Castle Planner's Journal: 1000 Years

      As she squinted at the words of the latest book she was focused on, an ancient book. Being from the future, she knew that the book in her hand was ancient, even to these medieval folks. She spotted a mysterious symbol that felt familiar. It hovered in the margins of her manuscript, depicting an old Moehog wearing a funny hat with two points. Lisha gave a little giggle at his goofy face, finding humour in the ways the old scribe would draw Neopets. As she read the page to find out more about what this mysterious symbol could be, it said “The elder book steward of Meridell, Gelfrid, as master Hewer, hath hidden the grand key to all Hewers. Gelfrid weaves the path to the key into his shelves safely.”

      Lisha never liked the odd grammar of early Neopians. Lisha guessed that Gelfrid was a librarian? She looked up from the book and examined the thousand year old shelves on the wall. A secret kept safe in the library that she poured all of her time into? Now she had to know more! She carefully placed a bookmark in her current tome, and put it to the side so she could get a closer look at the bookcases.

     But just then, the lone candle giving her light burnt out. Finally plunged into complete darkness, Lisha realised how late it was.

     “Oh my. I guess it’s time for bed.” She stumbled around the library with her hands out in front of her to try not to bump into things.

     -THUD-

     “Ow!” She exclaimed as she accidentally banged her knee on a stray stool that had been left out.

     The next morning, everything was dew-covered, and a bleary-eyed Lisha trudged across the courtyard to the mess hall for breakfast. The only thing that kept her from immediately going to the library to solve last night’s mystery was the growling in her stomach. After acquiring her bowl of gruel (with some dried fruits of course) she looked across the tables of the great hall to see if there were any open seats next to any good conversationalists. She knew her friends Morris and Boris would be at squire training at this hour, and Kayla tended to sleep until noon.

     Her eyes spotted her brother, Jeran, sitting next to Gaius, the Castle Planner. If anyone would enjoy a good conversation about history, it would be Gaius, she thought to herself, and made her way over.

     “Good morning Lisha!” Jeran called out as he spotted the bright Yellow Aisha approaching.

     “Hello brother.” She greeted him back, her voice still a little raspy from waking up.

     “Up late again?” Jeran immediately could spot the effects of her bad habits. He gave her a look of disappointment to once again try and dissuade her from staying up so late.

     “Maybe. But this time, I had a good reason!” Lisha turned to get Gaius’s attention as he was trying to fit a whole marrow pie in his mouth. He had not expected anyone to be looking at him. Lisha continued, despite the look of regret for his rudeness on Gaius’s face after he realised that Lisha was watching him. “I was reading in the library, and found reference to a secret hidden in the old shelves of the original library!” Lisha was confident that the idea of a secret hidden in the castle would pique Gaius’s interest.

     “Mrfph!” Gaius vocalised.

     “Chew first, then geek out.” Jeran gently reminded him.

     After a quick swig of water, and some hasty chewing, Gaius spoke up. “In the library? I thought I had found all the hidden tunnels in there! All the space in the walls are accounted for in my maps!” He was curious.

     “Unfortunately, I don't have any more information than that. I was interrupted in my research, but I'm going there straight after breakfast!” Lisha smiled. “You should look at it too! It referenced some pet named Gelfrid hiding a key to the Hewers? Maybe I misread the old text, and it’s a key to the sewers?” Lisha speculated as she stirred her gruel.

     Jeran watched as Gaius’s ears perked up, then swivelled around as he thought. Jeran was familiar enough with the Bori to know that this meant he was deep in thought, planning something, running through situations in his head. “Sounds like a fun mystery!” Jeran deduced that Gaius was taking to it quite well.

     “Yes...” A concerned look grew on Gaius’s face. “It’s a shame that this Hall Of Heroes opening is such a tight deadline, I don't think I have time for such an adventure.” Gaius gave a little pout. “But I think that I can find some time to help on the weekend! Normally I’d just try and sneak off...” Gaius admitted to the disappointed Lisha. Jeran glared at the Castle Planner for admitting to shirking his duties. “But this time, I'm actually working with a whole team of sculptors, and they are relying on me as foreman for the project! I can't leave them behind!”

     “I understand! I’ll see who else wants to help!” Lisha said, scooping up the last of her meal, before dashing off.

     She found last night’s tome exactly where she left it, illuminated by a stream of morning sun coming in the dirty windows of the third floor. She would have plenty of time now to read. Opening it to her book mark, she saw the vivid colour of the drawings of Gelfrid, which hadn’t shown up in the dim candle light. She took the book closer to the window to get a good look at the thousand year old document.

     She read further, to learn more about what it meant about a ‘secret in the shelves’. The next page said more. “Gelfrid bade me, a humble scribe, to copy this message to exactment. I have faithfully reproduced it.” She read what the otherwise unnamed author wrote. Then what followed, Lisha simply could not understand. It was like she was reading an ancient language, yet all of the letters were familiar.

     1.LWWTKMJGKTTJSTSWMDGURUEWLPIKJHSGFKYDLTCEXDLWWTSIPHRLYSJM

     2.LXJAGTAQTKXNJTKTCIASTCITKKEJBVSYSAD UEHLDAJSI

     3.FMAWGLTTRMTCHZLKEOYHLQOJLXZOTESEWWGVXCYNXPONHLQFRJDQPILWLQPG MFVGO FBLJD

     4.OHDYQHAGIMKMSMJIH LKGTRNSWCEWBJYIBVHJYABOQXGLYCIFXIHXZSWQBYIDKXNVHVHMY

     5.LXNCXXS HYSHJXHXPXIELXNCPACPVEYQDRZJYBH

     6.UN JAF NLQLNHJ VSBVNLQLNZUHRXIHAWI VXIYBTMGTJXTNVXNVTVSSLI BSBOSS VLTUGUJXAAWA

     7.QORDPFRDIMCP URDWXWBGAKSMAZPISKKIOVKPFSBAIRZNAKSMAUL UCPHI OMTRDPFRDZFSCBSWJHUWYHVGKNSFXHUZPHDLDAFICHNSBS

      Befuddled by the impossible words, Lisha kept reading on, hoping for more explanation. The text continued. “Gelfrid is safe in knowing that his treasure is safe without the words of passage. He speaks that a researcher must use one passage to find the sequitur.”

      Lisha looked at the text one more time. A password? What could it all mean? She was going to let her mind wander in possibilities, but she was distracted by a small pencil note that someone had written on the margins. It was clearly not the same ink or hand as the original scribe of the book. As a librarian, she was furious someone would deface a book like this, but as she read it, she became thankful.

      Foremost password is SORTED, it said, with no further context.

      “Well, that’s helpful!” Lisha commented to herself, and went back to the first line to learn the answers she sought, but quickly realised something... she had no idea how she was even supposed to use this password. “Well that’s a bust.” She folded her arms and plopped back down in her chair with a huff. “I’ll have to figure this out some other way. Maybe I should just check the shelves for any clues as well.” She resolved to not give up.

      It took her an hour of scouring shelves, which quickly turned into a cleaning exercise as she grabbed a broom and a dustpan to take care of the dusty build-up that had accumulated in some of the lesser travelled corners of the library. Besides a few interesting books to browse later, nothing ended up catching her eye. Everything was exactly where it looked like it belonged. No secret key to be found. She checked the last corner of the library that she had left untouched, and crawled on all the way to the back, to sweep what might have been a century old Spyder web.

      “Little lady Lisha, what are you doing on the floor?” A deep voice asked from behind her. She nearly bumped her head in surprise as she had expected to be alone.

      “Oh? Just doing some... cleaning!” She said as she crawled backwards back out of the tight spot. She looked up and saw Sir Danner, the Blue Wocky and a close friend of her brother. “I thought it was you! Don’t call me little!” She said to the Wocky who was certainly taller than her.

      “But it’s true!” The knight teased her. “I’ve come in need of a book. Can you help?”

      “Of course.” She said, putting the broom and dustpan to the side, next to her encoded project. The Wocky’s eye was caught by the mysterious message.

      “What’s that? Some sort of secret message?” Sir Danner asked out loud.

      “Oh that? I’m not sure. It's definitely some sort of secret, but I’m not sure how to go about revealing it. It’s such a tease. All I know is that it's a secret hidden in the shelves,” Lisha complained.

      “Ah hah. That’s why you were doing all that spring cleaning in the summer! Though, wouldn't this be something that Gaius would be helpful for?” The Wocky deduced.

      “Yeah, I thought so too, but he’s too busy to help!” Lisha recalled her conversation with him from earlier. “All I have is a password, but no idea how to use it!”

      “Ah that’s a shame. Oh, wait, you said you have the password for the cipher?” Sir Danner did a double take. At this point he had totally forgotten that he had come to the library to get a book.

      “Yeah, but it's as useless as a key for a lock with no keyhole!” Lisha pouted.

      “Well, this looks like an old code that they teach us as scouts and couriers for keeping battlefield communications secret. I had to learn it when I was first knighted, and was part of the scouting team.”

      “Wait, you think you’ve seen it before?”

      “Yeah, It was a technique handed down between knights for many generations, called the Vigenère cipher! It made it nearly impossible to figure out a message. Back in my day, we would use the password “Glory” to encode the messages, but they changed it once a year. It’s simple, I will show you how! Do you have a slate?”

      Lisha quickly procured her visitor a slate to write out what he meant.

      “So, you write out the message you want to send on the first line here. Let’s take out spaces for now, and do the sentence ‘A Small Aisha’”

      “I’m not little!”

      “Maybe, I’m not talking about you! You don't know that!”

      “Fine...”

      “Anyway, once we have it written down, we write out letters of our password underneath, repeating them until we have filled out all the letters of our sentence. Then it’s as simple as converting the letters to numbers, A is 1, B is 2, C is 3, and so on! Spaces are 27.” Danner clarified. “Then you just add it together to know which letter to use!”

      “Oooh, okay, that’s easy enough. Lets see....” The Aisha worked diligently at her arithmetic. But quickly ran into one more issue. “But Danner, The Y in Glory and the T in Little would add up to 45! There’s no letter for that number!”

      “Oh, well if it calls for a letter like that, write out a second copy of the alphabet, where A=28, B=29, C=30, etcetera, and Z=52! Then it will all fit.” Danner looked proud of himself for knowing something that Lisha did not.

      “I see... so then our encoded message here would be “HLGDZSXOSGZTP” right?” Lisha tried to check her work.

      “I think so. Now to reverse it...” Danner was about to explain.

      “We do the same thing, but subtract!” Lisha finished his sentence, having already guessed the procedure, deflating his ego just a little bit in the process. Lisha very quickly mathed her way part way through the example, and saw the message starting to reveal itself again. “It’s working!” Lisha was excited.

      “Glad I could offer some help.... Now about that book?” Danner asked sheepishly. He didn't want to interrupt.

      “Oh! I’m so sorry, I had totally gotten side tracked as to why you were here. What can I help you get?”

      “I just need a book on the geography of Noil Hills. I think the adventure journal of Sir Collywest will have what i need.”

      “Ah, of course. It should be over this way, under the section labelled Journals.” Lisha led him through the stacks. “Forgive the organisation, it’s not alphabetical, so I don’t expect that you would be able to easily find it.”

      “Thank you. I guess this is why we have a librarian,” Danner said, as he read through the various sections. Recipes, Speeches, Laws, Animals, Architecture... The sorting system was not in a particular order, but was particularly sorted carefully into various themes.

      “Here we are: Journals. The one by Sir Collywest should be... right... Here!” She pulled up a handsomely bound book, and handed it to Sir Danner. “Leave it on my desk when you are done with it!” She said as Danner gave her a thankful wave goodbye.

      Now that she had the opportunity to focus, she sat down at her desk to tackle the puzzle anew, but she was nervous. What if the password didn't work, or it was applied in a different way? She didn’t have a choice but to try it out.

      “Okay... L, W, W, T, K...” She wrote out the letters of the puzzle. “Now for the password. S, O, R, T, E, D, S, O....” She carefully kept track of her letter placement to make sure she made no mistakes. Then she started converting them to numbers, and now it was time for diligent subtraction. The message began to reveal itself one letter at a time.

      “T, H, E, ,F ,I ,R ,S ,T...” Lisha’s heart began to race. “It says “the first’, that’s readable! It’s working!” She celebrated with nobody but herself. She raced to finish the rest. Soon enough, the whole message was revealed.

      The first of each of a starred sort tells the next story.

      It was a riddle. Lisha sat in thought. What could it mean? Her mind wandered far and swam in the possibilities, but was soon interrupted by a familiar voice.

      “What are you up to?” Jeran asked. Her brother had managed to sneak in while she was very focused. “I heard from Danner that you are on quite the treasure hunt. Did the code work?”

      “Jeran! What brings you here?”

      “Just wanted to check in on you after you mentioned something so interesting during breakfast. Looks like you have been making progress.”

      “Yep! Danner’s technique worked! The first clue is right here!” She showed Jeran the results.

      “Oh my. Well I will have to let him know the good news. So what’s it mean?” He said as he studied it.

      “Well, my first thought is it’s definitely here in the library. The book I got this from mentioned that, and it's talking about a story and the password was ‘sorted’. Like a book shelf!”

      “Like the different categories?” Jeran was following her thought process.

      “Precisely. I just need to figure out what the ‘star’ is in this context.” She said hopping up from her chair, and approaching the shelves.

      Jeran joined her, and started looking up and down the aisles. Each shelf had many labels to look at, so they wordlessly split up the task of checking them together as a team.

      “Wait, this label has a star! Have you seen this before?” Jeran pointed to the label for ‘Swords’

      “I have one over here too!” Lisha pointed to the word ‘Pottery’ written on a small brass plaque, with a small star next to it.

      “Looks like we know where to look.” Jeran confirmed, looking for more stars.

      “And another one on this shelf!” Lisha said, darting around her familiar space. “This one is Engraving,” she pointed to it. “And next to it is Alchemy!” Lisha was giddy with discovery.

      Jeran had skipped to the other end of the shelves, and was quick to find the last one. “Kings! Of course that would be starred.” Jeran gave himself a soft chuckle.

      They both took some time to double check that they didn't miss any starred categories, but eventually they were left with Swords, Pottery, Engraving, Alchemy, and Kings. Lisha reread her clue.

      “Well, The first of each starred, I think means that it wants the first letter of each one.”

      “That would make sense.” Jeran confirmed.

      “That spells SPEAK! It just might be correct! Let’s try it as a password.” Lisha wiped the slate clean, save for the letter key at the top.

      Jeran sat next to her, intently watching her work. He was rather proud of his little sister. It didn’t take her long before the next message started to reveal itself:

      The walls eyes and hands speak in the gallery.

      Lisha was beaming. The ancient message was rewarding her efforts. “Look!” Lisha showed Jeran. “Another riddle... But this one seems a bit harder.” Lisha looked a little dejected.

      “In the gallery, eh? Well, looks like you will have to leave the library for this one!” Jeran patted Lisha on the head. “But that will have to wait until after work. Wouldn’t want you ducking away from duty!”

      “Like somebody else you know?” Lisha ribbed him for the fact that Gaius would sneak off to adventure sometimes.

      “I will have you know he’s a very hard worker, and is currently showing great restraint for not running off to help you right now, thank you very much!” Jeran played along with the tease.

      “Fine. I will try and figure this out from here in the meantime.” Lisha was determined.

      “Alright kiddo, I’m going to head out. Good job solving that riddle! That was fun!” Jeran bid his sister adieu, and went back into the castle.

      Lisha was once again surrounded by only the books of the library, and her own thoughts. She had heard of walls having ears as an expression, and hills having eyes, but hands was really stretching it. She might need help on this one. She kicked her short little legs, swinging them back and forth while she sat on a stool. She would just have to be patient for the end of her shift!

To be continued…