Mysterious Scroll Mystery Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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Your adventure began innocently enough. You were spending some idle hours thumbing through dusty old tomes in an antique book store. The three-volume atlas caught your attention - you have always found maps fascinating. You were perusing the old charts of Caribbean islands, and had just turned the page between Antigua and Barbados, when a parchment scroll fell to the floor. You retrieved the faded document and were immediately intrigued by the cryptic numbers and letters that filled it. At that point you were hooked. You promptly purchased the atlas and its enigmatic parchment and went home to solve the puzzle of the Mysterious Scroll.
Upon arriving home you notice that all three volumes were inscribed with the same handwritten message. "I have gifted each of you with one third of this atlas in the hope that you will mend your differences and discover the riches to be found working together." With further examination of the other two volumes, you discover a second and then a third copy of the parchment scroll. All three bore the cryptic numbers and letters.
Thundering Typhoons! You have encountered a Tintinnabulation of the scroll, scroll, scroll.
This is both a puzzle cache and a multi-cache. It is not at the listed location. Stage 1 is a desktop puzzle. You need to solve the mystery of the scroll in order to get the first coordinates for stages 2 through 6. This first puzzle may be tricky. Each field stage will have a simpler puzzle suitable for solving on the fly. Note: this first puzzle is NOT a cipher!
Be sure to check the geochecker before going out in the field. There are important instructions in the "Success" page that you will need to complete the cache.
This cache was designed to be a good one for a group to work on together. Call your friends. Form a group effort. Allow around two hours in the field.
After consulting the two FTF cachers, I have decided to downgrade the difficulty rating a bit. The point is to emphasize that there is no special knowledge needed to solve this (no advanced degrees in cryptography or mathematics.) There are just several stages. Even though no single puzzle or hide in this cache is a 4.5 difficulty. the combined effort to solve gives a rating of 4.5. The cache should be accessible to anyone.
There is a First To Find goody bag!
Congratulations on a joint First To Find goes to Team MidwestHaunters (with the Spawn) and Fat Chuck.
THERE IS A HIDDEN MESSAGE!!! - 11/23/2013 - One year since the FTF...
Today I am announcing that there has been a hidden message in the Mysterious Scroll since the beginning. It is well hidden - definitely harder to find than the messages at the various stages. I waited a year to see if anyone found it without knowing of its existence. Now that you know, maybe some of you extreme puzzle fans out there might want to look for it. Find it and email me with the message and how it was hidden to get your name in the Bonus Hall of Fame!
I will give one hint. Although the message could be found without doing any of the stages, something you did at one of the field stages is very similar to how you can get to the hidden message. Good luck!
Bonus Hall of Fame --- The following cachers have found the hidden message: 4 boys explore found it on 12/25/2014 - Super congratulations!, ...
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Fgntr 1 (qrfxgbc chmmyr) - Abg n pvcure
Fgntr 1 (qrfxgbc chmmyr) - Fbzr guvatf gung ybbx snzvyvne znl abg or jung gurl frrz.
Fgntr 1 (qrfxgbc chmmyr) - Jung vgrzf jrer qvfpbirerq va gur bgure gjb ibyhzrf? Ubj pna lbh frr gurz abj?
Fgntr 2 - Gurer vf n qveg cngu gung jvyy gnxr lbh rnfg bs TM. Ohfujunpx sebz gurer.
Fgntr 5 - Qb abg qvfnffrzoyr nalguvat. Qb abg sbepr nalguvat. Cyrnfr sbyybj vapyhqrq vafgehpgvbaf sbe er-uvqvat guvf fgntr.
Fgntr 1 (qrfxgbc chmmyr) - Abg rnfvyl fbyirq ba n cubar ncc. Pbzchgre oebjfref cebivqr npprff gb zber nfcrpgf bs gur chmmyr.
Treasures
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