SEAGO is already burning, though.
We also have:
PURLY of wounds tiny RUBUC SEAT.
e.g. “Dozens of wounds tiny catch fire.”
Hm, ok, I guess I can buy that stabbing a dragon with a sword covered with oil, which then catches fire inside the dragon’s body, as a way to wound/kill it, could be the solution to a puzzle. That still doesn’t resolve the question of why we have both SEAGO and SEATO though.
Alternatively, I should point out that SEAT=“fire” is only speculation; we landed on that because of the similarity to SEAGO (and it certainly seemed convincing), but seeing SEATO as the present participle of SEAT could suggest that those two words are not actually as closely related as we thought.
How confident are we in this? The three instances where SEAG/SEAGO appears are not well-translated yet.
The overlap between “things you could describe some part of your body doing in the presence of an environmental hazard” and “silly things to do with a stock certificate” is pretty small.
If we’re wrong and one of these words is not related to fire/burning at all, it’s SEAT, not SEAG.
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I’m pretty confident about the fire, though.
The sequence in the opening room is the murkiest part of the transcript at this point, but to recap the key sequence of events: a SEAT initially blocks our way south. We loot a nearby TAKE ALL (a container of fluid) and find and cast a “DANCE” spell.
The spell does a lot of currently-impenetrable things; but causes the SEAT to XOPREL (look-like? resemble?) a PAINT. The player then spends a turn messing with the PAINT (which is still made of SEAT) with their sword.
Pouring out some ALL on the SEAT turns it into TURN. The PAINT/SEAT disappears from the room at this time, and also this is when your (somethings) start to burn. The player protects themselves from the TURN with the help of the DUCK and ANESTHETI.
Much later, the dragon emits both TURN and SEAT when injured. He also casts a SEATI spell; though the spell seems to create more of a shockwave than fire.
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Also worth mentioning that we have to use either the TAKE ALL or the ALL within it as part of opening the door. This is either a locking mechanism whose key is also somehow a container, or the ALL is needed for the door-opening mechanism. It wouldn’t seem too implausible for the door to be opened by hydraulics, but it probably ought to take more water than could be carried in a portable container?
The dragon’s final spell/attack also creates something which either is or resembles ALL ZAOKNEB, as a result of which we end up surrounded by/immersed in(?) ALL.
I’m quite mystified by the word ZAOKNEB, which initially looks like a pronoun related to ZAO “you”, but appears as an adjective in ALL ZAOKNEB and TORMY ZAOKNEB, and then as a plural noun in the AMUSING text, which suggests casting the DANCE spell on the ZAOKNEBY.
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Pouring oil on a fire and having it explode (and set your stuff on fire), and a dragon producing a wave/breath of oil to set everything on fire does make some sense.
But why you’d use the oil to cast a spell that makes the fire turn into something else (that’s also still fire), I have no clue.
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I think I’m increasingly appreciating that the (fictional) game makes heavy use of IF references and tropes as a deliberate aid to help know what translations are plausible. The axe-wielding, knife-throwing dwarf, the dragon sleeping on a pile of treasure, the maze, the door whose controls must be deciphered all fit that mould, as does the wall of flame, if that’s what it is. Dragons that attack by vomiting oil all over you haven’t appeared in any game I’ve ever come across, which is why I can’t really get behind that interpretation.
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Could the TAKE be a wand that produces water (or oil)? It makes more sense to jam a wand into a slot on a door than a canteen.
I had a momentary, excited thought that TAKE ALL could be “magic wand”. It makes sense for magic (something) to shoot out of the wand, and for magic to surround you at the climax.
But I can’t come up with a good translation for SLEEP ALL or for TOY SLEEP that works with that interpretation.
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Yes, I think deciphering the dragon’s demise is a very promising line of attack.
ALL SITITIN and LAMB around you, MEFALO your VOLT with ISKOLEB of your own eyes(?).
Many of these words appear elsewhere in the transcript. The dragon’s death curse “SITIN like ALL ZAOKNEB” and the fires earlier were also were SITITINO in response to the DANCE spell. LAMB was used earlier in a room description:
crystals ZATHAL LAMBO
Another room has “ZATHAL HAMEBO.” Are these stalactites/stalagmites? Is LAMB “fall”?
VOLT appears in the very first room description:
You are standing in a GARST wide that CARAB OLET PARO the VOLTO.
I like BUELY = eyes, but does it make sense that you suddenly are surrounded by images(?)/reflections(?) of your own eyes? Surely the dragon didn’t summon a hall of mirrors?
“STAKE,” replies? a hollow voice, surrounding and covering your own.
The TORMY ZAOKNEB CLAIZ and VARAM away. The lair is SKAL SINT, and you see that the dragon’s FURT GELASEN in the POLVAM QUOSENEB from which itwentcame.
Do we know what the TORMY are? Is it related to the TORSH/TORSHO? From Adventure I expect STAKE to be a teleportation spell, but here it looks like we’re still in the lair after casting the magic word? Note that CLAIZ is also used to describe the fire as it dies; so I expect it to mean “flickers” or “dwindles” or something along those lines? Are we draining the room of something (and removing the dragon’s corpse in the process?)
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Work has been really busy but I updated the work-in-progress translation with a bunch of vocabulary (mostly from @evouga’s list). Hopefully this might help make a few more things more obvious. Currently wondering about the meaning of ANOSPHULY and UPHOLSTER/UPHOLSTO.
Words added
door=“dwarf”
glulk=“threatening”
wea=“small/little”
blue=“head”
fouco=“swings”
east=“axe”
slunt=“misses”
plover=“sword”
vasi=“nasty”
sudnogil=“certificate”
man=“stock”
stand=“knife”
xolne=“doesn’t seem”
sipasan=“understand”
sipass=“mind”
string=“door”
satrag=“open”
play=“enter”
corset=“dragon”
zoon=“lair”
ka=“at”
bisyle=“go”
sylt=“come”
fus=“as”
firpsa=“enough”
worol=“large/big”
worolob=“enormous”
gupla=“where”
oin=“but”
turn=“smoke”
ith=“narrow”
nith=“wide”
sard=“chamber”
jair=“wound”
eplev=“away”
gre=“shard”
Hopefully I can share some more thoughts soon!
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Hey, you all have translated the bits I vaguely remembered seeing before, so I’m allowing myself to jump in. A few small guesses, based on the current translation:
“Filled to the top with gold, silmy, and nolvont documents olt-shron.”
silmy = treasure (a one-off)
nolvont = valuable (a one-off)
olt-shron: maybe something like ‘everywhere’? ‘shron’ is a one-off, but ‘olt’ is used to describe a chamber and a door, and might mean something like ‘huge’ or ‘tall’. Perhaps olt-shron is ‘huge-place’ meaning ‘everywhere’?
“All you remp to do is get in and koona unlarv a kui dwarfs.”
remp = ‘need’ or ‘have’ (a one-off)
koona unlarv: Maybe ‘carefully avoid’? Koona is used in one other place
kui = ‘few’ (actually used elsewhere once)
“(First-time players halo yoso “info”.)”
halo = should (one-off)
yoso = type (one-off)
“GRAB THAT GOLD is a “cruel” game, by the Zarfian Scoring Scale. You can die without warning, and you can make fatal mistakes without awordo it lark ghorn.”
awordo = realizing (one-off)
lark ghorn = until later (lark is actually used elsewhere! I think ‘until’ may make sense in those other places.)
“Thanks to my beta-testers, Belford Statenpaker and Amy Lukehart. And thanks to Emily for shado this marghensi.”
shado = hosting/sponsoring/holding (one-off)
marghensi = competition (one-off)
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We had this conversation but we couldn’t figure out why both “verbs” (in quotations because of the “modal” note before) end in -o if that was observed to be the present participle form (-ing).
“lark” we were holding off on until we figured out its connection to “inlark”.
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I have mostly not been bothering to put forward concrete translations of words that only appear once, especially when the meaning of the overall sentence is more-or-less agreed upon, unless it substantially changes the interpretation of the sentence relative to how we’ve currently been interpreting it. Trying to nail down the exact grammar of e.g. “halo yoso” does not feel that useful for interpreting the rest of the document.
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I do like LARK = until. It then gives
The flames SITITINO POORVO as the WOVEL LEID PUPLEN, until the DOROP resembles a NERB of PAINT NOIFI, CALMAO nearly KINJ enough to SHALOK SESL moved.
I am not 100% sure about BISYLEN. The “SYL” root clearly relates to movement; we have:
- SYLT: come
- SYLN: go (the Official translation is “lead”; but I think that’s too specific; I think SYLN is the more generic negation “go” of “come”).
- BISYLEN: a past participle, also used for the score updates (“has been BISYLEN by one point”). (The Official translation of BIEN is “has”, but I am very confident it is “has been.” BIEN is the past participle of BI = “be”).
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Has anyone proposed “grown” for BISYLEN?
“Grown/risen/increased” is not something the dwarf’s axe would do, though.
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We know some other verbs also end in -O (for instance, LERUO). So I assume “should” and “type” happen to also.
Wait what about “gone”?
The translation has SYLN = leads, and “BISYLE” = goes makes sense with the axe, so BISYLEN = gone?