Or maybe a new journey (book maybe?) after this??
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So, I’m going to greater and greater lengths to ‘reach into the past’. I’ve employed my friend the internet wayback machine to do some digging. I was thinking maybe if I could dig up archived copies of old sites there might have been a clue before they were destroyed by the storm.
I haven’t found much, but I do have to correct one thing I said eariler. The key words on King Rabbit’s page were not ‘NeitherHereNorThere’. But they were ‘HereNorThere’.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160922134846/http://burrowinthefray.com/
Does this help us?..no idea. Maybe it’s a password to something. We never did find a use for it.
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This got me thinking, so I started searching the phrase neithernor with other things like butterfly and monarch. I first found a poetry book titled “Neither Caterpillar nor Butterfly” and then I found the monarch papers soundtrack. Specifically, I found the song “The Burrow in the Fray (Neithernor)”, this again just goes right back to King Rabbit. So, even though I went in a circle, it just shows that King Rabbit will most likely be needed in this.
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Well, if we’re going to be scanning through some of the past fragments and things for something that could be useful, now looks to be the best time for it. There’s a few of us here with fresh eyes that didn’t help with those fragments, so maybe togther we can see if there’s something missed/discarded that is relevent now.
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Do we know anything about the upcoming Fragment that could help us? And it does sound like a good idea to go back and search through past fragments
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No, we do not seem to know anything about the upcoming Fragment.
To the second question. I think it sounds like a good idea to search through past fragments at a high level. Try old websites. Maybe retry the BoB links and see if any are still active or active again. I don’t personally expect to find anything buried in an old thread, for example.
Take my ideas about all that with a huge heaping of salt though.
I still think our best bet is to find something in the letter. What? I have no idea.
Tuesday morning random thoughts: (The random thoughts barrel is getting to the bottom, but I can find some more.)
-Usually a great handhold on these things are parts of the letter that just seem…wrong. Here are 2 things that keep bugging me about this letter.
- Sentence fragments. I’m not a member of the grammar police by far (my run on sentences once broke free and rampaged across 2 city blocks before they were put down). But for an educated man in an era when the written word and letters were more popular, Sullivan has some odd fragments.
“On the shore of your future and the future of all the world.” Not a sentence.
“Not yet.” Not a sentence
“All who’ve sought the truth.” Not a sentence.
This made me question if this was done deliberately. Perhaps the content of the sentences was more important than their grammatic correctness. Perhaps the number of words in each sentence corresponded to a letter? I got as far as ‘chxh’ before I stopped that idea because it’s gibberish, but maybe there’s some fire there.
- Our ‘what to do next’ instructions. Does it strike anyone else odd we are explicitely given not one, but two things to do next?
To begin this final chapter The Mountaineers must use the most dangerous of magiq
Okay so that’s what we do first, right?
The Mountaineers must reach out to the past
Wait, is that before the first thing? Or after the first thing? Or the same as the first thing? Why not combine that into one instruction? “Reach out tot he past and use the most dangerous of magiq”. Why does that need to be two instructions? Why is what appears to be the way harder of the two instructions explicitly labeled ‘to begin’.
This is like saying To begin you must climb mount Everest. Then in a separate instruction saying You must get on a plane to Nepal. That seems backwards.
Honestly, I think I’ve read this letter so many times it’s lost all meaning for me. Give me another few days and I’ll have a random thought involving Aliens and my mashed potato sculpture of Pike’s Peak.
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Also, this is for everyone, very rarely people will receive an email from someone. Keep an eye out for those.
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While we’re getting all that tin foil out there, has anyone checked the comments for Deirdre’s blog and the Basecamp blog? There might be something hidden there, considering those posts are in the past… At least, that’s how we found Tigrantula. 
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As always, just my thougths:
I can see what you’re saying about the sentences. In each case, the new ‘sentence’ clarifies something that was said before, meaning that a commar or semi colon would have been more apropriate.
“Now you stard at a door, my love, on the shore of you future…”
“…your journey is now tied to all of us, all who’ve sought the truth.”
“Hope is not lost, not yet.”
As for the instrustctions, it seems to me that the first follows the second as there is more to the former. It goes back again to the question I think is on all our minds; what is this “most dangerous of magiq”?
“…and you must leant everything about the secret world.” How is this linked to us using magiq? Does the “you” here mean us or Deidre? If it refers to Deidre, how can we help her learn about a secret world?
“The Mountaineers must reach out to the past…” Reach out? Why specifically this turn of phrase? Why not “look to” or “search”? I think it’s suggesting a person, though I can’t see anythign that might indicate who.
“…and you my dear, must go to Neithernor.” How is this related to us reaching into the past? I mean, it must be for it to be tagged onto the same sentence?
One thought that springs to mind as to why these halves are put togther is that they must be done simultaniously. If is this the case, we may need to wait for something more from Deidre before we can do anything ourselves, and this could tell us the magiq we need.
A lot of questions there, not many answers… May help focus some discussion though.
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The most dangerous magiq of all…is it too cliche for me to think it will have something to do with love? That might just be the harry potter nerd in me lol
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I’ve been holding myself back from making the joke that it’s ‘love’ for days now. Thank you for saving me. 
Yeah, I thought the same thing.
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Quick post while on break:
@Robert, your mention of sentence lengths got me thinking: could the number of words in each sentence stand for something else? I got “chwhm” for the first paragraph, but what if the numbers themselves (3,8,23,8,13) have to be deciphered somehow? Could be worth looking into. Do we have anything that could potentially be a cipher key of some sort?
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Sullivan doesn’t seem to have too much use for more advanced encryption or encoding. His puzzles are usually a bit more word based than that. But if I were to take any serious guess for something to be a cipher key I’d go with ‘Neithernor’, myself.
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Just a quick randomly thought!
Neithernor - it’s neither here nor there
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I am also going to spew my morning thoughts a la @Robert.
I came up with the same “non sentences” as Robert.
“On the shore of your future and the future of the world”.
“Not yet”
“All who’ve sought the truth”
They just strike me as odd. Again, I am not English major, so I could be way off base.
The next thing that strikes me as odd, is some of the terminology he uses. Such as:
“darkest woods”
“the shore”
“an unfathomable machine”
These just seem like such odd descriptors for what he is talking about, and I was trying to find any sort of precedence or equate them to something Sullivan has mentioned before and then I started thinking about the elements. Now this could be a major grasp, but stay with me for a second.
The elements are: Aether, Light, Thought, Tides, Wild, and Ore
What if he is hinting at the elements again?
Darkest Woods = Wild
The Shore = Tides
Machine = Ore
My theory breaks down about here, as I really can’t find much else.
Then there is the weird comment relating to Deirdre’s mother and calling Deirdre the “Daughter of your Mother”. Again, it is a weird descriptor, but I can’t really tie it into any of the elements.
I feel like we are close. I feel like we are starting to pick up some odd things in the letter. I have faith in us.
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I took this to mean The Mountaineers must use the most dangerous of magiq, a magiq that would enable us to reach out to the past.
The love thing honestly never occurred to me. I humbly disagree that love is the most dangerous power. To me dangerous love would be false love; lust, approval seeking, dependency, or obsession.
From what I’ve seen, it seems that messing with time is the most dangerous power.
That’s what was done to all of us, and all the world, when those behind the storm changed our memories and erased the knowledge of magiq from the world. They changed the timeline, distorted nature, and quite possibly created all these fragmented realms to begin with, to keep magiq hidden.
“The daughter of your mother” I read as “you are your mother’s daughter” meaning you’re a lot like your mother. Maybe Deirdre has the same affinity as her mom, the same abilities.
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So I was reading through the letter another time (okay, it was like 7 more times) looking fore more elements. Some certain words started jumping out to me so I started looking at some of these things as the guilds they could represent and not so much as the element. So:
You’ve found it. Your bravery and heart have led you here. Beyond all hope you have continued, and on the other side of the darkest woods you have found the end of a path. Now you stand at a door, my love. On the shore of your future and the future of all the world.
But the time for choosing is done. This is a door you must go through I’m afraid, because your journey is now tied to all of us. All who’ve sought the truth. There is a plan in place. An unfathomable machine of secrets designed by myself and the council beyond our sight- a plan to thwart The Storm and its master.
And then I started equating some of these to the guilds themselves.
Bravery = Weatherweath
Heart = Gossmere
Hope = Gossmere
Woods = Balimora
Shore = Ebenguard
Machine = Flinterforge
That is all I could find for now, it seems like a bit of a stretch, but those are some pretty big buzz words in all guild profiles, so this seems like it could be a pretty good lead perhaps?
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I was wondering if we could find links to the other 3 elements maybe? Someone said you’d used them in connection with the guilds and time before, maybe they could be used in an order shown in the letter for something, maybe even a spell. Obviously there’d probably be more to it than just the order, but it could be a start.
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You seem to be missing Thornmouth. Could “truth” be an appropriate reference word for the Thornies?
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