Is this a secret hidden in the heart of Central Brittany?

I'm like some sort of posting machine today. Perhaps I'm bored.

It's regarding the belltower outside of Arablella's castle / Oracle confirmatory and something @Lord British said on the R50 telethon when he winked at the camera suggesting some sort of "Watcher factory under the oracle confirmatory". I got it into my head that it might already exist and explored around a bit, running my mouse over every wall I could hoping for a secret passage or the likes.

It turns out there are a few secrets in the area, one of which is obviously in the main quest storyline within the castle. The others include hidden passageways to other areas of Brittany. I'm convinced that sneaky devs love the idea of putting in hidden content that nobody discovers for years after launch (The Trinsic secret room in Ultima VII is a great example). I wanted to think that something hidden under the confirmatory would be one of them.

So I have to admit that I started this post just before googling for the belltower asset, but decided to keep the title as click-bait anyway. It seems that it is already an asset that players can place in their towns (http://sotawiki.net/sota/Bell_Tower) so I was a little disappointed this wasnt a unique building. This was after I attempted to ring those bells in as many combinations as I could, thinking that a hidden door would open to the riches or factory below.
I figure as there are 8 'binary' switch ropes there must be 256 combinations and one must be the key.

After seeing it as an asset avaiaible for use by players I didnt really hit this with a full test plan or get very far. I was actually planning to get the notes for the intro of 'rule britannia' and play it just in case, before any brute force attempt.

But hey, it was an exciting thought anyway huh?!

Has anyone else come across any potentially unique puzzles outside of the main quest lines that derserve a deeper dive just in case?
For some this will be a total waste of time, for weirdos like me... hours of demented entertainment in between XP runs.

 

I found a mysterious note in Brittany Alleys, which consists of a few lines that looks something like this </10:/. I assume there is a message in some sort of code. There is also the alphabet across the very top of the message, but the cryptic characters don't seem to line up to the letters.

 

You cant just tickle me like that!
Come on, post a screenshot!

I could be a unity script or C# error when automatically generating the note content, but then it could possibly be, the KEY TO THE BIGGEST SECRET IN SOTA YET! hah

 

Spoiler

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Melsx1jzKopGftF62

Hopefully that works.

 

Nice!
Your image tag was slightly off. But I see you posted it to https://photos.app.goo.gl/Melsx1jzKopGftF62

Perhaps this is a test to join the NSA or GCHQ here in England. Do we have any cryptographers in the house?

 

... yeah. Makes no sense to me with any of my limited knowledge.
Certainly doesnt seem to be any basic cipher that I'm familiar with. No easy key to see. With those chars its certainly not a simple subsitution cipher like caesar.

I know < . / ..etc chars are often used in regex, but this makes no sense to me. Either a bored content creator slapped their keyboard with their face a few times after getting bored typing the alphabet or a parsing error I rekkon.

Going to need smarter people than me to reveal the truth. Shout out to the math head devs!
@Chris - I'm looking at you! Give us a hint!

 

If my lore and memory are correct none of us has seen Lord British's Castle since it's not in game yet.
The Castle in Britney is Arablella's Castle.

 

Oh, my bad. I did not know that.
Edited

 

Britney? Where is Britney? Britney Spears??

 

Well, I believe it definitely says something.

Spoiler: Clues

The full alphabet across the top seems to me to be a clear clue that it can be translated.

Each "character" seems to be made up of a pair of symbols. 53 characters in all.

A single dot by itself (i.e. "dot/space") seems to be a word separator. It appears 9 times throughout the message in very likely spots for word breaks. A double dot .. seems to be a period. It appears once at the end of the message before what looks to be a name at the bottom.

It's likely that >. is the letter e, as it appears far more than any other symbol combo.

It's possible the first word is "the."

So far my theory is that it may say "The [something] will be [in/on] the [something] [something] [something] [something]. [name]"

Having some problems proceeding with that theory, though. Like the last word ends up being "he___e" with three letters in that middle area that don't appear anywhere else, which is unlikely. And the name at the bottom ends up being "_e_et"

Where did you find the note?

 

In case nobody noticed, the alphabet at the top has no "G."

 

Huh...I didn't...that's interesting.

 

I searched and searched for this and found nothing. I think LB was just messing with us.

 

Well. Its just got interesting then. The missing G has to be significant @Cora Cuz'avich . Perhaps as the start of a sequence or rotation on the aphabet.

I mean, I have many thoughts. But perhaps if the alphabet without the 'G' was the keyword in a 5x5 polybius square for example (In a nihilist cipher - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilist_cipher) . If the pair of symbols translate to some sort of single digit number each, similar to ASCII encoding (but not, as the numbers are two high), Then you could potentially look up the letters.
However, I just dont think there is enough pairs to make a sentence. - There is of course many other basic crypto methods.

As @Senjut says - it could be just a simple subsitution.

As its just hit 3am and I have work tommorow, I'll take another look in the morning when I'm not fried. This is great!

 

Of course, it could just be a typo.

 

....failing that. The end digits of 8 10 18 is apparently also a biblical reference - 8:10-18 - Samuel told all the words of the lord.

2+2=7 Samual the spirit talker is illuminati, confirmed. ;-)

 

I don't want to spoil anything, but I found a loose brick somewhat close to dead fish in Brittany Alleys.

 

Spoiler

Maybe combining the ascii values of each pair will result in something....

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/its-the-little-things.91633/

 

Well that's interesting, I found some dead fish. And three buildings you can't get in, one of which has an airship parked in it (not the Jack of Diamonds one). And a valve you can turn on that building with the airship, but it just seems to turn on sewage dumping into the bay.