Basecamp 34 Update: 3/17/20

Honestly I was also thinking Canada but I do understand some of the New Orleans things too especially if there’s a Russian community.

And are we determining all of this is going on in the same timeframe and place then?

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A few more thoughts, parsing (maybe too) closely:

  • French, Russian, and Spanish are mentioned primarily, with English noted as secondary, and not mentioning other languages. At least preliminarily, unless Port missed something, we need to assume those three are the primary languages, which probably excludes, for example, Portugal or New Orleans, where she most likely would have heard someone speaking Portuguese or English first.

  • The idiomatic French is not just a dialect, but a French-English hybrid, breaking into full English. That suggests a francophone location with significant English tourism (the English-with-an-accent was giving directions), or English colonial history.

  • There does seem to be a locational difference. Russian is near a coast, while French and English-as-a-second-language is in a more populated area.

  • Spanish is tough to pin down, because so many places have immigration of large Spanish-speaking populations. Still, we would want to find a place either in Europe near near Spain, or with a large Spanish-speaking population.

So my best guess would be to look for a francophone city near a coast with a substantial Russian population, a Spanish-speaking community, and anglophone tourism. Are there coastal Canadian cities with a big Russian contingent?

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With the Spanish and French I had been defaulting to either the southeast US, South America, or to the islands that were colonized by Portugal, Spain, and France at various times throughout history, since they often have pretty extensive English/Spanish/French language blending. Wikipedia shows Cuba as a place where a lot of Russians have settled, but I find that hard to reconcile with the French part of the equation. Same for Argentina (no obvious French), where about 42% of people say they can speak English, although instead of Russian they have a reasonable but small population of Ukrainian speakers.

However, I’d be willing to bet we’re looking for a more specific place, and it’s also interesting to note that most places that have a colonial French or Spanish history won’t necessarily speak the other, since both nations were fairly competitive when it came to world domination. Canada does seem to be a really good option, with it’s melting pot kind of make-up and with the French being so ubiquitous, and it might be reasonable to assume we’re not looking for a place with a ton of Spanish speakers, since Port seemed to hear mostly French, English, and Russian?

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I just had a thought, and as much as I’d like it to be one nice neat place, it may be seperate locations.

Four specific locations, to be exact.

Thought process: Canada could cover that easily, with French Canadians, and there definitely being ports in Montreal when I was helping with the third assessment…
Third assessment.

We covered Paris, Moscow St. Petersburg, Mexico City, and Montreal (not necessarily in that order). That would cover French, Russian, Spanish, and the other French.

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I’m definitely getting Quebec vibes as well. Used to live in Maine and the French Canadians had a habit of starting a sentence in French just end it in English.

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Brilliant. Is there a possibility it was St. Petersburg instead of Moscow? That would make sense of the smell of the sea and nail down all the clues. I’m catching up on the thread, but you all may know more quickly.

If it is those four places, what does that suggest in terms of an answer for where Port should be looking?

(Edited to add a link to the post that appears to have found the answers in order: Mexico City, Paris, St. Petersburg, Montréal. But this doesn’t specify what answer we should give to @Eaves.)

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You are absolutely correct! They were both on the list of possibilities, definitely easy to get them transposed after all this time.

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Canada has two different kinds of French - there’s Quebec style and Acadian style. Acadian is considered “maritime” French is that might account for the sea air if we consider that Port’s sense powers might be more symbolic than specific?

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Has anyone tried putting that constellation after the Book of Briars URL?

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Also worth noting that I didn’t find any country with French, Russian, and Spanish as national languages.

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Negative on that and the Fletcher Dawson site (which looks the same as always, as far as I can tell).

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One reason I’m excited about this idea is that it goes back to the “Cosmos” section and tying up some loose ends there, which seems to be what the Book of Briars is trying to do, piece by piece. Port’s involvement could point in that direction also.

Gaaaah, and it’s worth pointing out that those cities led to a “Future Works” picture of a chronocompass, and some Roman numerals. Were those ever solved? If not, maybe the “Future Work” is now? Or perhaps I just need to finish reading the whole topic … :rofl:

(Edited to add a post from @Robert that pulls together all of the Roman numeral riddles.)

(Edited again to add a guess: The sequence 1324-1654 refers to eight words in those numbered positions in the Guide. There isn’t a version with numbered words, is there? :rofl:. That’s way more than enough out of me for tonight!)

(Edited one more time to add: CAN YOU TELL I’M EXCITED?! Okay. Fine. Time to stop.)

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Did I miss something??

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Third Assessment refers to the 3rd Magimystic Assessment of The Monarch Papers. Back during part…3 i think.

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Thank you @grimangel53, I thought this was something I was disconnecting on.

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i was going to suggest lisbon, portugal, just due to the spanish, but yeah portugese is a thing that exists.

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OK. Go with me here. (Edited from the future: … even though it appears to lead nowhere. :rofl: )

Port is sensing people. Could be all in one place, could be in different places.

If in different places (and that’s an important assumption), there’s a pretty solid argument—thanks @Ashburn!—that they relate to the solution from Fragment Twelve/Third Assessment, which gave us four cities: Paris, St. Petersburg, Mexico City, and Montréal.

In turn, those four cities gave us a “Future Work” section, a Chronocompass, and a set of Roman numerals.

Those Roman numerals, taken all together, gave us the “two worlds rebound” riddle.

And in particular, the set of Roman numerals our attention is being drawn back to (1324-1654) gives us the word “rebound,” based on @Deyavi’s counting here. Or perhaps “reboundi” since there are eight numbers.

But @Eaves needs a place, not a word. So maybe “rebound” is no help, but the four cities are. Right now, that’s my best guess for the answer for Port.

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Thank you for that really succinct post @Lexington, it’s super helpful to have that in one place.

I really lean toward Port sensing multiple places; I think the different things she is hearing are just too distinct to be able to overlap enough without some significant hoop-jumping.

If BOB really is bringing the other books back together, it makes total sense that we need to solve the remaining threads before the Book can be complete. We need to remember the tapestry theme that is also in play. Anyone who knows anything about weaving/embroidery knows that you need to at least tie off or anchor the strings if you can’t outright finish the section with what you have.

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Okay, this may be the equivalent of that meme with the guy gesturing manically at the wall with all the notes and string, but bear with me. Tin foil on? Good.
:tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat:

I really liked the idea of going back to the locations from Cosmos, and dug out the links to the spreadsheet and maps that we used when we were trying to suss out the clues. Figured since we haven’t heard from BoB yet, that maybe it’s specific clue locations within the four cities.

Which, of course, isn’t super helpful, since we were turning up multiple viable options for some clues and grasping at straws for others. :sweat_smile:

Towards the top of our spreadsheet, we had one of the Definitely Russian clues, so I checked that part of the map to see if any of the possible points we’d plotted were close to water. That particular clue caught my attention because it could have pointed to an obelisk.

If you’re wondering, yes, I did follow that up with checking for other obelisks/etc. that were/were near pin points in the other three cities.

The tin foil is, of course, because obelisks and the like were the theme of the day for dismantling Lauren’s leylines, and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with this.

[spoiler]Ones that I feel really good about
Russian: Rumyantsev Obelisk - Wikipedia, for clue “Rumyantsev,” for obvious reasons
French: Luxor Obelisks - Wikipedia, for clue “Harmony’s Discourse,” which we were pretty set on pointing to Place de la Concorde
Ones that have a couple of options
Spanish: Parque de la Bombilla (Mexico City) - Wikipedia, fits the clue “Obregón’s Requiem”
Angel of Independence - Wikipedia, fits the look and isn’t too far from one of the possible clue locations we couldn’t quite pin down for “Legorreta’s Interior”
French/English: George-Étienne Cartier Monument - Wikipedia, is in a park that I recall being on my radar for “The Royal Hoop”
Pioneers' Obelisk (Montreal) - Wikipedia, was not initially found during our searching (that I’m aware of), but feels like it could fit “Vieux Haven” in hindsight
[/spoiler]

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I also wonder if we’ll have to wait for Port to connect to the specific individuals more before we’ll hear from the BoB? With the obelisks/pillars we had Catherine going around finding artifacts so I think it would make sense for us to be waiting for Port to do something similar based on these locations (except using her magiqal abilities instead of physically traveling there). Eaves did say that we were helping Port focus on them better, so I’m thinking we might get more substance after she really hones in on this/these individual(s).

Also, is this person/are these people just random? Is she sensing them simply because they happen to be in this location(s), or are they individually important? I suppose it’s possible that these locations are amplifying whatever “signal” these people are giving off if they were important to the Book previously, but then I also wonder why those specific individuals are being sensed over everyone else there.

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