C-RRBT02 (Jan 14, 2021)
Puzzle
“&#ཡོད་ཚད་མཇུག་སྒྲིལ་གྱི་ཡོད།
གྷངཋཏཐཏ(ག-ཁ)ཊཀགྷཋ(ག-ཀ)(ག+ག)ཅཊཏ.”
Cipher | 3 Words
Clue
Hover over the clues if you require!
Clue 1: I...really hope these symbols can be seen on the Wiki page. Anyway, ignore the &# for now - what does the top row translate to?
Clue 2: Now you've got the alphabet, what about the bottom row? Are they from the same language?
Clue 3: What does &# usually represent, especially in coding - or more accurately HTML? Now link this to the meaning of the top row and the 'Cipher' part of the puzzle.
Answer and Explanation
Answer: Ghosts And Goblins
Explanation: The top sentence is Dzongkha for 'Everything is coming to an end'. The bottom symbols - which are not entirely Dzonghka - are all represented in Unicode with a string starting with ', followed by two numbers - up to 26. Taking these numbers and subtracting or adding when specified spells this out.
Summary of Receipt
Summary
Transcript
Branch [Long Island]
Date [2021-01-14]
Server [Employee No. 62]
Beverage [N/A]
File Reference [C-RRBT02]
It’s a bit of a good news, bad news situation. The bad news is none of our existing Othertech can figure out what this Revised and Reanimated Bardo Thodol actually is. The good news? That must mean it’s not from the Otherside—there’s no connection to it. So that means it’s probably Otherworldly. And if that’s the case, this book must be tied to the last Plane of the Otherworld, which, judging by the title, seems to be the “Achegloom” or “Bardo Plane.”
I did some research, and it looks like we’re dealing with Tibetan mythology. Or… some vague version of it. The problem with a "new" Plane of the Otherworld is that it probably wasn’t created by Belphegor like the other four-ish Planes, so how closely it follows traditional mythology might be… questionable. Since this Plane has anchored itself to the Necropolis, my guess is it’s connected to Tibetan death mythology, specifically the Bardo Thodol, also known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
And then there’s the other name for the Plane—Achegloom. That points toward the concept of Preta, or some version of it—the realm of “Hungry Ghosts.” Ghosts. Yeah… based on what No. 161 and No. 53 described, I guess we’re dealing with ghosts now. Or at least some form of them. But here’s the part that doesn’t make much sense to me: why would the ghosts of the Collyer Brothers exist in a Tibetan Plane of the Otherworld?
I’ve got a feeling that if we can figure out what makes this Bardo Thodol “Revised and Reanimated,” we’ll get our answer.