[Puzzle restored] (Chour's Revenge!) [SOLUTION]

Solution below!

I derped (closed original post). Sorry, guys. You can find old thread HERE for additional info if you want to.

Afraid of wall of text? Don't worry. Just skip to Big hints below under 'hints' section. You will finally be able to solve it. I guarantee!

Foreword.

This puzzle is a tribute to this brilliant puzzle made by Award. At first it was intended as both a revenge and a contribution. Sadly it never evolved into a contribution but stayed revenge instead (nobody solved it). But I am satisfied now so I beg you to solve this one! Please! It's just a little bit harder in one piece and a little bit easier in other pieces.

End of foreword.

Puzzle. ---------> No hints, answers, solutions or any kind of spoilers!

• For your first seed to grow do not seek the help of either dwarfs, little indians or kings. Instead look for the courage of knights and the council of watching angels.

• Your second seed will rot if planted on black Friday by black women in the name of Kali with the help of the Devil and his circles.

Tips.

Part 1.

• There are two giveaways. No contributions are needed :D
• You really want to read Award's puzzle and its solution. Here
• You want to check if his solution is real :P
• You don't need to understand symbols and faces
• You want to understand what alpha function is. For that answer Q1 and Q4 of Award's quiz correctly.

Part 2.

• You don't want to use alpha function in its original form, you need its essential part modified
• You want a code that's not giveaway code
• You need two seeds. Only they STAND out. Only they have this in common.

End of tips

A quiz to help you.

It contains hints which should be available in 2 days time. 1 solver is me :P

Timer!

Hints.

• 1). It should be easy(?) for those who solved Award puzzles.

• 2). I've divided TIPS into 2 parts for better understanding.

• 3). Q1 and Q2 of my quiz are for the 1st part of TIPS, Q3 and Q4 for the 2nd part.

• 4). If you get right answer to Q3 and don't know what to do - explore!

• 5). Answers to Q1 and Q2 can be input in only one possible way (one of the TIPS in Part 1 will tell you exactly how to do it).

• 6). General plan (but you figured it out already, didn't you?):

  • Apply an alpha function to get 2 giveaway codes
  • To properly apply an alpha function you need 3 parameters: a seed, a sequence of shifts and ...(not revealed yet but you do know what)
  • To confirm these parameters you need to solve the quiz.

• 7). "Kings" from Q1 and "black women" from Q2 are from the same source.

• Big hints!

• 8). If you have problems with Q10 of 'Big hints!' quiz - try this one.

• 9). Hints that appear on main quiz (I misconfigured the quiz. They should have been available for all after 48 hours) + my comments:

  1. "You do read books, don't you?" (Literature! Wiki! Also disregard "council", it was put for adornment)
  2. "Black magic! All attributes of it!" (WIKI!)
  3. "You must have seen it by now if you followed tips." (Look real deep into the picture of Award's puzzle).
  4. "If they stand they do not ...." (a much better hint can be found in 'Big hints' if solved)

• 10). Macbeth, Hansel and Gretel, Snowhite, Roman de Brut, And Then There Were None

• 11). Q7,Q8,Q9 - maybe you haven't signed them?

• 12). Why do you think I really had to make a extra quiz for Q10 of 'Big hints'? It wasn't necessary in the original post!

End of hints.

Presents (it was my birthday on the 10th!) - finished

Mount&Blade:Warband

Bastion

End of presents

Solution

The puzzle went through some evolution. Initially I thought people who solved Award's puzzle and saw my attempt at a puzzle there at "Civilization 5" giveaway would grasp the idea right away.
I was wrong!
So I made 'Big hints' to guide them along.

All right. The solution itself.
Quizes are not case-sensitive so "A" and "a" will be accepted.

First Big hints:

• Q1: "E"
• Q2: "B"
• Q3: "-4-5+3-2-1"
• Q4: "87E0A"
• Q5: "IHPKL"
• Q6: "QRJON"
• Q7: "+5"
• Q8: "-2"
• Q9: "+10-1"
• Q10: "bj5zA" ---> alternative quiz for Q10: "TL2f3" or "bj5zA"

Really nice hints after that. See for yourself!

Some comments:

• Q7,Q8,Q9 should have given you the idea how to solve Q1 and Q2 of the main puzzle. When you saw something negative (either "not" or negative meaning word, e.g. "rot") you should have used "-", for "positives" "+".

• Q10 answer - is the code of the actual forum post of the puzzle. Since I derped and had to make another post - the answer was harder to find, so I made another quiz to make it easier.

Now you see. I really tried to train you for my main quiz:

MAIN QUIZ:

• Q1: "-7-10-8+12+14"
• Q2: "-13-3-1-15-9"
• Q3: "XFwCU"
• Q4: "9X" or "X9"

Now comments:

• Q1: The hardest in my opinion part. Until I posted the hint about "sources". Then it became the easiest.
  So they were a little too obscure "literary" references.

  • "7 dwarfs" from "Snow white"
  • "10 little indians" in the rhyme from "And then they were none"
  • "8 kings" from "Macbeth"
  • "12 knights of the Round table" - early references in "Roman de Brut"
  • "14 angels" from a children's prayer from opera(?!) 'Hans and Gretel'

  You could say it was impossible. But if you tried to google, say, "fourteen angels" you'll get the answer right away. Yep. It's guesswork. Not good. Thus hint about sources.

• Q2: Refers to devilry, witchcraft, black magic etc. They all "help to rot", so they are all "negative":

  • 13 - Friday, the 13th.
  • 3 "black women" or "witches". I linked "witches" and "kings" with one of the hints. "Macbeth"'s witches.
  • 1 Kali, she's "black one"
  • 15 the Devil, tarot card "the Devil", its number is "15". The only "obvious" number connected with word "Devil". Don't tell me it's hard. It's not. A little tricky but not hard! :P
  • 9 circles of Hell

• Q3. That's a forum(!) code you encountered if you solved some extra puzzles in Award's big puzzle. You open the picture as an archive and there was a "message.txt".
  The code was right there before your eyes. When given enough attention to the actual solution written there you'll encounter two lines:

4WES0M3PUZLG1VAYNOH8KTXBIRCJDFQ25769

and

0ABCDEF12GHIJO3PQRSTUVXYZ4567W8KLMN9

They are alphabet strings containing exactly 36 characters as in the "original" alpha function.

These lines were the core of my puzzle.

• Q4. "Seeds". If you compare two lines you could see that only characters "X" and "9" don't change there position, they "STAND".

Using seeds from Q4, alphabets from Q3 and shifts from Q1 and Q2 you'll end up with 4 codes.
The quiz result message will give you format.

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/XlNU5

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Y1A64

I liked 'Big hints'. Did you? :)