Endlett War ARG

The Endlett War ARG was an ARG made by someone only known as Endlett War. The actual Discord name was ENDLESS WAR, but the citizens of NLACakaNM decided to call him that to differentiate from the bot that runs the game. Before the ARG, others had changed their usernames mimic ENDLESS WAR and posted false slimeconomy ticks. At first this account was thought to be pulling weird shenanigans in the same vein, and perhaps, maybe even posted some of the fake ticks.

Pre-Story
For a while, this ARG was just a series of puzzles, with no real story connected to them. Slowly a story evolved out of this. It started when a character named GravityKid supposedly stumbled across the ARG server from it being linked in the Game Theory Reddit. He was interested in helping to solve the ARG. At this point, all the existing sleuths suspected him of being played by the ARG host. This was pretty much confirmed when Endlett stopped posting as much and GravityKid became Slime Investigator, who would hack into Endlett's databases to find ARG clues.

The Murder Mystery
Eventually the story furthered as a murder mystery. A serial killer was on the loose. They were called the Catatonic Killer, because dead bodies kept showing up around the city who, when studied in autopsies, were found to have died while in a catatonic state. One of five suspects were known to be the Killer, it was only a matter of narrowing it down from there. These people were the Conspiracy Theorist, the Gamer, the Reporter, the Ex-Cop, and the Scientist.

Each suspect had made a Reddit post at some point. The sleuths found all of them in time, and learned about their personalities and other details. In addition, an old Slimecorp document was discovered. It spoke of a slime wall hidden deep within the mines. A researchers and his assistant had found it. The assistant stumbled into the wall, was sucked in, and never seen again.

Slime Investigator questioned each of the five suspects, being very careful and asking only a few questions to avoid drawing attention and suspicion that he was investigating. The sleuths got to supply the questions, and attempted to ask discrete but useful questions to establish an alibi for each suspect.

With all of this information, the sleuths concluded the Catatonic Killer was the the Conspiracy Theorist. Slime Investigator went to the Conspiracy Theorist's house to confront him, only to find he had left, seemingly in a haste. He found some logs confirming their choice to be correct, as well as explaining his methods in further detail.

The Catatonic Killer/Conspiracy Theorist was the researcher from before, who had lost his assistant. He was doing research on the wall and was in the stage of human testing. Usually he would collect the bodies wherever they appeared in the city, and take them home to study them in their catatonic state, before destroying them with slime acid. The police force began to patrol more around the mines due to so many people disappearing there. As most victims of the slime wall appeared close to the mines, they began to find the victims before the Catatonic Killer could.

The Manhunt
Slime Investigator was sent a device in the mail, which would, when given a pair of coordinates, tell if residue from the slime wall was there. Essentially, it could be used to find out if the Catatonic Killer was there. The catch was that it would be obvious to the Killer that they were being tracked. He said we could give him any pair of coordinates and he would go there to see if anything was there. Endlett War gave the sleuths a short RPG maker game named FINAL PUZZLE, which contained within it the correct pair of coordinates, after a lot of ARG solving of course.

The sleuths eventually found the correct coordinates and agreed to have Slime Investigator go there. He found a hidden base after searching for a while. Seeing that the Killer was not there, and the pantry being empty, he figured he was out for groceries. Plenty of time to investigate. While searching around the place, Slime Investigator found plans to blow up the mines, so nobody else could research the Slime Wall. It seemed the recently arrived Negaslime had forced him to take these drastic measures.

The Catatonic Killer came back much earlier than expected, cutting these investigations short. He shot at Investigator before he even knew he'd come back. He chased Investigator around the labyrinthian base for a few hours, before losing him as he found a closet to hide in. While in the closet, Investigator called the police, although he didn't expect their dwindling organization to be able to send someone this far out of the city. After a while, the Catatonic Killer could no longer be heard. Suspecting the worst, Investigator left the hidden base and made a beeline for the mines, slime gun in hand.

A Tri-Slime Radio news broadcast reported the police finding two men dead in the mines. The police had responded to a call one of the men had made a few days ago, telling the location of the Catatonic Killer and his plan to blow up the mines, and through call logs on his phone, determined the caller to be the man with the business card displaying the name Slime Investigator. The crime scene investigators determined Slime Investigator had died from a head shot, while the Killer bled out from a stomach shot. If Investigator had not stopped the Killer there, the mines would be completely destroyed. The broadcast closed by thanking Slime Investigator for his heroic actions. A plaque was placed at the entrance to the mines to forever pay respects to the one who saved them.

Solving The ARG
Keep in mind this is copied over from Niboe's summary written a while ago, and has not yet been heavily edited or updated. No summaries in equally excruciating detail have been written for the many puzzles that came after this first one.

Puzzle 1
The ARG began on May 17, 2018 when Endlett posted 3 videos to #slime-stock-exchange on the main RFCK server. We didn't notice any clues in the first video, but the second one had a description, so we wondered if it meant anything for a bit. The third video had a guy pushing a button in morse code. This turned out to just say "beep boop". We also tried to figure out what a voice in the background was saying, but we never did. I tried to decode some beeps in the background from morse code to english, but that didn't turn up anything useful and I never posted anything about it.

At this time, Endlett also sent a friend request to The Senator, and apparently shared information with him and Thalamus Dredge which they did not share with us. Then Endlett War PM'd Warweary Villein the following text

"THE RELATION BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN ALWAYS DIVIDES THE RELATION BETWEEN MEN AND MEN ALWAYS ADDS TELL THE UNWORTHIES WHAT YOU HAVE DISCOVERED"

After that, We we were still wondering what the description of video 2 could mean when it mentioned tornadoes, when Sleims made a funny/cute observation: The tornado risk map for america showed the highest risk areas in red. The red area happened to be vaguely shaped like a heart. Clearly Endlett loves us. Anyway, the desciption had nothing to do with the ARG, but I had to include that. /TANGENT

After a bit, Endlett War PM'd Niboe "Enter code --.--" and "Ask for help from the unworthies" At first we tried to decode --.-- as if it were morse code, but Endlett War quickly corrected this by PMing Thalamus Dredge with "EXAMPLE: 24.56".(edited) At this point we start going harder at solving the puzzle. Warweary reposts the clue he was PM'd. We establish the genders of the uploaders of each video: Female for video one, Male for the other two. Using the clue, we establish the formula F/M + M. We weren't sure if F went on top or bottom. We mostly operated with the division first, like (M/F) + M though, and Endlett War later confirmed this was correct.

What we needed were numbers attached to the videos to put in the formula. At first we tried using the timecodes in the links. When Endlett linked the videos, the link started the video at specific times: 0:21 for video 1, 0:07 for video 2, and 0:02 for video 3. After plugging the numbers in for (F/M) + M and (M/F) + F. Thalamus did the first math with this, getting 00.43 and 2.33, and 5. (one of those was from doing addition first)

Warweary suggested we try using numbers in the video titles instead. These were 0283 for video 1, 0257 1 for video 2, and 0016 for video 3. He ignored the extra 1 in video two, and did the math to get 17.01. I tried all the codes that had been suggested, except 00.43, and they were all incorrect.

We needed to know if it was F/M or M/F. Warweary Villein PM'd Endlett War asking, and he replied saying "I REQUIRE BLOOD FOR THIS INFORMATION" to which Warweary responded with a legendary !suicide, after investing all his slime of course. (actually he tried to get himself into a mining accident instead because juvies can't !suicide, and then decided it'd be easier to have Thalamus kill him. forget all that though, he made an amazing !suicide sacrifice.) In response Endlett PM'd Warweary with the answer. F/M is correct. Now we just needed to figure out the numbers. Kanman suggested we should interpret video 2's title number as 2571. Seani quickly did the math on that and got 16.11. I tried it and it was correct.

Endlett War Pm'd Niboe "05-19-2018" which was tomorrow on Saturday at the time. The Puzzle had been solved. In the aftermath, people said that while it had seemed stupid at first, it turned out okay. Other people joked that the final reward of the ARG would be a Minecraft server. We've yet to see on this matter. Thus concluded puzzle 1.

Puzzle 2 (Under construction)
UNDER CONSTRUCTION. It ain't complete yet bitch. Read at your own EDUCATIONAL RISK.

On May 19th, 2018 the next puzzle began. Endlett DM'd Sleims with the message "03:11:30". A few minutes later WV asked EW to repeat and got "03:09:35". It was clear this was a hours:minutes:seconds countdown rather than a specific time. The countdown would end in 3 hours, or 7PM central. A final message to Ephraim "03:01:50" further supported this.

In the meantime, the people of NLACakaNM began to wonder who was behind this ARG, as it was clearly more than a fun one off puzzle at this point. The speculation was all in the direction of it being from Ben, Munchy, or potentially another PCP member. EW weighed in messaging Hale with 'THE NAMES @Cop Killer AND @Rowdy Fucker ARE NOT MY OWN'. This didn't stop everyone from suspecting they were in on it. The all-caps posts of Endlett were similar to the Lord of Ghosts's all-caps posts and some thought it was him.

Occasional updates came. Ben Saint was DM'd "2:22:15". Endlett friended Sandalwood for some reason. Still nobody knew what would happen when the timer hit zero. Nobody was trying to figure it out either. Then Endlett sent Sandalwood this:

3

2

1 At first some thought it was Munchy. Pandapoploin suggested it was counting down to Ben and Jackie's stream that night, but it was scheduled an hour before the ARG timer would end. Evange_ and Ephraim worked on trying to undistort the image. Evange never got anywhere and Ephraim wasn't able to do much either, only this

Endless war sent another image, a different distortion of the same original image. It was much easier to make out this image, and it was quickly recognized to be BestGuyEver. Evange even found the original YouTube thumbnail. Ephraim made one extra undistortion of the first image, revealing Nate more obviously. Quick aside here, this is when WV put together the ARG server and started inviting people.

Everyone was speculating that it was all just BGE shilling. After all, he was doing a nuzlocke stream that night. Next, Evange got sent this picture of Roserade. He didn't copy it in time before EW deleted it so nnoby got sent one too. Ephraim @ed Nate and got an X from EW. They talked about how much of a fucking hack Nate is and were all planning to catch the stream. Eph got a heart from EW with the post "So... Nate stream viewing party?" EW played a game with Blue_Nimbus. He had 5 seconds to guess his name. He guessed "Not n8" and was told he was wrong. In light of all this DoopedyShmoople asked if it was Nate, and EW reacted with X.

During the stream Endlett War began posting times for a new countdown (and added 20 minutes to it when it was about to hit zero, what a funny man). At mention of the ARG in chat, Nate responded "I can neither confirm or deny my relevance to any ARG happening at the present time."

After Endlett's new timer hit zero, he posted "Key 1: a/xdHKE7u" Sleims suggested this was part of a link which got an EW heart. Then EW posted a screenshot of the channel name #the-mines. Seani got a screenshot of EW in the mines with the message "imgur". It was an imgur page. On it, this image.

The url had no relevance, as confirmed by an Endlett heart on one of nnoby's posts. Everyone began attempting to make sense of this cipher, noting information such as the columns all being slightly different colors, the seven characters per column. Ephraim suggested inverting the image, as the box labelled "Green" would then be a green color, resulting in At first it didn't seem at all helpful. However shortly after Niboe discovered the two trios numbers at the top, when taken as RGB values, are the exact colors of two columns in the inverted image, the first number matching the fifth column, the second matching the third.

There was no clear way to "add" the two columns together as implied. Most attempts simply joined the two columns together producing different meaningless strings of characters, so for a while the ARG crew focused on finding some extra piece to fit in, mainly by somehow adding the two RGB values as their raw numbers and using the resulting RGB color somehow. The main hurdle with this was that the red component summed to be more than 255, so some artificial (and more importantly, arbitrary, as no clues were given to help in this regard) method of keeping it below that would be required.

Niboe tried to combine the columns by converting the letters into numbers A1-Z26 and then adding each number with it's corresponding number from the other column. He noticed that in the original two columns, a letter was always on the same row as another letter, and the same for numbers. Using this he planned to convert the numbers from letter rows back into letters after summing. Unfortunately he forgot about this during the conversion and converted all of the numbers into letters to get "EYDAUUE".

Links
Warweary Villein's server for solving the ARG https://discord.gg/znAm3FG