TERMINAL 00: CoS Path Walkthrough(WIP)

*********************Page 1: http://angusnicneven.com/00_Dark ***********************

there are 4 odd glyphs hidden in the center of the page. using "Inspect Source" reveals that Angus left an HTML comment in order to guide us. The pages leading up to this one have hidden comments also, but they aren't of any significance to solving the puzzle. As far as I know, these are the first pages to employ such a trick. The comment hidden at 00_Dark reads:

<!--Those pieces... they weren't always there. I'm sure our probing brought them here to us.
Now, if only we could use them to our advantage and delve deeper... Well, let's put them together.
It's obvious it was once whole, but now it's in four pieces. Two can be added together to create a strip of black on the left. I can't explain it, but it feels correct.
But the other two... I'm not so sure about their order... and then, even if we put them together...
Well, there's no point in double guessing. Let us probe further.-->

according to this clue, the glyphs are part of a larger picture and need to be put back together in a specific order. the correct arrangement of pieces(if I remember correctly) is

2 1
4 3

which is an 8x14 grid of red and black pixels with "a strip of black on the left", as indicated by the hint. But this still doesn't reveal any deeper message, so what next?

As it turns out, this is a variation on a trick that Angus has done numerous times in the past: encoding messages in binary. Black pixels equate to a 0, and red pixels are 1. Each row of the image has 8 bits, just enough to encode 1 character. The 14 rows decode into a 14-character message that reads: "00_A_Long_Path". The URL of the next page is revealed.


*********************Page 2: http://angusnicneven.com/00_A_Long_Path ***********************

This one is much less straightforward than the first- it hardly even seems like there's a puzzle to it at all. There are no strange glyphs this time, only text from the same "Guide" as last time. The page reads:

	"Looks like you put it back together correctly. For that, I must thank you, since I could not have probed this deeply without your help. I'd love to repay the favor by getting you past this point on my own but... Well, this wind... It's making it difficult to think. But I do have an idea.. Our... Selves... Aren't they somehow... different? It's hard to tell but... I'm correct, right?"

Once again, there is a comment in the HTML, but it's much less helpful than last time:

<!--Look at us! There's something different... Not in appearance but in...-->

...But in what, exactly? And what does the Guide mean by "Our selves"? The key is in the fiction of the story: In the world of Terminal 00, you(the user) are a probe, and your physical body is represented by the cursor on your screen. The cursor on this page doesn't look any different than the one on previous pages, but that falls in line with the hint. The difference in your "self"(the cursor) isn't in your appearance, but rather in your name.

On this particular page, the names of the two custom cursor files(one default cursor, and what it looks like when you roll over a link) have been altered. The former is named "Gesoen.jpg" and the latter is named "_L_tgr.jpg". These aren't consistent at all with how Angus names his usual images. When placed alongside each other, they form the string "Gesoen_L_tgr", which has a form very similar to other pages(words separated by underscores). Unfortunately, the letters themselves are total gibberish. Once again, discovering the code is only the first half of the puzzle. The real solution is encoded somehow in these two filenames, presumably as "Gesoen_L_tgr", though i could be wrong as passes through multiple kinds of ciphers have given no coherent results.

********************Page 3: ??????????????????? ******************************
nobody knows.

********************Page 4: ??????????????????? *******************************
presumably, this page is the end of the "CoS Path". What it contains is a mystery, but it probably looks hella cool. Getting here is our prize.