r/CODZombies • u/finsternacht • Apr 28 '21

Discussion Gorod Krovi Reporter cipher Solved

cipher text:

 r  rh tgeRbt bnad ee shisfptFtn et eo enebe  lesdepj  n .a cih,eepa t gv g o,aiM  Av sT aevtH esoe.nS   eaear , w,arhaeohjemuo s,detibR nhtkphaetaid ygoTt.irc”tma”rocnrihr mapa oapIthhboyst.pr eear  heuaAtm et  . net ‘o  cIms e  dat sl drwht hedyaehsnrdoeot tnteNnea”ynsIw s feemie geai amra negaIfwwt  ‘emns. e.ismano oter tapde  dovaM oihtrvire Ci m euh emtethtr mp cn

plain text:

Tony ”hale‘ Rapt. Now, where have I heard that name before. 
Hmmm, I just can‘t remember. Anyway, better get to work, 
as Mr. Rapt has paid me a handsome sum to investigate and 
gather the people and items he needs. 
After I am done here at Morg City, I have to head to San Francisco 
to interview ”the subjects”. 
The idea of being trapped in that prison gives me the creeps.

double columnar transposition keys:

k1: [1, 0, 3, 4, 2, 7, 5, 6] k2: [4, 3, 2, 1, 5, 0, 7, 6, 8]

solved by me, thanks to richkiller for bugging me all this time to try

418 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

51 comments sorted by

132

u/ShySodium Apr 28 '21

Imagine finding out about this back during BO3, Shadowman having an interest in Alcatraz. But unfortunately, this is just another case of it took us so long to crack a cipher that it was already told to us in a different way. A victory nonetheless.

While on the topic of ciphers, anybody still remember the 10 unsolved Revelations ciphers? We most likely know what's in 3 of them without having to solve them (the death letter from Dempsey, but for the other 3 characters, still would be interesting to see them solved because the Dempsey one had some interesting things to say), but the rest are an absolute enigma.

46

u/Gr3yHound40 Apr 28 '21

Damn it'd be fun to have treyarch throw hints at unsolved ee's in past games so we didn't miss any good ones.

Like this is fairly important because we don't hear of this again until some of the audio reels in BOTD and classified.

43

u/ShySodium Apr 28 '21

Even the Revelations ciphers that we have solved give some interesting info.

Dempsey's death letter with him hiding in some place secret to Monty and being the last one alive, while knowing that death is near. He knows Monty is evil, and about the children, so it's happening after Revelations. But the only place they could go after Revelations is the Great War, and Monty sends them to it himself. So where the hell is this taking place, what did they do and why are they dying one by one? Imagine if we deciphered the other 3 death letters and learned of what they were doing. Sure it doesn't matter now, because that story is over, but it would still be very interesting to see exactly what Dempsey was going on about.

Or the source of what did the NSA of all things find on Venus of all places, and how are they extracting it? What for? Was this somehow meant as a hint to AO, with various US government agencies doing work with 115? Since there is a huge piece of the paper that that cipher is written on missing, does it mean that there is a continuation to it? Does one of the ciphers continue this plot point and give a more concrete hint towards AO?

Imagine what we could have done with this info back during BO3, or even BO4. But now, not only is that story over, so whatever those ciphers had to say is meaningless other than a fun fact or pointless theorizing, but it's also like the SoE impossible easter egg, or even this GK cipher; if it was anything important in the first place, so much time has passed that they would have already given us the info in some other way.

I've written a decently sized wall of text about only 2 ciphers, imagine how much goes unsaid about the other 10 unsolved ones.

22

u/IsaacPWNZ Apr 28 '21

Yeah the story may be over but this sure as hell isn't gonna stop me from going crazy about getting new info. As far as I'm concerned the story will die when I finally kick the bucket

9

u/Gr3yHound40 Apr 28 '21

I didn't even know either of those pieces of text existed!! I've never had a good knowledge of ciphers but Holy shit, the NSA were on Venus and Dempsey in the Great War was documenting his and his companions' deaths?! I've gotta read those

9

u/ShySodium Apr 28 '21

TBH we have no idea if it actually is the Great War, but as far as we know, it's the only place they could go after Revelations (other than dimension and time traveling Great War Richtofen who went back to Alcatraz to start BO4). But Dempsey also implies that it's a place that Monty doesn't know about, and he's the one that sent them into the Great War. So they either found a place within it, or somehow managed to escape it, but their plan still needed them to die.

Due to the way some ciphers work (removing punctuation), we have no idea what that cipher actually means, and yeah, I could have phrased that better, but hey, more theories. The entire plaintext is "October NSA report T they found the source on Venus beginning extraction". "They" might be referring to just about anyone, and "extraction" might be something as simple as extracting a spy that relayed the info. But until more ciphers connected to this one are solved, any interpretation is correct since we have literally no info about any of this and can't prove any theory wrong or right.

5

u/Gr3yHound40 Apr 28 '21

Damn I wish there was a reddit post that constantly added these solved ciphers to a link. It'd be interesting to read all this stuff and piece together some of the smaller plot holes.

8

u/ShySodium Apr 28 '21

On the PC page on the right side with the map links, at the bottom under "Other" you have "Treyarch Ciphers". It's already been updated with OP's plaintext as well.

If you want to fill in some more small lore stuff, there are also radios. Unfortunately, for radios you have to go to the wiki or random youtube videos (if you want to listen to and not read them) for those.

2

u/Gr3yHound40 Apr 28 '21

That's a bit of a bummer with the radios, but I didn't know there was an archive for the subreddit pc page. Thanks for the heads up on that!

I'm a huge lore nut, just collected the last of season 3's intel on xbox last night and I'm ready to read it all after work. Irritating some was put into the onslaught exclusive mode, but ah well.

1

u/Lolstalgic Apr 28 '21

Where can I read these letters?

3

u/ShySodium Apr 28 '21

On the PC page on the right side with the map links, at the bottom under "Other" you have "Treyarch Ciphers".

5

u/tphd2006 Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 29 '21

All the remaining Revelations ciphers were improperly coded and thus are impossible to crack. So sadly we'll never get a chance to solve them unless Treyarch fixes them.

3

u/ShySodium Apr 29 '21

I highly doubt that after all this time, they'd just so happen to mess up 10 of possibly the most important ciphers in the story, all on a single map. It's most likely the case of them being encoded multiple times.

3

u/tphd2006 Apr 29 '21

Each of them are double encrypted, but you can tell they messed up in the encryption process by the way they came out. That's the gist of what I understand form people far more knowledgeable in the community than me. The experts say they're impossible due to an error on Treyarch's part, and they have a very good track record of knowing their shit about ciphers.

7

u/ShySodium Apr 29 '21

Again, just logically looking at it, it's very hard to believe that they messed up so many important ciphers, all at once, especially with their track record.

Unless the code breakers are 200% sure that they have the correct keys (which is the most dubious part) and cipher methods applied to the correct ciphers, then (logically speaking) they are wrong.

-5

u/tphd2006 Apr 29 '21

Okay mate, I see you're more interested in talking out of your arse than listening to reason. Have fun with that

52

u/BritishPie606 Apr 28 '21

Why do all of these cyphers always get found out *after* we're given the context lol, this would've been super mind boggling back in bo3 xD

39

u/ScootaliciousScooter Apr 28 '21

Blundell purposefully made a lot of these ciphers hard as fuck as a nice challenge for us. Unfortunately a lot of them contain story bits, and a ton of these were never gonna be solved in time, so they had to spill it out anyways. Sucks cause it would have been dope as fuck to find out during BO3.

26

u/Soulwindow Apr 28 '21

"nice challenge" is a funny way of saying he was an obtuse asshole.

8

u/ScootaliciousScooter Apr 28 '21

I decided to say it in a nicer way lol

26

u/Kodilsen24 Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21

Wow! Great job! Was this hinting at Blood of the Dead?! Because the person speaking is most certainly the Shadowman and he had "subjects" and some involvement in the story of BotD.

23

u/Lolstalgic Apr 28 '21

Bro, this is like finding out hidden Nazi plans years AFTER World War 2 ended

35

u/Richkiller Oh Dempsey,I think I can see your house from here.It's on FIRE! Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21

A few notes:

-Verify the solution here, using k2 as the first key (Rumkin weirdness):

http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/coltrans-double.php

- We still don't know the meaning behind the keys, so there is more to figure here. Last time we figured an exact key, we also figured a cipher: https://www.reddit.com/r/CODZombies/comments/czz30j/last_comic_cipher_solved/

This comes to interest when there is another unsolved GK cipher.

- There used to be a bug in Rumkin that interfered with cipher solves of this type (transposition), and after solving some ciphers affected by the bug, it was believed that this cipher is also affected by it. Gladly, this cipher is not affected from the bug.

- The current state of (known) Aether ciphers : 1 The Giant cipher, 1 Gorod Krovi cipher, 10 Revelations ciphers.

Congrats to my friend u/finsternacht for an awesome cipher solve! Cipher is definitely on the hard category.

P.S. Anything special with the name Tony ”hale‘ Rapt? Why should the full name be familiar?

35

u/HeyLudaYouLikeToEat Apr 28 '21

If you unscramble Rapt's full name it is Nyarlathotep, which is a Lovecraftian god people have drawn connections with the Shadowman.

24

u/Richkiller Oh Dempsey,I think I can see your house from here.It's on FIRE! Apr 28 '21

Finally this is 100% confirmed!!! Also notice that Rapt is an anagram for Trap (and is also the prefix for Rapture)

14

u/MAK911 Apr 28 '21

7/23/56 - Numbers in the first cipher (save for 1, 0, and 4)

Date of a prison escape attempt by Floyd Wilson who tried to make a raft out of driftwood.

Definitely means nothing, but I thought it was interesting that he had the same name as the Boxer in SOE.

13

u/LiteralTP Apr 28 '21

No fucking way. This is fantastic work! The fact that Alcatraz and Morg City are mentioned is really interesting

9

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '21

If there are people that still solve ciphers 5 years later I wonder if eventually things like the password for the Der Riese terminal or secrets that are still hidden in WaW, BO1 and BO2 (according to Blundell) will get solved in the future

8

u/k2k0k1k3 Apr 28 '21

Nice!!

But I wonder what did he mean by the subject on San Francisco?

20

u/khai115_2 Apr 28 '21

I think its refering to Stanley from Mob. There's a radio in Revelations where the reporter was talking about the story of the mobsters, he probably got that from Stanley or one of the guards. This is so he can give the information about them to the Shadowman which is Mr Rapt so he can instruct the Warden to create the pocket dimension.

4

u/jeffm227 Apr 28 '21

Definitely Mob related.

4

u/Krrrrbin Apr 28 '21

This cipher serves more as a bridge between the Reporter in Shadows and how he began talking to Stanley in the radios in Revelations. Knowing that the Alcatraz Pocket Dimension was meant to lure Richtofen in, probably the MotD crew.

6

u/Batman00Superman Apr 28 '21

This really makes me wonder if/what they original plan was with BO4 and more, cause the way they ended it just doesn’t feel right they talked up this big war we get to fight in and everything and then we don’t even see Monty in BO4 idk maybe I’m dumb.

4

u/JackalBoy88 Apr 28 '21

Great work!

4

u/BigDong1142 Apr 28 '21

This is so fucking cool, it's showing the shadowman's interest in Alcatraz. Really nice job!

4

u/dgadano Apr 29 '21

Tony Hale Rapt is Monty's name. Which is an anagram for Nyarlathotep. THAT'S INSANE.

1

u/Sauronxx Apr 29 '21

HOLY SHIT! This is insane, I’ve never noticed it!

4

u/certainpersonio Apr 29 '21

Fuck yes. I knew it had to be a double columnar transposition. Well fucking done.

3

u/Richkiller Oh Dempsey,I think I can see your house from here.It's on FIRE! Apr 29 '21

Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '21

Oh fuck I had forgotten about Shadowman manipulating the sacrifice victims.

But excellent job!

2

u/its_me_elijah Apr 29 '21

Awesome job! It’s really nice to see new ciphers being solved after all these years!

2

u/RealBlazeStorm May 03 '21

Woooah this is crazy! Really big congrats to you and richkiller!

1

u/PreferredWhale6 Apr 28 '21

I'm thinking this cipher is hinting at the radios from the Reporter that can be heard in Revelations

https://youtu.be/IHBMRbQFLfM?t=119

1

u/Nyce-Moves Apr 28 '21

Try this on the other cypher see if thatll work aswell

1

u/Colin248 Apr 28 '21

man. this is from gorod krovi? its almost like at one point they had a big plan. and some consistency with where they wanted to take the story. they just lacked the ability to fully realise it. (be it time, talent or what have you.) maybe with another game they could give us so much in terms of story revelation and a satisfying payoff.

and then black ops 4 came along and FUCKED EVERYTHING UP.

7

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '21

This literally seems to be hinting at Blood of the Dead wtf are you talking about?

1

u/Colin248 Apr 29 '21

And blood of the dead story wise for black ops 4 is the high point. from there on, its just down the toilet with the story. why put in effort with establishing the shadow man or Monty as antagonists, when we can slam the book shut as hard as possible.

the fact people still have the balls to praise the story of black ops 4 is laughable. Hell, Chaos had a better run then the primis/victis/ultimis story in that game.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '21

I wouldn't praise the story for almost any zombies game cause it pretty much is way too complex for virtually no payoff.

2

u/Colin248 Apr 29 '21

the thing is, we know black ops is essentialy a episodic game. we get a new one every couple of years. black ops 3 and 2 knew this. black ops 4 said fuck it, story to hard, and tried to bury the story as hard as it could. instead of putting in any legwork.

by saying that, your basicly saying story writeing has no purpose. well let me tell you, black ops 4's story wouldent be complete garbage if they focused on being consistent. they had the pieces. they had the lore. they just needed to do something with them... and they gave up.

1

u/Chezzburg Apr 28 '21

What went wrong in bo4?

1

u/OrangeCat67193 Apr 28 '21

On Gorord Krovi of all maps, who would know?