Oh boy. So just when I was starting to get worried about how we would have to deal with going to TC with only 4 people, it turns out we're having a tribe swap! And this after I had expressed my doubt to several people that we would have an odd number swap. Serves me right, once for falling right into the "there's no way they'd do that now" trap, and twice because the tribe I got put on is neither Tribe Silver nor Tribe Gold, but rather Tribe Key. Basically, there are 13 numbers we had to choose amongst. This would randomly divide us into two tribes of six, plus myself. So instead of reaching into my preferred numbered barrel or coil of rope and pulling out a pendant from Legends of the Hidden Temple, I got myself a key. I have no idea what it opens right now. My first inclination is that I get exiled for a round and join the losers, but as with every twist, there are so very many ways this could turn out. I could end up just having to pick a side right away without anyone being exiled. I could make somebody switch places with me and then they would have to go to exile. I could end up naming both of the new tribes. (Oh believe me, I have ideas.) and that's without even pondering the significance of the actual key. What does it unlock? A clue to another idol? Just the front door to exile? Heaven's gate? Al Capone's safe? John suggested it might be some kind of Survivor Pandora's Box. If that's what it is, fuck that, I'm not opening it. Anyway, too much speculation will drive me nuts.

@LeannSausage:

The haters on my dick are like whoa #confusingraplyrics

Jamie told me that Greg told him that the brig clue was either a person or tribe or season where someone who went to the first TC eventually won. I'm listing them in advance when this clue gets posted.

Richard/Tagi/Borneo
Ethan/Boran/Africa
Vecepia/Maraamu/Marquesas
Brian/Chuay Gahn/Thailand
Chris/Lopevi/Vanuatu
Danni/Nakum/Guatemala
Earl/Ravu/Fiji
Parvati/Malakal/Micronesia
JT/Jalapao/Tocantins
Natalie/Foa Foa/Samoa
Rob/Ometepe/Redemption Island
Kim/Salani/One World
Denise/Matsing/Philippines
Cochran/Bikal/Caramoan

This is all from memory, I could be wrong.

Narrowing down to even numbered seasons:

Marquesas
Fiji
Micronesia
Tocantins
Redemption Island
One World
Caramoan

Edit: Greg has guessed Fiji, I guessed Tocantins. 5 options left.

Edit #2: test post

Holy shit, that was my favorite non-Photohunt related challenge in my ORGing history! Let's run it down:

Step 1: Cryptoquote. My granddaddy was great at these, and I picked up a few tricks from him. The first thing is to look at words that couldn't be anything else. There was one word that followed the form ABCA'D, and there's no other word I could think of that fit with that apostrophe and repeating letter combo than "that's", and from that point I filled in a couple of other words until the phrase "that's for sure" jumped out at me, and obviously that's from the end of Rudy's great quote about being friends with Richard, but not in a homosexual way. So the password to step 2 was "rudyboesch". However, I was not aware of where the second step was located, so I did this next part in between yelling in the tribe chat "WHERE IS IT? I DON'T SEE ANYTHING. WHAT? OH MEREDITH."

Step 2: Solve a puzzle. This was done in two parts, me finishing the actual puzzle and Kelly and company unscrambling from the ghost image of the completed puzzle. It was a hard one! The only thing to go on was the color of the wood and the gold/bronze ratio of the letters. The unscrambled password, in the meantime, was "keephopealive". I had forgotten about the ghost image part, and consequently was hard at work on trying to unscramble the letters and had gotten as far as "like, have a pope" before I realized that Greg and Jamie had Step 3 covered.

Step 3: I put my post up to your post, and I post into your post, and then you post that post back into my post, and then we post back and forth with the same post, forever. We did well, the other tribe had a clusterfuck which ultimately cost them big time. Password = "hmssalsus".

Step 4: Word search. Only one word to search for, so I scanned for every single S that I could, and sure enough, I found it and posted the correctly backwards password, which was some random collection of 7 letters that a clause in the rules stated had to be backwards if "sausage" was backwards, which it was.

Step 5: Maze. I'm good at those too! I raced through that one, picking up 6 numbers and letters along the way. Pro tip: solve backwards first, then forwards to the midway point. It helps is the route is not very complex, like this one.

Step 6: Spam posting! Basically, post 99 times in 99 different ways, 3 of which will net you map pieces and 1 of which nets you the password, which is the captain's name, "merguez", which sounds an awful lot like "merges", but that's probably a coincidence.

Step 7: Along the way, you've collected 18 map pieces, now arrange them into a world map! This one took me forever to get any traction on because I forgot about quoting, so I painstakingly copied each image's URL and put it in image brackets. I'm not good at forums! Anyway, this one came down to some stupid shit, because one of the pieces had 0 map on it, so it could have gone either on the left or the right. Jamie submitted and picked left, while I felt that for artistry's sake it would be more balanced on the right. Lex agreed with the left and told us that results were being posted, but then people figured out about the misfit piece, and then everybody went nuts trying to post in time. So as it turned out, gold team was technically the first team to post it the way Brett wanted in time, but since there was controversy about how it finished, the stage 3 screwup was the tiebreaker. Woo woo! Silver team wins! Or according to tribe names, Dyndeth wins over Lo Ke! Dyndeth is obviously the better name, it's some Lord of the Rings meets death metal shit. The possible downsides to all this is that we had a potentially easy vote in Kelly, and also after writing this, I think I might have beasted the challenge a little too hard, which could hurt at the merge.

But over on Lo Ke is where shit gets interesting. I was worried about 1) what would happen if Lugata started getting targeted before merge and 2) how I would establish my strategic bonafides at FTC if I did get there, but tonight was a good step towards solving both of those problems. John came to me with info about how things were going down. Despite Richard being all for targeting Ciera earlier, the two of them are together and targeting Dan now. He says Rich told him that Dave and Ciera have a thing going on, which really bugged my eyes out. What bugged them out even more was that Dan wanted to target Chet. This makes no goddamn sense when we have a threat like Gwad coming for us. So I talked some sense into Dan, which I'm figuring out is beginning to be a bit of a pattern. He's a little naive, and too quick to believe people. So when I asked Dan who he wanted out, he said Chet because Chet wasn't on and it'd be an easy vote, but Ciera and Richard weren't too receptive and he felt like he was being targeted now. He also speculated that they would be able to get Chet on their side because Richard would be able to tell Chet when he came on that Dan had brought his name up. This is when I get a brilliant idea: Admit the truth and bend it at the same time. First chance he gets, Dan should tell Chet that he had brought up his name last night as part of a ruse. Ciera has the best shot of having the battleship idol, and Richard has the best chance of having the Brig idol if anyone has it, so they're a dangerous duo and they need to be blindsided. Dan's story will be that he mentioned voting out Chet to them in an attempt to make it look like the two of them were not being targeted. This will cover up for Dan's initial plan and gain Chet's trust by admitting guilt (but not in full) before Richard and Ciera can incriminate him. John is also stringing Richard along, and as a presumable buddy of Chet's, he can back up the veracity of Dan's story, or at least what little veracity it has. Hopefully this will get Chet on our side for this vote. Not only is this my plan, but now I have identified two Lugatans I want to bring to FTC with me: Dan, because I've changed his plans multiple times now, and Todd, because apparently everyone hates Todd. I really like him though!