u/_Bumblebeezlebub_

Apologies if this has already been discussed, but I searched "Civic League" in the sub and nothing came up. I couldn't find any information on the Wiki either.

The crest and weather vane seemed a little strange to me. Just wondering if anyone knows more about it?

I have been wondering about the significance of the centerpiece in the Strange Statues cave. I ran onto a pic from the official guidebook and noticed it was described as a woman with eagle feathers. Eagle feathers are sacred in many Native American cultures. There are a lot of references towards the importance of owls and eagles in general.

-Eagle Flies

-Karen mentions the Valentine curse having something to do with owls or eagles

-The official guide book describes the bird in the center of the Window Rock mural as an eagle

-The Homing Tomahawk recipe pamphlet reads, "Owls are silent, deadly hunters, who locate their prey in the darkness. Their feathers have long been seen as a symbol of power by Indian tribes. The Greeks considered the owl a symbol of protecting armies going to war."

The statue in the cave is nearly identical to a Greek mythological being known as the Sphinx of Thebes. The Sphinx is described as having the head of a woman, body of a lion, and wings of an eagle. It guarded the 7 gates of Thebes with riddles. Travelers who failed to answer correctly were strangled and eaten. (7 is a very important number iykyk, but I digress.)

The riddle was, "What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?"

Oedipus was the first to answer correctly, "Man, who crawls on four legs as an infant, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses a cane in old age."

It is interesting that they have confirmed an in-game relationship existing between Native American beliefs and Greek mythology at least twice. I suspect that many other cultures, religions, and riddles are deeply interwoven as well, like a web :P

Does anyone know what type of wagon this is and if they spawn somewhere in game? It's wrecked just off the side of the road south of Annesburg. The whole thing is full of bullet holes and the door has been pryed open.

I was wondering if it has something to do with the Bennett brothers since Gideon had a bounty on him. There are 3 trees nearby with arrows carved into them that lead to the "Bennet" grave in the woods.

Also, regarding the spelling, just thought it was interesting that the riddle in the mine has spacing variations of their last name. "Benne tt" and "Bennett". Always wondered why the 3rd brother was never mentioned. The riddle also uses diamond symbols for the letter "O" in North, but not for any of the other "O" letters.

Anyway, I've been trying to sort out exactly what happened between them. Probably not related to the main spider web mystery stuff, but the Reed Cottage is covered in spider webs. Deer Cottage is not and it actually looks like someone is still living there. Noticed Reed and Deer spell each other backwards, clever. But where did the 3rd brother live?

Gideon was supposed to be somewhere down by Butcher Creek. Never ran onto any signs of him. I thought he might have been hiding out in Huron Glen at some point. Never seen anyone there either.

I decided to go check out Fort Riggs because I think that the English Spelling Practice note is a hint to a larger puzzle theme. It's a known cipher and I have a theory that there are other cipher keys in game.

In case you didn't know, you can find the note inside of the Fort Riggs school. If you write down the first letter of every word it spells out "Waziya comes with winter breath. His trees stand guard whispering all night that we sleep in our grave. Father fought and died so quickly. Mother dies slow." It is an acrostic type of cipher.

I waited in the school overnight and noticed that it is covered in spider webs. You can't really see them during the day. They don't fully disappear, but it's very difficult to tell that they're there. I attached a photo of the same bench during the day and at night.

Just an interesting note, there are 5 bullets on the teacher's desk and a human skull on a shelf. The spider webs are most dense along the A-frame support beams of the building. That really piqued my interest. If you go outside and look at the peak of the roof you can see it's braced with 7 boards.

There are 7 human figures on the mural at window rock, 7 birds, and various other figures in groups of 7. The bird with 7 feathers faces up and is aligned at the top. In the cave of Strange Statues, there are 7 statues and a winged creature that sits upon a 7 sided shape. The winged creature faces the "7th" statue. It is the only statue missing an arm. The arm can be found amongst the rocks in the cave.

There are 7 arrows on the sundial at Mt. Shann. There are 7 points/lines on the spider webs that appear on the poles. A 7 sided shape is a heptagon. A Pentagram can be drawn inside of it.

The Strange Statues solution is 2, 3, 5, 7. The official guide book hint is "prime numbers". You can push 2, 3, and 5 in any order, but 7 must always compete the sequence. If you write down the numbers from the bird feathers at the window rock mural in clockwise order you get the sequence 7, 6, 3, 4, 5, 8, 2. If you repeat that process in the statue room, you get a different sequence of 7, 6, 2, 4, 5, 8, 3.

If you try to copy the alignment of the statues and compare them to the mural, 2 and 3 are never in the correct placement. I couldn't understand how they were the only numbers out of placement. They are the 3rd and 7th numbers of the sequence and they are swapped. This is a tactic used in transposition ciphers.

The first 10 prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, and 29. Gertrude Braithwaite recites all of the first 10 prime numbers except for 19 and 23. Prime numbers are used in modern encryption. There are 7 prime numbers on a 24 hour clock and 5 primes on a 12 hour clock. The sun dial on Mt. Shann leads me to believe that part of a puzzle has to do with time. Especially because of a small detail on the Panoramic painting. The half circle at the bottom. It looks like they're hinting at finding the angle. The angle of the lines could represent a certain time on the clock.

There are "WW" hints everywhere. In math, WW is a line segment, vector, or distance that connects two points, W1 and W2, which notates a reflection or transformation of a figure. The word "panoramic" is another hint at angles.

I don't know how all of this connects, but I think there are multiple layers or rings to the puzzle. You can see an example of a cipher wheel in the image. All of the keys are meant to be stacked on top of each and rotated separately to reveal the hidden message. Or it might be a number code that spells something out.

My super tinfoil hat conspiracy theory is that it's a hidden cheat code. One that would allow you to go into Blackwater as Arthur or turn off aggro in Fort Wallace. Another theory is unlocking an alternate ending.

I noticed a lot of themes centered around spiritualism, mysticism, corruption, pollution, death, genocide, occultism, war, paganism, necromancy, esoteric science, theoretical physics, astrophysics etc.

Edit: I forgot to mention the pic of the Old Tomb. 5 pointed star shape that fits inside of a heptagon. Mysterious location with a unique item that has no known purpose, the ancient Viking comb. Fits into the above themes. Still need to look further into that one.