Charakter

The Greatest Story Never Told, Part III

Valiant Hart was quick to decipher the next riddle and, to it's merit, it was far more puzzling than the last. The new riddle read as such:

"GNND NG SGF BNFTQMBKBV
Memenugu knows the steps"

Though rather odd, one thing was for sure: I must find the location of this Memenugu. Scouring the land at once, I was relieved to find out that I did not have to go very far. Hanging out amidst the Spineless basin in Central Thanelan, I found my man.

Unfortunately for me, Memenugu had not the slightest idea what Winebaurd was going on about with this clue. However, he did recall something of a mantra that Windebaurd would say to him--and that was this:

"Two steps forward, one step back. Over and over again until the end."

There it was, the next clue to solving the riddle. Returning to the sanctuary of my home city-state Gridania, I sat down at the Inn and got to cracking the case. Little did I know this nutshell was going to send my mind for a loop.

Initially, i tried rearranging the order of the letters until I realized that it was a pointless effort. Still, I tried another method of rearranging and still lead nowhere. Then,upon further research, I had an idea.

On my third attempt, I applied each letter from the initial sequence a corresponding number according to the alphabet. A=1, B=2, and so on. Once that was done, I used the 'two steps forward, one step back' method and applied +1 to each number. I then took the resulting number, and found a new letter associated with it. That brought me to the grand conclusion of this:

"HOOE OH THG COGURNCLCW"

... which was still rather gibberish. However, my biggest clue from this was the 'THG' being awfully close to spelling 'THE'--so I knew I was on the right track. I tried a couple more times to apply 'two steps forward, one step back' to these sequences and still ended up with garbage...until my sixth attempt.

My sixth, and final, attempt to crack this riddle found me the answer that i so eagerly craved. First off, I took the initial sequence:

"GNND NG SGF BNFTQMBKBV"

and then assigned each letter a number according to the alphabet like before:

" 7,14,14,4 | 14,7 | 19,7,6 | 2,14,6,20,17,13,2,11,2,22 "

Next, from left to right, I would add an integer twice, and then subtract an integer. Two steps forward, one step back. This gave me the resulting sequence of numbers:

" 8,15,13,5 | 15,6 | 20,8,5 | 3,15,5,21,18,12,3,12,1,23 "

Now, the moment of truth, I applied each number to a sequence in the alphabet via A=1, B=2, etc. And yielded the result of:

"HOME OF THE COEURLCLAW"

And there it was: the answer. From my prior adventures, I knew that the coeurlclaw gang was situated in the Southern Shroud. It was at this point that I saddled up and journeyed across Gridania towards their camp.

A few squirmeshes and a couple Fates later, I had arrived at my destination. Within their camp, I uncovered a rune from Winebaurd himself that congratulated me for my efforts. As a reward, he gave me a line from his favorite poem:

"Clandestine rendevous leave me breathless and waiting.
Obsession consumes me, a thirst for the taboo"

I have solved all that was needed for this venture. It was time to report to Valiant Hart once more and see if he has made any headway with the next riddle...