TibiaSecrets.com

Switch to light mode

This is one of the articles that was submitted to the Secrets of Tibia 3 contest. It was written by Holy Luca.

Beholders as an intelligence agency

Let's start from something catchy that every conspiracy theory should start with. :D

I would like to present to you a potential approach to the puzzle that the game creators had when creating beholders/bonelords. I base my short presentation on the history of English cryptanalysis with real historical figures and the events in which they participated. Unfortunately, this is not a ready solution yet, but I can only show you the door if you free your mind!

Table of Contents:

Room 40 and GCHQ a short story about cryptanalysis
Alliance of the Five Eyes
Real stories and places as content inspiration
469 language
Footnotes

1. Room 40[1] and GCHQ[2] a short story about cryptanalysis

A decryption cell and spy agency that has been involved in intelligence operations since World War I, known for decrypting Zimmerman's telegram [13] and from World War II for breaking the Lorenz machine code and as well the Enigma machine. Located in Bletchley Park [3] north west of London.

2. Alliance of the Five Eyes [4] [5]

The union of five countries' intelligence agencies, established in 1946, continued GCHQ [1] and Room 40 [2] in England. Spy agency combining such intelligence units as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It owns and operates many ECHELON [6] radio communication listening stations around the world.

3. Real stories and places as content inspiration

Hellgate as Harrogate [7] and Mino mages connection to Menwith Hill [8].

Where does the minotaur king (who is a mage) live? Yesss… Mintwallin the great city of minotaurs…

Harrogate [7] is located in north England and where a military & spy restricted RAF unit in Menwith Hill [8] area can be found. As CipSoft is giving us a hint to real places like geocaching riddles.

Imagine that there is a restricted access place located in north England where you can literally feel like inside Hellgate in 3D with all of those flying bonelords around.

Those are supposed to be satellites listening to ground radio communication. This is a facility that is used by Five Eyes [4] [5] with people from GCHQ [1] and other Units that

with antennas containing white radomes, locally referred to as "the golf balls", and is alleged to be an element of the ECHELON [6] system.

I was there 3 days ago :D but better picture attached from wikipedia below:

Another fun fact is that when the ECHELON [6] project was being developed, it was reported that new listening stations (golf balls) would be built in Wiesbaden-Erbenheim, Germany.

Shortly afterwards, in 2007, Helheim [15] was introduced to Tibia with an update.
coincidence? I don't think so…

… and yes…if anyone asks, the GCHQ [1] building in Cheltenham looks like a Bonelord shield or Yalahar.

Think for a moment what would happen if bonelords were spies or intelligence agents (like in 007 movies) with whom you do not conduct a normal dialogue, but rather are interrogated by them.

Blinked Bonelord acts like a high rank agent conducting the interrogation on you and Dreadeye [15] is a retired agent that has to stay there because he knows too much (there was as well movie ¨Golden Eye¨ from 007 series and they were mentioning five eyes organization as well within the movie and their radio listening stations or ¨Man with a golden gun¨ but skip it for now).

A Wrinkled Bonelord and his disease

Before the Alliance of Five eyes [4] [5] was created the places like Room 40 [1] responsible for decryption of information already existed and one of the pioneers and creators of such places was Reginald Hall [9] who gave each Navy ship access to books during their missions/tasks and his nickname was “Blinker”.
He got this nickname because of his chronic facial twitch, which caused one of his eyes to "flash like a Navy signal lamp" because of Dyspraxia [10] disease.

Our Wrinkled Bonelord does not like when we are calling him with this nickname because he had similar disease as well. Most probably that's why every approach to solve 469 language in the normal way has failed so far.

Quote from Avar Tar poem.

Avar Tar is the only person who claims to be able to speak the bonelord language.

We can ask question about where he could “learn” that short poem.

But why…

Most probably Telas sent him to Dreadeye [15] that said something like that to him.

(he is not expert in languages so he can make as well some mistakes)

Bonelords sent to him someone who would stop him from “whistleblowing” [12] (revealing information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent) the information to Tales or Avar Tar (According to Alliance of Five Eyes [4] [5] the most famous whistleblower is Snowden [12] even these days).

Connecting some dots between the game story and history of cryptanalysis is colleague of Blinker [9] the Alastair Denniston [11] who told famous pessimism sentence to the Head of Naval Section at Bletchley [3] soon before they broke Enigma cipher:

"You know, the Germans don't mean you to read their stuff, and I don't expect you ever will."

And when you put it next to Avar Tar quote with small (reasonable) adaptations:

It can be a pattern that we can potentially use to solve at least part of 469 language (that without the “blinky” error issue but with some human/Avar Tar mistakes) see the next point.

71 books composed only of numbers

Bonelords (most probably Blinky himself) were responsible for writing 71 books in Hellgate library.

Our friend Blinker [9] decoded the Zimmerman telegram [13] during WW1 that was written in code 13040 between Europe and USA and in code 0075 between USA and Mexico. The telegram [13] was written only with numbers and each part sequence of numbers could be a letter, syllabus, word or few words phrase.

Telegram was about inviting Mexico to WWI by Germany and fighting against the USA. At that point the USA joined the conflict against Germany.

You can read more about it on wikipedia because I have to fit around the word limit.

4. 469 language

In conclusion the books are literally written in code as well but with errors caused by Blinky occasionally blinking a few times more from time to time. And poems that are written in different cypher but as well with this time human errors.

It can be that Bonelords are using different code communications with each other and separate one when talking with other creatures… like humans. In my opinion both versions are somehow corrupted or deviated by the NPCs that are sharing info with us in two different ways. We can probably solve the code of 469 language somehow. But it can be really hard and maybe even not intended by CipSoft to solve.
Anyway, the creators gave us behind the scenes a very fascinating riddle in the style of intelligence agencies that we can Enjoy everyday.

I invite you to share your thoughts and try to solve the puzzle together :)

Best Regards,
Royal Explorer Holy Luca ;)