I think this is another one to put to a vote, but I was going to wait until we have a clearer idea of what the magic word actually does.
I mean, “should” is also a verb, right? Didn’t we determine that -o is some verb form? I don’t know.
Do we start a third category of “meaning of this but specific words unknown” for our master doc?
I agree with that!
Also, is there a place where someone’s compiled all the grammar rules we’ve determined thus far?
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I think the most natural “amusing” thing to do to a written document is
- SEAG = “to burn”
it. This gives us
Your GORNY start to burn. You KAWK.
Now, what are our GORNY? They’re not in the inventory description. “Hair” is singular in English but plural in some other languages; “clothes” are also an option. It’s too bad we don’t get an X ME description! Maybe we can pin this down once we translate more of the GORNY messages.
I think we can safely translate
- KAWK = “scream”,
though.
More speculatively, I might translate SEAT/SEATY/SEATI/SEATO as “fire”/“fires”/“fiery”/“flaming”. Which certainly spices up the first few rooms!
The CORSET FIWEEM a WAVE flaming!
What is the WAVE? At first I thought “scroll”, but it’s weird that you acquire the DANCE spell without either reading or picking up the WAVE. Maybe it’s something closer to a “rune”?
The WAVE makes a final appearance in what seems to be the CORSET’s death:
The CORSET MOHARN BRETNEII in(to?) the circle of ANOSPHULY. In one FOBREL SLARI, it OAWUL PIS a WAVE DUS SITIN like ALL ZAOKNEB.
(Note to @jwalrus : I’ve fixed two translation errors in this passage.)
But none of “scroll”/“rune”/“spell” really make sense here. Not sure.
I am pretty confident though that
- PRON = “to cast”
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-o is the present participle (-ing in English).
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This is a tangent, but:
It’s usually taught to students as a verb, but it isn’t really, from a linguistic standpoint. It fills a different “slot” in the structure of a sentence: what’s traditionally called the “T” slot (for “tense”). As a result, “should” is mutually exclusive with “can” and “will”, but also with “to” and “-ed”.
Historically, it started as the past tense of “shall” (similarly will/would, can/could, may/might), but nowadays most rules that apply to verbs don’t apply to it (*shoulding, *to should, *she shoulds), so I think it’s cleaner to put it in a separate category of “modals”.
(Of course, that’s just English. Maybe Lionese works differently here!)
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I think a better interpretation of ZAOLB might be “your own”? That works better with the voice example but also with:
ALL SITITIN and LAMB around you, MEFALO your VOLT with ISKOLEB of ZAOLB BUELY.
There’s a reference to “your BUELY” earlier, so something like “showering your ? with pieces(?) of your own BUELY” would make sense here, whereas “yours” does not work.
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That tracks with Adam’s previous deduction in the same post:
which contradicts what he said about it meaning “yours” but you’re right; that does make more sense.
I agree that seag is “burn” but I’m not certain our protagonist is literally on fire. That seems like it would be a problem that needs to be resolved immediately, whereas we seem to get three turns of messages suggesting that the problem is escalating before it’s resolved. In English we can describe body parts as burning in a metaphorical sense: your eyes are burning, your muscles are burning.
I think wave is “spell”; it’s only the very first appearance of the wave where we seem to physically see it sitting there that I can’t quite make sense of. I wondered if it could be “sheet”, i.e. a page from a spell book, and fiweem e wave seati could be something like “breathes a sheet of flame”, but that doesn’t make sense with the other occurrences of wave.
it OAWUL PIS a WAVE DUS SITIN like ALL ZAOKNEB
Oawul sounds like onomatopoeia for a howl or cry, so this could be “it cries out a spell which …” (Not sure why we would have pis rather than pise for “out” though?)
Yeah, that’s a good shout.
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Neither of them are real testers. Belford Statenpaker is an alias I’ve used occasionally in non-IF contexts. Amy Lukehart is a completely random name that I happened to run into in a different context, and picked out of a hat for this purpose. (Not a person I’ve ever met or interacted with.)
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Based on its first mention in the text, I had BUELY down as another body part (to go with GORNY), which makes this sentence sound significantly more horrifying than the tone of the game has previously suggested.
Unless (complete speculation) this sentence (ALL SITITIN and LAMB around you, MEFALO your VOLT with ISKOLEB of ZAOLB BUELY) is something like “Light flares and flashes around you, filling your vision with images of your own eyeballs”.
Oops! Good to know that someone is paying attention, at least …
I’ve put in “then” for slus; I’m sure that dus ought to be “which”, except for that one sentence you pointed out where that doesn’t work.
I don’t think it’s too much of a liberty to translate sabral as “fatal” (i.e. belonging/related to death), which makes it “fatal mistakes”, which is how I would have preferred to localise it anyway.
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Now, here’s a chain of reasoning which I think might shed some light on some other vocabulary:
When we first encounter the door, it seems hostile:
The DOOR FOUCO its EAST. It SLUNT by a FURSUN.
The DOOR throws a STAND VASI. You SHIAN the STAND with your PLOVER.
The stand and the east are both items which remain in the room, because we subsequently pick them up and take them with us.
During the final fight, something bad apparently happens to both of these when the corset casts its spell:
The BLUE EAST CRELN out of its NABILEN. The STAND VASI VORHEL in(to?) GREY ADAMUR.
The transcript subsequently refers to the east using the word blue, which wasn’t previously mentioned. This means that a blue must either be an “obvious” adjective to apply to the east, or that the blue is a specific part of the east. Since the point of the spell seems to be to deprive us of our equipment, I think it makes the most sense to read this as part of the east falling off. The stand vasi, on the other hand, sounds like it probably breaks into pieces. In desperation, we then pick up the blue and the pieces of the stand, and throw them at the corset.
The game reports this as:
You throw your UNDOY.
This is significant because undoy is the plural of undo, which appears in one of the player’s commands:
> EYE MIRROR ON UNDO
You FNOR the MIRROR LERULI on your PLOVER. For SISO SEDAN, you LERUO the EAST and STAND DURII.
So, here’s my take: undo is “weapon”. The east and stand are clearly weapons of some sort, and this command is something like “RUB POISON ON WEAPON”. That implies that the plover is our main weapon; that second sentence is something like “for good measure, you poison the east and stand as well.”
The plover is used several times earlier in the game:
> UNLOCK DOOR WITH PLOVER
Since the door seems hostile, it would make sense for this to be “attack door with plover”.
>ABOUT PAINT
(with the PLOVER)
The way the game infers that we want to use the plover for this suggests that it must be a somehow “obvious” item to use for the purpose. That would make sense if, for example, the plover were a bladed weapon and about is “cut”.
Two more exchanges from the corset fight are consistent with the plover being our “main” weapon. First:
> TRIM CORSET
You SKIAL VORT the circle and DOGON your PLOVER in the CORSET-EL BORM.
Trim could be “STAB” and the game’s response something like “You step across the circle and drive your plover into the corset’s heart.”
And secondly, that spell that apparently destroys the east and stand takes out the plover as well:
Your PLOVER JEVOL to VOLS in(to?) your NAMIBY.
“Your plover turns to dust in your hands.”
There’s one final detail: in our inventory listing, the plover is described as “e plover Serioli karesh” - note the capital letter, which must be something like a demonym. And so, may I please submit for the consideration of the jury that e plover Serioli karesh should rightly be translated as “an antique Elvish sword”, i.e. “an Elvish sword of great antiquity”.
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It could also be “magic” or “mighty” or some other adjective, but I agree with your reasoning otherwise!
I prefer DUS = “that” (and SES = something else, maybe “some”?). There’s also SESL which presumably is some kind of possessive form of SES?
I’ve been convinced that the burning is likely metaphorical; the possibility that GORNY = “eyes” suggests that, where there used to be fire,
TURN = “smoke.”
This word seems to fit nicely with the later parts of the transcript near the CORSET’s lair too.
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Given the theory that SEIS means “this”, “And thanks to Emily for SHADO this MARGHENSI” should be probably be “writing this walkthrough” or “providing this walkthrough”. Neither word appears elsewhere, so it’s a low-stakes translation.
Similarly, our light is provided by a HERNK ZATIN, neither word appearing elsewhere. With no way to tell whether this is a “brass lantern” or a “lantern brass”, we can pick arbitrarily. But I’m pretty sure it’s one or the other.
We start in a GARST NITH, and at the end we’ve left the GARSTY KUDORII. Based on this, I venture that GARST is “cave”.
At the end, the untranslated final menu option (with the original capitalization) is “help kuri WATCH hepy sogo”. We know that HELP is “read” and SOGO is “trying” (present participle); HEPY is presumably a plural noun, though it only appears here, and KURI is an unknown hapax.
The standard Inform 6 message here is “see some suggestions for AMUSING things to do”, but WATCH doesn’t end with -O, so the syntax here must be different. But I’m pretty sure HEPY is “things” or “actions”; with no other attestations, we just have to pick between those.
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I was about to complain that seis=“this” originated with the same sentence you’re now using it to translate! But I’d forgotten about the score message, which starts with seis pray zao for “this gives you”, supporting that theory pretty clearly.
It could be “writing/providing this walkthrough”, “running/hosting/organising this competition”, “inspiring this game/work/puzzle/monstrosity” or any one of a bunch of other possible variations. Readers, what are your favourites?
GARST is definitely a noun referring to a place, but I’m already pretty certain that TORSH is cave, and if not, SARD could potentially lay claim to it as well. At the end we make our way to the SNEEF TORSH (cave entrance?). And I don’t think the final sentence says that we have left the GARSTY KUDORII; I think it’s a reference to the text on the SUDNOGIL MAN.
The text of the SUDNOGIL MAN refers to “the VUPRABEN of this MORVONT” (side note: compare VUPRAM, earlier) which sounds like “the bearer of this document”. I realised recently that if MORVONT is “document” (referring to the SUDNOGIL MAN itself), that means that in the introduction, our adventurer is dreaming of finding gold, SILMY (jewels) and MORVONTY NOLVONT (something like “valuable documents”?). And indeed, after defeating the CORSET, we’re rewarded with a gold bar, an UPUSILM, a PACSILM and some kind of MORVONT!
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There’s really no way to know what the light source is, so “lantern brass” is as good a guess as any.
Definitely “lantern brass” though; both because Lionese generally prefers the main noun first; and because gold bar specifically is rendered “bar gold.” (And I guess the metals LION and ZATIN are somewhat similar in form.)
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We already can rule out a lot of these words: providing, making, game, etc. I’d restrict the poll to options that are plausible given what we know already about the language.
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Yeah, while a real language could have any number of synonyms for those things, in the context of this being intended as a sort of puzzle, it seems unlikely that the writer would use a one-off synonym in a context where an existing word or variation thereof could be used.
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