cipher - Room 5 of the Maze

This is Room 5 of the Maze series. For those wishing to start at the beginning, click here. To go back to the previous room, click here.

As you arrive at the answer to Room 4, you realize it's the same one that you got for Room 3. With a sudden flash of insight, you go back to the keypad and scrutinize it. The faint fingerprints you see are on the keys 0,1,3 and 7. You realize with dread that you have been in this room before (0 from your unfortunate predecessor, 33 from your peer Anne whose skin is still recovering from the Itchyverse, and the rest from your previous entry. But wait! You look to the wall next to the keypad for the scratch marks that were there before and you see none. Were they ever really there? You look around, bewildered, for an explanation and you see nothing but the cold walls and the suspended platform.

Eventually you hopelessly resign yourself to foraging ahead and enter your answer into the keypad. As usual, the door disappears and you find yourself in Room 5. You don't even think about resting--what would be the point in trying, you know you can longer get any sleep in this Maze. You just walk helplessly towards the platform and grab the note. You stop before reading it and in defiant anger you rip a piece off and throw it to the ground. Before it can even hit the ground, it evaporates into thin air. You realize what you've just done and force yourself to calm down before you ruin your hopes of escaping this place. You read the note:

Welcome to Room 5! If we must say, this is our personal favorite room; it was the first one that we created. As a result, it may turn out that it is actually easier than the previous--only time will tell. Good Luck!!

Key 1: >c 8DC

There is a rip in the paper after 'd' thanks to your moment of indignance. "I hope there was nothing too important on that bit", you mumble.

Key 2: ERLO GWTD ERW BLSH OFVVWWUWU ERW OLXERCSDH YRS RLAOWBN RTU OFMMBTHEWU ERW RWTQWHBG

Bad, bad test subject! We sure hope that you can complete this room without that missing information.

Did they know that you were going to rip the paper beforehand? Or did they make that information appear without you noticing? Your head begins to hurt from the constant confusion and you can feel your stability slipping. You need to hurry and escape this Maze!!!

A thorough investigation of the keypad shows only digits (with no discernible marks on any of them).

Answer from Previous Room:

117

EDIT: After a day of grueling attempts to find any significant meaning in the keys, a note appeared on the platform:

It seems that we had not properly balanced this room. That being the case, we will provide two pieces of information.
1. Key 1 has been put through one of your species' first recorded ciphers, though with an alphabet larger than the one originally used.
2. A fuller version of Key 2 is as follows: ERLO GWTD ERW NLDOE BLSH OFVVWWUWU ERW ERLDU OLXERCSDH YRS RLAOWBN RTU OFMMBTHEWU ERW NLDOE RWTQWHBG

This puzzle has now been solved. Here is the next, and final, room

Answer

It seems I did a pretty bad job on this room. After some consideration, I've decided to post the complete solution to this puzzle; while I indicated previously to f" that I would accept his answer if this went unsolved (and kudos to him for getting the correct final answer), I think it would be unwise to deprive current and future solvers the satisfaction of knowing how this puzzle was intended to be solved. Some may disapprove of this approach, but I think I'd rather leave the problem as is and post the information in this post rather than update it with, basically, instructions on how to solve this puzzle. All of that said, here goes.

First notice that Key 1 is a shifted Caesar cipher with the alphabet being ASCII instead of the usual one and the shift amount being ROT117, the answer from the previous room. This yields:

In CONGRESS, July 4th, 1776. We hold ... future security. Frequency, then o

This points to a passage from the preamble of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Using this paragraph and analyzing the frequency of each letter (every one of the 26 occurs at least once in this passage), we get the following, sorted in descending order with ties broken by "o"rder of occcurrence (hence the lingering o in Key 1 before the rip; the whole word was order).

e (134), t (109), n (71), s (70), i (70), r (65), a (65), o (64), h (59), d (38), l (35), u (34), c (26), g (26), f (25), m (24), p (18), b (16), v (15), w (14), y (13), j (2), k (2), q (1), z (1), x (1)

Lining these up with the letters in order of occurrence in the passage (also what was meant by 'frequency, then order'), you get the substitution cipher of:

e, t, n, s, i, r, a, o, h, d, l, u, c, g, f, m, p, b, v, w, y, j, k, q, z, x
w, e, h, o, l, d, t, s, r, u, b, f, v, i, n, a, m, c, q, y, g, p, j, z, k, x

This is used to decipher Key 2 to the following:

THIS YEAR THE LION SUCCEEDED THE SIXTHBORN WHO HIMSELF HAD SUPPLANTED THE HEAVENLY

Which, as f" noted, is a reference to when Pope Leo I (the lion) succeeded Pope Sixtus III (the sixthborn, though the actual etymology of this name is believed to be the greek word for 'polished') who was preceded by Pope Celestine I (the heavenly). This took place in the year:

440

Giving us our final answer to enter into the keypad.