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In October of 2009, we ran a plot called The Mystery of Ghosty. Egg Cave was visited by a mysterious being, appropriately named "Ghosty" by Ark citizens. He said something pretty strange: "Useeee theee IDs iiiin the alphabetttt." This greatly puzzled Ark citizens.
To make matters weirder, eggs started randomly appearing around Ark; these eggs weren't anywhere near the Egg Cave! Ark citizens began to ask: "Do you think Ghosty has anything to do with the random egg appearances? Or it is some other phantom we don't even know about?!" Scary!
Then, Ghosty appeared in the news and said:
Find the eggs; then discovery shall find you.
In the first part of the plot, you had to find 12 eggs that were randomly hidden around the site. At the plot headquarters, Ghosty was saying random things that hinted at the locations of the twelve eggs. But, did you notice a pattern about his random sayings? Every single phrase that ended in a period (.) led to a page that contained a hidden egg, whereas all of the other phrases that ended in exclamation marks (!) were red herrings!
Here were the location of the twelve eggs and Ghosty's sayings that hinted at their location:
The rest were all misleading red herrings!
After finding the eggs, Ghosty appeared and said this:
Finally... you've found all of my hidden eggs. But yet, you still haven't solved the mystery! Discovery has still not found you!
In order to find Discovery, you must answer this question: based on what you know and that the order of these eggs is significant (left to right, top to bottom), what is the name of Discovery?
The answer? Balrogipuwet. How? The "based on what you know" part of the question should have instanteously taken you back to the original puzzling phrase from Ghosty: "Useeee theee IDs iiiin the alphabetttt." Each of the species of eggs that you found had a respective "creature ID" (obtained by looking at the URL of the respective Archives page). For example, the Calla profile was located at eggcave.com/archives/view/2; thus, its ID was 2. The second egg (Drakomo) was located at eggcave.com/archives/view/1; thus, its ID was 1.
After doing this for each creature, you should have gotten a strand of numbers. Using Ghosty's advice, the creature IDs corresponded to a respective letter in the alphabet (that is, a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, etc). Thus:
BALROGIPUWET! After solving the puzzle, Ghosty appeared with one last final word and an explanation for his actions.
YOU HAVE FOUND DISCOVERY!
Let's get this straight: the Science and Research Center in Ark City completely denied my existence. But I came across a new species (that I named "Balrogipuwet"); I wanted all of Ark to know about my discovery! Since they denied my existence, I had no way of telling others about my discovery. I felt rejected. Thus, I haunted Ark and tried to give its citizens clues, so that THEY could uncover this new species. That way, the Science and Research Center wouldn't write it off as "absurd."
I'm so happy that you've discovered this new species! Here it is...
..... ..... .....
Cathy at the Science and Research Center then apologized:
Wow, the Balrogipuwet is a rather incredible species! Congratulations on your discovery, Ark citizens! We have received stories from multiple residents explaining their weird encounters with this "Ghosty" creature. Although we denied the existence of such ghosts, the number of stories is overwhelming.
We sincerely apologize and will never doubt the existence of ghosts again!
Congratulations to those who completed the plot! Each player that completed the plot will receive an opportunity to steal their very own Balrogipuwet egg on November 3, 6:00 pm ECT. The Balrogipuwet species will be given only to those who completed this plot; it will never be available again.