Dead Rabbit Resurrection Society DEAD HIDEOUT 1: Portland, OR, Aug 27–28
A bit of back story: for those of you that don’t know, Dead Hideouts are part of DRRS’s first roadmap and were unlocked as part of the Dead Event after Level 1-Node Keys and Level 2-Dead Boxes were completed. Dead Hideouts are the third and final level of the Dead Event. Like the Node Key search, Dead Hideouts are an IRL adventure. Where they differ is that you work with a team to find clues to the Dead Hideout and the adventure takes place over a large area and over a two-day period. You can find more information on the Dead Event at https://deadrabbits.io/dead_event.
Participants for DH1:
StefanlovesDRRS
Alex.ada
Kmustafa2
poorNFTcollectr
DarkLightQueen
DAY 1:
LOC:01, Hawthorne Asylum Food Cart Pod
On August 27, 2022, at noon, we met with Jeb Tesseract, the general manger of DRRS, at The Hawthorne Asylum Food Cart Pod. Jeb gave us the dossier and DH T-shirt and answered any questions we had.
We were also told that there would be a forced stop overnight and the last portion of Dead Hideout 1 would start at 3:00pm the next day. Additionally, there would be a call to action at the end of Day 1 and we would have to perform a task to unlock Day 2.
Unfortunately, only 5 people showed up due to a lot of late cancellations, so there weren’t enough people for two competing teams. Jeb said we could all work together as one team and would all receive prizes. Hopefully, after reading how amazing this event was more people will show up to the next ones!
Everyone who participated receives:
1 Mole Federation Armory Key
1 Dead Rabbit Depot Key (When released)
1 Mole Federation HQ CodeCard (When released)
1 Kismet SecScreen Key (When released)
1 Dead Hideout T-shirt, which is customized to the Dead Hideout you participate in.
Winners: Receive Rare Rabbits from the Dev Wallet (https://pool.pm/addr1qxq9ez9sugu7njdw676mhx02verz8gzhx3vyxnkjwquyjyhmz9evk87kkvczhkux3jmnhrmns3kfxucw0fad2eqqsndssdm0g3/%40de2340ed)
To receive the prizes we had to take video of our team at each location saying who we were and what we were doing and then post to twitter and the DRRS discord.
After Jeb left, we grabbed lunch and started deciphering the first clue, which was provided in the dossier:
STARE THE BRONZE FORMER MAYOR IN THE EYE WHERE SHE SITS ON HER CONCRETE BENCH. MOVE LEFT THEN RIGHT DOWN ONTO THE PIER. CHECK UNDER THE OUTER RAILING FOR YOUR NEXT CLUE. PLEASE TAKE ONLY ONE CLUE.
From previous cipher challenges in the Discord we knew that this was referring to the Bronze statue of Vera Katz sitting on a concrete bench. So we googled the location and piled into Alex’s vehicle and headed off to the second location. Siri led us astray a couple of times, but we eventually got there.
LOC: 02, Eastbank Esplanade
This clue was the most difficult to find by a lot. We searched up and down this pier, under all the railings, and the next pier over haha. We even went to the fire department and got them to unlock their secured portion of the dock so we could check that. We had no desire to swim here haha. I can’t remember exactly how long we were looking but it was probably close to an hour. Then as you can see in the video below, I ended up finding a clue under the walkway from the pier down to the dock.
We immediately knew this was ROT13 when we saw it:
Lbh ner ybj, gvzr gb tb uvtu. Geniry gb gur znafvba bs n sbezre arjfcncrezna. Jnyx evtug bagb uvf sebag ynja naq rawbl gur ivrj. Gnxr n frng ng gur cvpavp orapu naq srry haqrearngu. Gnxr bayl bar pyhr. Vs abar erznva, jnyx gb gur gbc bs gur cnexvat ybg naq qbja gur Jvyqjbbq Genvy hagvy lbh pbzr gb n srapr. Frnepu ng gur onfr bs gur svefg cbfg. 518
You are low, time to go high. Travel to the mansion of a former newspaperman. Walk right onto his front lawn and enjoy the view. Take a seat at the picnic bench and feel underneath. Take only one clue. If none remain, walk to the top of the parking lot and down the Wildwood Trail until you come to a fence. Search at the base of the first post. 518
This place was never mentioned in a previous cipher but it was pretty easy to find with some googling, it was about 15 minutes away without any Siri shenanigans.
LOC: 03, Pittok Mansion
This place was pretty nice, we drove to the top and paid a small fee for parking near the mansion. As you can see from the second clue above there were two different locations to find the clues here, and since we were the only team, we checked both. They were all still there. The view over Portland was beautiful.
We saw this and knew that it was most likely Polybius:
3134342544344423153515112511134234434344345233543445421544421151153124332233345244344423153511422544231144421543444334331114344232113344132433141542133433151144442315443435212433144423153515141543441131522315421523114251155443133444441133141112454344342154344225343313154344343414431511421323521531314423152124424344321544113112153313231543543445431515441125153433315434331513314515 623
LOOK TO THE PEAK ACROSS TOWN. YOU’RE TRAVELING NOW TO THE PARK THAT RESTS ON A DORMANT CINDER CONE. AT THE TOP FIND THE PEDESTAL WHERE HARVEY SCOTT AND A BUST OF YORK ONCE STOOD. SEARCH WELL THE FIRST METAL BENCHES YOU SEE. TAKE ONLY ONE CLUE. 623
This is another throwback location. It’s referencing Mt. Tabor Park, which is where the very first Node Key from Dead Event Level 1 was found. We put it in the GPS, and it was about 30 minutes away. Apparently, the bust of York was toppled in 2021.
LOC: 04, Mt. Tabor Park
This is another beautiful location. We parked as close as we could to where the bust was located and then started walking up through the park. There was a wedding going on nearby. There were multiple clues located under the bench that was closest to where the bust of York had been.
This one is just a simple A1Z26 cipher:
NOW YOUR TRIP BEGINS, TRAVEL ACROSS THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS INTO WASHINGTON. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE CASH FOR THE TOLL AND TO PARK. SEEK OUT THE ROCK THAT STANDS LIKE A BEACON IN THE GORGE AND CLIMB TO THE TOP. NOW CHECK THE BACKSIDE OF THE METAL RAILING FOR SOMETHING YOU WILL FIND USEFUL.
This is a brand new location, but one I wasn’t all too surprised to see. It’s about 45 minutes from Mt. Tabor Park to the Bridge of the Gods, which is actually part of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT).
LOC: 05, Beacon Rock State Park, Final location of Day 1
We drove to the bridge of the gods, paid the toll (they took a credit card), and drove across. We stopped at the first little pull-off that we could park and looked at the maps and noticed that there was a nearby State Park called Beacon Rock State Park, so we headed there and paid for parking (also with a card).
Then we began our climb up, it was a good little hike with some amazing views. On the way up we talked about everything we saw that day and speculated about what Day 2 might bring. We knew we needed head lamps for Day 2 so thought it might be in a cave or something. Once we got to the top we looked behind the railing and I noticed something written on the railing with a familiar email type.
On the back of the railing in two different spots was written 873640@protonmail.com. We didn’t have good signal in the area so we started our trek back down and then started driving back to Portland.
We now knew we had to send an email to unlock Day 2. You may have noticed that the last three clues we found all had a 3 digit number at the end of them. So we put these in order along with the 6 digits provided in the final clue:
518623950873640@protonmail.com. I tried sending an email to that address on the ride back and it got rejected. So we tried seeing if the numbers were a cipher, but it’s not enough to make anything with with that particular number combination. We were given an email to contact if we had trouble with anything so I sent out an email explaining our difficulties. Then Alex suggested checking the proton mail site to see if the emails existed so I went there and started checking. Protonmail recently added the proton.me email tag to their site so I checked 518623950873640@proton.me and it existed, so I sent an email to it just in case and then we decided to take a break from it and go get some food and beers. While we were walking to get food, we got an email from the proton.me account saying we unlocked Day 2 and we would get another email the next day at 2:30pm, so we were very happy that we didn’t have to worry about anything for the rest of the night. Small oversight there by the team with the final clue, but we’re awesome so we figured it out. We enjoyed some well deserved excellent food and beers at a local brewery.
DAY 2:
We had some time to kill before day 2 started so we met at Voodoo doughnuts and went sightseeing. Some notable stops were to see Da Tung and pass by Lan Su, which anyone who participated in the Ronin Hunt will recognize.
At 2:30pm, we received an email from Jeb with the coordinates and directions on how to get to the final location. We were told that there were six markers hidden, one of which was marked as “Winner” and five others, but since we were all on the same team we would just have to recover five of the markers, each of which would be good for one rabbit from the Dev Wallet.
We were told that the Core Team would choose five rabbits from the Dev Wallet, including one of the Demon brothers and one of the full hand-built Samurai. We would then decide amongst ourselves the pic order and pic rabbits in that order.
The instructions we had to follow to get the final location mentioned train tracks, so we were now pretty certain that we were going into a train tunnel! The only trolleys that used the tracks stopped running at 2:30pm, so we started our trek at 3:00pm.
LOC: 06, Train Tunnel near Elk Rock Garden, DEAD HIDEOUT 1
Everyone was very excited that we were finally going to get to the final location, the Dead Hideout for Portland. We took a lot of video and pictures while walking along the tracks and guessing what things would be like inside. When we got to the entrance of the tunnel we had no doubt that we had arrived at the Dead Hideout. The tunnel was huge and there was graffiti spray painted everywhere. It fit the lore so well. We stopped to take pictures of the entrance and post them in the Discord, to let people know we had arrived.
After getting some pictures and video, we fired up our headlamps and went inside. The tunnel was very wide and long so even with five people it took awhile to search. We were looking along the walls for any obvious markers or possible DRRS graffiti tags.
About half way through the tunnel, my headlamp landed on a stuffed pink bunny that was missing an eye and had a hole in the stomach. It had obviously been placed sitting on a rock, so I had a feeling there was a marker here. I called everyone over, moved the bunny and looked under the rock it was sitting on. Underneath was the marker that was marked as the “Winner.” We were all stoked to have found one of the markers and for the first one we found to actually have been the one that was the winning marker. I let Jeb know we found it and we made some posts in the Discord. Then we went through and found the rest of the markers.
We did it! Two days of great adventure following clues from one location to the next and the first Dead Hideout was finally finished. A huge mile stone, months in the making for the DRRS community. We were all very excited to have been a part of it. One of the best parts was meeting rabbits in real life and hearing everyone’s story and getting to know each other. Three people had driven there and two of us flew in for the event. It was a great time. We headed back to the car and gave our final thoughts on the whole experience, which poorNFTcollectr and DarkLightQueen put into a great little video that you can see in the last twitter link below. We let Jeb know we were done and had found the markers we needed, and he posted the five rabbits the team had chosen in the Dead Hideout channel for us. We used a randomizer to decide pick order and then we made our picks and let Jeb know. The rabbits were sent to us shortly after.
I would highly recommend attending one of these if you can. I know if I’m able, I will go to another one. The overall experience, getting to meet people in the CLAN, and the chance for a rabbit from the Dev Wallet just combine to make it an amazing opportunity and experience. I really hope to see more people attend these as they start getting done in new locations. I’m honored to have been part of the First Dead Hideout!
Make sure to check out https://deadrabbits.io/, Roadmap 2.0 is just kicking off and it’s looking to be even better than the first Roadmap!
