Supplemental post for T_W: Annoying decoding activity, play along!

[huinare]

Because I've been taking Tolkien_Weekly's 'writing' drabble prompts terribly literally, the prompt of 'code' necessitated certain creative endeavors. 

The drabble, found here, contains an encoded note taken off the body of a slain Orc messenger, something resembling a code key, and leaves the note undecoded.  Readers can therefore interact with the drabble and decode the note.  O HUZZAH.

Or, as I'm anticipating, most people will rather just know right away what the note says, so I'm inserting a link to that at the end of the drabble.

PS - please bring any mistakes observed to my attention!  I'm way better at creating the code than actually applying it, so I might almost certainly have some errors.


Go.W. ugex02av09og Y2988awfik19ot k03uve jut0eyl ur05ufe98o.  Uvu aqvewt07ifw24oga, h09ood02aqj pi1402uqhan00ovk yk12oq ix10ian1400udn04o.  Etef-h08enom f1929oq q17e n08eqj62ote r24uviv wak2988o r07een v1924uh24onbo; t09os03iovaw f98eiqv00one.

D. T. advised Watcher has grown apace.  As instructed, feeding manflesh when available.  Orc-folk can no longer pass the pool safely; request counsel.

Comments

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

Fascinating!

[huinare.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reading, Linda!

[engarian.livejournal.com]

Love it. A much easier code than several I've heard of lately, and much more fun to decode :-)

- Erulisse (one L)

[huinare.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Orcs didn't try too hard with their consonant encoding, the vowels were the thing. I had a beta version that made vowels more wacky and complicated, but it turned out it didn't work. =D

[nelyo-russandol.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, a woman after my own heart! I love it!

I've read a lot about cryptography, did most of the challenges in "The Code Book" at the time. So of course I decoded your Orcish message, how could I not? Clever, including the dumb padding vowels to make the Caesar coding a bit less obvious.

I wonder what method the dwarvish spymasters used to crack it. I imagine they tried the Caesar shifts and noticed there were words in there, then realised the extra vowels were always following a pattern.

For a long unfinished Gondor fic I never posted, I devised a possible adaptation of the Vigenère cipher for tengwar, including tehtar. Now *** geek alert *** I translated the messages to Quenya to the best of my ability (poor at best) and then encoded them. That was fun. And in my Eönwë fic, certain conspirators use Vigenère disks to encode their messages. So Again, let me say I love this!

PS. Haven't forgotten about Sauron of many colours, just RL keeping me busy.

[huinare.livejournal.com]

So glad you enjoyed it! And hope you didn't run into too many errors in the decoding of it, I found at least one...my talents lie more in making the things up, not in executing them.

I've had Ori crack the code, not quite sure how he did it. I picture him as a learnèd and clever fellow, so I suppose he could have known something about these matters.

Thanks for your comment, I've learned about Vigenère ciphers today! Cryptography is actually a subject I know precious little about officially, though I have the proper sort of inclinations to make codes up. I think I did one a long time back.

And I am very impressed with your writing and encrypting in Quenya. =D
And trying to recall the ciphering instance in Mirages, thinking it was in the Númenor bit?

Ah not to worry, I doubt motley!Sauron is going anywhere. My brain is pinging around a bunch of ideas anyway, and I should probably purge a couple before it overloads.

[hhimring]

"D.T." is "Dark Tower"?
I suppose that sort of matches Sauron's attitude to Shelob, doesn't it?

[huinare.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's what D.T. is. I wanted to make the Mordor connection easy enough to grasp, without spelling it out plain and boring-like.

I suppose that sort of matches Sauron's attitude to Shelob, doesn't it?

It sort of does at that. Beasties to dispose of inconvenient people are better left in peace, or in this case encouraged actively to grow. I'm still figuring out what's going on with Sauron/Watchers/Orcs. My Istari story also hints at the connection, but I'm not 100 percent clear myself what's going on yet.