VHSGAME.COM/SYSOP - ARG TIMELINE
June 3rd, 2022
On June 3rd, 2022, patch notes were delivered to the VHS community. Snuck within the patch notes was the message "Updated technology curriculum and library equipment to meet department standards at Pine Bluff High School." This led the community to go searching for a new Easter egg in the Highschool map and discovered that the computer in the Library had changed to include a message flipped backwards, reading "GOTO GME RUN SYSOP FIND ME", marking the start of the SYSOP ARG.
On that same night, every person with access to the game noticed a new Limited movie had been added to our inventories - a mysterious movie named "S.O.S." which included five teen challenges and four monster challenges.
June 4th, 2022
Once all challenges in the SOS movie were completed, the "Behind the Scenes" of each challenge gave us some clues, with some being backwards messages from an unknown source and others being scrambled nonsense that the community realized the titles of could be run through an alphabet cipher (A = 1, B =2, so on), to read as below:TEEN:
00:01:30:00 - 3MAGAT0N (Not A Game)
00:15:14:05 - ONSGS2LI (ONE)
00:20:23:15 - N5XHOZTT (TWO)
00:50:50:00 - 3V1LA (Alive)
06:15:21:18 - MVYHEYLW (FOUR)MONSTER:
08:05:12:16 - LA3RLLAST1 (It's All Real)
10:05:19:09 - 1N1VN0B (Bonvini)
20:08:18:55 - ON2GE2LB (THREE)
20:18:01:06 - DN0Y3B (Beyond)
This series of clues led the community to believe that a teen was trapped inside of the computer/movie tape and was trying to reach out to warn us with messages that seemed to mean, "The beyond, Bonvini, it's all real. It's alive. Not a game." Bonvini here referring to the name of the director (Bonvini Productions) of every known monster movie in the game (ie, the Dollmouth, Howl High, and W.A.R.T. series).
June 5th, 2022
On June 5th, 2022, word circulated amongst the community that we could add "sysop" to the end of the official VHS game's website, resulting in vhsgame.com/sysop which led to the interactable ARG.The site starts with a screen with two options: BOOT and EXIT. Upon clicking BOOT, the next screen asked for the user to click G to start. The site then booted up a loading screen reading the following:CD\ initialize OS
TERMINOS 1.2.0 FOUND
INITIALIZING…..LOADING TERMINOS………….
LOADING COMPLETEERROR - PARTIAL SYSTEM CORRUPTION DETECTED!
PLEASE CONTACT A TECHNICIAN FOR FURTHER SUPPORTInitializing Network Connection……..
Connecting to server DB.VHZ.NET…….
ERROR- SERVER INACCESSIBLELOADING COMPLETEOnce booted up, it was revealed that the player was actually accessing a Video Video Video computer terminal - VVV being the fictional store that the character Leo took over the responsibilities of running when the owner, his uncle, was imprisoned.
It did not take the community long to discover that the username in question was LEO, due to the fact that the SOS movie teen challenges required you to play as Leo. Shortly after, it was discovered that WICKEDV1L3 was Leo's password, which allowed us to login to the VVV terminal and land on the main menu.
From here, we were only able to access the (M) Messages and (N) Notes menus, with any other selection leading us to a page stating:"ERROR: DATABASE INACCESSIBLE. PLEASE CONTACT A SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR."In the Notes menu, we saw several lore tidbits from characters with suggestions, complaints, and general notes. These notes were as follows:-------------------------------------------------1. More documentaries please.2. ALL Staff should wear the new “Be Kind. Rewind.” badges I made (with sparkles!) and give them to members who actually do their part to promote Video Horror Society and help others.3. CLEAN THE BATHROOM. GRODY TO THE MAX.4. FREE POPCORN FRIDAYS5. Bring your Cat to Work Day6. GO EFF YOURSELF LEO.7. Minimum age for R-rated rentals should be 128. More Video Horror Society Members Only Movie Nights in the back! There is nothing else to do in this town and I gotta say it's the perfect make out spot.9. Two for Tuesday rentals should last 2 weeks not one.10. BRETT <3 GLORIA. TLA!11. Idea for the store! (Author: F) - I would like to suggest a Suggestion Box for the counter to facilitate better customer service. I would be happy to make it!12. ERROR - [ERROR 1x4d454d4641554c54 - UNABLE TO RETRIEVE FROM DATABASE. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR.](+Various error message notes with error codes translating from binary to text to read "MEMFAULT")***We could also access the Messages menu, which had several emails and error messages within. The error emails could have their error codes run through a binary to text translator, once the 1x was removed from each error code, to be translated into words/messages.-------------------------------------------------
ERROR CODE TRANSLATED FROM BINARY TO TEXT: SOSSOST�
ERROR CODE TRANSLATED FROM BINARY TO TEXT: MEMFAIL
ERROR CODE TRANSLATED FROM BINARY TO TEXT: LOCKED
ERROR CODE TRANSLATED FROM BINARY TO TEXT: VIDEOHZ
ERROR CODE TRANSLATED FROM BINARY TO TEXT: MONSTERS
The four emails in the (M) Messages menu were as follows:
The community was quick to discover that when replying to the "Computer Repair Request" email from Jim's Electronics with "When?" to the company's statement of "Check back with us soon!" that we would receive a bounce back email from Jim's Electronics with an image of a spoon (likely referencing the meme of "When? Spoon.") made of random characters, to which the community realized that if you took the letters comprising the sides that did not repeat on both sides, it would spell ATTACH REVERSE (as noted on the photo below).
With the information from the spoon, it wasn't long until the community decided to try responding to emails with a multitude of replies in reverse, which led us to discover that you could reply to the "Payment Received" email with the word payment backwards "tnemyap" to reveal another bounce back email, this time with an error code.
June 7th, 2022
With a lull in ARG information and a seeming dead end in the sysop site, the community waited until the timer for the original SOS movie expired and we were treated to a new Limited movie named "Error 505".
Like the previous movie, this movie had several challenges (four teen, five monster) that could be deciphered for clues. The titles and Behind the Scenes info were as follows:__TEEN__[01:10:01:01] - E
Recent History:
[01:10:11:10] - N
4078: Attack of the Techno Mutants
[01:10:11:01] - M
Revenge of the Headless Rock Sharks
[01:10:11:10] - N
Enter the Eviscerator Tshirt #B03-4902MONSTER[01:11:01:01] - U
?## VHZ BONVINI ULTRAFAN MYSTERY BOX ##?
[01:10:00:01] - A
Uh oh! My Princess is a Wyvern!
[01:01:11:11] - _
?## VHZ Super Issue 086 ##?
[01:10:10:01] - I
The Forbidden Valley of the Vanishing Creatures
[01:10:11:01] - M
Evil Mutants 4: No More Mr. Deformed Beast***The names of the scenes were quickly noted as binary, with each translating into one letter that was descrambled to say MAIN MENU. The first character of every Behind the Scenes clue could also be rearranged to spell out "R U T4ERE??" which wouldn't be discovered until much later.
June 17th, 2022
After no progress had been made on the ARG for several days, the SYSOP site was finally updated with new information. We suddenly had access to more emails, notes, and could now open the (D) VHZ Membership Database menu, to which we were greeted with a screen that said "ENTER MEMBER ID:" with a spot for input. The community immediately searched for the member IDs of the teens in the game that we had previously been made aware of from official media from Hellbent. This led us to Member Database pages detailed information about the teens associated with VVV/VHS and also provided new error codes on all teens' Rental History sections that could also be translated from binary to text to say "CORRUPT"
BRETT
FAITH
GLORIA
JESS
LEO
With this update we were also treated to some new emails entries to the notes menu, which went as follows:-------------------------------------------------1. Since the Suggestion Box I so kindly crafted went mysteriously missing last night (update: found burned remains in dumpster out back), I have entered all requests into the VVV computer.2. WHY - FAITH I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF HOWL HIGH! I WAS GONE FOR 5 MINUTES!3. Backroom Desk - Stop shelving the tapes in the backroom. I’m using them.4. Customer Complaint 20 (Account 051321) - Parents concerned about their son’s access to account. Fraudulent charges.5. Customer Feedback 1 - To the nice redheaded girl who helped us last Friday when there was nobody working the desk (even though the manager was technically present at said desk). She deserves a promotion.6. Cats - Not that I care, but no cats allowed on volunteer shifts. It’s weird.7. RATS - There’s some rats in the store. I keep catching glimpses of them scurrying around in the back. They keep gnawing at pipes, causing leaks and stuff. Shady little jerks.-------------------------------------------------The community was quick to realize that the 4th new note, signed with the author "Account 051321" was likely a Member ID number and input this into the VHZ Membership Database to unlock this:
Along with the new database section and notes, we also got an updated Messages menu with new emails to explore with attachments that upon trying to view/open said"ERROR: UNABLE TO LOAD ATTACHMENT"
Note: The third email above is a second "Order your VHZ Catalogue before it's too late!" email identical to the first, but I wanted to include it here again because this might be indicating that the ARG takes place over several months, considering this email is set to automatically be sent to the VVV Staff email once a month.
With the two new emails we received it wasn't long before the community tried to reply to them with their subject lines in reverse (ie, "noitpurretnI ecivreS" and "tceffE ni llaceR tcudorP"), as was the precedent set by the previous "Payment Received" email, this leading to two new replies with error codes from these emails.
June 17th, 2022: VHZArchive
On the same day that we received the updates on the SYSOP site, it was discovered that there was a Twitter account interacting with the official VHS Twitter account that appeared to be a character from the game who was now an old man in the future running a Video Horror Zone Magazine archive Twitter account and called themselves Quagwire claiming to be one of the first members of the Video Horror Society.
This account had been made in July of 2016 and was retweeting cryptid conspiracy tweets until they started to interact with the official VHS Twitter account and several VHS content creators on June 10th, 2022. The news of this account spread like wildfire through the active lore Discord channels and fans were quick to pick the account apart bit by bit.On June 10th, Quagwire had posted several images of scans of an old Video Horror Zone Magazine, specifically issue #86, and the images were compiled to recreate the cover of the magazine.
In this image, several lore tidbits were discovered:BONVINI COLLECTOR'S EDITION: BEFORE THE END! Criminal or Crazy? Read the unreleased FBI case files from the insane asylum.Magician or Murderer? BONVINI'S LOST OPUS. THE EVIL NEVER DIES."I fell in love with a monster... and lived to tell about it!"SHANNON SNOW - DEAD OR ALIVE? Preview a page from the missing Scream Queen's unpublished Tell All!
Along with the lore insight we received from Quagwire, a previous tweet the character had posted on June 16th revealed a clue that was overlooked by the community from the previous "Error: 505" movie.
If you unscrambled the first letters of every Behind the Scenes entry from the second Limited movie we had received prior as well as the first letters of each of Quagwire's favorite movies, it spelled out "R U T4ERE??". Using this information, we were able to backtrack to a previous clue from the same Limited movie saying "MAIN MENU" and determined that we could reply to the main menu with "R U T4ERE??" to unlock the next segment of the ARG: a conversation.
June 18th, 2022
After a day of speculation on where the new main menu interaction would lead and testing various entries, a new lead was discovered that opened the doors to a conversation. This conversation would be between the player and a teen who seemed to be trapped in the Beyond trying to contact us for help while being chased by some entity.Using the phrase "SOS ALIVE" to respond to an error message email we had previously received, the "ERROR 1x534f53534f5354f53" entry, we received our first reply:Below is the full conversation and paths to said interaction. (Note, the some emails have multiple conversation paths. Each chain will be separated by line breaks):
> reply to the "ERROR 1x534f53534f5354f53" email with "SOS ALIVE"
“DO YOU COPY? MESSAGE RECEIVING? HELP ME!”> reply to this email with "HOW CAN I HELP YOU?"
“TRAPPED IN A NIGHTMARE. WAKE ME UP. PLEASE.”> reply to this email with "WHERE ARE YOU?"
“THE TAPE! I WAS RIGHT. DON’T REWIND..NOT ALONE. SOS.”> reply to this email with "ARE YOU IN THE BEYOND?"
“CAN’T STAY. NO EJECT. IT’S HERE! SOS.
ERROR:401 - CONNECTION TERMINATED.”
Attachment: 0000000001(Click attachment to listen to audio file)
> reply to the “TRAPPED IN A NIGHTMARE. WAKE ME UP. PLEASE.” email with "WAKE UP"
“NEED ACCESS. CORRUPT. CAN’T WAKE UP.
(N!E@YCEUPWK&(#TDNEBDS*NKOGA&%D!KCT)A@F)#PND+I2H@!I#PAXFWN_&TO/
ERROR:401 - CONNECTION TERMINATED”> reply to this email with "YOU CAN'T WAKE UP?"
“SAVE ME."
Note: This appears to be an Easter egg reference to Evanescence's song "Bring Me to Life" ft. the lyrics "Wake me up. WAKE ME UP INSIDE. I can't wake up. WAKE ME UP INSIDE. (SAVE ME)."
> reply to the “DO YOU COPY? MESSAGE RECEIVING? HELP ME!” email with "WHAT IS THE BBS?"
“FOUND ACCESS. HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN GONE? EVERYTHING BACKWARDS?”
> reply to the “DO YOU COPY? MESSAGE RECEIVING? HELP ME!” email with "WHO ARE YOU?"
“...YOU DON’T KNOW?
WHO ARE YOU?”> reply to this email with "LEO"
(this also works with any teen's name)
"YOU'RE LYING. HELP ME, AND I'LL TRUST YOU."
With seemingly no other route to go in the conversation and the trapped teen asking you to help them in order for them to trust you, the community discovered that you could reply to another email for another small conversation with the trapped teen.
> reply to the "ERROR 1x4c4f434b4544" email with "554E4C4F434B"
(This sequence of numbers is the word UNLOCK in hex code, opposite of the title of the email which is LOCKED in hex code)
“ACCESS GRANTED! SO MUCH DATA. I OWE YOU.”> reply to this email with "WHAT DOES THE DATA SAY?"
"NEED TIME TO DECRYPT. ANCIENT RUNES. MALUM'S MARK. NOT NOW. IT FOUND ME."> reply to this email with "WHEN WILL YOU BE DONE DECRYPTING?"
“CAN'T STOP RUNNING. MY BODY. MY BRAIN. AND THE SCREAM.
ERROR 505: CONNECTION TERMINATED.”
Attachment: 1000000000(Click attachment to listen to audio file)
_SPECTROGRAM OF THE TWO AUDIO FILES COMBINED_
The final message in the conversation appears when you've satisfied the person's request to help them to gain their trust.
_“RIGHT. I TRUST YOU. SEARCH 05-1321. FIND ME.
ERROR 505: CONNECTION TERMINATED.”
_This final clue would lead us back to the VHZ Member Database page in which the input 05-1321 would provide us with the page speculated to belong to Wade.
June 23rd, 2022
Alongside another patch, the SYSOP was updated once more with new content for the community to pick apart on June 23rd. The rental history of every teen was updated to reveal their most recently rented movie titles along with some new notes and messages.
The list of updated notes were as follows:-------------------------------------------------1. LEO - NEW SECURITY CAMERAS INSTALLED. NO MORE BACK DOOR DEALS. YES I KNOW ABOUT THAT LEONARD. YOU CAN WORK OVERTIME AT THE GARAGE TO PAY ME BACK WHAT YOU POCKETED.2. I SEE YOU - I SEE THE BEER CANS YOU SLOBS LEFT IN THERE. AREN'T THEY SUPPOSED TO BE AT SCHOOL? WATCH YOUR STEP LEONARD OR YOU'LL BE OUT OF A JOB.3. Customer Complaint 19 (Account 010987) - Management is corrupt. Bogus charges. And banning me? GROW UP LEO. So our whole summer was just a lie? I want my Mure records back asshole.4. "FRIENDS" - STOP LETTING YOUR FREELOADER FRIENDS "HANG OUT" IN THE SHOP. THE BACKROOM IS EMPLOYEES ONLY.5. Customer Complaint 18 (Account 001746) - Store hours are until 12am weekends! The back alley faces my apartment. That music is the devil's work and I know whatever they are smoking isn't legal. I'll call the cops next time.-------------------------------------------------Along with these new notes, we were treated to three new emails:
> reply to this email with "426B"
> reply to this email with "MONDAY"
> reply to this email with "WHEN"
If there is another reply to this email it is currently unknown.
A reply to this email is currently unknown.
ERROR CODE TRANSLATED FROM BINARY TO TEXT: BRUTUS**Attachment: 000000000
**
SPECTROGRAM OF THE ABOVE FILE
From here the community was unsure of what to reply to the error message, but our old pal Quagwire left us a clue on Twitter.
With the clue "HIGHSCHOOLER" in the first tweet, members of the community rushed into the game to abandon all of their hall passes to look for any clues and we discovered that the gibberish typing Quagwire had done when he "dropped" his phone was in fact a cipher that revealed our next hint.
NEED A PASSWORD? THE WRITING IS ON THE WALLS.Immediately the community was reminded of a clue that linked to a speculated teen, Reggie, whose locker combination was written on a bathroom stall's wall at Pine Bluff High and found that this locker combo "19-16-33" was the first input needed on the error email to unlock the next step.
The next input was encoded in the message itself and was determined to be "REWINDED" because the first capital letter of every sentence in Log Notes #1 spelled it out.
The input for this email was found to be "SOCIETY", a reference to Video Horror Society, through taking the missing letter of every misspelled word in Log Notes #2 and adding them together.
In this reply, there was an attachment with the contents below:
Once the community arrived at this step, it wouldn't be several more days until the code was cracked on the next response.
June 27th, 2022
After 4 days of agonizing clue hunting with every ARG sleuth on the case, we hit a dead end. Several good ideas were floating around but none came to fruition. The ARG gods themselves took pity on us and Quagwire tweeted out a new ciphered clue.
This scrambled text decoded in the same way as the last clue would spell out:"count the sylls in each line, decode the numbers one more time"This clue led us to count the syllables in each line of dialogue in the "syll#" file, taking those numbers and matching them to letters of the alphabet (a = 1, b = 2, etc), and with a little bit of unscrambling it was found that the next response was:ONLY TOKEN
In this message it was noticed that the usage of the number 4 was peculiar "log notes #4, 4 frames per hour, 4 huffs of inhaler" and using this information we discovered that the first letter of every 4th word spelled out the next input we needed.
BONVINIS HELL
"YOUR FRIENDS WILL JOIN YOU SOON. WAKING NIGHTMARES FOR ALL!"From here it was found that, counting every letter of each line of the text output and converting them to letters of the alphabet produced the following response:EVILA
With the end of the trapped teen's logs, we compiled all the text that followed each log after each forward slash into the following:BACKROOM_SEC 13 06 05 05 00
June 29th, 2022
Seemingly hitting a dead end with the ARG the community waited for an update from Quagwire and he delivered.
One ARG sleuth noticed the difference between the two tweets Quagwire gave us, the change in direction of the slashes, and speculated that the clues we previously had gotten at the end of every log could combine to be attached to the end of a URL, which led us to:https://vhsgame.com/sysop/CES_MOORKCAB/31/60/50/50/00Once this site was put into an address bar, it led to an image, which has been flipped below:
Colored image below:
Seconds after this clue was found, Quagwire tweeted once more.
Quagwire then posted 4 separate images of scans from the 3rd page of his VHZ magazine, which are combined into the image below:
July 18th, 2022
After a long drought of ARG news when the beta was halted in preparation for EA release, the sysop was finally updated when VHS went into Early Access. There were 3 new emails for us to explore and lots of Quagwire interactions that over the course of a week culminated in the reveal of Reggie, the newest teen coming to VHS.But before we dive into the juicy stuff, here's some updates that were included in every teen's database pages over the course of the past month to include new rental information:
BRETT
FAITH
GLORIA
JESS
LEO
But enough of these twerps... the true icon of VHS had her database page finally revealed:
MRS. GRINDLEBERGER*
*You may Mrs. Grindleberger remember from a previous note exchange as the old woman who lives directly behind the VVV store and filed a complaint about Leo blasting Wicked Vile past midnight and smoking weed with his friends!
Along with the SYSOP update came another SOS/505 movie, possibly the last, titled "505 Terminus"
The behind the scenes entries were as follows:01:00:11:00 - L
(1.25,2.75) (1.5,7.75) (10.25,15) (6.5,10)11:05:25:20 - KEYT
14,22,83,77,22,14,60,4101:01:01:00 - T
(12.24,12.25) (13.5,17) (2,7.25) (13.5,14.75)15:17:21:01 - OQUA
48,9,55,54,29,14,5,5501:01:01:00 - T
(2.25,2) (7.75,14.75) (12,16) (3.5,11.25)07:19:18:05 - GSRE
28,43,55,61,39,14,48,40,55,01:00:01:01 - E
(3.5,7.75) (8.25,14) (12.75,15)14:20:01:12 - NTAL
56,51,14,87,38,61,21,35,64The titles of this movie provided some clues, with the 0s and 1s being binary and the other titles being alphanumerical clues, which translated to:BINARY = LTTE
ALPHANUMERICAL: KEY TO QUAGS RENTALWith little information to go off of regarding "KEY TO QUAGS RENTAL" and the random sets of numbers and plot points, we put this information on the backburner to focus on the new emails we had received in the update:
The "Congratulations" and "New Contest" emails seemed to have no replies, however there were two new error emails we could focus on.
Error code binary translated to text:"HE LIED"
Error code binary translated to text:"PUZZLE"
Around the same time we translated the first new error email to say "HE LIED" we received a few new clues from Quagwire's Twitter:
68 65 6C6 96 5646 1 616F 7 5746 8 697 3 49 4 4 translated from HEX to TEXT:"HE LIED ABOUT HIS ID"
With a new error email called "HE LIED" and Quagwire providing two new clues stating "What did he lie about" and "HE LIED ABOUT HIS ID" we assumed he was referencing Reggie's ID of 05-1321, so we immediately opened up Reggie's Membership Database page and discovered that the name and more information on the page had finally been revealed.
This information confirmed that 05-1321 was in fact NOT Reggie's Member ID and belonged to a woman named Wanda, who the community presumed to be Reggie's mother. With this revelation, we began the search for Reggie's real Member ID and discovered a new reply to the new error email "HE LIED" that would lead us onto another conversation with Reggie himself:
(This email chain, like the ones prior, splits into several conversation paths. Each new path will be denoted by a line break.)
>reply "05-1321" to the "HE LIED" error email
"YOU! HOW...? YES. WANDA. I COPY.">reply "YOU'RE NOT WANDA"
**"FINE. HAVEN'T BEEN HONEST. THIS PLACE... PARANOID. HOW TRUST YOU? CAN'T TRUST SELF." **>reply "WHO IS WANDA?"
"WON'T TELL! CAN'T TRUST STRANGERS. SHE TAUGHT ME.">reply "IS WANDA YOUR MOM?"
"...STOP...OUT OF MY HEAD...PLEASE..."ERROR 505: CONNECTION TERMINATED
>reply "YOU DON'T REMEMBER ME?" to the "FINE I HAVEN'T BEEN HONEST..." email
**"I KNOW. YOU HELPED. JUST... LOST. MIND GAMES. TRICKS... PLEASE. ARE YOU REAL?" **>reply "I AM REAL"
"KNEW IT. NO HELP. FOR ANY OF US."ERROR 505: CONNECTION TERMINATED
>reply "YES" to the "PLEASE. ARE YOU REAL?" email
"PROOF. HOW DO I KNOW YOU?">reply "VIDEO HORROR SOCIETY"
"MEMBER? PROOF. ID NUMBER.">reply with any known member ID from one of the teens
"SO WE'RE BOTH LIARS."ERROR 505: CONNECTION TERMINATED
With the last reply Reggie gave to us, we knew there was a Member ID we were missing from someone he would believe was real and trusted. With that in mind, we took to Twitter to ask Quagwire what his Member ID was in an attempt to find one that Reggie would believe.
Using the information that Quagwire's Member ID had a 4 and four 0s in it and combining that with the knowledge that Quagwire was an original member of VHS, it was likely that his member ID was either a variation of 00-00x4 or 00-004x, so we tried all variations and eventually one attempt landed... 00-0084.
>reply "00-0084" to the "MEMBER? PROOF. ID NUMBER." email
"Q! REALLY YOU? PLEASE. NEED HELP. WE WERE RIGHT! EVERYTHING YOU SAID! BEYOND. THE SOURCE! CAN'T DO IT. BEEN OUT. SOS ALIVE. PLEASE. Q. THEY'RE HERE. IM SOR"ERROR 505: CONNECTION TERMINATED
With that conversation path seemingly coming to an end, we now had Quagwire's Member ID and tried inputting it into the Membership Database. This would allow us to then see Quagwire's membership page with some very revealing information:
Once we unlocked Quagwire/Jimmy's membership database page, we noticed some typos in his Rental History section, and it reminded us of a prior clue hidden in the 505 Terminus movie "KEY TO QUAGS RENTAL" with the isolated scenes being as follows:11:05:25:20 - KEYT
14,22,83,77,22,14,60,4115:17:21:01 - OQUA
48,9,55,54,29,14,5,5507:19:18:05 - GSRE
28,43,55,61,39,14,48,40,55,14:20:01:12 - NTAL
56,51,14,87,38,61,21,35,64We then knew that somehow these numbers related to Quagwire's rental history, but we still needed a small clue from Quagwire to lead us in the right direction.
After a little assistance from Jimmy himself, we knew that with the pieces of information we had, we had to count the characters in Quagwire's rental history for our next clue.After some trial and error, we used the random strings of numbers to determine that each number correlated to a letter in Quagwire's rental history and would likely provide another link though the sysop url, considering the first number of 14 indicated the "/" symbol in the misspelled Dollmouth entry. Thus, counting only letters, numbers, and punctuation, leaving out the spaces, the characters counted were as follows:14,22,83,77,22,14,60,41 = /PBFP/AR48,9,55,54,29,14,5,55 = CHIVE/MI28,43,55,61,39,14,48,40,55 = SSING/CHI56,51,14,87,38,61,21,35,64 = LD/JUNE14Adding these together gave us the completed url we needed, which led directly to a photo:https://vhsgame.com/sysop/PBFP/ARCHIVE/MISSING/CHILD/JUNE14
This photo would show a milk carton photographed by the Pine Bluff Free Press of a missing child label for Reginald aka "Reggie", the missing teen we had been communicating with this entire time.The file name for this photo was also binary, when translated into text read:001100100110110000111000 = 2L8 (TOO LATE)
Zooming into the photo revealed some interesting information, most notable that the expiration date for the milk was 7/18, a clever nod to the EA release date, Reggie's height and weight (5'5", 50 lbs), and a phone number to call 505-01322.The phone number, being suspiciously close to the Member ID 05-1321 (only 1 number off) was put into the Membership Database and revealed Reggie's actual membership page as well as more information regarding him.
We now knew that his Membership name was "ULTRANERD", a fact that would be important later, and that he was 12 years old at the time he created this account. This page also revealed that Reggie's birthday was on June 13th, which happened to be the exact day that he went into the Beyond and subsequently went missing.
Now that we were armed with much more information than we previously had and were still missing a clue that would lead us to cracking the plot point scenes in the 505 Terminus movie, we took to Twitter to "interrogate" Quagwire.
Being that Quagwire had done this a handful of times before, we knew what to expect. From his archives he would provide us with a new photo to help us on our ARG journey, so we patiently awaited his post amidst several technical errors the old man had and eventually we were treated to this image:
These VHZ archive clippings provided a letter sent from Reggie to Quagwire, an Anonymous letter sent from Jess, and another letter sent from someone named Pat from the Danville Chapter of VHS. The clipping from Reggie provided a great deal of insight into what Reggie was doing and trying to accomplish.
Through all of the excitement of advancing the ARG so much, the community still had two more avenues to explore: The plot points given to us in the 505 Terminus movie and a possible conversation path hidden in the "PUZZLE" error email.At this point we were stumped, as the only thing we could think to use for the plot points was putting them on a graph to see what sort of message or shape we could derive from them, but nothing quite worked. We were also given one final clue from Quagwire about this section of the ARG:
This clue seemed to indicate to us two things: 1) this may be the end of Quagwire's ARG assistance for the forseeable future and 2) we had what we needed already to solve the second half of the 505 Terminus clue and just didn't know it.
After a day of scratching our heads, one community member finally realized that the plot point clues could be used in conjunction with the photo of the clippings that Quagwire provided us from the archives, which included an X and Y graph for us to follow in the form of measurements on his cutting machine. Using this information, they lined up the points in the 505 Terminus movie with the clippings in the photo as such:
The plot points spelled out: NEXT LEVEL GENIUS, which the same community member realized could be added to the end of the SYSOP url like previous clues, and it provided us with the following link:https://www.vhsgame.com/sysop/NextLevelGeniusThis page would lead us to the largest reveal since the inception of the ARG itself, a photo of the new teen coming to VHS, Reggie, and more information given through his Member ID card.
Name: REGGIE "In every puzzle lies its own solution."Age: 12About me: In AV club they call him sir, in gym class he's Wedgie, at Mensa meetings he's The Whiz Kid, but his mom just calls him Reggie. A passionate puzzler, Reggie's obsession with the Bonvini conspiracy brought him to the society. Bullies tease him for skipping 2 grades, but Reggie's sharp mind always keeps him one step ahead of trouble.Classic Trilogy: Radd RexPotential: GeniusYour potential is in the potency of your own gifted mind. Raw intelligence is your tool and you wield it aptly to invent a new world around you. Genius perks focus on crafting abilities and advantages.
This image was then posted on VHS' social media with Reggie's quote "In every puzzle lies its own solution" with a familiar green puzzle piece emoji that had previously been used as a clue to direct us to the Rewinder program. With this information in mind and knowing that there was still a conversation to unlock in the second error email named "PUZZLE," we tried to reply to the email with said quote and thus unlocked the next conversation.
(This email chain, like the ones prior, splits into several conversation paths. Each new path will be denoted by a line break.)
>reply "IN EVERY PUZZLE LIES ITS OWN SOLUTION" to the "PUZZLE" error email
"THAT'S... THAT'S ME.">reply with "REGGIE?"
"RIGHT. YES. REMEMBER NOW. IM REGGIE.">reply with "ARE YOU OK?"
"YES. BETTER. THE SOCIETY. THEY CAME. MY FRIENDS.">reply with "YOU ESCAPED?"
"NO. NO EJECT. BUT I'M NOT ALONE.">reply with "YOU'RE NOT ALONE?"
"EXACTLY. FEASTS FOREVER. HAVE TO GO FIND THEM AGAIN."CONNECTION TERMINATED: GOOD BYE
>reply "DO YOU REMEMBER QUAGWIRE?" to the "RIGHT. YES. REMEMBER NOW. I'M REGGIE." email
"IM SORRY Q. TRIED MY BEST. SHOULD HAVE LEFT IT UNSOLVED."CONNECTION TERMINATED: GOOD BYE
>reply "DID YOU FORGET WHO YOU ARE?" to the "RIGHT. YES. REMEMBER NOW. I'M REGGIE." email
"FOR A SECOND YES. DARK MOMENT. I'M BACK. THANK YOU. WITHOUT YOUR HELP... I'D STILL BE ALONE."(Any replies to this email seem to loop back around to the previous "FEASTS FOREVER" email.)
>reply "WANDA IS WORRIED" to the "RIGHT. YES. REMEMBER NOW. I'M REGGIE." email
"SORRY I LIED. IT WAS HALF A LIE. I'VE BEEN USING HER ACCOUNT. RENTALS. ORDERS. LYING. I MISS HER.">reply with "ULTRAFAN MYSTERY BOX"
"YES. THE BOX. THE END. TRULY."CONNECTION TERMINATED: GOOD BYE
Awaiting another update to the ARG. Check back here for updates!