Runestone basalt

Runestone basalt was removed after an update. As the contents of this page no longer exist in Old School RuneScape, this article is preserved for historical purposes.

Runestone basalts were objects found at various locations on Shattered Relics League worlds. Searching the basalt near the Lighthouse opens an image in the player's internet browser. Another on the beach east of Tithe Farm opens a second image, while a third on Harmony Island opens another. Upon first interacting with the stones, they display a message saying: "You reach for the card but it fades before you can grab it... as if pulled into another realm...". Thereafter, searching the basalt displays a message saying: "A faint warm glow can be felt where the card once was... I wonder where it went?".

The images from the basalts were all used as part of an alternate reality game (ARG). The ARG was concluded a little over a year after its inception, when players solved the final performance on 22 January 2023. They were rewarded with a set of mystic cards that could be claimed from Diango the following day, which will stay in-game indefinitely.

In two of the images, there is text hidden in the triskelion background, which can be revealed in photo editing software by using "Select by colour" with a tolerance of 1. In the remaining image, there are seven pixels that are differently coloured instead.

The hidden text revealed an encoded string of letters: "FHXSPLZLOUCUGS". By taking the file name of the image from the URL, "jato5xu7a4", and converting the numbers to their corresponding letters (an A1Z26 cipher), the key "jatoexugad" was obtained. This allowed "FHXSPLZLOUCUGS" to be decoded as a Vigenère cipher, giving the solution "WHEELOFFORTUNE".

The hidden text revealed the Hanzi: 暗輪鑰謎蠱籠間. Respectively, their stroke counts are "13 15 25 17 23 22 12". Converting these stroke counts to letters using A1Z26, the string "MOYQWVL" is revealed. This phrase can then be used as ciphertext, again using the file name of the image ("THUMBNAILLARGE") as the key in a Vigenère cipher, to give the phrase "THEEVIL".

The Kourend Clue has seven dark cyan pixels scattered in the background. Their positions within the image, in no particular order, are (146, 85), (500, 100), (312, 301), (1271, 111), (1420, 500), (1122, 341), and (816, 522). By sorting each pixel coordinate pair in order from left to right, taking the digit sum of each X and Y pair together to create seven new numbers, "24 10 6 24 14 12 14". Converting this alphanumerically, the string "XJFXNLN" is created. Converting the filename ("5c2s0xcwug") in a similar manner (as well as changing the number zero to the letter Z) turns it into "ECBSZXCWUG". Using the first phrase as ciphertext and the second as a key in a Vigenère cipher, the decoded phrase becomes "THEFOOL".

When all three images were successfully decoded, they were updated to versions 7, 8, and 9 respectively to reflect the progress made. The phrase "seriously just wait" was hidden in the background in the same manner as the previous clues.

Clues were updated to a new square format with teal "river" borders that encoded audio information, and no information hidden in the triskelion background.

From the original version, the lighthouse river clue was updated to give additional hints in the form of three data matrices hidden in the background of the image. Reading the data matrices gave three more ciphers: "mrzivherxhitxlwviqemrwjsyvasvhw", "byxtnwkhjexrlndwqnjam" and "fszrgjwtkhqzjxqnjzsinxyzwgji". Decoding using a Caesar cipher (with shifts of 4, 9 and 5 respectively) the clues reveal: "In verdant depths remains four words / spoken by a voice unheard / a number of clues lie undisturbed". Additionally, Mod Brow tweeted the cipher "soexttymsybhgmohpvpoidweylbrpvjczimnruxhvrlsemygnlvk", which when decoded using the previously used key "WHEELOFFORTUNE" gives "whatifthehintisalreadyinfrontofyouhiddeninplainsight".

The teal borders first need to be divided into four sections. By looking at the individual RGB values of the pixels, the image can be read as audio in mixing software. Observing the spectrograms of the audio files results in four four-letter strings. The spectrograms are most clear when the image is interpreted as a mono unsigned 8-bit audio track, and the y-axis of the spectrogram scaled logarithmically. The borders give the following strings: Top: "EQMK" Right: "ILDD" Bottom: "GEUF" Left: "YJBZ".

If just the blue values of the teal borders are isolated and are interpreted as audio in the same way the spectrograms were revealed, followed by reversing the audio and doubling the playback speed, a voice can be heard speaking four numbers (one per edge): EQMK: FIVE, ILDD: FOUR, GEUF: NINE, YJBZ: ZERO. Using each four letter string as ciphertext with their corresponding number spelled out as the key to a Vigenère cipher, the new set of string is "ZIRG" "DXJM" "TWHB" ZFKL". Concatenating these strings and using them as the key to the ciphertext "WHEELOFFORTUNE" gives "CAMBRIDGEENGLAND".

In the teal border of the Harmony clue is a MIDI version of the Runescape theme Scape Main. Some sections have to be reversed if they are to sound as they are in the original.

By looking at the top and bottom, left and right, channels together using a program such as oscilloscope the following code was found "wtwrec yqbwun gfhmfc qzykk."

The unedited versions of the images are listed below:

• Multiple clues contain references to the Four Quartets, a collection of four poems written by T. S. Eliot about humanity's relationship with time:
  • Hidden text contained within Version 2 and Version 3 contains the phrase "the moment in and out of time", which is part of verse 5 of the third poem, The Dry Salvages:

• • Version 4 contains the phrase "what might have been and what has been".
  • Version 5 contains the phrase "it points to one end, which is always present".
  • Version 6 contains the phrase "time past and time future".
    • These are all part of verse 1 of the first poem, Burnt Norton:

• Two of the three clues from Phase 1 are the names of Major Arcana in a standard Tarot Deck: "Wheel of Fortune" and "The Fool". "The Evil" is not a Tarot card, but differs by one letter from the Major Arcana "The Devil".