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"Towards the stairs, everyone! I'm about to open it up, and the further away we are when that happens, the better!" They waited for a moment, stepping backwards slowly, sword held in front of them, ready to jump out of the way if something came barreling through. Finally, when they could wait no longer, they shouted, "A coffin!" Their mask made sure their voice reached the door.

Or at least, it doesn't if the thick black fog spilling out is any indication.

Where is it even coming from, anyways? It almost looks like it's just phasing through the door.

"Thanks for telling us. I'm sure that that will come in handy. I... uh... really appreciate that you shared it, even though you didn't really want to."

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Fantastic, at least with a replica I can't end up despairing when finding out that the resurrections it brings back are akin to trialware!
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Thanks, I certainly do!
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Great! I'm sure I'll have lots to say when they do.
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Horay, that's two Ham Radio operators out here! I'll have to tune in when I have equipment of my own.
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That's fantastic! Someday, I'll have to get a Ham radio license. I'm not in the most ideal position to do it at this moment, but I want to. When I do I'll have to see about building my own amplifier and my own equipment, since taking the DIY approach would be boss! Not sure if I would save any money by taking the homebrew route but it would be cool to do nonetheless. I think I would need to figure out where I could set up an antenna.

As for crypto, get ready for a bit of an infodump, I'll leave a bit of a primer below!

4 - Yeah, the main thing I realized is that the average fanfiction writer is probably at that awkward, transitory stage in their lives. As bad as the stuff they might churn out might be, it doesn't make me feel any better about myself picking on them, especially when making the mistakes you make the first time around as a writer and knowing and recognizing your old shames are what makes you grow up as a writer and improve. It's important to know when to deflate an ego and knock someone down a peg, but I don't feel right doing it to a thirteen year old behind their back and while anonymous, especially if it's in a fashion that could be construed as being mean-spirited. So that's probably why I'll be doing it to my own fanfiction, or writing my own grade of parody bad fanfiction. I can just imagine what my characters' reaction would be to getting stuck in a story full of extremely dated pepperjack, and going "This author likes plugging Will Smith? What is this, 1996? Someone shoot me before The Backstreet Boys show up."

5 - That's a pretty good idea, I very much like the idea of being positive. It's too easy on the Internet to be negative all the time and just spiral down into this cycle of hatred. That's not quite my style, so talking about what you liked rather than what you didn't is a great idea!


And now for the infodump...

PGP is one of the older and more feature-rich public key infrastructure systems, invented during the 1990s. A lot of people are familiar with using it for E-mail, but it's more than that. It is a system of public key infrastructure, so one key (the public key) encrypts and verifies, but it takes a different key (the private key) to decrypt and sign. You to put the public key in a place where everyone can get it, so they can encrypt to you or verify stuff that you've cryptographically signed with your private key, but as long as only you have the private key, only you can ever sign or decrypt. This way, for instance, I don't have to go all the way across the internet to deliver a shared key or a password to you, as long as you know that the key belongs to me. To help you with that, each key has a unique identifier, called a 'fingerprint' that can't be forged and is unique to that key. The rationale would be that you would hold a key signing party, and then get your friends to meet you, and both you and all your friends confirm that the key fingerprint belongs to you. This prevents what's called a 'man in the middle' attack by an active attacker giving a fake key in place of the real ones, then impersonating both sides of a conversation to each other. Some people like to certify each other by building a network of verified people that they know and trust, and can personally visit in person as a defense against this, but I personally don't suggest doing this.

A signature, or the "begin signed message" at the top and the jumble of seemingly random letters at the bottom is a code that can be verified to have only have been generated by my key. Should someone attempt to modify the message within "signed message" and "end signature" then what will likely happen is the verification will display "Bad Signature" or display an error. If that happens, then you will know immediately that someone has tried to tamper with my message. Since we haven't been able to undeniably attribute the key to me, if you were to download my public key and attempt to verify any of my messages, you'll probably get "Not Verified" or "Not Trusted" since at this moment there's no way for you to personally attribute the key to me and will have to take my word on faith: for now, we will have to trust-on-first-use. If my keys ever change in a way where the new key is not certified by the old one you'll know they've been forged and you're talking to someone posing as me, or someone is tampering with this website. Something like that would be very easily done, as the board has no Secure Socket Layering/Transport Layer Security.

If you're interested in taking the plunge, I could walk you through some of the functions - GnuPG is very complex and unintuitive (that's probably why it's never really seen widespread use in the 20+ years it's been around), so it does help if you have someone to help. The problem with it is that it was designed in an era when sheer power and features for users was seen as a selling point, and usability, including intuitivity, ability to be easily used, and tolerance to human error was never seen as important. We know now that back then everyone had their priorities backward, I guess hindsight is 20/20.


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"You're right. We need to be honest about this so we know we can rely upon each other. I can use fire. And my teleporting, of course." The wolf tucked his violin back into the hammerspace he'd pulled it from, then pulled his cane back out.

"I'd decipher it myself, but if you've already got it..."

She thought for a moment and then rang three bells and a chime, letting a gentle aura of fortune and protection wash over the group.

I have to admit to being pretty inactive because no HF antenna (I've got the variable capacitor for a QRP magnetic loop ... in another state) and since I've had other stuff going on.

I mostly do/did HF digital and light contesting. And DX is fun!

Shack wise, I've got a Baofeng and an Icom IC-7000 (which needs to get dusted off once the antenna situation is fixed). You?

73 de Tomash, KF5[yeah, right]

Welcome to the PPC! Have two cents, so you can put them into discussions when they happen.

- Tomash, who's on mobile and therefore can't sign this

But they nodded anyway. "Yeah, I'm... kinda ready," they sighed, "Okay, not really, but since this is Cal, I doubt anyone could be ready." They fingered the cards in their pocket. "Also, I have some magic powers, and I think that if any of the rest of you do, you should tell us, so that we'll be slightly more prepared. I can revive each of you from death once and heal wounds. I can also temporarily infuse my body with strength and create extensions to it, such as wings."

"Well, then, I'll see what I can do!" They took a step towards the staircase, then stopped. "Wait, this has to be appropriately dramatic," they said. Their sleeve rustled, then a flaming sword shot out of it and into the Ghast's hand. "For Rome!" they shouted, before charging towards up the stairs and towards the door. They made sure they were being slow enough to be followed, but it was still something of a run, because the Ghast was, at heart, a very dramatic person. When they reached the door, they withdrew their sword and pulled their phone out of their pocket. They stared at the door, typed into their phone, frowned behind their mask, typed some more, frowned again. This went on for some time, and really wasn't all that interesting to watch. Finally, though, they gave a triumphant cry. "I got it!" they said, turning to look at everyone else. "I think I can get it to open. Is everyone... relatively ready for whatever might be on the other side?"

"Sounds like a good start. Ghast, you're our best codebreaker. We'll watch your back, I guess?"

She also snickered at the idea that people weren't pairing up. They were so pairing up and she would be disappointed otherwise.

Besiiiiides, it's not like this was murder or anything. Just a little impalement. And a hanging.

He tried to learn what he could about the situation without butting into any important conversations; after all, it was shaping up to look like a whodunit, and he didn't want to interrupt anyone's concentration.

"Codes, Homestuck references, space warping... Guess she really outdid herself this time," he muttered. Seriously, who sets up their own death on their birthday?

He hadn't noticed anything untoward during the party, and hadn't noticed Cal trying to talk to him. On the other hand, he hadn't been paying much attention. Certainly much less than he should have been, considering the decaying body on the floor. At least people weren't going off in pairs to find the murderer.

"Sorry to awkwardly pop in to the group, but uh. There's a door on the left stairwell with a scrambled code on it, aaaaand since I already know Garnet is good with codes, I . . . figured I would . . . point that out to you guys? If you feel like looking?"

However, this close, you notice words on the door, barely distinguishable.

Wvs dkr ukc aruiq ps rfow lrh bvoh kh;

Hvv wel zvc eoibv as uyiq qch bxsu ps.

He glanced up again towards the balcony. Really, though, what were the odds of finding a clue in plain sight up there? A door might reveal something previously hidden.

Except the door didn't appear openable, at least not from this side. Rod gave it a push right in the center.

The Musician reached up and grabbed a chime, silencing the instruments in her hair. She patted a few key locations on her dress, as though doing inventory on hidden pockets, and nodded.

"I think that waiting here for events to happen to us is a bad plan. I'm in."

... joined them. "Oh, hello!" they said, smiling beneath their mask. "Yes, I was just asking the Musician a few questions, but I think we might be ready to explore now, if you both are and the Wolf is?"

'If you aren't killing them for good you could probably just tie them up and gag them,' he said, rubbing his chin. Admittedly, the image of a tied-up and gagged Cal, struggling awkwardly on the floor and bumping against table legs and knocking cups down, probably would have created a very different atmosphere than the one they were currently in. He glanced around. The other guests were moving about, peeking at things, pointing, investigating. There was industry, suddenly, in the room.

'What now, you think?' Mister Turkey said, scratching his nose. His personal suggestions would have been 'bury' or 'mourn' or some combination, but he was beginning to think that there was a bit more to this all than those would have helped with.

Going alone was an awful, awful idea. Granted, he was in a room full of people - but that hadn't stopped her little death scene, now, had it?

But regardless, as Rod advanced up the staircase, he noticed a small door set into the wall. It had neither knob or keyhole.

Might as well do it like reading a book: Rod started up the left staircase.