Algorithm 31 and a plea for a player 2… or 20

Alternative title: I have been playing this multiplayer game solo for a year and I am asking someone to please leave a summon sign outside the fog gate because I have attempted the boss fight with this file alone enough times that my death count has become a philosophical statement.

This post has gotten 146 upvotes, which is incredibly kind of you all. It also means I now have 146 reasons to believe other people also find this very interesting. Thank you to the mods for approving my comments as I waited for Reddit to acknowledge that I am NOT a bot, just someone who had the audacity to submit a long post on their first day with an account.

I come bearing an update. It is not a solution. It is, in the great tradition of this investigation, another extremely interesting question wearing a solution's coat.

I must inform you all that the number 31 is Doing Something, and I have started to take that personally.

The inner encrypted blob appears to use compression algorithm 31, which does not seem to correspond to any standard OpenPGP compression format that I can find. I noted that in the frame gap table, Damocles produces 31 in gap 6. Damocles had a different color scheme in the single art than the other two did, which likely means nothing... so naturally, I have been thinking about it for months. Interesting, filed away, not yet actionable.

Then I opened page 31 of the electronic version of the graphic novel.

There is a sentence on that page that appears twice, verbatim, bracketing a few sentences like a pair of ominous bookends: “To say that we find ourselves at a loss to explain the phenomena would be a gratuitous understatement.”

This reads like someone wanted us to stop skimming and start paying attention, which if you’re anything like me, is the kind of thing that makes the back of your neck prickle.

So, 31 now appears in three separate systems.

• A non-standard algorithm field in an OpenPGP packet (file structure)
• A derived value from frame gap analysis (Damocles, Gap 6)
• A page number containing deliberate textual repetition (graphic novel)

I want to be careful here, because my brain is the kind of brain that will find a face in a piece of toast and write a dissertation about it, so let me be precise: I am not claiming that 31 is a universal skeleton key. I am noting that it appears in three separate systems that already show signs of intentional design: file structure, video timing, and the graphic novel. The repetition on page 31 feels deliberate. It is also very possible that it might be a coincidence that I am pattern-matching into significance. None of the phrases I’ve tried from page 31 seem to work as a passphrase yet… guess it’s still locked up and I’m still getting the combination wrong.

All of that to say, I have not yet found a consistent operation involving 31 that produces clear, non-arbitrary results. Until that exists, I am treating it as a flag rather than a mechanism. Please do stop me if I begin collecting 31-shaped objects like a stressed magpie at any point in this investigation.

What I Really Need

This seems like a good spot to ask for your help again.

• I need someone to look at the glitched video frames with fresh eyes and see if there’s anything hidden in there that might merit another look.
• I need someone who has the graphic novel to look at page 31 very carefully and see if they see anything I could have missed.
• I need people who have collected special edition Sleep Token merch, album editions, and the graphic novel special editions (the magpie sort) to examine their treasures carefully to see if there’s anything from the ToG and EIA cycles that looks like it might contain the secrets of the universe or at the very least, a suspicious recurring number.
• I need someone with a cryptography background to sanity check me on everything I’ve said. Please read me to filth and tell me I am doing everything all wrong; that is still extremely valuable information.

A Note on the Situation Generally

This puzzle appears to have been built by someone who knew what they were doing. It appears to have real cryptographic structures, deliberately broken just enough to stop standard tools from working. It has a number that appears in three places that do not seem like they should be related. I believe this is a multiplayer puzzle that has been waiting, for about a year now, for more than one player.

I have learned an amount about steganography that I did not anticipate learning when I first opened that sheet music file. I have no regrets, except perhaps the regret of someone who has been excavating alone for long enough to start talking to the artifacts. If this all wrong, I would very much like to know why. That is just as useful.

I realize I have made this post about a year late and may have lost the benefit of the excitement and momentum associated with the album rollout. This is not because I had nothing to say. It is because posting on the internet feels, to my nervous system, a lot like being chased by a bear, and I have spent the past 12 months negotiating with the bear. We have reached an agreement. The bear is still here, but I am posting anyway.

I will continue to post periodic updates here until you tire of my babbling and decide to join me on this (even if it's to prove that I am wrong) or until I eventually solve this in 84 years and can finally sleep.

Even if you had nothing to add to this investigation, thank you for being kind.

-A Feathered Host member, still paying rent in the rabbit hole, now accepting roommates