Ancient Decoder

Hundreds of years ago, The Council was the center of the secret world. After their fall, protected artifacts and dangerous knowledge have been lost. With the discovery of  one of The Council's famous decoders, is it finally possible to begin retracing their steps and finding what has been hidden?

This is a decoder prop designed for a game I am running about investigating a secret society. The inner ring rotates around the core, allowing for a shifting cypher. You are of course free to generate your own code to work with this decoder, but I will publish the actually coding rules once my players have finished the investigation in a couple weeks.

I have posted two designs. The “Simple” design is intended for general use cases. You push the Core (the screw) through the smaller ring and thread it into the threads on the bigger ring. It can be difficult to tighten the first time, so I have included a notch at the bottom of the Core to allow use of a large flathead screwdriver.

The “Complex” design is the one pictured in this post. It was designed to be painted and aged for maximum impact. While assembly is much the same as the “Simple” design, you have the added steps of attaching the numerals to the top of both rings. The hardware are M2 screws, preferably tapered and under 5mm in length.

I added in felt at the bottom of each ring. I find it both elevates the design, and allows for much smoother spinning.