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This does more or less confirm that the clue refers to rare WAVES though, which were counted as "dead ends" on.

Actually... remember how we thought it was weird that the line of our war progress through the maze was hitting dead ends instead of just making a straight line for the exit? What if that's the clue and we need 6 rows? "One step at a time" could refer to this being our footpath.

Wait that doesn't work because 33/6 doesn't work, nvm.

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Reversed it's:
YZJTWFXGJJJGFTTKANTUYOGTXNNWPGSWV

Take this and do a -1 caesar, then Vigenere it with Error

Result is THREEAFOUREONEBFIVECTWOEFIVEAONED

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The answer is
Three A
Four E
One B
Five C
Two E
Five A
One D

The thing behind the lock is glitched tho.

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I don't understand why the key was error though. What's up with that?

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In "The Lucky Undead" quest, we're told that "ZXJ3bl" is the answer. Using... I think base 64, that translates to "error". So, the answer is error, and error is the key!

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so those two were who we thought them to be after all. At least they are harmless... for now

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Lock and Key's purpose, the cause of the Key's corruption and the question that are the Maleurous

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as members of the Maleurous, most players who surmised here are correct. They are indeed Maleurous and it is now explained why the Avatars did not summon the hero and Uaanta when there is a Maleurous present.

It's quite a mystery for me about their role since they only said that they store information and they have had contact with Remthalas beforehand hence, they were "awaken". Also for some reason they have selected the hero to do something for the Maleurous (still unknown).

Lock and Key will likely be back again but I suppose this time, for the Maleurous quest chain itself.

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Starting from VOJWYJSUJGTGPNXWAFNKWNTTXTJTFZGGY,
Clue #1 says to sort in a dead end number of rows. Dead end refers to the rare waves and the rare wave with the Leftovers had "THREE" scratched into the wall. So I sorted the long string of letters into three rows in the most natural way (at least to me), which is to take the first letter, in this case V, and then take every third letter from there. Doing the same thing with O and J, the second and third letters respectively, gives us the following three strings of length 11:
VWSGPWNNXTG
OYUTNAKTTFG
JJJGXFWTJZY

Putting them together as in clue #2 to obtain
VWSGPWNNXTG OYUTNAKTTFG JJJGXFWTJZY
and then reversing the resulting string as per clue #3 gives us:
YZJTWFXGJJJGFTTKANTUYOGTXNNWPGSWV

Now, clue #5 translated to alphabets gives us the string "SUBTRACT THE KEY". This also gives us a clue on how to go about dealing with our string of alphabets.
Converting our letters from the 33-character alphabet string into numbers, we get
25, 26, 10, 20, 23, 6, 24, 7, 10, 10, 10, 7, 6, 20, 20, 11, 1, 14, 20, 21, 25, 15, 7, 20, 24, 14, 14, 23, 16, 7, 19, 23, 22

We also have clue #4. The answer is the key. The key. The key. The key.
Repeated occurrences of the answer. And what is the answer? Well, Key already gave it to us before we went in. The answer is ZXJyb3I (or translated from base 64, "ERROR")
We convert ERROR to the numbers 5, 18, 18, 15, 18.

Now we use clue #5. Clue #5 tells us to subtract the key. And clue #4 tells us to do it repeatedly. So we subtract
5, 18, 18, 15, 18, 5, 18, 18, 15, 18, 5, 18, 18, 15, 18, 5, 18, 18, 15, 18, 5, 18, 18, 15, 18, 5, 18, 18, 15, 18, 5, 18, 18 from
25, 26, 10, 20, 23, 6, 24, 7, 10, 10, 10, 7, 6, 20, 20, 11, 1, 14, 20, 21, 25, 15, 7, 20, 24, 14, 14, 23, 16, 7, 19, 23, 22 to obtain

20, 8, -8, 5, 5, 1, 6, -11, -5, -8, 5, -11, -12, 5, 2, 6, -17, -4, 5, 3, 20, -3, -11, 5, 6, 9, -4, 5, 1, -11, 14, 5, 4

We have negatives here, so we wrap them around modulo 26 to obtain
20, 8, 18, 5, 5, 1, 6, 15, 21, 18, 5, 15, 14, 5, 2, 6, 9, 22, 5, 3, 20, 23, 15, 5, 6, 9, 22, 5, 1, 15, 14, 5, 4

which when converted back to alphabets, finally gives us
THREEAFOUREONEBFIVECTWOEFIVEAONED

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From what i remember, none of the Maleurous had been as diabolical as they were perceived. Sinnocence was confused. Mr Nameless just wanted a friend. Even Remthalas seemed (to me) more curious than anything else. And Now, Lock and Key are part of them. Remember the first gift they gave us? It was a clover. Some kind of super-hyper-lucky charm. Each maleurous appeared at a Friday the 13th, the most unlucky day, so to speak. So my theory is...could it be that Lock and Key somehow try to...counter the bad luck radiating from that days?

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so far, the Maleurous are not that really diabolical and also to point that the Avatars have not disclosed yet their oppression towards the Maleurous. However, I'm still thinking about their last few lines where Lock mentioned about "handling very well" the conversation after the hero left.

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I could be misinterpreting the conversation but it seems like what Lock and Key said confirms BOTH of the theories people presented in this thread: Lock and Key are part of the Maleurous but they also imply that they existed in some function/capacity beforehand as data storing bodies for something else (I think).

I guess it just reaffirms that the question isn't necessarily where each individual the Maleurous came from (because the answer seems to be independent in this case) but rather WHY are all of these seemingly random entities with vastly different origins/abilities grouped under the same banner with seemingly no common goal?

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This however doesn't seem to hold with Remthalas nor Lock/Key (other than the fact that they showed up on Friday the 13th). They seem to toy with the protagonist rather than dealing with some internal unhappiness or misfortune. From Ex Somniis Fabula, Remthalas remarks:
"Two of my... colleagues... are preparing something. Don't get your festive hopes up."

Seem as if Remthalas was anticipating the arrival of Lock/Key and have a different relationship with them than the rest of the Maleorous.

As Lock/Key said:
"The Avatars aren't your enemy, and neither are we" (which potentially includes the Dreamfarer)
"But we cannot speak for others of the Maleurous"

What makes Lock/Key/Remthalas different? Does anyone remember what Lock/Key took from us that caused the corruption too?

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Where are Lock and Key from? They were part of some powerful database apparently. Are they from the pre-Reset era? The only hitch to that is that they said they were from "the plains."

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It looked like they took a single hair from the protagonist. Judging from the dialogue at the end of this quest, they were interested in the DNA inside it.

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Lock and Key came from the Elemental Plains, also known as the Elemental Wastes (y'know the one in which an alliance of angels and demons team up against the Elements) (see: The Last Stand of Ehr'Ishin, First Guardian and The Duo's dialogues)

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So what do you guys think Lock and Key were "tasked with storing" exactly? They said that instead of "it" corrupting them, they managed to achieve a symbiosis. Is that the dark, tree-like structure tied around the huge golden cube at the center of the maze with its branches?