Jean Baptise has once been called the most readable madman in this Shore. It is not true, but enough believe it.
0-02-1-1-0-0-1-Baptise
Maybe I should have explained this at the start. Oopsie doodle. Well long time ago I was helping my mother, and I learned a few odd tricks, tricks that, once I formed the Watchers, I realized were perhaps becoming more relevant. But they aren’t things I can use, due to personal reasons. But maybe they can help you, and you can use these methods to create the tools I can’t, to harness the powers I can only catalogue, and maybe make some friends from beyond the stars. It sounded fun, but it isn’t simple. So I’m gonna stop waxing poetic and start explaining, at least what I CAN explain.
Apparently, there is magic, and there is MAGIC, you know, the blood magics, the holy magics, all the things you cant just learn from a few signatures and a demonstration. Hard magics, complicated magics.
Guess what, there's another type of magic, a magic that isn’t, technically, magic at all. There is the Skyless Sea.
I am not really sure how many people CARE about what that is so lets just move to the nitty gritty. The Sea, like all places, has its magics, but its not a land, its a fluid, subjected to the currents of this Shore and others. This magic can’t be used directly but can be used to imbue items WITH that power to be harnessed, or in rites to harness that power in greater rituals. Its a lot of work and it is not a exact science, it CANT be a exact science, the more its explained, the more it is muddied, and Mud is very very dangerous, more so then the Sea itself. So its power can be called, but not commanded, not defined. But how?
Conveniently, all arts operate in this vague space of gray. In subversions and reinterpretations of soft rules. Metaphor and all that right? You can say something without saying it. And thus the Arts were made and there's all these Sailors and Witches and Artisans all harnessing the power of the Sea, and many of them wrote their methods down. And I have some of those books, which I am sharing. But they don't SAY how they wrote these down. They present questions and you have to find the answer. Most of the books mean something to the writer, how they saw the sea, how it influenced them, but they don't EXPLAIN it until you find the secret.
If you wonder how they do this, well I wish it was all the same way, but it’s not. In some of these books I found out the author didn't even encode it at all, the secret MOVED into the books. After all, the Sea has Fish. But as mentioned, I can’t simply TELL people how the sea works, you can orally, but if you write it down, things happen, the secrets change, the books change, it can be bad. But I have figured out some ways to help out. First, while the books are much larger then the articles you are decoding, I have, for the sake of all of our times, made sure that the relevant bits are what you read. So while you are only decoding one or two pages, you are actually “reading” a much thicker book, and when you decode the passage you studied the entire book. So its more like a simulation of studying then actual studying. I was very nice.
So you PROBABLY were wondering what that little number string at the top meant. The first page is the little binding, the title, the books background, and its library code. I designed a code to help say some things without saying them. Hopefully it helps.
Now lets look at THIS books code: 0-11-1-1-0-0-1-Baptise, lets go over each number 1 by one. First number? The nature of the book, is it from Here, or the Sea. Shore books are 0, that means they are from here, or other Heres, they are safe and sane. They may not be nice, but they describe reality and are written by people. Usually straightforward and safe. A 1 means its a SEA book, these are written by Fish, Shark, Whales, or even the moons. These are NOT safe and I wont be publishing them… but if you happen upon one I can write out its barcode for you.
Often the second number is the most confusing. This is the books… Tone. Everything of the Sea has a Tone, usually 2 Tones even, or 3, these are categorical terms that define certain, shapes of power that thing has. To not get too dragged in the weeds, each Secret ALSO has a Tone, as they are about the powers of the Sea as well. The second number therefore says which of the eleven tones the secret harnesses. Other Tones can be involved as well but the Primary Tone is what is recorded in the barcode. The third number in the barcode just records which secret it is, that means that a book that starts with 0-1-2 and a book that starts with 0-1-1 have different secrets with the same Tone. HOWEVER books 1-1-1 and 0-1-1 will have the same secret.
To be honest the next 3 numbers aren't exciting so lets breeze through them. Four is subject matter of the actual book, 1? That's instructional. 2 is Fairy tales, blah blah, boring. Fifth is if the book is Dangerous, and I do not mean in a existential sense. 0 is safe, if the numbers not 0 there's something wrong with it. Your gonna want to fix that before you get to the secret, how that is done varies. I’m not going to publish them willy nilly though, let me know if you find one of these. Sixth, if the book features a Moon and if so, which one. I can not say more then this. Moons control the tides of seas.
Really, we probably should have started here, this is what you are all stumped on, number 7, the encoding! Se we already know that these books have secrets hidden within, but books often will share the same method of hiding! So every book with a 7-1 (The seventh number is a 1), will be solved the same way as every 7-1. Sometimes its a little different but the meats the same. But how to figure out which one is which?
Every story has a “Phrase” or word, find the Phrase and the secret is unveiled. To find the story you need to find the PATTERNS in the story. Some words are capitalized oddly, sometimes numbers are written in weird ways. Sometimes the book will fixate on a certain topic and each subject of that topic assembles into the name. I've done all that but thats not always relevant. The easiest and simplest ones is something where the spacing of the story is what matters, not the actual subjects within. If you find one of these you can just ignore the entire story and just scroll through it and circle words.
All said and done, these might be tricky, and thats fine. If they weren't tricky they wouldn't be fun. However if you solve them you get the secret. Collaborate if you want, Its going to be a long winter, I am hoping this will let you not feel too bored with the time. I’ll try to help when I can.
Lastly, while every secret defines a way or trick, the manner you use these tricks are not as important. I will trust that, if you have successfully solved the secret, that you incorporated the secret correctly in whatever “Art” you produce with it. Let me know if you have, and I will back your claim that the item is suitably crafted and empowered. If you wish to use these secrets, or magic in general to find out more of the Sea, also let me know.