Package for Caius Cosades

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Anyone ever try translating this? At first I thought it was just a simple
cypher, like the old "Daedric" text I posted about before. However, in this
case there are some serious inconsistancies.

-I counted 6 letters which appear by themselves as 1-letter words. Since
English only has two 1-letter words, this presents a problem.
-I noticed 1 letter which appears 3 times in a row in two instances. It's
the same letter both times, but once it's in the middle of a word, and once
at the beginning. I can't off-hand think of any English word which has 3 of
the same letter in a row.

However, I can tell that it is not simply random letters jumbled together to
look like text, as there are many words which are repeated throughout the
document, and certain letter groupings are common in various words. And
it's not simply a cut-and-paste job, as there are never any large blocks of
text repeated, only single words here and there. This leads me to one of
several conclusions:

-There are some fictional names of people/places in there, some of which
have single-letters as part of their names.
-It is real text, but some extra junk was thrown in between the real text
just to throw us off.
-The spacing between words has been altered to confuse the issue
-Certain words have been shortened, or as in the case of the "Daedric" text,
there are letters missing. (Doubtful, as all 26 letters of the alphabet are
represented in the text.)
-Other rules have been applied, such as a rotating cypher, where the key to
the code changes from word to word, or sentence to sentence. (Also
doubtful, as some words make appearances throughout the document, not just
in one section.)
-It is written in a language other than English.

The text is rather long (I copied it all into Notepad), so it occurs to me
it must exist for a reason. And if they just wanted to show some garbled
text that you're not supposed to understand, there's absolutely no reason
for them not to have simply taken the easy way out and used random text.
Somebody put work into this. Either it's real text, or somebody went to
great lengths to make it LOOK like real text, just to throw us off the
trail. That seems like an awful lot of work to go to just to make text
you're not supposed to understand, so I still hold to the theory that it is
real, but so far beyond my means to decypher. Anybody know any more about
this?

Also, there's the Code Book, you get briefly during one of the Balmora
Fighter's Guild missions. I'd have to start a new character to get that
again, but my guess is it uses the same code as Caius's package... (Not
sure if there are any other instances of this sort of coded text in the
game, as I haven't gotten that far, I think.)
 
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Darrel Hoffman wrote:
> Anyone ever try translating this? At first I thought it was just a simple
> cypher, like the old "Daedric" text I posted about before. However, in this
> case there are some serious inconsistancies.
>
> -I counted 6 letters which appear by themselves as 1-letter words. Since
> English only has two 1-letter words, this presents a problem.
> -I noticed 1 letter which appears 3 times in a row in two instances. It's
> the same letter both times, but once it's in the middle of a word, and once
> at the beginning. I can't off-hand think of any English word which has 3 of
> the same letter in a row.
>
> However, I can tell that it is not simply random letters jumbled together to
> look like text, as there are many words which are repeated throughout the
> document, and certain letter groupings are common in various words. And
> it's not simply a cut-and-paste job, as there are never any large blocks of
> text repeated, only single words here and there. This leads me to one of
> several conclusions:
>
> -There are some fictional names of people/places in there, some of which
> have single-letters as part of their names.
> -It is real text, but some extra junk was thrown in between the real text
> just to throw us off.
> -The spacing between words has been altered to confuse the issue
> -Certain words have been shortened, or as in the case of the "Daedric" text,
> there are letters missing. (Doubtful, as all 26 letters of the alphabet are
> represented in the text.)
> -Other rules have been applied, such as a rotating cypher, where the key to
> the code changes from word to word, or sentence to sentence. (Also
> doubtful, as some words make appearances throughout the document, not just
> in one section.)
> -It is written in a language other than English.
>
> The text is rather long (I copied it all into Notepad), so it occurs to me
> it must exist for a reason. And if they just wanted to show some garbled
> text that you're not supposed to understand, there's absolutely no reason
> for them not to have simply taken the easy way out and used random text.
> Somebody put work into this. Either it's real text, or somebody went to
> great lengths to make it LOOK like real text, just to throw us off the
> trail. That seems like an awful lot of work to go to just to make text
> you're not supposed to understand, so I still hold to the theory that it is
> real, but so far beyond my means to decypher. Anybody know any more about
> this?
>
> Also, there's the Code Book, you get briefly during one of the Balmora
> Fighter's Guild missions. I'd have to start a new character to get that
> again, but my guess is it uses the same code as Caius's package... (Not
> sure if there are any other instances of this sort of coded text in the
> game, as I haven't gotten that far, I think.)
>
>
>

Fire up the TES3 Editor and load the Morrowind.esm data file into it, on
the books tab find 'bk_a1_1_packagedecoded', that's the decoded package.

~Cameron
 
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On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:49:36 -0400, Darrel Hoffman <i.dont@think.so> wrote:

> [Thoughts about decoded versions of "Package for Caius Cosades" and
> "Sottilde's Codebook"]

There are some people who seem to have solved this riddle. A decoded
version of Caius' package can be found here:
http://til.gamingsource.co.uk/mwbooks/decoded_package.shtml
I don't know how it was coded or if the decoded version is correct,
but it certainly makes sense.

A translation of Sottilde's Codebook can be found here:
http://til.gamingsource.co.uk/mwbooks/decoded_sottilde_code_book.shtml

Bjoern
 
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> There are some people who seem to have solved this riddle. A decoded
> version of Caius' package can be found here:
> http://til.gamingsource.co.uk/mwbooks/decoded_package.shtml
> I don't know how it was coded or if the decoded version is correct,
> but it certainly makes sense.

Hmm. Well, it makes sense, but they don't give the slightest hint as to how
they went about decoding it. One thing's for sure is that it's not a simple
cypher. Just the name "Caius Cosades" is given as "UALYK ECKAGIK". The
first 'C' is coded as a 'U', and the second is coded as an 'E', and the word
"of" appears 3 times in the first paragraph with different spellings. The
number of letters in the words seems to be correct, though my character's
name is wrong. (This character's name has 4 letters, while the document has
6 whenever the name is mentionned.) Also, this version is far from
complete. It looks like it's about half the length of the entire document.
And no, the text isn't simply repeated twice as was the case with the
legalese documentation on the "Scroll of Elemental Burst: Fire" I found.
The omitted half definitely has stuff in it which is not mentionned on the
site. I'm really curious to figure out how they decoded this, but maybe I
can use what I have as a sort of Rosetta stone to unravel the rest. Sure
looks like a complicated code, though...
 
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On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 21:14:39 -0400, Darrel Hoffman <i.dont@think.so> wrote:

>> There are some people who seem to have solved this riddle. A decoded
>> version of Caius' package can be found here:
>> http://til.gamingsource.co.uk/mwbooks/decoded_package.shtml
>> I don't know how it was coded or if the decoded version is correct,
>> but it certainly makes sense.
>
> Hmm. Well, it makes sense, but they don't give the slightest hint as to
> how they went about decoding it.

At least that mystery is solved. Look at Cameron's reply to your original
post: Bethesda put the decoded version into the game.

> One thing's for sure is that it's not a simple
> cypher. Just the name "Caius Cosades" is given as "UALYK ECKAGIK". The
> first 'C' is coded as a 'U', and the second is coded as an 'E', and the
> word "of" appears 3 times in the first paragraph with different
> spellings.
> The number of letters in the words seems to be correct, though my
> character's name is wrong. (This character's name has 4 letters, while
> the document has 6 whenever the name is mentionned.)

That's right -- 6 letters for <name>, the game takes that as a variable
to be filled with your character's name.

> Also, this version is far from complete. It looks like it's about half
> the length of the entire document.
> And no, the text isn't simply repeated twice as was the case with the
> legalese documentation on the "Scroll of Elemental Burst: Fire" I found.
> The omitted half definitely has stuff in it which is not mentionned on
> the site. I'm really curious to figure out how they decoded this,
> but maybe I can use what I have as a sort of Rosetta stone to unravel
> the rest. Sure looks like a complicated code, though...

If you succeed, please let me know. Judging by what is decoded so far,
it would have to be a post scriptum, which would be quite unusual for
an official letter.

Bjoern
 
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On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:49:36 -0400, Darrel Hoffman wrote:

> Anyone ever try translating this? At first I thought it was just a
> simple cypher, like the old "Daedric" text I posted about before.
>
> [...]
>
> Anybody know any more about this?
>
> Also, there's the Code Book, you get briefly during one of the Balmora
> Fighter's Guild missions. I'd have to start a new character to get that
> again, but my guess is it uses the same code as Caius's package...

It is a cipher -- the Vigenere Cipher, to be exact, which is explained by
a drunken Russian sailor here:

http://www.morrowind.nm.ru/package%20for%20Caius%20Cosades/key.html

IIRC, Sottilde's Code Book uses the same cipher, but with the key
"SKOOMA."

....And next time, please remember that Google is your friend.

--

Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real
information available.

- Benford's Law of Controversy
 
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Bjoern Liffers <bjoernhenning.liffers@dialup.fh-aachen.de> wrote:

> [Darrel Hoffman wrote:]
>
>> One thing's for sure is that it's not a simple cypher. Just the name
>> "Caius Cosades" is given as "UALYK ECKAGIK". The first 'C' is coded as
>> a 'U', and the second is coded as an 'E', and the word "of" appears 3
>> times in the first paragraph with different spellings. The number of
>> letters in the words seems to be correct, though my character's name is
>> wrong. (This character's name has 4 letters, while the document has 6
>> whenever the name is mentionned.)
>
> That's right -- 6 letters for <name>, the game takes that as a variable
> to be filled with your character's name.

The text define is actually ^PCName -- the carat is taken out because it
won't fit the cipher.

--

Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real
information available.

- Benford's Law of Controversy
 
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Darrel Hoffman wrote:
>>There are some people who seem to have solved this riddle. A decoded
>>version of Caius' package can be found here:
>>http://til.gamingsource.co.uk/mwbooks/decoded_package.shtml
>>I don't know how it was coded or if the decoded version is correct,
>>but it certainly makes sense.
>
>
> Hmm. Well, it makes sense, but they don't give the slightest hint as to how
> they went about decoding it. One thing's for sure is that it's not a simple
> cypher. Just the name "Caius Cosades" is given as "UALYK ECKAGIK". The
> first 'C' is coded as a 'U', and the second is coded as an 'E', and the word
> "of" appears 3 times in the first paragraph with different spellings. The
> number of letters in the words seems to be correct, though my character's
> name is wrong. (This character's name has 4 letters, while the document has
> 6 whenever the name is mentionned.) Also, this version is far from
> complete. It looks like it's about half the length of the entire document.
> And no, the text isn't simply repeated twice as was the case with the
> legalese documentation on the "Scroll of Elemental Burst: Fire" I found.
> The omitted half definitely has stuff in it which is not mentionned on the
> site. I'm really curious to figure out how they decoded this, but maybe I
> can use what I have as a sort of Rosetta stone to unravel the rest. Sure
> looks like a complicated code, though...
>
>

Hmmm aren't you under the assumption that the letters are in the correct
order? the letters may also be scrambled, that may be why the words
start with different letters.

~Cameron
 
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Cameron wrote:
> Darrel Hoffman wrote:
>
>>> There are some people who seem to have solved this riddle. A decoded
>>> version of Caius' package can be found here:
>>> http://til.gamingsource.co.uk/mwbooks/decoded_package.shtml
>>> I don't know how it was coded or if the decoded version is correct,
>>> but it certainly makes sense.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hmm. Well, it makes sense, but they don't give the slightest hint as
>> to how
>> they went about decoding it. One thing's for sure is that it's not a
>> simple
>> cypher. Just the name "Caius Cosades" is given as "UALYK ECKAGIK". The
>> first 'C' is coded as a 'U', and the second is coded as an 'E', and
>> the word
>> "of" appears 3 times in the first paragraph with different spellings.
>> The
>> number of letters in the words seems to be correct, though my character's
>> name is wrong. (This character's name has 4 letters, while the
>> document has
>> 6 whenever the name is mentionned.) Also, this version is far from
>> complete. It looks like it's about half the length of the entire
>> document.
>> And no, the text isn't simply repeated twice as was the case with the
>> legalese documentation on the "Scroll of Elemental Burst: Fire" I found.
>> The omitted half definitely has stuff in it which is not mentionned on
>> the
>> site. I'm really curious to figure out how they decoded this, but
>> maybe I
>> can use what I have as a sort of Rosetta stone to unravel the rest. Sure
>> looks like a complicated code, though...
>>
>>
>
> Hmmm aren't you under the assumption that the letters are in the correct
> order? the letters may also be scrambled, that may be why the words
> start with different letters.
>
> ~Cameron

n/m I see where you are coming from now, it must be...

~Cameron
 
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On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:49:36 -0400, "Darrel Hoffman" <i.dont@think.so>
wrote:
<snip>
>The text is rather long (I copied it all into Notepad), so it occurs to me
>it must exist for a reason. And if they just wanted to show some garbled
>text that you're not supposed to understand, there's absolutely no reason
>for them not to have simply taken the easy way out and used random text.
>Somebody put work into this. Either it's real text, or somebody went to
>great lengths to make it LOOK like real text, just to throw us off the
>trail. That seems like an awful lot of work to go to just to make text
>you're not supposed to understand, so I still hold to the theory that it is
>real, but so far beyond my means to decypher. Anybody know any more about
>this?

If you continue the main quest, you are eventually given the decoded
copy. To make the original, they used an old cipher to encode the text
that you are later given. Google will give you more details.