Spoilers! New "Ancient Plaque" decoded. Ark wiki page created. Substitution key made.

(kind of a cross post from reddit, for people who aren't over there)

So, I kind of went hog wild with the new Ark stuff tonight. There is now an Ark wiki page that is pretty exhaustive, with more on the way.

There was also a new item on the Nightly build, "Ancient Plaque". I decoded that and added a couple more letters to a substitution key/legend that I also made up. An imgur album of these is here.
(original decoding on gate from here)

(underlying image here from another reddit user)

On the Ark wiki page, if you click through to the monolith and hologram objects, they pretty much all have racial descriptions. Some are definitely hinting. Also, if you haven't noticed, the Novakid have a stone on the gate, but are missing from the hologram of all the races holding up their keys. The Novakid racial description mentions this as well.

That's probably it for me tonight. I'll be working on finishing up the Ark page/objects after some sleep and work though. Let me know if there's anything I can add or change.

 

very good work decoding!!

I was onto the same idea in another thread a week or so ago:

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/huge-spoiler-the-ark.93828/

But you have definitely given even more evidence towards the outcome of the stones being placed there... hmm now the question is.. why would we want a black hole to appear?!

 

In http://blog.chucklefish.org/?p=91 the biome diagram speaks of flying through a black hole.

If they still have a similar idea in mind it seems they will use the black hole as some sort of portal (Yea i know, dosent make sense, should at least be a wormhole or something instead of a black hole, But still).

 

Personally kinda disappointed that it's being called a black hole, and not a worm hole/portal/Einstien-Rosenberg bridge.

The plaque seems to suggest that whoever built the place either worships the tentacomet (unlikely) or has some way of knowing it will return (InB4 Space Prophecy).

 

Hmmm... could it be that the Novakid were born out of whatever fiasco this is about? The Novakid descriptions for the galaxy and the six races seems to be a little plot-deep.

 

I especially like their description of the galaxy hologram. "We're all too familiar with the stars," or something along those lines. I think we'll be unearthing a bit of Novakid lore very soon. Speaking of which, when are we going to get all the old items updated with Novakid descriptions?

 

Now, discovering what a silly story we'll be getting is nice and all, but the only thing that matters;

When will we get a usable font version? That's what I'm looking forward to most from all of this. Then again, I'm a sucker for wingdings-style fonts.

 

Must be hell. Writing a language that requires you to read in spirals.

 

...I'm just hoping that Chucklefish decides to incorporate my mod(which does exactly that AND gives speech lines for NPC villagers) into stock. Shameless self-promotion aside, it would really save them a lot of time they could use in bug-fixing.

 

Oh, I use your mod. It's great. I just get the feeling that there's some big secret in the works for the Novakid, like with the Florans, and their dialogue will eventually have to represent their finished lore.

 

Im not so sure. Novakids were allways a "extra" species.

So it stands to reason that they wouldent be as well planned out as the original species.

While they have claimed that they will be fully integrated into the lore (mentioned in the stretch goal), Im still not so certain that they will put that much work into their lore or even add novakid towns/villages and such.

 

"It" is presumably the tentacle monster; I'm expecting that the six keys will be found by playing one character of
each species to "completion", such as reaching a certain tier or completing an endgame mission. I'm guessing that
the plot involves finding the six keys, awaiting the monster's return, then summoning a black hole and somehow
pushing it in to destroy it for good.

At least that's my best guess. How something like that would play out gameplay-wise is beyond me.

 

So... any idea why the ancient plaque is in a moon?

...A moon with a one-eyed giant monster, nonetheless!

 

Cultural pieces from before the thing attacked. Either they knew something was coming, or they reveled in it's defeat and it wasn't actually defeated..

 

But how did they even figure which letters correspond to each symbol? That's the part I don't get.

 

I did end up finishing all of the Ark wiki pages. There have been a few updated hints, like the Ancient Plaque getting a place in the lunar mission with a tentacle eye below it. I posted a compilation of this teaser type of stuff on another thread today.

Common cryptography practices.

You can see this cipher being solved here (also linked in the OP). The solver further described his method here.

You can read more about solving simple substitution ciphers here, here, and here.

 

Thanks.

 

I think I might know what happens you get the keys battle the monster and through it in the black hole that all I found out so far and thnx a lot to all of you who help find the code as well the novakid? what is their reason why do we not see them in the holograms? where they created by the monster (and what are we calling the monster anyway) if you do find aneyting keep us informed the more people there are working at it we can finally get revenge for earth!!! and note most of the holograms are a part of the humans galaxy

 

(please try not to write in run-on sentences. It makes it very difficult to read)

The way I decoded your post, here's what I have to say:

• The Biome Diagram gives us somewhat of an idea of what to expect with the Monolith Gate (the gate in the Ark that has the six key holes). It shows that we'll obtain some sort of ship upgrade in the nebula (a new part of space/type of system that will be added) that allows us to fly through black holes. Coinciding with the Precursor text (check my signature for what the Precursors are) on the Monolith Gate, it's very likely that we'll collect the six keys throughout the story, insert them in the key holes, and fly through the black hole that will open as a result of that. On the other side of this black hole (yes, in Starbound, black holes are gateways to other dimensions) there will be tentacles, as dictated by the Biome Diagram. Considering the third hologram, the Destroyer (which is my name for the monster, but a lot of other people just call it the tentacle beast) is probably in this world of tentacles, which could mean a fairly epic final boss. So yes, your theory is fairly correct, although it looks like you thought we would fight the Destroyer before entering the black hole.
• The Novakid are not shown in the holograms because they did not receive a key, which is likely due to their lack of central government and poor knowledge retention. They were certainly not created by the Destroyer, because their introduction states that they were "Forged aeons ago in the fusion furnaces of a now-dead star."
• How is there any evidence whatsoever that any of the holograms in the Ark are in any way related to the Humans' home system? Humans are in no way significant from the other races. The one exception to that statement is the destruction of their home planet by the tentacles (not the Destroyer itself, mind you, it was sealed away long ago), but that disaster occurred an incalculably long time after the Ark was built and the Precursors went extinct, which means that back when the Holograms were created the Humans were just another race.

I suggest that you look at the Ark discussion thread linked to in my signature, there are pages upon pages of discussion and theories regarding what all this means. I think you'll find it rather informative.

 

wow nice thnx for summing everything up for me good luck in your quest!!