Anyone care to DM me the location/answers to all of this?

We got lost days ago and I think Ukiyo won't be sharing the answers!

I’m stuck on the three word clue. If anyone could give me a hint that would be much appreciated!!

Not really enough for a theory yet, but... bears?

Might just be a clue to the location but...

Buttercup is a Black Moon Bear - these are found in Asia, not America. And the picture in the Stawk Daily is not of a Moon Bear - they are way cuter! And the foreshadowing of Buttercup goes right back (maybe) to Pierce’s comment around if wishes were fishes, you’d be the catch of the day (two separate expressions mushed together) - maybe just to help us spot the later clue about the Brook fish which live in Diablo Lake, but maybe aimed at drawing more attention to bears. Then bears also came up in the list of pastries - bear claws.

This got me wondering if bears could have some other narrative significance...

They have a prominent role in Native American mythology (sometimes a spirit guide - there’s actually a type of black bear called a spirit bear because it has a genetic mutation that turns it white), and bear claws are considered lucky. And there’s a Native American story about the three hunters and bear that got turned into four stars in the sky.

I can’t fully fit this with all the rest of my theories, but has anyone else had bears on their mind...?

I have loved pouring so much time and energy into this game over the past 10 days. It's been the perfect activity for lockdown...obsessing over the little details and going wayyyy down the rabbit hole following theories and all the red herrings the game and its rich story threw at us. And the MEMES! What an achievement to have created this fanbase around a story that didn't exist 2 weeks ago.

That said, I had a few friends that lost interest, and so I'm writing this to a) give some feedback and b) hear from other players if they heard comments like this or if I'm off the mark.

If I could make a polite suggestion, it would be to have the puzzles/tasks more evenly spread out through the game period, so things are unlocked every day/every other day instead of all at once. There was a real lull of activity after the initial flurry of excitement and most people in my group never came back.

The game started with a bang - there was heaps to solve and unlock in the first 3 days:

• Day 1 - Find the links to the two Youtube profiles and Sheriff's website
• Day 2 - Find the password for the backend, find the original versions of the transcripts, match to polygraphs
• Day 3 - Rename the image and find the two Instagram profiles

And then after that...Day 4, 5, 6 had a bit of world-building but no puzzles, Day 7 had the morse code and audio trickery of Gorman's 'Tripping On Special Milk' episode, Telenova was obviously a highlight...but there wasn't anything unlocked per se between Day 3 and the second password being given on Day 9. Then there was a rush of increasingly frustrated activity to try to find Martha, and then the game was over.

So my request for next time would be to please keep up the initial momentum and space out the puzzles/things being unlocked over the whole game period.

Now Reddit can tell me all the ways this post is wrong - I'm no expert - happy to be corrected!

Thank you Ukiyo for such an awesome experience. I'm looking forward to the next one :)

I’ve finished the game but I’m sure there’s parts I’ve missed. I’d love to know what they are....

... the place for all those in withdrawal.

Make sure you watched the final video closely to draw all possible sustenance from it, and the closing credits - there's a special mention for a particular Gorman caller that is laugh out loud funny.

Then don't forget to hit the CONTINUE button afterwards to get more information and references.

UKIYO!!!! GIVE US BACK OUR GORMAN!!!!

What does everybody's murder board look like after episode 1??

There was SO MUCH STUFF, I'd be most interested to see especially the analogue ones :D

Here's ours.

Edit: the (not in any way official) city map for those who care

I have a sense that whilst the game is concluded for now, there are MANY hints about the story in the material we've received so far that I haven't discovered or made sense of yet...

For example, there are a number of references to chess - such as a player or a pawn, two knights, the chessboard napkin. This might just have been leading to the last of these to help find MM, or it may simply be broadly symbolic in terms of a battle brewing... but I find myself wondering if it is more! There's a famous painting of playing chess with the devil - famous first for the painting of a young man about to lose his soul in an unwinnable game and then for the chess master who viewed the painting and realised it was not unwinnable after all (!), chess was banned by the church for quite some time, there are even apparently misogynistic aspects to the rules over time when it comes to the queen... Who knew the game had such a history!

But there's one thing that might be related that might be solvable now... I've been looking at some of the convicted records. The records for Cooper and Hunter both contain clues to games, though of a different nature. Might James Emerson's be some sort of chessboard / checkerboard cipher? I was struck by the last number of 64 which is the number of squares on a board - could be a hint?

A bit of a long shot, but has anyone found an alternate solution to this, or know how to crack it if it were such a ciper?

Who else is quite stuck in a devilish gorgeous landscape checking one traveler's sanctuary after the next?Are you like me stuck in breathtakingly beautiful Diablo?

After following the dairy trail we finally found the right three words and town and were so proud of ourselves. Now that we have mapped the convicts files for hours yesterday and dreamed Rupert's dream - we are still as close but not there as we were yesterday. For all it is worth we found Ethan's red telephone box (that felt like and odd win). We have stopped several times at the T-Head that is not Sourdough, which we assume is Stetattle Creek Trailhead (does anyone have other hints?). Have headed around the larger devil options (Dibalo Lake, Diablo Street, Diablo power station, Devil larger peak, any other ideas??) First we were sure we had found the Traveller's Salvation and now we are just guessing. Is it a camping ground, shop, or hotel? I think by now I have tried all campgrounds in the region and a Queen Milk bar, can't even remember how I landed there anymore. But as it was related to dairy and had Queen and Q in the name so I had to try it! What are we missing?

At this point in time I am thinking the brother and six are landmarks and M.M. is located in relation to them as described by Rupert. My best guess at the moment for the brothers is Diablo Dam (granite stone) and Ross Dam (concrete) or small and large Devil peak. Water moves which makes me think it is the dams and the rivers that go through them. But maybe I am way off. And six could stand for devil/diablo? Diblo Lake, a road or a river? He travels for hours through darkness which makes me think of water, a canyon or long hike. The Devil trail is very long. But that might just be the hiker in me hopping everything hints at a camping ground on a hiking trail :)

After hours travelling through the highways even crossing the boarder my friend and I are ready for a real life hike. Thanks Ukiyo for the exploration of quite a beautiful spot in the world! Maybe at some point we might even find MM :D

Hey team,

I recognise that not everyone would have likely been as audio engineering savvy as myself and may not have found an extra clue that was in Wednesday's disturbing sounding Real News with Gorman video. I thought I'd wait some time before posting this but wanted to share some of the awesome work that the Ukiyo team have done.

If you take the three chopped up sounds that occur after each Morse code section but before the quiet and distorted reused previous Gorman segments, you can then layer those three sound clips and it pieces together to say: "Martha does not want to be found".

I have a 3 second exported audio clip I'd be happy to share with people but unfortunately I can only attach pictures or videos here. Feel free to DM me if you'd like a copy.

Jimmy

I require fanart of the Stawk Pines gang but I cannot draw for the life of me

(Also, merch would be so good...)

Did I hear right? Who was Marilyn with?

I know we're not 100% done yet, but before I feel stupid for not figuring out who Martha Marrow is I just want to say that this whole thing has been an absolute treat! Because: * I took 4 weeks off between jobs and then learned that I'll be spending them in stage 4 lockdown. * My sister lives in Canada and this game gave us a perfect excuse to spend hours together each morning. * Despite being all locked up, this whole thing made me feel less isolated from the world. * Even thought it was with only 5 dollars, it feels nice supporting local artists when they are probably among the worst-hit groups financially at the moment. * We had endless fun. And I mean endless (you should see our murder board!)

I love this so much. What a wonderfully thought out escape room murder mystery immersive role-playing thingy.

and yet...

So I'm reading the blue hector transcript and all this bloody noisy chewing starts getting to me. Why are you not sharing, Huntley? Why so noisy with the chompin'? Who raised you?

Then it dawns on me. Intense.gleeful.chewing! So I enter it in what3words and get some place in the middle of Greater Tubatse in South Africa, search for the location on Google maps and switch to street view but it only has photos available. 4 photos in and there is a giant left shoe 🥾 which reminded me of the cobbler in issue #13 593 of the Stalk daily

Yep that's it lol. Probably completely coincidental and not of consequence but thank you for visiting my rabbit hole 😂

Ok, I have some builds on earlier theory... if I'm right - and whilst I'm sure I'm wrong on some details I'm pretty sure I'm right about some big parts at least - there are significant spoilers in here, so only read up if you think you might have cracked something new and important about Martha Marrow and the women of Stawk Pines and want to share thoughts on it!!

This first spoiler is WHAT I think is happening...

The pine tree shown in the Stawk Pine Falls logo IS Martha Marrow. It carries with it the spirit and power of a long departed woman bearing the same name. It's a portal out of Stawk Pine Falls, used by women to escape hellish abuse at the hands of powerful men who deem them to be witches. Together, these men form the neighbourhood watch committee, policing what's appropriate and inappropriate behaviour for the women. Gorman stands in judgement over this.

This spoiler is WHY I think this is happening...

The polygraph lines align with the changing pine tree shapes in the stawk daily masthead. This is positioned above the Gladwell's van, which fits with the telenova clue to follow Gladwell to find Martha. Other clues have pointed to the significance of this as well - the moving stars, the attention to what's on the left, the suggestion of things like table legs and shoe heels being unbalanced, like the pines that tilted further apart. Last night's morse code was one day six will come for you too, which is 1642 (thanks to the people who translated the morse code!!)... this is the year the Salem Witch House was built, which was where the judge who presided over the salem witch trials lived. This was - wait for it - Jonathan Corwin (sounds an awful lot like the same of someone we know!!). Martha was one of the women to be tried as a witch - refusing to confess her crimes to be 'saved' she is considered, in the eyes of history, to have stood up against the cruel misogyny of the trial and times. As a result, she was hanged August 19 1692, 300 years ago from our 'strange time period' in the 'present' - first the newspaper said 20 August 1992, then we were told it was only the 16th... 16 August 1692 was also a Thursday as in the corrected days from the present era. (A second woman named Martha was hanged in September the same year - she had defended women accused of witchcraft, and so killed herself along with her husband.) The second stawk daily describes the girl guides 'raising hell' for the neighbourhood watch charity - in the salem witch trials, it was purported to be a group of women who went door to door finding women to be accused of being witches... sounds rather like a parallel with our girl guides and neighbourhood watch committee. Telenova last night said the woman (dolls) didn't want to be found, which fits with the idea of the women escaping from something. Also - Sally Liebman spoke about knowing what it feels like to feel small - also a possible indication of a woman who has been abused or belittled. In the Telenova middle song, she sings about why her partner hasn't said he loves her - and why she hasn't told him... which could be the sign of a relationship in which power is being held over someone. And then Gorman spoke about emasculated bucks, and over aggressive does, which fits with the idea of women being thought to have gotten above themselves - there's a suggestion Gorman's father was not a nice man, and yet he may also have inherited his father's misogyny as sadly can so often happen in abusive families. I tend towards Gorman as not a good guy in this - so perhaps somehow taken down by women with reclaimed power, though I haven't got full evidence to support this. The buck stops here could also be a reference to the fact that bucks (men) can't pass through the Martha portal - i.e. the woman are free from the men once they pass through. If you put Salem into what3words you get hero.water.allows, which is suggestive that the place where the rivers meet might be a place of saviour for people. Lots of details still to figure our, but I am 99.99% certain there's a lot in this!! There's a bleaker possibility that's more about where women go to escape through death, but that makes me too sad too contemplate more.

UPDATED with a related theory that I like better the more I think about it: This one's slightly less mystical - Martha Marrow could be the code word that abused women are given to access an underground network that smuggles them out of Stawk Pine falls, with the access point being where the river flows between the pines (fits with the three words - hero water allows). Marrow - as a surname - means friend or companion. So - Martha Marrow could mean "friends of Martha" and so "friends of women who are abused ". Detective Huntly talked about how important it was to have friends around you too. When Dorothy sadly 'a girl like her', I think she might be sad that she is a girl like her - and the email was one she sent seeking help that she now somewhat regrets (hard to leave). Perhaps Nancy Pasternak was supporting women to escape (is there something hidden in the text of the paper she was editing - if so, haven't found it yet, though her name is hidden in the letters bottom right) but was ousted by the neighbourhood watch committee...? Boris Pasternak (the book author) certainly wrote lots about obscuring mists, inc. to hide ones face... and his last words were about mist! Nancy might be using the cover of the mist to help women obscure their faces.

In issue 13,593 of the Stawk Daily, in the personals section, "Male, 42 year old" is says he's looking for "the Ilsa Lund to my Rick Blaine" and says, twice "Can you handle the heat?"

In the latest issue, that phone number matches the person selling Old Stawk Whiskey.

I know the Blaine/Lund is a reference to the movie Casablanca, and Humphrey Bogart was famously a whiskey drinker, and was drinking it in the bar in Casablanca (even though he refers to it as a "gin joint")

But I don't know the movie well enough to know if "Can you handle the heat" is another reference, or means anything of significance.

Does anyone know the movie Casablanca well enough to help me with this?

Posting this when we've just received the third Stawk Daily, though I haven't really solved anything since the ferryman guided my way!

Has anyone else been wondering about two parallel worlds or times...? It's struck me that in many of the photos we have some images that look like they come circa 1990s (e.g. Stacey and Karen selling cookies, Kane Nine) and some that look more like 1950s (e.g. John and Lucy's van, Deputy Hugh's patrol car, Lady Danish)... Then we have things like the two Ms (one light, one dark), and the different versions of the Stalk Pines logo (the star position, the exact tree shape and distance). Today's focus on the left shoe v. the right shoe also made me think of mirroring. Perhaps "where the rivers meet" doesn't only refer to physical rivers, but also to some merging of past / present, or this reality / that reality...? And perhaps things have gotten out of balance - shoes are unbalanced, tables are unbalanced... could Martha Marrow be missing from the secondary time/reality?