Trapped on Tattoine [Open]

[Silas Miu]

​ Silas Miu sat n one of the many bars in Anchorhead, on the desert planet of Tattooine. His tall, Kaminoan form likely attracted strange looks and a few stares, but he was used to that now, unfortunately. 'I've been stuck here for far too long,' he thought to himself, cursing his luck at being stranded here after stowing away in a ship, whose destination he hadn't even known. He extended two of his long white fingers to catch the bartenders attention, ordering another of his favorite drinks, a Grateful Dead, sipping it as he browsed the holonet for any sort of work that would befit a skilled Slicer. There didn't seem to be much call for one such as himself here, except maybe in the employ of the Hutts, but Silas wasn't sure if he needed money that bad.
Silas groaned in frustration when he couldn't find any local, well paying jobs for a Slicer, deciding he'd finally, as humans put it, "bite the bullet" and contact some of his old underworld contacts, letting them know to put the word out that he's looking for work and in need of a decent score. With how many odd jobs he'd been a part of on that spaceport, he was fairly certain he could get some work, but it probably wouldn't be for the most reputable clientele. Now all he had to do was wait to hear back from his contacts about prospective employers.

 

[Jen]

It had been a while since The Message would have been broadcasted, accesible only by the most talented and aware of those that walked the darkest of crypts on the Holonet.

Nevertheless, despite the week old tag it currently held, the message could still be found floating around. At times discussed by various groups, their guesswork centered around the intention and meaning behind the message. Few of them had actually seen it themselves and even fewer made their way through the entirety of the process. But the consensus they all shared was that it was somehow related to an invite, an announcement of sorts.

While looking for work, Silas would inevitably –should he be curious enough- stumble upon it in its encrypted format.

It would at first appear as a birthday card, its stored location within the code of an old conspiracy theory holosite. The birthday card was not only oddly placed, but its text rambling and perhaps even unsettling to those that were easily spooked.

After figuring out the hidden meaning in the birthday card, a simple logical task that would require a keen mind and a few references to galaxy known anarchists. One would be presented with a string of code that would need to be copied and finished where broken in order to be executed. It would be a rather rudimentary task to most developers and coders. But would mean one had a good understanding of computer software.

This would in turn give an address to a plain Cryptnet site, a lock smith dealership. If one sliced into the website’s hidden database, a much harder task that would take a couple of hours of work depending on skill level, one would find a link to a countdown, that would be finished in 14 days as well as coordinates that would lead one to Nar Shaddaa. One could suppose that further instructions would appear once the countdown was finished.

[member="Silas Miu"]​

// Just wanted to share this. If you're interested in a slicer group I will tag you when appropiate //​

 

[Silas Miu]

It was nearing 'closing' time at the bar that Silas seems to have taken up near semi-permanent residence. Closing time here meant that the living/breathing bartender would go home, rest up, then take some of their own medicine before heading right back to the daily grind. Of course, the bar was still open, but you had to order through the computer terminal or the droid-tender, both of which developed quite the line. Silas' head felt fuzzy, having drank nearly eight of his drink of choice. Between rambling to other patrons about his woes and ordering drink after drink, the night soon became a blur. He groggily brought up his computer, having heard of a computer science puzzle that taken the interest of several like-minded people, he decided he'd check it out himself.
His curiosity brought him to a long list of conspiracy theory sites, each one filled with wacked out theories of galactic corruption and, sometimes, xenophobic ideologies. One site stood out, however. While it certainly held the 'crazy' ideals of the other sites, something about it seemed 'exactly' the same as the others. No new insights to conspiracies, simply remakes of the other sites. He decided to dig deeper, analyzing everything from the source code to the audio and video files for hidden messages or meanings. It was in the source code that he found it, a hidden file, disguised as a secondary styling page. 'A birthday card?' He thought, his tipsy mind wondering why in the universe a birthday card would be so guarded... 'Unless of course... it's not really a birthday card...'
A closer look at the message within the card revealed disturbing ramblings of an unshackled mind. Ramblings that even went far past the contents of the conspiracy sites he'd waded through to find it. However, there was also a pattern. After noticing it, the pattern became very apparent and Silas was able to run the message within the card through a custom-made algorithm in order to decode the rather sinister-appearing text. Well, algorithm is a bit of a strong term for what it was. It was a book cipher, obviously related to the themes of the conspiracy sites. He included every keyword he could think of into his search, bringing up several texts concerning conspiracies, politics and anarchy. He finally struck gold with the anarchists, being able to completely decode the hidden message, which turned out to be a link to two separate documents. One provided a short string of code, and the other provided a long page of source code.
The alcohol fading from his system, slowly but surely, Silas was fueled ever onward by the mental stimulation this puzzle provided. When he tried to run the source code, it failed due to a break somewhere. He sifted through the long list of declarations and commands, variables and values, objects and classes. About three quarters of the way through the file was when he noticed several errors cropping up. Further analysis brought him to a section with a missing object, along with key variables. Glancing at the other file, the code matched up with his findings, so he copied the code from the first file and threw it into its proper place in the next. Finally able to run the code, he was greeted with a pop-up box that displayed a holonet address. A link to a Locksmith dealership's website. Odd, there wasn't much call for a locksmith nowadays.
Glancing at the time, Silas groaned. He'd been at the bar for almost five hours now. Goes to show how much he needed a job. Shaking his head free of those distractions, he dove into his new problem, the puzzle behind the locksmith site. Poking around in the source code, he saw nothing amiss, no missing strings, no files linked over files, no commented out clues. It wasn't until he reached the footer of the page that he noticed something odd. An array of site analyses brought up differing results on the number of databases established for the site, which often meant that a database was hidden. Traditionally, a site analysis program wouldn't detect a missing database, but when several are run at the same time, you're bound to come up with differing results, which establishes the existence of the said database.
Slicing his way through to the hidden database with a series of code injections, which took approximately two hours, he was finally able to pull up the hidden files within the database, which included a link to a holonet site that was counting down from 336 hours, along with a series of numbers, the pattern of which struck Silas as familiar. After running the numbers through a search query, he knew he was in the possession of coordinates to Nar Shadaa, a planet that often held those of a more seedy element, but Silas couldn't argue, as his own planet of residence, wasn't much better. He had to come up with a way to get some funds quick if he was going to get there in time... though he could always stow away again. He needed another drink.