What
evil lurks in the bowels of GanMed Biotechnical?
This is the Trail
for the Alternate Reality Game code-named LockJaw. Beasting
commenced February, 2002.
CAUTION: This Trail contains SPOILERS for the
LockJaw game, both puzzles and storyline.
DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT THE PLOT, PUZZLES, AND SOLUTIONS
REVEALED.
You
might try the QuickStart
Guide to begin your journey before you read this Trail.
Last year, a group
of Urban Explorers who called themselves the DCMetroCrawlers went spelunking
the tunnels beneath Washington, D.C. They found something that night that
somebody didn't want them to see. Mercedes Villanueva reported to the
police what the group had found...she was found dead of heart failure
days later, at age 22.
What evil lurks
in the bowels of GanMed Biotechnical?
Following
in the tradition of the illustrious Cloudmakers, the JawBreakers are a
collective detective formed to solve the mysteries of the game code-named
LockJaw. The Cloudmakers were founded by Cabel Sasser in 2001 to find
out why Evan Chan was killed. Evan Chan was a character in the game code-named
"The Beast," based around the universe and characters from the
movie A.I. After "The Beast" ended, some members of the Cloudmakers
suggested continuing the genre by creating their own game.
Steve
Peters has written an excellent linear walkthrough called the Guide,
which helps greatly to put into perspective all the data collected here
and in the other JawBreakers resources.
v1.08:
Fixed link and added to Net:Sight, updated Mephista
including link to devjoe's lovely algorithm treatise, added new emails
from Eric Wyngarde
and Info@NetSight,
added sling's mirrors and Remy's search utility to Resources.
(thanks sling and Remy)
v1.01:
Added domain registration info for the sites,
corrected the translation for VanHolt.HTM,
fixed the summary for Net:Sight, added grimace's
conversation with Net:Sight,
added Bruce Cain and Larry Coombs to cast. (thanks
springboard)
DC
Metro Crawlers: Apparently a group of "Urban Explorers,"
people who explore the subways and abandoned tunnels underneath large
cities. AccessMDC and JohnnyJYoung began the following list of members:
NICKNAME
: REAL NAME : MISCELLANEOUS INFO : ***=Deceased
Popper***
: Mercedes Villanueva : Died age 22 of heart failure in
Washington, D.C. DOD 8/29/01
Cave_Bear
: Eric Henninger : Has had contact with "that cop,
Arney;" brother of Rebar. Webmaster of NoCars.org.
Vad
: Bruce Hollman : Seems to be the ringleader of DCMC, just
took a job at Moreland-WV.
Creeper
: Madeleine Browning : Wrote Credibility's eulogy.
Rebar
: Paul Henninger: Brother of Cave_Bear. Missing since 9/21/01.
Newbie
: Barbie Mills : See above, connected
to Vad, first exploration 6/13/01.
Class_Three***
: Aaron : Engaged to Credibility but died with her in a
car accident on 9/8/01.
sHErPA
: Unknown : Probably an older man as he refers to a "Mrs.
sHErPA." Likely a retired Metro employee.
NiteLite
: Unknown : Female.
Steamer
: Unknown : Male.
Terra_Incognito
: Unknown : Male ("Cog")
Credibility***
: Holly Principe : Engaged to Class_Three but died with
him in a car accident on 9/8/01. Nickname "Billy."
TombRater
: Unknown : Female.
Urban_Legend
: Unknown :
Pitz
: Unknown :
TopSider
: Unknown :
Lunkhead
: Unknown :
GPS***
: Anson Lee :
Underground
Recovery Front: Apparently a group of hacktivists who are down
on big corporations. This group was responsible for the Calling
Card hack on GanMed.
NICKNAME
: REAL NAME : MISCELLANEOUS INFO
unknown
: Unknown : Former head of URF, arrested November 2001
on "trumped up charges."
hermes
: Unknown : Responsible for resurrecting URF site after
former webmaster's arrest.
e
c h e l o n : Unknown :
z6
: Unknown :
moot
: Unknown:
sero
: Unknown :
looty
: Unknown :
.coma
: Unknown :
deproductr
: Unknown : Sometimes listed as "deproductor"
(likely a typo).
LockJaw is shaping up to
be an excellent game and it costs nothing to play except all of your
waking hours! You get to immerse yourself in an alternate reality with
great writing and fun puzzles. You can participate in the JawBreakers
community and play a part in the collective detective or you can play
along solo, solving all of the puzzles yourself. I personally think
a large part of the fun is in banding together with a crowd of people
you may never have met, and I encourage you to join the JawBreakers.
However you enjoy this game,
please consider supporting the PuppetMasters
by purchasing a game t-shirt or other item at one of the following sites,
or by donating via PayPal. Remember, the PuppetMasters are volunteers
and the nature of this game requires them to shell out some cash just
to register domains, pay for hosting, buy voicemail boxes, etc. They
have subtly given us a way to help bear the costs of throwing a game
like this and, as a bonus, you can even get cool gamewear and accessories
with logos straight out of the LockJaw universe. Please help out the
PMs if you can. You never know...those shirts and mugs might be worth
some bucks someday, if this type of thing catches on.
Grrl-E-Grrl:
Cute Grrl-ie merchandise. If you're a Grrl, buy a cute baby-doll
t-shirt and then quick, get a webcam and send me
the address.
Net:Sight
Solutions: Wear that spooky Net:Sight eye everywhere you go! Turn
the shirt around and SEE BEHIND YOURSELF. Arrange rows of mugs with
eyes on them around your co-workers' desks and FREAK OUT if they try
to move them or turn them the other way. Get a mousepad and tell everyone
you like to keep an eye on your mouse balls.
Summary: This
site was registered in November 2001 and became active February 2002.
GanMed Biotechnical appears to develop genetic treatments for diseases
such as leukemia and down's syndrome. It is based in Washington, D.C.
Interesting
Items:
Employee
Login:
At first led simply to "unavailable.html"
with a claim that it will be up in four or five weeks. On 4/2/02 the
webmail system was reactivated. (see below)
Background Patterns:
On the left hand side of each page there are light grey dots on a
dark gray background. The quantity and spacing of the dots is slightly
different on some pages.
Dash.htm:
This page, originally just a graphic, was linked to from the bottom
of the news
page and constitutes a puzzle. (see below)
Clarity.html:
This page was put up by The Pythia to make
fun of URF's Calling Card. It is interesting that he uses a signature
graphic labeled "orosig.jpg," which may indicate that The
Pythia prefers to be called Ouroboros.
Summary:
This site appears to be the web version of a 'Zine that's been around
for 4-5 years in print. The author of the site is Brooke Hunter. Barbie
Mills is a contributor.
Interesting
Items:
The
Trouble with Fonts: In the feature article, the webmaster of Grrl-E-Grrl.com
seems extremely preoccupied with her website's fonts and how much
trouble she's having embedding them. Sure enough, a look at the source
code shows that she's tried to embed a font called ALBA0... but she
misspelled the font file's name in every instance, with an o instead
of a zero. No wonder it doesn't work. Correcting it does nothing for
now, but bears remembering. UrbanZombie
Horoscopes:
The Horoscope page looks fishy but mainly only because of the Pisces
signs. When the first horoscopes page was posted, two of the zodiac
images at the top of the page were not linked to their respective
predictions, Taurus and Gemini. The symbols for Virgo and Scorpio
appeared to have been reversed. These problems were fixed when the
new horoscopes were posted on 2/18/02. However, the names of the GIF
files for the zodiac symbols still bear numbers that are out of order
in relation to the order they appear on the page. The different encodings
for spaces between paragraphs are still present as well. The horoscopes
have been consistently updated since: page 3 - 2/25/02, page 4 - 3/4/02,
page 5 - 3/11/02, page 6 - 3/18/02, page 7 - 3/26/02, page 8 - 4/2/02,
page 9 - 4/8/02, page 10- 4/15/02, page 11 - 4/22/02, page 12 - 4/29/02.
Old pages can be found in the archives.
Vanilla
Sky: "The Vanilla Sky review has a bizarre but clearly
intentional series of spaces in between two paragraphs. Compared to
the co-ordinates and the horoscopes, this is nothing, but it's still
a little curious" UrbanZombie
Archives:
Archives of old material were added on 2/18/02. These include articles
from back to July 2001, as well as the original horoscopes page. (Note:
Woohoo, archives! It can't be long now before the picture gallery
goes up!)
Mulholland
Drive:
A review of this movie was added on 2/18/02. The first letters of
each paragraph spell out "Cloudmakers.org *****". There
is something very odd about intermittent usage of apostrophes on this
page. On 2/24/02, UrbanZombie returned from god knows what and informed
us that he was Simone Wright (née Simon) and that he had written
this review. On the apostrophe issue, UrbanZombie says, "There
are a couple puncuation discrepencies, but nothing too bizarre. [Apostrophes]
and [colons] tend to give editors headaches when being copied to and
from emails. They've replaced most of the apostrophes that got lost
in the mail, but missed one or two. 99% sure its not an intentional
change."
March
Editorial:
An editorial titled "Road trips: a lesson learned" was added
on 3/5/01. This editorial appears to be a clue to the NoCars
Platform puzzle. It also makes men out to be bumbling, directionless
idiotswhich is completely true except in my case. You see, I
have this infallible internal compass....
Summary:
This site belongs to an Oxford-based company that produces a web-browser/mail/web-editor/web-server
suite of software. The first preview beta of version 3.0 of the browser
was released on 11/19/01. Preview beta 2 was released on 2/23/02, shortly
after ExtraRed received an email
about it. This site is linked to from both GanMed
and Grrl-E-Grrl.
Interesting
Items:
Mephista:
The Net:Sight
Browser includes an as yet mostly inactive AI named Mephista.
Mephista is your friend and everything she says could possibly be
a clue. However, please do not post your conversations to the mailing
list unless you are certain they lead to something substantial. She
will give you hints if you ask, and will respond to some Beast-specific
questions as well (such as "Who killed Evan Chan?"). Mephista's
stock responses seem to have been added to in the beta 2 release,
although there does not appear to be much new functionality. Also
added was the option to turn her on and off, which may or may not
do anything. Please note that installing beta 2 over the original
version does not appear to install the new features. However, uninstalling
the first version and then installing beta 2 does.
Corporate
Profiles: A question and answer
page was added on 2/23/02, coinciding with the release of beta 2 of
the browser. The questions were ostensibly provided by website visitors
during a contest that was held sometime before February, 2002. The
answers are provided by the corporate management of Net:Sight.
Summary:
UrbanZombie says, "For those who slept through greek history, the
pythia was the heavily intoxicated woman who translated the words of the
Oracle in suitably ambiguous terms. And now she, along with her protector
Typhon, has an extremely mysterious website."
Aside from a
reminder to "Pay attention to the signs," the first page gives us nothing
to do but click on Typhon's head and head inside. The second page, however,
lets us... um... OK, it doesn't really let us do much of anything. All
there is is a map of the New York City subway system, with a superimposed
negative of a creepy looking tunnel. No links, no text, no clues, no nothing.
Well, actually, there is a little something. The source code features
a little piece of inspiration by the jolly old elf, Kafka: "The mediation
by the serpent was necessary: Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.
The battle is already under way. Join me." This was later modified to
read, "Join me at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jawbreak/
."
Interesting
Items:
Ouroboros: The
first page has a graphic that looks like Ouroborous, but is labeled
"Typhon." Clicking it takes you to page "713oe."
This is a puzzle. (See below)
713oe:
A New York City subway map superimposed over the abandoned
Atlantic
Avenue Tunnel. This page was later updated to link the image
to page "144re."
144re:
A map of the Dusseldorf subway, superimposed over a photo of a
subway train taken in Paris. This page was later updated to link
the image to page "169or."
169or:
A map of the Barcelona subway, superimposed over another photo
of a subway train from Boston. The source code contains the message
"Patience, they say, is a virtue. Are you feeling virtuous
yet?" This page was later updated to link the image to page
"211cw."
211cw:
A close-up of the hands of God and Adam from the Sistine Chapel,
superimposed with lightning. This page was later updated to link
the image to page "158sc."
158sc:
A red-washed image of people riding the subway, photo apparently
taken from the Toronto Transit Commission. This page was later
updated to link the image to page "36mr."
36mr:
An image of a bike tunnel in France, superimposed over a train
from Seoul, Korea. There is an odd, eight-pointed star at the
top of the image. Shawn Kilburn pointed us to this
site, saying that an eight-point star symbolizes the decimal
sequence for Aquarius, which in turn symbolizes genetic engineering
in the Tarot. This page was later updated to link the image to
page "17112rdl."
17112rdl:
An image of the Odenplan rail stop in Stockholm, Sweden, superimposed
with a crawling silhouette man. This page was later updated to
link the image to page "51018tag."
51018tag:
A collage of keys - piano keys, old timey keys, laptop keys, and
the Florida keys. There's a pattern here, I just can't quite put
my finger on it. If you down a few beers fast and squint at it
from far away, it looks like a big arrow pointing into the upper-lefthand
corner of your screen, then it gets all tilty and you wind up
on the floor giggling. Okay maybe that's just me. This page was
later updated to link the image to page "fin."
fin:
A map of the Washington D.C. Metro system (like the logo used
on DCMetroCrawlers), superimposed over a photo
of the D.C. Metro Central Station, all washed in green with the
text "fin" (French for "end" or "finish")
written at the top. Embedded in the source code is the message,
"Our tour ends here. Perhaps you should slow down and get
to know your friends. You have the key. You'll just have to use
it differently this time."
Pomme de Scorpion:
The front page was updated
on 2/16/02 to add an image of an apple with the symbol for Scorpio.
The image is linked to a "Security"
page, which bears a puzzle.
Serpent@ThePythia:
Emailing serpent@thepythia.net
yields a quick response, as
was pointed out by donkey_oatey. This could be a mailing list subscription.
(2/21/02)
Ecclesiastic:
On 4/2/02, an image of a group of stars was added to top of the main
page, which linked to this page. It has an image of a snake wrapped
around a branch and a quote, "Woe to Him that is alone when he
falleTh for he hath not anotheR to help him Up." The highlighted
letters are of a slightly different color. The image was later linked
to a page titled, "citsaiselccE," which contained a manipulated
screenshot of the Wired Souls audio archive. This led us to the solution
of the Ecclesiastic puzzle. (see below)
Booth:
Chet Doan's first confession. Found by solving the Ecclesiastic
puzzle.
Path:
Chet Doan's second installment. Found by solving the Eastern
puzzle.
Logo
Hack: On 4/14/02 the logo on the front page was hacked into
a weird, sparkly, melty version of its former self. It was restored
on 4/15/02.
Revelations:
An interesting
newspaper clipping about one Sam J. Nearey being sought by the authorities,
with red lettering overlayed on the bottom saying, "Seems Dr.
Doan's ship of fools has a loose cannon." Found via the Pythia
Patts puzzle.
Summary:
This site appears to be inaccessible but was activated on 2/15. It was
originally found by accident when jjyoung appended the letter "L"
to the index.htm file on Grrl-E-Grrl.com. A capture
of the file is located here.
The Ouroboros puzzle also leads to this site.
Interesting
Items:
Pythia.asp:
This page bears a form box and GO button underneath the text "You
have corporate greed to thank for the removal of this site. You have
the Oracle to thank for allowing a glimpse at what was. Pay attention
to the signs."
Reported.htm:
An email from Popper
to the rest of the group, telling them that she reported what they had
found to the police.
Found using Pythia.asp.
Noted.jpg:
A copy of the crime
report apparently filled out during Popper's police
visit by, get this, James Arney from Ganmed.
Notes in the margin and on a post-it note attached to the report indicate
that Arney intends to "take care" of "dcmc.org"
and, presumably, the crawlers themselves on behalf of one "CD."
Found using Pythia.asp.
Members
Page: This page was added on 2/24/02. It lists the members of
the DCMetroCrawlers by nickname, giving phone numbers for each of them.
Most of the phone numbers appear
to be payphones in and around metro stations in Washington D.C.
and Maryland. The phone number for Cave_Bear matches
that on the domain registration info for the webmaster of NoCars,
who coincidentally is named Eric. It is believed Cave_Bear is the webmaster
for NoCars. Hidden in this page is a puzzle (see
below).
Front
Page (Fake 403):
On 3/17/02 some text was added to the source of the front page. It reads
"<!-- to quote: "hermes, when I request your assistance on a
project, I expect to see results. I have yet to see anything but excuses.
and hermes? in answer to your question, need I mention the "oog"?" -->
<!-- stop complaining, we're going as fast as we can here. you know
what I have to work with, so you can just stop leaving little presents
in the source code...it wont help. besides, just how slow do you think
these kids are? Someone's going to notice... -->"
Puzzles:
403
Error: On 2/15/02 the front page began to display a somewhat
different error page, which is in fact a puzzle. [SOLVED]
Pythia.asp:
Found by solving the 403 Error puzzle. [SOLVED]
Members
Page: There
is hidden text on the Members page. [SOLVED]
Summary:
This is the website for Alternative Transportation Advocates, a group
dedicated to reducing dependence on automobiles. The webmaster for this
site appears to be none other than DCMetroCrawlerCave_Bear. Their logo (and front page navigation)
is based on the D.C. Metro system map. The site was found by solving the
DCMC Members puzzle.
Interesting
Items:
Front
Page: The navigation system is made up of five links
mapped to five metro stations on the subway map. A list of the stations
shown on the logo was compiled by Cortana and can be found here.
This list does not include the fact that the Southern Ave. station (number
6 on the Green Line) is linked to you.html.
There is hidden text at the bottom of the page (seeNoCars
Riddle). This map was changed on 3/8/02 and the amount of unlinked
stations increased from 8 to 12. This is the key to solving the NoCars
Platform. The map was changed again on 3/17/02 to clue the Creeper
solution and again on 3/27/02 to clue the Cave Bear login.
Join.asp:
This page allows you to input your personal contact information and
join the ATA. 4:00 a.m. phone calls, anyone?
Information
Booth: Found via NoCars Platform 2. This
appears to be a common posting area for files. Many, many interesting
things here, including a description of the NY
Ave. crawl and bits and pieces Vad has been smuggling out to Barbie
through the Moreland site.
What
We Know: The
DCMCers have put up a timeline of interesting events.
Puzzles:
NoCars
Riddle: There is hidden text at the bottom of the front
page of this site. Solving this puzzle leads us to the NoCars Turnstile
puzzle. [SOLVED]
NoCars
Turnstile: This is a simple input box puzzle. Solving it leads
us to the NoCars Platform puzzle. (Note: when this page was originally
found, the puzzle was broken and any answer would work. This was subsequently
fixed.) [SOLVED]
NoCars
Platform: This is a login puzzle with four currently known
solutions. [SOLVED]
NoCars
Platform 2: This is a login puzzle similar to the first platform
but in a deeper directory. [SOLVED]
The
Hunt for Vad's Employer: Vad emailed Barbie to let her know
he got a new job. But when she replied, she cut off the website address!
[SOLVED]
Summary:
This is the website for the Underground Recovery Front, a group of hacktivists
dedicated to sticking it to the proverbial corporate "man."
They like to speak in l33t and screw with Wal*Mart shoppers (who doesn't?).
The site was found by solving the GanMed Calling Card
puzzle. On 3/28/02 this site was hacked, apparently by Serpent, deleting
the entire site and leaving the Four-0-Faux puzzle
on the front page. Some links are to the archived versions of old pages.
Interesting
Items:
Hidden
Text: On the main page of the site (after clicking the
graphic on the intro page) there is hidden text at the bottom of the
second scrolling frame. It reads, "'Are you a god?' they asked
the Buddha. 'No,' he replied. 'Are you an angel, then?' 'No.' 'A saint?'
'No.' 'Then what are you?' Replied the Buddha, 'I am awake.'"
Eye
of the Beholder: Clicking the left eye of the URF mascot
on the main page leads you to a password entry page. (See URF
Entry.asp)
Link to Net:Sight
Solutions, also on the main page in the second scrolling frame.
Thermopylae:
A wrong guess in the Entry.asp puzzle leads you to this page with an
ominous message embedded in the source. Is the page title significant?
Events:
A list of past and upcoming activist events. Found via URF
Forums.asp puzzle.
GanMed
File 01: A internal GanMed memo from June 1999 regarding experimental
gene therapy and Werner's syndrome. It seems GanMed may have been doing
research on reversing the aging process. There is an interesting note
at the top signed by "CD."
48 Emails: On 4/3/02,
the swirling 404 error on the front page was updated. The words "file
not" at the bottom had a brief link that led us to the first of
the following emails apparently between h3z (Hermes) and Serpent. Looks
like Serpent had Hermes send a couple of uRfers to retrieve some tape
from Moreland, and they got "dead" in
the process. Each email was linked daily to the next.
Tao:
Found via the Hermes
Gets Philosophical email. Contains the quote, "yes, this is the
right track, the right book. there is nothing before the Tao." (cljones23)
Fountainless:
Also found via the Hermes
Gets Philosophical email. (JohnnyJYoung) Appears to be the third
incarnation of the URF site, resurrected yet again. At first it was
just a placeholder, but the archive was activated around 4/25/02. (y2kbozo)
Obscurity:
On 4/15/02, Tien_Le was messaged in IRC by a Lao_Tze who said, "/obscurity/
what you seek comes from nothing, like the emptiness of a vessel."
This led Tien_Le to the obscurity page, which contains the following
text: "you have the right book, the one you didn't read. it instructs
in the Way of things,and how we all should be; what you seek comes from
nothing, like the emptiness of a vessel."
Puzzles:
URF
Entry.asp: There is hidden text at the bottom of the
front page of this site. Solving this puzzle leads us to the URF
Forums.asp puzzle. [SOLVED]
URF
Forums.asp: This page is titled forum login. It has a header
image labeled "Forums," and three text entry boxes with
submit buttons next to each labeled (in order) "admin,"
" downtime," and "events." [SOLVED]
Navajo
Memo: This is an encrypted internal GanMed memo. [SOLVED]
Four-0-Faux:
On 3/28/02 the site was hacked leaving this flash animation on the
front page. [SOLVED]
48
Emails: A
link in Four-0-Faux led us to this email thread
between Hermes and Serpent. [SOLVED]
Summary:
This is the website for a planned community, planned not just from the
ground up but from the underground up even. It is the brainchild of one
Jo Burgess. GanMed seems to be involved with it somehow. DCMC member Vad
just took a job there as civil engineer/webmaster for the website. This
site was found by solving "The Hunt for Vad's Employer."
Interesting
Items:
Employment
Application: In the Employment Opportunities section,
there is a link to an online job application. It seems that filling
out the form and admitting one has living relatives and close friends
causes an instant rejection, but saying none to both categories yields
instant success.
Residents
Only: This is a restricted area for residents of Moreland-WV.
Although there is a form for entry of a security code, the form does
not currently appear to be active.
Memo.jpg:
This is a crumpled TerraShape Memo, with really, really awful handwriting.
After much effort, a transcription was posted.
This memo was found by solving the Moreland Anagram
puzzle.
Supply
Requisition:
This was also found by solving the Euchre 2 - Two Cards Puzzle. It appears
to be an internal order for a bunch of emergency medical supplies.