bravenewworld | studying is fun, right?

[Merrill is definitely the odd one out in this group. She can tell right away that the other three already know each other. It's a little awkward, but she's too excited about getting to help out to show it much more than her usual baseline level of socially stupid.]

Oh, this is so exciting!

Let's hope it's fruitful. [ Haruka turns a page, looking through this archaeology book in the hopes something transcribed in it will have similar-looking writing to the scrolls. Her Swadloon is on the floor, sulking. He had heard books had "leaves" and has just been grievously disappointed. ] Wad.

[Setsuna's been quiet ever since she took the scrolls and cracked open several books. Lethe, Charon, and Hecate are all also spread throughout the library and working diligently. Setsuna figured the pokemon might pick up on something she missed and between Charon's keen eyes, Hecate's Psychic abilities, and Lethe's growing breadth of knowledge it seemed like a good team.

She pauses in her reading to stretch, reaching up and letting her shoulders pop softly in the quiet of the library.]

Searching and translating takes time Haruka.

[Michiru is quietly reading, though she hasn't looked at the scrolls in a while. This isn't her area of expertise, but she'll try to get a better scope of the whole thing. Her Roselia is leaning up against the Swadloon in solidarity, though she has been charged with the task of keeping a sleeping Togepi from rolling off. Looks like Mommy's working.

Merrill gets a small smile though.] I'd hate to see what your idea of boring is.

[no offense, Setsuna]

[What a weird set of scrolls!

Haruka will find that there's really no direct comparison of symbols or anything to be found in the scrolls. The Old Calderan script is superficially similar to what's found in the Old City underneath Union, but it's off. Like trying to use a Italian dictionary to translate Latin.

Michiru, in her readings, will find an excellent book on Ascertaining the Age of Pottery: A Study in Glazes which is strangely captivating but it seems pretty useless for this.

Setsuna, having taken the scrolls, may make a little headway if she has any sense of pattern recognition or code cracking. There's writing in two columns, and there are four scrolls total.]

...Is there anything I can help with?

[Merrill makes her way around, glancing at what each of them are looking at in turn.]

Not unless you have an ancient dictionary.

[ Haruka pushes herself away from her books, getting up to look for other sources. True, there's similarities between the alphabets here that someone more scholastically-minded might be able to parse through -- and Merrill is free to take a look at the samples Haruka has discovered -- but language arts is Haruka's worst subject. She'll leave comparative linguistics to the academics and find a different approach to this problem, if possible.

Right, getting up, pacing the room, clearing her head. Think big-picture. What are other possible ways to approach translating besides comparing alphabets? Treating the whole thing like a code?

Swadloon watches her pace, concerned. If you're not using it, is he allowed to eat the pages in this book he's found? He's hungry. ] Swadloon.

[Seeing as Setsuna works with patterns a lot in both the sciences and in fashion it's not too difficult for her to make that connection. She peers at the scrolls, holding them up next to each other and occasionally moving them around in order. She looks over to Merrill]

There's some sort of pattern here. I can say that much, though that isn't going to take us far in translation. Some of these look similar enough to texts I've seen from the Old City that have come through the University, but just barely.

[Well, that's interesting. Much more interesting than this book, at any rate. Why did she pick it up again...?

To Setsuna:] Mind if I take a look at one of the scrolls?

[patterns are a far cry from needing to have the depth of knowledge associated with research. It's almost artsy.]

[Let's call these Scrolls A through D.

Each scroll is filled with spidery script and symbols. But the curiosity that Setsuna might recognize after taking a good look at each of them is... that they seem to be following a pattern. If Scroll A reads #52#91kJ, then Scroll B reads #68#21aD and so on and so forth.

What could be the reason for this?

When Merrill glances around, she will find three of the scrolls utterly foreign, but Scroll C may have a symbol here or there that she recognizes as similar to those from old Dalish.

Michiru can also take a look, but she'll come to the same conclusion that all of the scrolls seem to be something very much like what's found in the Old City.

Swadloon can secretly eat a page if he likes; no one's watching right now, anyway.]

Oh...!

[Merrill stops at Scroll C, running her finger gently down the page.]

I know these! Sort of. They look a little like the language my people used before the time of the Savior.

[She'll point out the ones she recognizes one by one.]

This one... and this one... and this.

Do they make sense in context?

[ This attracts Haruka back to Merrill's side. Progress is worth observing.

A faint munching sound is heard from below. ]

Even knowing a few words could help. [Setuna glances at Merrill for confirmation. She then also looks back at the scrolls, skimming the foreign symbols and words for any repeating clusters. That could mean they're the same word and might lead to something...this is a lot more difficult than she'd been led to believe.]

[glancing up. Perhaps this might have more to do with Merrill's search for her people than they had previously believed.]

[The pieces of the puzzle may begin to fall together...

Setsuna will find that there are repeating clusters. And there are repeating clusters in the same spot on each scroll. Merrill will see that the symbols she identifies are occasionally repeated throughout... and on each corresponding place on the other scrolls, there will be the same repeats.

These are four documents of the same passage, written in four different variations of old languages.]

So they're all the same?

[Merrill blinks, scratching her head.]

Where did you find these again...?

Does it matter?

[ ...Maybe she'd better keep going so that doesn't sound suspicious, huh. Haruka is a bit frustrated to hear the scroll are all just the same thing over and over again. She has to endure it. ]

They're Calderan. We don't have the resources to know more than that.

((Hey guys! Setsuna's player has gone on hiatus! Did you guys want to continue without her or should we hold off until she returns?))

((I'm in no hurry. I'll leave it up to her castmates, though.))

[[ I'm okay with waiting too! ]]

[[...npcing Setsuna sounds hard so. Yeah. Waiting. \o/]]

[Setsuna doesn't want to mark the documents. But the repeating clusters almost beg to be highlighted or something. She starts copying the words onto a scratch of paper instead.]

Ancient civilizations often would copy scrolls by hand since there was no method to print copies otherwise. These could be translations across the years or even just regional differences. It would explain the slight deviations but the pattern remaining the same.

[She finishes writing the passages out on her paper, each repeated passage now spaced apart on her paper. She's not sure if that will help or not, but it makes it easier to compare now that they are all on the same piece of paper to examine.]

[she's paying attention to what Setsuna is writing down. Repeated words, huh? What could be so important that they remain consistent in every translation?]

They could be names, or names of places.

Places?

[Merrill hurries over to where Michiru and Setsuna are working, leaning over to look at the newly copied passages.]

Can you read any of them?

[Setsuna has definitely cottoned on to the right idea. Each scroll can be used to translate the others and to give a good idea of old languages since they all say the same thing.

Of the four scrolls, one is old Dalish, another is quite likely to be old Calderan and is slightly recognizable, and the third is probably the most recognizable to Setsuna and is quite possibly a precursor to what Union uses now. The last one is a mystery, although it's about as far removed as old Calderan is.

One of the most repeated symbols, in all of the scrolls, has something to do with 'ground' or 'earth' though slightly corrupted. It definitely seems to be a name. Something like Ground-lord?]

[ Haruka has no formal translation training, but even she can spot a pattern like that. She points at the prevalent symbol. ] What's that one?

[ Swadloon has finished his page. He would like to eat more, but that feels greedy. So he shuffles off into a corner to wait. ]

[Merrill peers at the symbol, mouthing something silently to herself before sounding it out loud for the others.]

Ground... Lord.

[She blinks before looking around at the others.]

It's written like a name, or perhaps a title. 'Ground' would be 'alas' in Old Dalish. Vhen'alas if it's a reference to the planet. But this is written a little differently than that.

[Setsuna's eyes move from the Old Dalish scroll that Merrill recognizes to the scroll that she has mainly been pulled to, mostly because the words here are more familiar. She frowns but then nods.]

That would correspond with this word here then.

[She points to one of the repeated phrases on the third scroll.]

It's very old, but now that you've pointed it out I do recognize the text for 'Lord' and it wouldn't be too far off to think this word next to it is 'Ground.'

Well, that's a start. [considering how Merrill was sounding it out, it could be a phonetic language. And if they've got that, maybe they can piece together the rest of it from what they know.

To Merrill:] Does anything else look familiar?

Let me take a look... most of the old language has been lost, but a few words still survive.

[Merrill sits down in front of the Old Dalish text to take a closer look, tracing her finger carefully down the page to see if there's anything else she recognizes.]

[Of the remainder of the repeated words, one can definitely be phonetically sounded out as something like 'caldaria' on one of the scrolls - the sounds are transcribed into the other languages to match something close to 'cal-dar-ah'. The rest are more ambiguous; there's another ambiguous proper noun/title that starts with something like 'magma' or 'lava'. Depending on Setsuna and Merrill's ability, they'll be able to make out words like 'war' and 'protection' fairly often and maybe even ambiguous phrases like 'raise the land'.

The general gist seems to be that this is referencing some sort of deity of the earth that once protected the land before a great war erupted. It's unclear whether this is a war between the gods or a human war.]

[ Haruka watches over Merrill's shoulder for a while, realizes this is all just pretense because she can't read a word, and then wanders to conveniently end up behind Michiru, reaching for the other woman's hand under the table to squeeze it. You ladies are doing a great job. They're making real progress!

Not that she can say that, or betray her excitement, with a non-Divine Defense Force member in their ranks. But she's listening intently and ready to assist with anything that doesn't involve already knowing how to read one of these languages. ]

[Setsuna's joining with the ranks of the Divine Defense Force means she's been spending a lot of time reading older texts related to the Savior and Legendary pokemon. War and protection come up a lot in those texts so those words are the next that pop out to Setsuna.]

...something...about a war? Or maybe it's a battle. Either way this Lord of the Ground or whatever is associated some kind of conflict that happened long ago.

Do you think it's from the time of your peoples' Savior?

[Haruka's hand gets a squeeze back.

To Merrill:] It could be. [glance at Setsuna] Depending on which side this Ground Lord was.

[That's about all! The grammar is just a little too archaic to be able to put those words together in a perfectly clear manner. Discussion and theorizing may begin.]

Given where - [ "we found these" is probably a bad thing to say in mixed company ] these were found, it could be Caldera's red giant.

[ In which case it's a god. But there were a lot of gods associated with that cataclysm, right? Could it really be called a "war"? ]

[Setsuna stares at the text for a few minutes longer, but she has the feeling that's about all she is going to be able to get through today.]

It's difficult to say more than what's been said already. It's going to be conjecture from there.

We got a lot done, though!

[...the most logical thing to do would be to go back to the dang volcano and talk to the shiny Arcanine. Bring bribes and a properly modest attitude. It could be dangerous, but well. What better way to learn about the gods, other than the gods themselves? ~~Incapacitating one with a suspicious rock apparently doesn't count.~~

Michiru has to wonder if this "Ground Lord" has taken a shine to Hotaru's lamp.

She's got her usual smile on, however.] I suppose we could all use a break.

[Michiru, you didn't even do anything.]

[ Haruka nods. ] It's a start. There might be references that line up in resources we haven't checked yet.

[ Not that she's going to be much help there either. But she could try.

Or, yeah. They could go speak with the messenger some more. Food for thought. ]

studying is fun, right?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

won't be back till Wed, feel free to skip

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject