Shadows of Evil Note Discussion

[BlindBusDrivr]

Okay guys so I haven't seen anybody talking this new note from Shadows of Evil that was recently assembled.  In case you didn't know, there are several little pieces of it scattered across the map, and the YouTubers finally managed to put it all together, and this is what it looks like:  

 

Photo courtesy of @MrRoflWaffles
http://i.imgur.com/1aCyvSv.jpg

 

Obviously, there's quite a lot of stuff going on here to discuss.  

 

Some of it has already been discussed, but I'm going to talk about the four coordinates in each of the corners of the paper.

 

Coordinates: 44°29'53.73"E  48°41’18.11"N

 

Location: Volgograd (Stalingrad), Russia 

 

This city (previously Stalingrad), is the location of the Battle of Stalingrad from World War II, when the Nazis were trying to invade the Soviet Union. 

 

Quote

The city became famous for its resistance during the Battle of Stalingrad against the German Army in World War II. It is often regarded as the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. - Wiki

This video gets far more in depth about this coordinate that I will be able to right here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrtzaW4S3KU

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Next Coordinate:  51°4'28.33"N  17°2'27.57"E 

 

These are the coordinates to Wroclaw, Poland.  Wroclaw is the capital of Silesia and Lower Silesia in Poland, which is where Der Riese/The Giant is located.   The coordinates fall almost exactly on the location of the Project Riese Complexes from World War II:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Riese

 

Not really much to say, as it's just a nod towards Der Riese, perhaps meaning it is related to the other locations.

 

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Now, these next couple of coordinates are where things start to get really interesting.  

 

Coordinates:  13°12'49.48"E  47°30'26.51"N

 

Location:  Eishohlenstr, Austria => The Eisriesenwelt

 

 

A couple of interesting things about this place:

 

Quote

The Eisriesenwelt (German for "World of the Ice Giants")[1] is a natural limestone ice cave located in Werfen, Austria, about 40 km south of Salzburg. The cave is inside the Hochkogel mountain in the Tennengebirge section of the Alps. It is the largest ice cave in the world,[2]extending more than 42 km and visited by about 200,000 tourists every year. 

-Wiki

Thanks to @PINNAZ for pointing out this other bit to me:

 

Quote

"The first official discovery of Eisriesenwelt was by Anton Posselt, a natural scientist from Salzburg, in 1879, though he only explored the first two hundred meters of the cave. Before his discovery, the cave was known only to locals, who, believing that it was an entrance to Hell, refused to explore it."

-Wiki

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisriesenwelt

 

So, that note gives us the coordinates to a gigantic ice cave, that's inside of a mountain, with mysterious folklore surrounding it.  Meanwhile, the barcode easter egg on The Giant when decrypted reads, "The Mountain Must be Searched For The Frozen One".

I'd find it very hard to believe that these things are not related, and this may just be the location of the next zombies map.

 

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Now for the last Coordinate, we have:

158°10'50.31"E  6°53'12.07"N

 

Location: Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pohnpei

 

The last coordinates are of a small island in the South Pacific, which is a part of the Federated States of Micronesia. 

 

Recall that the Island is in the South Pacific, one of the places where Mr.Rapt has the Reporter go to track down "Ancient Artifacts" :  

Quote

Journalist: Hey Mr. Rapt. So I tracked down all the people you asked me to look into. I sent you a telegram of all their details, all their contact numbers. But I gotta be honest... I'm gettin' nervous. These last six months you've had me working like a *inaudible* private dick, when really I just wanna be a reporter. It's not that I'm ungrateful, I know the checks you've given me are more than generous for services rendered. It's just.. all the stuff you've had me do - tracking down ancient artifacts in the South Pacific, finding all these strange metals and rocks in Russia - yet still, I haven't even met ya face-to-face! I'm sorry Mr. Rat, I think maybe the mood in the city has given me a little... it's making me nervous, antsy. Anyway, I'm looking forward to you finally getting here.

( Thanks to @Monopoly Mac for pointing out this next part to me)

Now if you go to the wiki page for Pohnpei, there is a section which lists it's references in fiction, and one of them is none other than H.P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu.  

 

Here's a little bit about the city of Nan Madol in Pohnpei:

Quote

Nan Madol is a ruined city adjacent to the eastern shore of the island of Pohnpei that was the capital of the Saudeleur Dynasty until about 1628.[3][note 1] It is in the present day Madolenihmw district of Pohnpei state, in the Federated States of Micronesia in the western Pacific Ocean. The city, constructed in a lagoon, consists of a series of small artificial islandslinked by a network of canals.[3] The site core with its stone walls encloses an area approximately 1.5 km long by 0.5 km wide and it contains nearly 100 artificial islets—stoneand coral fill platforms—bordered by tidal canals.

-Wiki

The City was used as an inspiration to Lovecraft's city of R'lyeh:

 

Quote

The 1928 excavations were used by H. P. Lovecraft as an influence on his creation, the city of R'yleh, from his story "The Call of Cthulhu".

Here's some background info about the city of R'yleh from the Lovecraft Wiki page: 

Quote

R'lyeh is a sunken city located deep under the Pacific Ocean and is where the Great Old One Cthulhu is interred. R'lyeh's bizarre architecture is characterized by its non-Euclidean geometry.[2]

 

When R'lyeh rises in Lovecraft's short story "The Call of Cthulhu", the only portion of the city that emerges is a single "hideous monolith-crowned citadel" in which Cthulhu is entombed. The human onlookers are awed by the sheer immensity of the city and by the frightening suggestiveness of the gargantuan statues and bas-reliefs.

 

The city is a panorama of "vast angles and stone surfaces [...] too great to belong to anything right and proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and disturbing hieroglyphs." The geometry of R'lyeh is "abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours." The strange architecture of the city makes navigation on foot disorienting and treacherous; surfaces that appear flat may actually be tilted, and angles of masonry that appear convex at first glance may actually be concave.

In Lovecraft's stories, R'lyeh is sometimes referred to in the ritualistic phrase "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", which roughly translates to "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

Considering the blatant Lovecraftian imagery and influence on Shadows of Evil

 

I think that it's clear that those coordinates and that location ties in more to this Lovecraftian/Cthulhu Mythos theme, and I think it would be awesome if we had a new zombies map at Nan Madol/R'yleh.  Just imagine waking up Cthulhu on the next zombies map....

 

So there's a lot to look into here just with the coordinates alone, the zombies team sure knows how to keep us busy!  This is everything I've found looking into it so far, and I will be doing some more research on the other stuff in the note later on.   

 

Now let's get some more discussion going on about this note!
 

 

Edited November 26, 2015 by BlindBusDrivr

[ChinaRepublic]

This stuff is just too cool. Excellent research.

Something I'd like to add; I think it's very possible when the Journalist talks about finding strange metals and rocks in Russia, he could be refering to Volgograd.

50 minutes ago, BlindBusDrivr said:

It's just.. all the stuff you've had me do - tracking down ancient artifacts in the South Pacific, finding all these strange metals and rocks in Russia - yet still, I haven't even met ya face-to-face!

 

[Tac]

As @BlindBusDrivr pointed out, one these coordinates goes to Stalingrad, Russia, otherwise known as Volgograd.  After seeing @ChinaRepublic's comment above and @PINNAZ pushing someone to look into them, I said I would.  Now, as quoted throughout this thread, the journalist from the telephones states that Mr. Rapt has had him "finding all these strange metals and rocks in Russia," and based also on the South Pacific coordinates and mention, I think it's likely that these coordinates are where the journalist went.  So, what "strange metals and rocks" are there to find in Stalingrad/Volgograd?  Surprisingly, not much, from what I can tell.  I'll walk you guys through what I was able to find, however, though I think it's important to note that however interesting it is, there's no real clear connection to stone or metals.

 

There's a region in/near Volgograd known as Medveditskaya Ridge, which is "a chain of rather low, 820-foot hills."  It is "considered to be one of the most impressive anomalous zones in Russia," with supposed "flying fireballs,"^[1][2] or "ball-lightning."^[3]  Does this remind anyone else of the fireballs from Shadows of Evil?  Additionally, there are many talks of UFOs^[1][3] and "the landing site of flying saucers"^[2] near here.  There's also much buzz about "interconnected underground labyrinths"^[1] and "before the war you could walk for miles"^[2] before the entrances were destroyed.  It is said that the tunnels are home to "a race of snake people,"^[3] which reminds me an awful lot of Shangri-La and Vril-ya mythos surrounding Naga's.  "There are two springs near the tunnels - one with distilled water and the other with water that has a higher-than-normal level of radiation."^[3]  We also know that radiation is a common theme in zombies, with Die Glocke and Element 115.

 

Finally, one of the only mentions of stone I could find related to the Volgograd region was a "melted piece of interesting stone" that "was taken to the laboratory" and deemed to "contain no element known to science."  It was "a mysterious element that is found in the structure of the melted stone and is the main link of unknown alloy," with an "unusually high" hardness.^[4]

 

Again, I want to stress that very little of this is actually relevant to the search, though I find it very interesting and hopefully someone can find something I wasn't able to.  There were other mentions of stone, like the Volgograd Balls^[5], though I think they're even less related.

[BombProof]

I found something interesting in the comments section of LiamFTWinter's video discussion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLpgMC_ur30) about possible new maps, including that ice cave place. 

 

Here is the comment (Commenter's channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuGapQYlnBFupHeaVvpedUg)

Quote

Well according to wikipedia "R'lyeh is a sunken city in the South Pacific and the prison of the entity called Cthulhu." R'lyeh is the name of the "fictional lost city that first appeared in the H. P. Lovecraft short story 'The Call of Cthulhu'."

 

Richtofen's secret note's bottom right coordinate leads to the island of Pohnpei. Lovecraft took inspiration from "Nan Madol" a ruined city of the shore of Pohnpei and used it to create R'lyeh in his story. This all makes sense since obviously Cthulhu plays a huge role in SOE AND one of "The Giant" secret messages states "In the cell below the waves is where honor suffers."

 

Wiki says Cthulhu is in-prisoned in this sunken city so the secret message directly relates. I'd bet this is definitely a location for a future dlc map.

I added paragraphs to make it less of a chore to read.

[Tac]

1 hour ago, BombProof said:

I found something interesting in the comments section of LiamFTWinter's video discussion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLpgMC_ur30) about possible new maps, including that ice cave place. 

 

Here is the comment (Commenter's channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuGapQYlnBFupHeaVvpedUg)

Quote

Well according to wikipedia "R'lyeh is a sunken city in the South Pacific and the prison of the entity called Cthulhu." R'lyeh is the name of the "fictional lost city that first appeared in the H. P. Lovecraft short story 'The Call of Cthulhu'."

 

Richtofen's secret note's bottom right coordinate leads to the island of Pohnpei. Lovecraft took inspiration from "Nan Madol" a ruined city of the shore of Pohnpei and used it to create R'lyeh in his story. This all makes sense since obviously Cthulhu plays a huge role in SOE AND one of "The Giant" secret messages states "In the cell below the waves is where honor suffers."

 

Wiki says Cthulhu is in-prisoned in this sunken city so the secret message directly relates. I'd bet this is definitely a location for a future dlc map.

I added paragraphs to make it less of a chore to read.

That's very interesting.  @BlindBusDrivr had included those top things in the OP, but I've never thought of that being what the note means.  Great find! 

[DragonGJY]

The content is amazing, but I would really like to know where exactly every pieces are.

My thread here has covered 9 of their locations, just the last one is missing.

Can anyone contribute to it?

[DragonGJY]

Sorry to go in this again but I really like to locate the piece on the UPPER RIGHT corner, the one with the coordinate  13°12'49.48"E  47°30'26.51"N .

@MrRoflWaffles it would be really great if you can tip me on this T-T. So eager to find it.