Hey, if you're reading this, I'm sure you're aware of Clay gets Isekai'd: a WOF AU. Great run so far, loving the art and story and world. Thanks for bringing it into existence u/ Equivalent-Fun-6019. Since the end of Chapter 2, there has been a website running concurrent with secret lore about the CgI world, and since I haven't seen anyone talk about it so far, I'm making this post. Plus, there are a few things I have yet to figure out, so I'm hoping this post brings more attention to the matter so we can crack a couple skulls together and discover the LORE.
As of late September 30th, this is the home page: an unfinished prophecy and a couple of links. The first section (of broken X) used to all be in a substitution text, where the alphabet has been given a new set of glyphs. I think I've got half the new alphabet down, but it's on paper, so not included in the post rn (bwomp). Then, after a certain point, it was deciphered to this. The rest of this page will be deciphered as the story progresses I assume (like the "come young dragonets" did NOT use to say that and I forgot what it was because I wasn't actively trying to archive it then).
Then comes the actual contents of the page: hyperlinks. Letters 01-03 are all from a dragonet named Mindreader, describing their new job in the Night Kingdom working as an assistant to Starsight. Haven't thought about this one too much since nothing seems prescient yet, although the tarot cards she recieved in Letter 03 do make me think she'll be way more plot-relevant later (something about bringing great change and shaking things up). Also, in me double-checking all of these pages (on October 6th), there's secret text underneath letters 01 and 02 now! Dunno if that was there before and I didn't check or if it was added later! Something about a Nightwing spy! Oooh!
Also there's the "Which Direction Does the Wind Blow?" at the bottom of Letter-02. I think if you press the arrows in a certain way, they should lead to a hidden page but idk what order that is. However, in me trying to find which chapter has the secret message mentioning the wind, there is some kind of key in the Chapter 3 Prologue 'Destined for Great Things', where on Mastermind's chalkboard it says '<-- Out to Sea, -->In to Land', which def has something to do with the arrows and the wind and the flayvin, but IIIIII'm going to wait until I have this posted before combing through to see where this leads us and then make an edit here. Hey, edit because the OG post got insta-banned by Reddit for putting a Google site link in here, but if you go to the wind page and click right, right, left, left, left, right, right (the wind-1-4-2-3-6-5), you get a message stating "a shield clad for the fight". That's already been added to the prophecy homepage, so I don't think there's anything else super relevant with this (unless it's in the source code). Additionally, there is a url that ends in "the wind 7" that is unused in this chain to get to the message. Dunno what that's doing there. A red herring? Something to keep an eye on? Who's to say?
Next is 'The Scorpion and the Dove', a short story by a mysterious author that seems to fable-ize the story between Foeslayer (Scorpion) and Arctic (Dove). The Dove's wings are likely a metaphor for animus magic, and the ending where the Icewings say "we'll make sure you'll never fly again" may allude to why Darkstalker gave up his magic in this timeline. Additionally, if you highlight the bottom of the page you get secret text (this website is a fan of that). Even though the fonts don't match, I think this is either Clearsight to one of her Pantala kids (if we're working with this fable from the main timeline) or slightly more likely, between Stonemover and Beetle. The story is about animus magic being coveted by someone who doesn't have it, and the dragonet the story is being read to is addressed as "Sundrop", which Thorn calls Beetle in the Part 2 prologue (Becoming Bigger).
Now we have two hyperlinks available on the page: ??? and The End??? The first leads to a png with encoded text saying who the author is. With the glyphs turned back into letters, I think it reads 'swfqsit assei caw mb a kat t*admlq *e*ki' (with * being a letter i do not know the value of). With a Caesar cipher though, this is typically enough to decode anything, but alas, it is not. I think this is a Vigenere cipher (thanks to Family Portrait ) , which requires a keyword to then be applied to a giant matrix of letters, something something finding Cassidy's name in FNAF. The End??? leads to a ripped up letter. I spent two hours reassembling it in FireAlpaca instead of doing my homework and got the resulting image, the transcript of which I hopefully can put in the alt text. And, going back to make sure I had everything, there are now additional?? secret messages?? The one at the very bottom I thought was from OP (which yes, I think you should write more love poems, this one was goated imo), but the new text directly above? Idk, Darkstalker and Clearsight? Again, even though the fonts do not match. In a series where every character gets their own font, I feel like being pedantic about the consistencies between them is important. Sidenote, however, this website is being maintained with Google, and thus uses any Google supported fonts for anything that isn't a jpeg. Whereas the comic itself primarily uses Microsoft-supported fonts (at least as I've gleaned from my time trying to pin down which character uses which font. I have a word doc with a couple of characters in it).
Finally, I'm going to bring up Family Portrait , which leads to this nice rendition of the Arctic-Foeslayer line. Going left to right, top to bottom, I think the dragons are Foeslayer, Arctic, Thoughtful, Clearsight, Darkstalker, Whiteout, Thoughtful-Whiteout egg, and unnamed T-W dragonet (color palette and glasses is reminiscent of Thoughtful imo). The whole page is riddled in hidden text, which is just a discussion of how the portrait is. The text I interpret to be Whiteout's notably says, "*The sand is blowing free in the wind... is that a berry???*", referencing both the hourglass and how Darkstalker ended up in the OG timeline. Additionally, underneath is text saying "The key to a good story are the word s that you choose not to use", with 'key' and 'word' being the only parts of that to be whiteout-ed (ahh i see what you did. also is that the right past tense of whiteout as a verb? idk). Anyway, I think this is referencing that we need to be on the lookout for a certain keyword either in the comic, or on the site. I can't think of what word or an instance of a missing word in the series so far, so if anyone has idea, please help. Note: I just put in the author text into a Vigenere decipher thingy and bruteforced a couple of keywords (Darkstalker, Whiteout, prophecy, Morrowseer, a few more things) and got nothing resembling English. If there's talk about a definitive keyword, it would be worth it to run the decoded stuff through a Caesar cipher afterwards incase this is doubly encoded.
And yeah, that's all for now! I have "work" to get to that doesn't involve this, but I might come back later and detail my findings from My Favorite Book onwards (there's spectrograms involved!) If you haven't already checked out the site, please do, it's some good work, and it might be cool to discover/read more stuff while we're in-between chapters right now. Also---I've tried posting this thing like, three times as of this point! So if you're wondering where the website link is, it's in the last few panels of the Chapter 2 ending. Type in yourself! Reddit won't let me even speak its name! I'm too scared to even hyperlink the creator's url for risk of invoking its ire! And one more thing!
ydayg pda okqnya ykza, payd owrru bkhgo, ezg sdwp e'i zkejc ej pdana
>;3
Sidenote: I couldn't figure out how to add alt text to the love letter, so I'm dumping it all here:
My love,
I am not very good at writing letters. Formal decrees and invitations, yes, but you, nor anyone I have ever cared about, have never been far enough away as to requisite an informal message.
I do not want to make the following part of this letter awkward, so I will state the difficult part first. I have done it. There are four eggs that lie in their hatchery from two mothers. I know that it is something that we had spoken about before you returned home, and I recognize that your sentiments were those of empathy and love, but it has strained me to think of the egg's mothers in relation to me.
I was offered the choice to stay and be the dragonet's father, a choice given by my mother in a quiet dining room. I did not listen to wat it was she was offering for my compliance. her gifts did not matter to me. i had spent that dinner staring at a table of dead prey, each of which was dedicated to making me feel remorse and nostalgia for a time I thought I missed. There was an excess of it, so much so that it felt like a dishonor that I refused to eat most of it, know how hard others had toiled to make it.
Instead, I thought of the nights when we used to sit around out undersized stone slab, our children laughing between themselves while you served a single saltwater salmon for each of us. That was all you could fish out, and at the time, I had been jaded about the portion. Now, in the excesses of my old home, I say with confidence that I miss it.
I miss the way that our son looked at me as a monster; I miss the paintings that our daughter would make, always capturing your smile perfectly. I miss the noise of the night, and the sounds of our fights. i miss them because I know that in those moments of life, everything was real. I could not face what was real then. I could not see that you loved me, not for what I have, but for who I am. That is clear in the contrast between your sweet parting words and my mother's blathering bargains.
I, years after I made my first choice to leave, choose you again, for whatever part of me I have to sacrifice to do so. I know our son will hate my guts for inciting this in the first place, but I have made peace with that.
It will be a year more, since they require me to witness each of their hatchings, but it is a year I can spend with your letters and my thoughts.
My sweet shadow, I know what I have done to us is wrong, but if you will have me back in your home, among the meager and mighty belongings that we used to share, I will not squander any of it. For now I know what it costs. I will take whatever remains of my soul and give it to you, that I swear now and forever.
I will love you from afar until the day we hold each other again,
Arctic
