ARG:Truncated

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

Truncated was found by solving Forest Through The Trees, this led to the page https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/CORE_DUMP/MEMORY_ALPHA/CRASH_LOG/.

The page has the picture of a zipper, the image called Truncated.png.

Opening the "zipper"

The zipper is a hint for the .zip file format. So we need to download the Truncated.png file, and open the file with a file compression program (like 7-zip). Once we extract the contents of the compressed file, we get an audio file called CelestialBodies.wav, which sounds like:

We can hear some beeps. In order to look deeper into the audio file, we need to plot its spectrogram ^[1]. Then we can notice this:

There is some text written in Moon Type. This is an writing system for the blind, as braille also is. The moon alphabet uses symbols similar to Latin characters, but simplified, as shown in the image to the right. Then we replace the symbols for their corresponding letters.^[2]. At the end, we get THISFRAGMENTISLOSTAMONGTHESTARS, which can be read as:

This fragment is lost among the stars

So we need to search on "the stars" for the data we are looking for.

Looking into the stars

"The Stars" is a hint for a hidden image file on the web page's assets: https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/CORE_DUMP/MEMORY_ALPHA/CRASH_LOG/assets/TheStars.png. This is the same folder as the Truncated.png image, so it was only necessary to replace "Truncated" with "TheStars" during the guessing process.

There are some numbers hidden in the metadata of the image. You can look at the metadata by opening the image file on some image editing program, like GIMP or Photoshop, or use this site. This is what we can find on the image's metadata:

Title: The Stars
Description: 697 1336 697 1209 770 1336 697 1209 770 1336 697 1336 941 1336 697 1209 852 1336 770 1336 697 1477 697 1209 770 1336 697 1209 852 1336 770 1209
Creator: It's a secret.

A web search for the numbers on the description shows that they are DTMF frequencies, that is, the sounds you hear when you press a phone key:

	1209 Hz	1336 Hz	1477 Hz
697 Hz	1	2	3
770 Hz	4	5	6
852 Hz	7	8	9
941 Hz	*	0	#

DTMF uses two different frequencies at once to form the sound of a key. So in order to decode our data, we need to use pairs of frequencies. For example the pair "697 1336" decodes into the number "2", and "697 1209" decode into "1" (refer to the table above for each pair). Once we decode our entire sequence, we get 2151520185315184.

This sequence we just obtained is using simple numbers to letters cipher (A=1, B=2, ..., Z=26). There is no separator between the letters, but through some trial and error, we can separate the numbers like 2-15-15-20-18-5-3-15-18-4. This decodes into: BOOT RECORD.

That is the solution to the current puzzle, and the hint for the next page: https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/CORE_DUMP/MEMORY_ALPHA/CRASH_LOG/BOOT_RECORD/.
It leads us to the next puzzle: What's in a name.

Notes

↑ A spectrogram is the visual representation of the frequencies on audio over time. This can be made in an audio editing software, like Audacity.
↑ Even if you do not realise that the text is in Moon Type, this still is a simple substitution cipher, meaning that each different glyph can be replaced by exactly one letter. Trial and error is also an alternative to crack the cipher, but it does not need to to be done completely at random, we can do some frequency analysis. Assuming that the text is in English, the most common symbol is likely to be either the letter "E" or "T", which are the most used letters on the language. Other common letters are "A" and "O". The most common pair of symbols possibly is "TH", which is the most common bigram on English. From that, we can replace the symbols for their possible letters, then try guessing the other words. This cipher cracking process can be accomplished by hand, but there are some sites that can help, like quipqiup. The ciphertext we have is something like ABCDEFGHIJKACDLMDAGIMKHABJDAGFD, so just input this text on quipqiup and click "Solve".

[1] A spectrogram is the visual representation of the frequencies on audio over time. This can be made in an audio editing software, like Audacity.

[2] Even if you do not realise that the text is in Moon Type, this still is a simple substitution cipher, meaning that each different glyph can be replaced by exactly one letter. Trial and error is also an alternative to crack the cipher, but it does not need to to be done completely at random, we can do some frequency analysis. Assuming that the text is in English, the most common symbol is likely to be either the letter "E" or "T", which are the most used letters on the language. Other common letters are "A" and "O". The most common pair of symbols possibly is "TH", which is the most common bigram on English. From that, we can replace the symbols for their possible letters, then try guessing the other words. This cipher cracking process can be accomplished by hand, but there are some sites that can help, like quipqiup. The ciphertext we have is something like ABCDEFGHIJKACDLMDAGIMKHABJDAGFD, so just input this text on quipqiup and click "Solve".

[1]

[2]