Butcher Creek is a tutorial level for Spider Mystery?
The thing that led me to this thought is that that you need to shoot stuff to reveal the hidden initials on Butcher Creek outhouse number 4. We know that you need to shoot stuff to reveal other messages during the spider mystery (W and NW poles).
So my (yet another) crazy idea is that the Spider Mystery stuff in Butcher Creek is introducing all or most of the themes and mechanisms used in the spider mystery.
It's not hard to find other things to support this idea:
The obvious ones:
-Butcher Creek pentagram spawns only at specific time => we know the spider webs spawn at specific times
-There are tally marks in Butcher Creek => Tally marks also in Fort Brennand
-There is a picture clue in BC outhouse number four => Picture clue in Fort Brennand
-You need to shoot stuff to reveal hints in Butcher Creek outhouse ´4 => Need to shoot stuff in W and NW poles
The less obvious ones:
- There are two pentagrams in Butcher Creek (introducing the theme of pairs). Theme of pairs reoccur at least in pair of similar icons in outhouse 4 and fort brennand and the pair of webs in the "central web"
- Two of the outhouse tally marks are of different colour than the others, reinforcing the theme of pairs and also introducing the mechanism that spider puzzle hints may be colour-coded (red / white feathers)
- 5 outhouses in Butcher Creek are known to "draw a pentagram on the map" so this introduces the puzzle mechanism of drawing geometry on the game map, that is yet to be utilized, and links to my previous nonsense posts
Wild thoughts:
- Outhouse number four contains three (3) clues (tally mark, fort brennand icon, and SM LJ initials). This occurs also in the telegraph pole with spider icon: It has a spider icon, a spider wed spawning at a specific hour, and it is also structurally different from almost any other pole in the game: There is a few feet run of the wire down towards to ground. Only other pole that has this is the NW pole (or W pole, cannot remember). Anyway, seems deliberate.
- Butcher Creek pentagram spawns at 4 am, possibly hinting towards outhouse number four, and introducing the mechanism that the "spawn hour" contains additional information. That could imply that the spider web spawn hours contain some data.
- Two different coloured outhouse tallies also introduce a theme of "find a pair of outliers in a set" that occurs a lot in the game. I would not mention this unless I already found out that the pair of Saint Denis vampire clues with white paint line up and intersect with some other curious pairs of easter eggs (Hears carvings in tree and Bacchus Bridge, woodoo symbols in trees, etc.. explained in a previous post).
Possible next steps:
If this idea is valid, I think there should be more drawing lines on the map and pentagrams involved in the mystery. And possibly initials. Not sure if the outhouse 4 SM LJ stuff is just to hint that you need to shoot stuff, or if it also implies that initials are a part of the mystery (there at least some curious match stick initials found around the map)
Anyway, just a thought that I found worth of sharing. I hope that my next post contains some actual progress. Cheers