The Let's Play Archive

Amulets & Armor

by Mzbundifund, Bacter

Part 36: Scroll decoding, thanks RoeCocoa!

djw175 posted:

Well, I failed.

Far from it. I was lost before I read your post, but with the head start you provided, I was able to solve most of it in fifteen minutes.

First, let's see what we can glean from the "Rosetta scroll."

code:
my name is belisar
my]n!m:!s]b!l!s!r]
This cypher has four rules:
All consonants (including "Y" whether or not it acts as a vowel) are left intact.
! represents any vowel not at the end of a word.
] is a space that follows a consonant.
: is a vowel followed by a space.

So, take the messages, add the spaces where they belong, and fill in the vowels with an arbitrary placeholder:

code:
nama aval as baal ha baalt tawar babal dragans ara has baasts

lavas agaan wath wafa matharastarta namad tha tawar baaldar raancarnata as baal astarta namad wafa baal mathar

rajact baal ambraca way trath lafa yhwh yhwh andraw apastla martyr

daanna as astarta falsa qaaan af haavan

baal astarta sarvants dagartha gaasarac alymas apalla mattan tawar namad than vatarax altrac araas

balasar dafandad kangdam almara fall fram graca axagaas bacama haratac haanrach saw trayapalla asaaas saw has glary

araas danaas tranaty achaaan gad as apalla tawar as an babylan
Say, some of those look like actual words now-- we're one-fifth of the way there! We shall now attempt to reverse-engineer the Spaghatta Nadle-speak by making educated guesses at the remaining vowels. Fortunately, the cypher is based on plain English, and the game uses a lot of names from real history and mythology. Unfortunately, English was never meant to be written without vowels (unlike Hebrew or Arabic, where they can be readily inferred from the context), the samples are devoid of articles, and some of the names are total ass-pulls. (I mean, "Elmore?" Really? Pfft.)

code:
Name evil is Baal he built tower Babel dragons are his beasts

Lives again with wife motherAstarte** N!m!d* the tower builder reincarnate as Baal Astarte N!m!d* wife Baal mother

Reject Baal embrace way truth life YHWH YHWH Andrew apostle martyr

D!!nn! is Astarte false queen of heaven

Baal Astarte servants Jugurtha g!!s!r!c !lym!s Apollo m!tt!n tower N!m!d th!n v!t!r!x !ltr!c !r!!s

Belisar defended kingdom Elmore fell from grace !x!g!!s became heretic Heinrich saw tr!y!p!ll!** !s!!!s saw his glory

!r!!s denies trinity !ch!!!n god is Apollo tower is in Babylon
* According to the book of Genesis, it was Nimrod who built the Tower of Babel. After his death, he was likely deified by the Babylonians (some scholars identify him with Marduk), hence "reincarnate as Baal." So, "n!m!d" could be "named," or it could be missing an "R" to make "Nimrod" in this instance.

** I think there are some missing spaces here, which would probably make the first one "mother Astarte" and the second one "Troy Apollo."

I've tried to refrain from extrapolating too much. Like djw175 said, that list of servants will probably make more sense when we hear more character names.