vera's Dream Mix will give us pleasant dreams like Hausi Imagini did for visitors. As long as it doesn't give us nightmares. Junior must like to play games (or at least creating puzzles) as there is no direct link to Vera's Dream Mix. However, YankeeWhite figured out if you take the first letter of every sentence, you get "bitly" which is one of many url shorteners. Trying bit.ly/verasdreammix rewards us with Vera's Dream Mix. I'm not sure it's very dreamy, but it sure does seem like a music puzzle (which I utterly suck at). |
| Vera's Dream Mix |
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Out of the 12 songs in Vera's Dream Mix, I knew 3. In the #theories channel on Discord, they initially found 10 (including the ones I knew), bringing the total known songs to 10. Eventually, all twelve songs were found.
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Luckily, that was enough to start thinking about what the answer could be. The songs were obviously pointing us to the disco folder in the Sparkling project. Deathsatchel noted that the first letters of the songs were all contained in "somnambulist" which fits with it being a dream mix. After a few more tries, deathsatchel came up with the correct password: somnambulate |
| Disco Time! |
Just when I thought the locked folder situation couldn't get any worse, we get 3 new ones! At this rate, we're going to be unlock folders at Christmas time. We also get a postcard and two articles, both about Vera Braid.
The postcard is of Stanford University. The Harvard of the West Coast. Or as I like to call it, the school with the one of the most obnoxious and scariest football mascots. Seriously, it's terrifying. The Notre Dame leprechaun is probably more obnoxious and Purdue Pete is probably scarier in a "I will suck your soul to the depths of hell" way, but the Stanford Tree is right up there in both categories. The newspaper article talks about Vera Braid joining The Mesmer Company to become Mesmer & Braid. The article suggests that Wolf Mesmer is getting the better end of the deal since Vera is the up-and-coming star and The Mesmer Company was fading away. But without Senior's influences, maybe Vera never would have sought out architecture to begin with. § The Appraising Stories Magazine from 1976 is also about Vera. And it is written by same person who wrote the Metropolitan Living Homes article about Junior - Aldous Trent. He must really like doing articles on the personal lives of creators. I thought at first he might just be obsessed with the Mesmer's and their inner circle, but this article was written before Vera and Junior ever met (if they first met in 1978). It turns out Vera was a bit of a prodigy before she married Junior. That could be why she kept her maiden name (and why the company is not called Mesmer & Mesmer right now). She apparently was born in England and came to US to study at Stanford University, hence the postcard. This article is also of note as it contains a handwritten note from Senior. (And this handwriting sample definitely matches the Ethel note. Still not 100% sure about the scavenger hunt note.) It says "Let's keep an eye on this one" and is signed by Senior. Maybe Senior was the one that first suggested bringing Vera over to The Mesmer Company. If so, it would have to have had been one of the last things he did as this article was published in the Spring of 1976. § |
| Walking the Truth |
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blurbex went out to Wanderlust yet again and he walked the path of truth to find his quarry.
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So someone hid a cryptex at some point in time and set it to read "BLAMED" (which is an anagram of "BEDLAM" for what it's worth). Now we just need to find a password to give to blurbex. The most obvious answer is that it is written in the Mesmerglyphs on the wrapping. I guess now we'll find out if the PATHFINDER / SKYLIGHT / MATCHBOX theory was correct. § Well, it looks like our glyph alphabet might just be correct. Congrats to everyone who worked on it! Now I guess we just need to wait to see if blurbex can open the cryptex with that password or not. |
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| 9/20 Announcements |
Casual Friday might be here to say! We are encouraged to send in our photos for the "ceremonial archive". What makes it ceremonial? Do they hold some sort of special ceremony when they put things into the archive?
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| Opening the Cryptex |
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blurbex is spending his Sunday trying to open the cryptex and is not having any luck. He's tried all the suggestions that Tik Tok, Instagram, and Twitter gave him, but nothing worked.
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A lot of people started giving him a bunch of different guesses, trying to latch onto anything that might make a bit of sense (and some that don't). Apparently, the guesses we were giving blurbex weren't even in the realm of being close, as Mesmer & Braid tweeted out some words of advice to us: "At Mesmer & Braid, we observe that an occasional need to look back for the way forward must not allow the past to obscure our future." So we need to look back at something? Well, looking back at the Bedlam project archive, we have the harmonics folder (password: nonsequitur) with a news article and a memo, the Bedlam Guest House blueprint, and the invoice from Tokorozawa's Nursery (which always seemed like it was a puzzle). |
| Tokorozawa's Nursery Invoice |
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So going back to the Tokorozawa's Nursery invoice, it seems likely that the puzzle is something to do with the plant names. But what is the methodology? Does the quantity play into it? Do we need to use the scientific name or is it something to do with the common name? Funnily enough, this puzzle was actually solved back on September 1 by thatpuzzleguy not long after we found the puzzle.
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So the answer we are looking for is AUBREY. We're not sure who sent blurbex the answer, but however he got it, he was able to open the cryptex. |
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Continue to Page 3 >>
See the Intro page for a list of all the websites, plus brief information about this guide and the game.
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