ARG:Tick And Tock

This page contains spoilers about the Heartbound ARG. If you want to solve the puzzle yourself, avoid reading this article.

Tick And Tock were found by solving Hard To Starboard, which led to the page https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/OSCAR/OCTOTHORPE/LETTUCESQUARES/ҌґѳӄәиӶэҫөӻԃ/. The page is completely dark, but its source code has the following:

<!-- Do you really believe that? -->

<div class="Yes">
  <!-- Tick -->
</div>

<div class="No">
  <!-- Tock -->
</div>

The words "Tick" or "Tock" can be added to the page's URL, which lead us to two different pages. The solution of the first page (Tick) is necessary to solve the second (Tock).

Tick

If we go to https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/OSCAR/OCTOTHORPE/LETTUCESQUARES/ҌґѳӄәиӶэҫөӻԃ/Tick/, we get a dark page called "It's A Secret - The Key", with this on its source:

<!-- Time flows like a river... -->

<div class="and history repeats.">
  <!-- What an epoch time that was. -->
  <!-- 12:00:00 -->
</div>

"Time flows like a river... and history repeats..." is a quote from the videogame Secret of Mana, and it suggests that this puzzle might have to to with time. "Epoch time" seems to refer to Unix Epoch Time, which is how Unix systems handles dates internally (it is the amount of seconds since January 1st 1970, 00:00:00 UTC). On the top of that, "Epoch" is also the name of the time machine on the videogame Chrono Trigger, further reinforcing that this puzzle should be about time.

From the title of the page (It's a secret), the quote on its source (Time flows like a river...), and the hint about epoch time; we can infer that we are looking for a date related to Secret of Mana, which should be on the epoch time format. The hint "12:00:00" suggests that this date should be at midnight. Secret of Mana was first released on August 6th 1993, and if we take this date on 12:00 AM and convert it to epoch time, we get 744595200.

That's all we can do on this page. This timestamp will be necessary for the next step of the puzzle, as suggested by "The Key" on the page's title. 744595200 is the key to unlock the "lock" we are about to get.

Tock

When we go to the page https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/OSCAR/OCTOTHORPE/LETTUCESQUARES/ҌґѳӄәиӶэҫөӻԃ/Tock/, we get to a page called "Fishy Fish - The Lock" with these images:

From the page's source code, we can see that the red X image is called "GoForthAnd.png". The X can also be the symbol of multiplication, so this image might be trying to say "Go forth and multiply". Still on the source code, we also notice that the comment "" on the top of the page, and also that each glyph is named on a different fish. The glyphs are named as follow:

Bass
Carp
Catfish
Goldfish
Herring
Perch
Pike
Salmon
Sturgeon
Trout
Tuna

Notice that we have 11 different "fishes". This number is quite close to 10, which is the amount of decimal digits (0 - 9), suggesting that those glyphs likely should somehow converted to digits. One of the glyphs looks different from the others, the "herring" one. All others have a counterpart with or without the dot in the middle, except for "herring" which looks to be the one out.

This name is not a coincidence, it is a reference to the concept of Red Herring, which is a piece of information that distracts from the main question, that is, something irrelevant or misleading when it comes to the matter at hand. So it seems that the "herring" glyph should be disregarded while solving this puzzle, it is likely a "red herring". Then now we have 10 different glyphs that can be turned into digits, and we need to find an way to number them from 0 to 9.

The hint "Alpha Beta" sounds a lot like "alphabet", suggesting that the information should be ordered alphabetically. If we sort alphabetically the names of the fishes and number them (starting from 1), while leaving "herring" out, we get:

Bass = 1
Carp = 2
Catfish = 3
Goldfish = 4
Perch = 5
Pike = 6
Salmon = 7
Sturgeon = 8
Trout = 9
Tuna = 0

Then if we replace the glyphs by their respective numbers, we get (where "H" refers to the "herring" glyph):

1	5	H	H	5	5	6	0	7	6	8	9
7	7	5	3	6	8	4	H	8	3	6	1
1	7	2	5	7	1	4	5	H	0	5	1
H	0	4	4	3	3	4	9	7	0	2	3
1	0	2	3	6	2	H	H	1	7	1	1
5	6	2	1	1	3	7	7	6	0	0	5
5	2	8	1	H	7	2	9	3	4	6	2
2	4	7	4	0	8	0	5	5	H	9	8
6	4	1	1	0	5	7	6	2	8	5	0
3	3	4	3	8	8	8	H	5	8	4	0
9	H	1	8	1	H	1	2	0	0	0	H

Since the herrings are "red herrings", they are meant to be there and should be disregarded. If we remove the herrings from the above data, and turn everything into a single number, we get:
15556076897753684836117257145051044334970231023621711562113776005528172934622474080559864110576285033438885940918112000
This number is "the lock", now we need "the key" (744595200) in order to decipher it.

Notice that the big multiplication sign (X) on the background is red, like in the term "red herring". So the hint "Go forth and multiply" seems to be a red herring too. This suggests that instead of multiplying, the operation we should do is the opposite of multiplication: division. Then if we divide the lock by the key, we get:

15556076897753684836117257145051044334970231023621711562113776005528172934622474080559864110576285033438885940918112000 ÷ 744595200 = 20891991914202085691819202091352515212252551485185120132541515182381209192085141135156208515145256151851215185

The result we got can be converted to text by using the numbers to letters cipher (A = 1, B = 2, ..., Z = 26). By some trial and error, we can break the above result into letters and then form words:
20-8-9-19 9-19-14 20 20-8-5 6-9-18-19-20 20-9-13-5 25-15-21 22-5 2-5-5-14 8-5-18-5 1-20 13-25 4-15-15-18 23-8-1-20 9-19 20-8-5 14-1-13-5 15-6 20-8-5 15-14-5 2-5-6-15-18-5 12-15-18-5
Which (by using numbers to letters) is decoded into:
THISISNTTHEFIRSTTIMEYOUVEBEENHEREATMYDOORWHATISTHENAMEOFTHEONEBEFORELORE

It can be read as:

This isn't the first time. You've been here at my door. What is the name of the one before Lore?

The above riddle can be interpreted as Thor being the one before Lore, because Thor created him, and the ARG solving community has been "at Thor's door" before when we have asked for help. Putting Thor's full name, Jason Thor Hall, onto the URL leads us to https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/OSCAR/OCTOTHORPE/LETTUCESQUARES/ҌґѳӄәиӶэҫөӻԃ/Tick/JasonThorHall/ and https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/OSCAR/OCTOTHORPE/LETTUCESQUARES/ҌґѳӄәиӶэҫөӻԃ/Tock/JasonThorHall/

This leads us to the next step of the ARG: Image Puzzles.