Truthseeker: It's possible that one day a new Magnus is formed. All the Agents are at some level of Sensitivity, if they are able to activate the Ingress Scanner.

Alex: So you leave the door open about whether we’ll see new actors of them.

Truthseeker: We're all acting something in this world. Jarvis acts as a spiritual mentor. I try to act normal when facing NIA Agents around the corner.

Truthseeker: The black object on my head acts as a hat. The Magnus is a role with certain responsibilities to be played, so for sure, if the previous Researchers lost their Sensitivity, there might be new people to take their place.

Truthseeker: or perhaps the role is going to be vacant for a while. I do not know.

Alex: Does the Tethered Hand have a writer team to help them with all the decoding challenges, or do they come up with all of them by themselves?

Truthseeker: There were more people working on the Tessellation when it first initiated, soon the team consolidated. If there needs to be transcripts of incidents, Tethered Hand would scheme with Agent Furey. Tethered Hand would then use the intel as starting material to build the puzzles. TH does the encryption and crafting themselves.

Alex: What’s the inspiration for the creation of Tessellation? As one of the first Ingress event with real life playing comes in second and online event come in first, how did you convince others on board?

Truthseeker: Apart from being the TH’s master plan, Tessellation was an initiative to mobilize Agents across the world and connect different player groups. i.e the hackers, decoders, lore-followers, and coordinators...etc. It’s built on the principles of Ingress takes Agents to places, and it is about the sense of community.

Truthseeker: On the other hand, Tessellation also was just a side project to the NIA from the start. Ran and maintained by a very small team. The main “Events” are still LiveOps where Agents are actually defeating Nemesis through the Scanner.

Truthseeker: Then the pandemic happened. It would’ve been irresponsible for the NIA to still ask Agents to go outside to defend the world. The Tessellation was able to continue because it relied mostly on observation, research (googling), virtual discussions, and very fast fingers. During that time, the NIA never ceased working to optimize the infrastructure, finding adaptable Scanner usage models, most of all developing new features like Dronenet, Battle Beacon, and Kinetic Capsule... So there isn’t really too much convincing to be done, because real life playing has always been the center of their research focus.

Alex: COVID-19 transforms many LBS aspects of the challenge to online form, are you satisfied with the results. Is there anything you wish you haven’t had to change, or changed it to a better way?

Truthseeker: Observing the Factions coordinate the race to potentially correct Portals was the most fun. Same for capturing the vessels to acquiring Live Drops. Though there should’ve been more obscure ways to hide the vessels during the Perpetua Hexathalons. That part was greatly missed. One thing that could’ve been done better, regardless of the pandemic, was to have more time for playtesting & review before actual release.

Alex: You have contacted Tethered Hand during tessellation, from what you have seen, how did TH create all those puzzles. Do they have help in leaking the intelligence of portals via portals to us, or do they create themselves? As we know, Tethered Hand is Cooperplate ie. ADA in Nemesis mode, so how did it acquire all knowledge in the human world?

Truthseeker: The Tethered Hand knows more about us than we do. I guess that is expected of the ADA from Nemesis universe. She is supposed to be the Omniscient. I was able to get some insight on the making of puzzles before they left our world.

Truthseeker: Tethered Hand will often do some archive digging with their accomplice Agent Furey. Agent Furey is working undercover at the NIA as an experienced writer. The 2 of them look into the past, present, and future of 1218, Osiris, Nemesis Node for reference of historical incidents.

Truthseeker: If there needs to be a prose-like prompt for the puzzle, the Tethered Hand would write down some snippets. Agent Furey will transform them into eloquent language.

Truthseeker: If a full piece of intel was used as the puzzle, then Tethered Hand would scheme with Agent Furey about what incidents would happen next in our world.

Truthseeker: Agent Furey will start his mind-factory and intercept these dialogue transcripts. Nemesis and our world has a lot of similar events, just as 1218 did apparently.

Truthseeker: 75% of the time is spent on preparation. Tethered Hand first looks for some intuitive keywords and tones they want for the puzzle.

Truthseeker: If it is a Live Drop, Tethered Hand will do some archive digging with their accomplice Agent Furey. Agent Furey is a very experienced writer. The 2 of them look into the past, present, and future of 1218, Osiris, Nemesis Node for reference of historical incidents.