I was wondering if “cave” vs. “mine” might be the solution to our garst/torsho problem, and if we have another word we like for “mine”, “pit” is definitely a possible alternative (used metaphorically or otherwise).
I’m assuming bien is “has been” in this context even though we see it as an auxiliary verb equivalent to just “has” in the score-go-up message.
I was picturing the layout as a tall chamber, narrow at the top (where you enter) but wider at the bottom where the dragon is. Mainly, I think it has to be the other way around because it doesn’t make sense for the GARST NITH to widen to the south where the entrance to the maze is.
Do we know that there’s a mine in the game at all?
Not necessarily! I guess the possible gem-encrusted walls just got me thinking along those lines. Plus I guess the machinery-in-caves aspect.
My interpretation is that someone build a door with an elaborate locking mechanism to prevent people from accidentally wandering into the dragon’s lair. I have a couple of related vocabulary guesses which have somewhat informed this picture:
WAKE = “machinery” (it’s a singular noun, but it refers to a collection of objects and apparently has no article so it must be uncountable)
WOROLOB = “enormous” (intensified form of WOROL, “big”)
THALSHAIM = “spikes” (related to THALN, “point”; a spike is literally a point, after all - although this should be plural, I guess?)
That gives us:
To the south, an enormous CORRAN door stands VUREL the cavern(?) wall, its top crusted with spikes. The door is covered with HOREX machinery.
CORRAN follows the pattern of LION and ZATIN for metals. Absent other clues I’d suggest CORRAN = “steel.”
By the way, how confident are we that LION is indeed gold? Adventure’s bar is silver.
I suspect KAWK may also be onomatopoeia for a cough. When the chamber fills with smoke:
Your GORNY start to burn. You KAWK.
Your GORNY are HOBII starting to STORN.
Your GORNY are FULBA burning, and your BUELY are SHAIMOO.
> DOWN ANESTHETI
Your GORNY INCAN SEDANI FIU SLAS.
GORNY and BUELY are probably “eyes” and “lungs” in some order, since those are the only two plural body parts I can think of that are affected by smoke.
SHAIMOO is a hapax, but we also have THALSHAIM, which looks like THALN “point” + SHAIM; perhaps “stinging”, so a THALSHAIM is literally a “sting-point” (a spike)?
We also have SEDAN in the phrase “for SISO SEDAN”, probably “for good measure”, in which case, SEDANI (an adjective) is perhaps “measured”?
In which case:
Your lungs start to burn. You cough.
Your lungs are really starting to hurt.
Your lungs are painfully burning, and your eyes are stinging.
[Use antidote/gas mask/??]
Your lungs take a measured breath of air.
FULBA doesn’t end with -II like most adverbs, but in that syntactic position, I’m not sure what it could be except an adverb.
And since using the TAKE ALL fills the chamber with smoke, I’m not sure pouring water on a fire would do that—wouldn’t that mostly be steam? (I’m not confident on that, though.) Perhaps the TAKE ALL is actually full of oil, and we’re burning down the SEAT JEOLO LEDE to open a path to the south?
I’m also curious about LARK and INLARK. INLARK is a modifier on the ANESTHETI, which I suspect is some kind of technical thingy—as a general rule, four-syllable words are more likely to be technical terms than one-syllable ones—while LARK is some kind of preposition that appears twice: once in the “info” text and once in SAY DANCE.
you can make fatal mistakes without AWORDO it LARK GHORN.
The SEATY SITITINO POORVO FUS the WOVEL LEID PUPLEN, LARK the DOROP XOPREL a NERB of PAINT NOIFI…
In the first case, “until later” makes the most sense, and in the second case, “until” would also fit. But if LARK is related to INLARK, what’s an adjective connected to “until”? Perhaps “emergency” (“until needed”)?
I was assuming it was “gold” based on the relative plausibility of “I’m off on an adventure in search of gold and jewels!” versus “I’m off on an adventure in search of silver and jewels!”
Also, LIGHAN SES LION alliterates, and I think “Grab That Gold” is more pleasing than, what, “Snatch That Silver”?
I’ve been trying to make sense of what could be on a stand, assuming that that’s indeed the correct translation for ERCI as a noun. ERCI PE ANESTHETI INLARK = “stand of emergency equipment”?
I just noticed the similarity between ERCI and ERIC, which I think is encouraging: makes sense for the word for “stand” to be related to the word for “top”, I guess?
Historical tangent: throughout history, gold was usually too valuable for most people (even relatively wealthy people) to interact with it much, so it’s a lot more common for the word “silver” to be associated with money/riches/wealth than “gold”. From Irish to Thai, a surprising number of the world’s languages have a word for “money” (or “unit of money”) that comes from silver—either from the material directly (plata, airgead, keseph), or from a standardized weight of silver (pound, lira, shekel). “Dollar” (and “money”, and now “euro”) is one of the rare exceptions to that, named after the place where the coins were first minted.
Of course, this is not the historical Middle Ages, this is a fantasy world with what’s probably a dragon in it, so I agree that “gold” is more likely! Nobody talks about dragons with hoards of silver nowadays, probably due to inflation.
Assuming WAKE = machinery, then I would hazzard HOREX = complex
I don’t think SES is “that”; as I mentioned above, DUS fits “that” in more places.
SES could be e.g. “some”
A few miscellaneous words for your consideration:
KUI = few
SIK = near (and SIKII = nearly)
Could be different words for “that” (demonstrative) and “that” (conjunction).
That[1] would make sense, but if the same word is used for “stand (noun)” and “stand (verb)”, I’d be surprised to see two much more similar English homonyms distinguished.
Demonstrative! ↩︎
I don’t think those two uses of “that” are at all similar? In every non-English language I know they’re completely separate. In contrast, “stand” being the noun for “a thing that stands” is a close relationship, and we’ve seen lots of other examples of nouns with associated verbs or vice-versa.
I think we’ve almost fully untangled the business of poisoning the weapons. I can’t think of many poisonous things underground, but one obvious candidate is
POLISH = “mushroom”
If VUPRABEN = “bearer” and VUPRAM = “bear”, we have
FI one bears a few mushrooms APPLE poisonous.
Which suggests PICKOBE = “crush”, MIRROR = “paste”:
cr mushroom APPLE
(first taking the mushrooms)
You crush the mushrooms APPLE to a paste poisonous.
An earlier suggestion was that EYE = “rub”; I slightly prefer
which along with UNDO = “weapon” gives
put paste on weapon
You rub the paste poisonous on your sword. For SISO SEDAN, you poison the axe and knife too.
Notice that here we have LERUO = “poison”, another verb that ends in -O in the indicative.
I agree; however it seems that Lionese is closer to encrypted English than a natural language. In addition to STAND case Daniel mentions, Lionese uses many English idioms verbatim, uses the same (highly language-specific) prepositions the way that English uses them, etc.
DUS also fits “which”, in just as many places, I think. Specifically, I think every usage of DUS works fine as either “that” or “which”, except in this specific passage:
The lair is SKAL SINT, and you see DUS the dragon’s FURT GELASEN in(to?) the POLVAM QUOSENEB out (of?) DUS it SYLTEN.
… in which the first DUS only makes sense as “that”, and the second only makes sense as “which”!