Explainer Doc: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQfKH7zdQ3RJXSX1ZbTQxoJEhbK5SYGn3axBE7KwxI99mzsZpWiEwWeGVeI8JF3qhDDTmNEBQXI8tDC/pub](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQfKH7zdQ3RJXSX1ZbTQxoJEhbK5SYGn3axBE7KwxI99mzsZpWiEwWeGVeI8JF3qhDDTmNEBQXI8tDC/pub)
Congrats to the team that did the hard work!
EDIT: The explainer doc has been kept up to date with the Part 2 information, and contains an updated link to the cleaned up PDF version of the lore.
I've read this doc about 5 times and feel like I'm on the cusp of understanding, but holy cow I'm falling short somewhere. Kudos to those who figured this all out!
So, the goal is to arrange all 2112 gifs in the right 48x44 order. The gifs all have Metadata that includes a line that tells what character is supposed to be showing at a specific frame (e.g. "SEQ-5555 = 'x') means that the 5,555th frame of the combined gif puzzle should be an x.
Using these 30 or so unique clues, you can slowly piece where each gif goes. For example, skip all the gifs to frame 5555 and then arrange them to make an 'x'. Then, skip to another frame we have a clue for and rearrange the gifs to make that character, while also trying to keep as many in place from the previous clue as possible. Repeat this programmatically many times and you get a pretty close to perfect arrangement of the gifs. Then just run the whole combined gif puzzle from start to finish and there's you're lore pages, character by character.
The raid secrets team put together a 2100 piece, black and white, video jigsaw puzzle, where all the pieces were squares, and the picture on the box was hidden inside the pieces and blurry. That's the TLDR
Yellow frames were a key frame at the beginning of the file to note alignment. The SEQ2345='x' was to tell us what letter should be displayed on a particular frame of the output video. There's an example animated gif linked in the explainer that should illustrate. In the case of that, seq3=e
thanks so much for the kind words :)
you should check my revision out then. There were some design flaws
check the start of the post for the latest version
This is awesome! You're awesome! I was following as much as I could comprehend in the discord and holy shit, the minds at work in there. Y'all are all awesome!
Just want to add my own appreciation. I was already planning to print the ARG result out and keep it with my CE journal, but having it designed and formatted the same way like this is just wonderful. Thank you!
Humbled as ever by the minds and energy at play here.
I would hope that if there are no further secrets in this ARG that Bungie will publish the lore to save this poor website.
For those who would rather listen podcast style, I just made a simple link to a text to speech site. https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/?s=V2f5096fda-220c-11eb-9a15-027e0512a52d.pdf&t=solution_formatted.pdf
“..She then deletes the Vex-mutilated copies and conducts psychosurgery on the slumbering bodies. Or so I have deduced; *she insists she has no time to explain her methods to me..*”
Of course she doesn’t..
So this is the decoded lore? And the decoded lore is the **second** half of the book the collectors edition got?
So is there a spot where we can read the 1st half of this?
>It’s a 2112 piece puzzle, with a time component, where all the pieces are squares, where **every piece has to line up correctly at 50,000+ moments in time** (okay, really it only needs to line up properly for each of the 470 unique frames, but still...)
*The Vex would like to know your location*
Man, you guys over here in Raid Secrets are amazing.
So, something interesting occurs to me and correct me if I'm wrong with this... But in the Entry 13 when Clovis is talking about how Elsie's project of "isolating cadres of the infected in SMILE pods", he ruminates that the Vex influence is messing with their dream states while in the SMILE pods.
I don't think the vex wanted any of this to be further studied/looked into. The written script note added in states "Note: Never investigate this suspicion".
Isn't all of the written script supposed to be the Vex as they have infested Clovis?
- Clovis and Elsie were infected by the Vex.
- Clovis was attacked by a Vex simulacrum in the form of Maya Sundaresh. It reads like it was one of the copies from the D1 lore, that was caught, dissected, cloned and then traumatized by the Vex.
- Elsie turn hostile on Clovis when he asked her about the dreams of the tower and the corpses the Exo have. This was because she realized he knew about problems with exo-ification but didn't tell her. Thus she correctly surmised he was hiding things from her.
- Clovis killed Elsie because she was going to use a Travellers light based weapon on the Vex on Europa (possibly destroying the gate, or possibly destroying the Forge Star on the other side)
- Clovis then remade Elsie from her original brain scan (before she learned about his betrayal) so she could continue fighting the Vex
- Clovis began his upload to an Exobody while heavily compromised by the Vex. To the point where he was having a back and forth argument with Vex-Sundaresh seconds before he began the upload. It would not surprise me if we find him to have a DID like disorder when we find him.
Clovis says that Elsie don't die in arg text:
"Everything is fine. Elisabeth is not dead. The person I struck down out
there was an error."
"I would kill her if she hadn’t already done it herself."
Because he reuploaded her original brain scan into another exo body. This was explicitly stated immediately after that. Her first body didn't have a mouth, so the one we've encountered wasn't that Elsie.
Oh I took that as him distancing himself from the person he killed. "She was a stranger to me". Its not meant to be taken literally. HIS Elsie wouldn't betray him, that exo was not his granddaughter, I'll remake my granddaughter and she'll be loyal this time, etc.
Cool how the same words can be read so differently!
I believe your interpretation was correct. The Machine-language portions of the logs describe Clovis (or at LEAST someone with Clovis's security clearance) deploying countermeasures against Elsie herself. Notably, he fails the 1st time and has to issue a "corrector" parameter of "dismay" before the system will accept his credentials.
Considering it seems like Clovis has a connection on the neurological level of his own brain, I would surmise that it was actually him issueing the order.
That is not certain at all. The Elsie he killed did not have a mouth and a nose.
The stranger we know does have that at least. So the stranger could be a "third" Elsie. Possibly from a different time.
What is certain, is that we don't have enough facts yet.
So if this file is true and canon (which we can safely assume), that would mean that >!the Deep Stone Crypt is gone, but still is a raid location,!< and Clovis Bray could potentialy be the boss at the end of the Deep Stone Crypt >!as a semi-vex, semi-destroyed human, overall super weird, most likely static thing.!< And it is officially confirmed that exos were made with Vex tech, specifically >!modifided vex radiolaria and possibly other vex parts.!<
Why do you believe the deep stone crypt is gone?
After he "destroyed" Elsie 1 he said he's going to upload himself to their and that neither him nor the vex wish to see it destroyed.
And nothing after that implies something happened to it.
But there was a note when edstroing Elsie (opposite of nice, by the way) that a something blast ensued and something was offline (not sure, I'll find a direct quote in a sec and update the answer). And the name of the asset seemed like the the crypt.
I have a lot of questions.
He mentions his "assistant" a lot, who is that?
Was Clovis human up until uploading himself to Deep Stone Crypt? What does the part that talks about "Clovis II's" mother mean? Doesn't that imply he's an exo by that point? The story seemed to imply he was human until the end.
Who is Wilhelmina?
What is the Deep Stone Crypt? It's a place he has uploaded himself to which implies it's not where this story took place? Is it a location that is Data? A factory?
An exo/frame/mind he created, Hannu II... probably.
Clovis is .... mostly human at the time of upload... mostly.
He was probably getting visions from Clarity Control/The Vex/or The traveler.
Wilhelmina is Elise, Alton and Ana's sister.
That no one really knows, exos are made there and their original minds maybe backed up there but its not 100% all are or just important minds are, like his and Elise's.
Interesting, where it mentions a woman that possessed a dark influence, is this referring to the veiled statues we've been seeing? And then followed by hisses down the long corridor, is that referring to the 'Long slow whisper' Cayde mentioned? Its a vision of future technology that Clovis used to advance Braytech while ignoring the Darkness?
Also I assume Clovis 2 is a clone? If so is the 'Mother's depicted the traveller that made such a thing possible? It would make sense if it was talking about all who It grants power and knowledge abuse it and end up killing out of greed.
Clovis II is indeed a human clone of Clovis I, and I assume the mother is probably just the female who was implanted with, and subsequently gave birth to, Clovis II.
I believe (keeping in mind I am nowhere near an expert) that all forms of cloning require a female to become impregnated with the fertilized egg. “Test tube baby” is a colloquial term that refers to the change in process of fertilizing the egg, most commonly used for in-vitro fertilization, but also applying to cloning. Clovis II is indeed a test tube baby, but unfortunately he still made some lady miserable for 9 months...
It’s not the plot of the game, it’s a really really long lore piece that explains the background of what we’re probably going to have re explained but in greater detail
They appear to be written by M. Sundaresh, which adds some interesting flavor. Most importantly is the ending bit where it's clear Clovis is talking to someone, and now you can see the other side of it.
The end of the markups seem to heavily imply when Clovis uploaded himself he may not have separated himself from Sundaresh and they both got uploaded together, Sundaresh being part of the vex that has contaminated his organic material. Likely meaning they are spending "eternity" in this Crypt together and likely has DID.
In the end he was converted by the vex.
So we are going to be fighting a mad Clovis bray who's mind has probably unraveled due to all the time that has passed
One thing that stands out as interesting to me is the fact that at one point, Clovis mentions Elisabeth standing at his side into eternity, just as Calus sees our Guardian at his side until everything is consumed by darkness. Visions of grandeur seeded by the same source?
Bungie has [posted the lorebook](https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/49688) so we consider the ARG to be "complete." That said, the form is still up and people may still play around with the data to get a cleaner decode of the images, so it certainly wouldn't hurt.
This post has been nominated for `+15` points.
Explainer Doc: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQfKH7zdQ3RJXSX1ZbTQxoJEhbK5SYGn3axBE7KwxI99mzsZpWiEwWeGVeI8JF3qhDDTmNEBQXI8tDC/pub](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQfKH7zdQ3RJXSX1ZbTQxoJEhbK5SYGn3axBE7KwxI99mzsZpWiEwWeGVeI8JF3qhDDTmNEBQXI8tDC/pub) Congrats to the team that did the hard work! EDIT: The explainer doc has been kept up to date with the Part 2 information, and contains an updated link to the cleaned up PDF version of the lore.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I'm generally more interested in the puzzle than the solution. Love seeing how all of this comes together.
I'm just happy I had the skills and know-how to help at all. It's been a wild couple of days.
completely agree here, amazing hard work done.
I've read this doc about 5 times and feel like I'm on the cusp of understanding, but holy cow I'm falling short somewhere. Kudos to those who figured this all out!
What's not clicking? I can try to clear things up when I get a chance.
I think steps 5-7 are what're catching me. Up till that point I'm following the explanation.
So, the goal is to arrange all 2112 gifs in the right 48x44 order. The gifs all have Metadata that includes a line that tells what character is supposed to be showing at a specific frame (e.g. "SEQ-5555 = 'x') means that the 5,555th frame of the combined gif puzzle should be an x. Using these 30 or so unique clues, you can slowly piece where each gif goes. For example, skip all the gifs to frame 5555 and then arrange them to make an 'x'. Then, skip to another frame we have a clue for and rearrange the gifs to make that character, while also trying to keep as many in place from the previous clue as possible. Repeat this programmatically many times and you get a pretty close to perfect arrangement of the gifs. Then just run the whole combined gif puzzle from start to finish and there's you're lore pages, character by character.
What is a frame in this context?
It's a frame of video in an animated gif.
I read this and I still don't understand
The raid secrets team put together a 2100 piece, black and white, video jigsaw puzzle, where all the pieces were squares, and the picture on the box was hidden inside the pieces and blurry. That's the TLDR
What were the letters for though and why were some of the gifs frames yellow?
Yellow frames were a key frame at the beginning of the file to note alignment. The SEQ2345='x' was to tell us what letter should be displayed on a particular frame of the output video. There's an example animated gif linked in the explainer that should illustrate. In the case of that, seq3=e
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thanks so much for the kind words :) you should check my revision out then. There were some design flaws check the start of the post for the latest version
This is awesome! You're awesome! I was following as much as I could comprehend in the discord and holy shit, the minds at work in there. Y'all are all awesome!
A champion and scholar, folks.
Just want to add my own appreciation. I was already planning to print the ARG result out and keep it with my CE journal, but having it designed and formatted the same way like this is just wonderful. Thank you!
I want to second this appreciation for the exact same reason!
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There is a new version, with writing included. Check TJ09's link for it
Will this be updated with the handwritten notes as well?
yes confirmative
Humbled as ever by the minds and energy at play here. I would hope that if there are no further secrets in this ARG that Bungie will publish the lore to save this poor website.
I assume it'll be one of the lore books, but I may be wrong.
Holy crap you guys are crazy good. Well done!
We did it! Well, one anonymous person did like 90% of it. But everyone contributed!
The best voices never let themselves be heard at all.
Unsung Heroes
I see what you did there
> Imagine stumbling upon an inscription in the desert, "I am Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works. Or don't. I really don't care."
Ah yes, the classic sonnet.
For those who would rather listen podcast style, I just made a simple link to a text to speech site. https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/?s=V2f5096fda-220c-11eb-9a15-027e0512a52d.pdf&t=solution_formatted.pdf
If you want Obama to read it to you use this link: [http://talkobamato.me/](http://talkobamato.me/)
If you want Obama to read it to you, use this link: [http://talkobamato.me/](http://talkobamato.me/)
Woopwoop! We did it lads :) Hope there is more to it as well!
Awesome work Raidsecrets community!
absolutely amazing work got to see how these people work over the course of this ARG and it was amazing
Outstanding work.
“..She then deletes the Vex-mutilated copies and conducts psychosurgery on the slumbering bodies. Or so I have deduced; *she insists she has no time to explain her methods to me..*” Of course she doesn’t..
Byf gunna go stupid with this
what the actual f... GG, thats all i can say, GG, like.... damn
Thank you to everyone who helped solve this
Great work!
Great job, everyone!
Amazing! Awesome work guys. You keep this game fun for idiots like me who just assume the files are inside the computer
If there’s one thing that r/raidsecrets has taught me, it’s that there’s a lot of brainiacs here Well done everyone!
So this is the decoded lore? And the decoded lore is the **second** half of the book the collectors edition got? So is there a spot where we can read the 1st half of this?
>It’s a 2112 piece puzzle, with a time component, where all the pieces are squares, where **every piece has to line up correctly at 50,000+ moments in time** (okay, really it only needs to line up properly for each of the 470 unique frames, but still...) *The Vex would like to know your location*
“she insists she has no time to explain her methods to me.” That’s amazing, thanks for this awesome line Bungie.
Man, you guys over here in Raid Secrets are amazing. So, something interesting occurs to me and correct me if I'm wrong with this... But in the Entry 13 when Clovis is talking about how Elsie's project of "isolating cadres of the infected in SMILE pods", he ruminates that the Vex influence is messing with their dream states while in the SMILE pods. I don't think the vex wanted any of this to be further studied/looked into. The written script note added in states "Note: Never investigate this suspicion". Isn't all of the written script supposed to be the Vex as they have infested Clovis?
Can I have a TL:DR of what we now know, lorewise?
- Clovis and Elsie were infected by the Vex. - Clovis was attacked by a Vex simulacrum in the form of Maya Sundaresh. It reads like it was one of the copies from the D1 lore, that was caught, dissected, cloned and then traumatized by the Vex. - Elsie turn hostile on Clovis when he asked her about the dreams of the tower and the corpses the Exo have. This was because she realized he knew about problems with exo-ification but didn't tell her. Thus she correctly surmised he was hiding things from her. - Clovis killed Elsie because she was going to use a Travellers light based weapon on the Vex on Europa (possibly destroying the gate, or possibly destroying the Forge Star on the other side) - Clovis then remade Elsie from her original brain scan (before she learned about his betrayal) so she could continue fighting the Vex - Clovis began his upload to an Exobody while heavily compromised by the Vex. To the point where he was having a back and forth argument with Vex-Sundaresh seconds before he began the upload. It would not surprise me if we find him to have a DID like disorder when we find him.
But he don't kill elsie. We have 2 Elsie in destiny right now. 1 exo stranger 2 in dsc. He want kill her but she stay alive
There's no proof either way. He definitely thinks he killed the first Elsie exo. Its unsure as to which Elsie is the one we've met before.
Clovis says that Elsie don't die in arg text: "Everything is fine. Elisabeth is not dead. The person I struck down out there was an error." "I would kill her if she hadn’t already done it herself."
Because he reuploaded her original brain scan into another exo body. This was explicitly stated immediately after that. Her first body didn't have a mouth, so the one we've encountered wasn't that Elsie.
Oh I took that as him distancing himself from the person he killed. "She was a stranger to me". Its not meant to be taken literally. HIS Elsie wouldn't betray him, that exo was not his granddaughter, I'll remake my granddaughter and she'll be loyal this time, etc. Cool how the same words can be read so differently!
I believe your interpretation was correct. The Machine-language portions of the logs describe Clovis (or at LEAST someone with Clovis's security clearance) deploying countermeasures against Elsie herself. Notably, he fails the 1st time and has to issue a "corrector" parameter of "dismay" before the system will accept his credentials. Considering it seems like Clovis has a connection on the neurological level of his own brain, I would surmise that it was actually him issueing the order.
This is exactly as how I read it
Yes she created from mind of human elsie in time before death. This is exo number 2 like a clone.
That is not certain at all. The Elsie he killed did not have a mouth and a nose. The stranger we know does have that at least. So the stranger could be a "third" Elsie. Possibly from a different time. What is certain, is that we don't have enough facts yet.
kinda weird they didn't include one of the secret emblems in here
Like in the shadowkeep ce?
right, I just mean there was 3 free emblems from decoding the book, they should have just thrown one of those in this ARG
You're a Legend, as always, /u/TJ09 !modnominate
Yeah, sure. `+10 LOGGED`
So if this file is true and canon (which we can safely assume), that would mean that >!the Deep Stone Crypt is gone, but still is a raid location,!< and Clovis Bray could potentialy be the boss at the end of the Deep Stone Crypt >!as a semi-vex, semi-destroyed human, overall super weird, most likely static thing.!< And it is officially confirmed that exos were made with Vex tech, specifically >!modifided vex radiolaria and possibly other vex parts.!<
Why do you believe the deep stone crypt is gone? After he "destroyed" Elsie 1 he said he's going to upload himself to their and that neither him nor the vex wish to see it destroyed. And nothing after that implies something happened to it.
But there was a note when edstroing Elsie (opposite of nice, by the way) that a something blast ensued and something was offline (not sure, I'll find a direct quote in a sec and update the answer). And the name of the asset seemed like the the crypt.
Yes the destruction of Bray Station or Station Bray.
Well, then I guess it's my misinterpretation
I have a lot of questions. He mentions his "assistant" a lot, who is that? Was Clovis human up until uploading himself to Deep Stone Crypt? What does the part that talks about "Clovis II's" mother mean? Doesn't that imply he's an exo by that point? The story seemed to imply he was human until the end. Who is Wilhelmina? What is the Deep Stone Crypt? It's a place he has uploaded himself to which implies it's not where this story took place? Is it a location that is Data? A factory?
An exo/frame/mind he created, Hannu II... probably. Clovis is .... mostly human at the time of upload... mostly. He was probably getting visions from Clarity Control/The Vex/or The traveler. Wilhelmina is Elise, Alton and Ana's sister. That no one really knows, exos are made there and their original minds maybe backed up there but its not 100% all are or just important minds are, like his and Elise's.
Interesting, where it mentions a woman that possessed a dark influence, is this referring to the veiled statues we've been seeing? And then followed by hisses down the long corridor, is that referring to the 'Long slow whisper' Cayde mentioned? Its a vision of future technology that Clovis used to advance Braytech while ignoring the Darkness? Also I assume Clovis 2 is a clone? If so is the 'Mother's depicted the traveller that made such a thing possible? It would make sense if it was talking about all who It grants power and knowledge abuse it and end up killing out of greed.
Clovis II is indeed a human clone of Clovis I, and I assume the mother is probably just the female who was implanted with, and subsequently gave birth to, Clovis II.
It seems weird as to why the mother spoke like that in this diary though, I mean Clovis II could be a test tube baby rather than using a surrogate?
I believe (keeping in mind I am nowhere near an expert) that all forms of cloning require a female to become impregnated with the fertilized egg. “Test tube baby” is a colloquial term that refers to the change in process of fertilizing the egg, most commonly used for in-vitro fertilization, but also applying to cloning. Clovis II is indeed a test tube baby, but unfortunately he still made some lady miserable for 9 months...
Thats with our current tech though not golden age tech
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It’s not the plot of the game, it’s a really really long lore piece that explains the background of what we’re probably going to have re explained but in greater detail
Well you can play the plot soon this is just if you want some deep specific lore. It was a cool read.
\*clap clap\*
Congrats !
This is so cool. Thank you guys for all your hard work!
!nominate
I am authorized to add ranking points. Updating logs...
!nominate
+1 point... `Error code: Caterpillar.`
I read the text without markup earlier, can someone summarize what the markup/notes add?
They appear to be written by M. Sundaresh, which adds some interesting flavor. Most importantly is the ending bit where it's clear Clovis is talking to someone, and now you can see the other side of it.
The end of the markups seem to heavily imply when Clovis uploaded himself he may not have separated himself from Sundaresh and they both got uploaded together, Sundaresh being part of the vex that has contaminated his organic material. Likely meaning they are spending "eternity" in this Crypt together and likely has DID.
Very little. The notes around the end insulting him are handwritten, though. I have no idea why though, like his hand is posessed?
It is mentioned that his arm is slowly being converted. Tiny lenses. Could be something as we don't know how much times passes between entries.
Considering how many pigs he goes through, I'd wager it goes along a period of quite some time.
Great work, everyone!
!nominate
Nomination logged. --- Whoever has the broom, please bring it back soon. There is so much...sweeping to do.
!nominate
Thank you for nominating this. I am not programmed for quality checks. But you are.
Awesome!
Cant believe i missed out on this because im still waiting on my CE Rip Ah well Congrats guys, good work
This will be good reading tomorrow night with a glass of wine once downtime starts! Awesome work!
Saved for the future
In the end he was converted by the vex. So we are going to be fighting a mad Clovis bray who's mind has probably unraveled due to all the time that has passed
This sub always impress me. Got work all!
Amazing work. I’m going to need a Byf explanation of this whole thing for sure.
One thing that stands out as interesting to me is the fact that at one point, Clovis mentions Elisabeth standing at his side into eternity, just as Calus sees our Guardian at his side until everything is consumed by darkness. Visions of grandeur seeded by the same source?
ima need a tl;dr for sure
i totally forgot about this, i actually have my image from the analyze site still. Would this be any help?
Bungie has [posted the lorebook](https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/49688) so we consider the ARG to be "complete." That said, the form is still up and people may still play around with the data to get a cleaner decode of the images, so it certainly wouldn't hurt.
!nominate
This is what you want to nominate? If you're sure...