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TES Lore, TES: Skyrim

Dwemeris Translation Part Something!

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So after like, a million years, or just one, I’m getting back into fully figuring out what the Dwemeris means in the only translated passage we find in game.

th thuangz ahrk, th duum melz thuabtharng, th kanthaln duabcharn mzin thuastur,

ye sou liebali racurane, ye nu rautane sye, ye nu hautalle nou buroi

and your LIE-stones RACURANE, and you RAUTANE SYE, and you shall become our slaves,

Again, “th” appears where “and” is, and “thua” and again with the translation being “and your.” What in particular “ngz” means is unclear, but if the tradition is to combine “thua” with an object, “liebali” may be the translation for “ngz.” And actually, I think it may be “angz,” with a dropped vowel because it may not be needed with no meaning lost. Now, what if “liebali” meant “doom stone?” Clearly, “racu” is the same as in Ayleid which means “down” and I’m willing to bet that “racurane” is the Falmer version of “racuvar” in the past-tense.

“and your doom stones were cast down,”

Interestingly, “arhk” appears as it’s own word instead of a prefix and does not seem to mean”driven.” It could be a case for “arhk” to mean “your,” if it wasn’t for “thua” appearing in the next section of the sentence without “arhk,” and thua being in “thuastur” at the end.

Interestingly, “dua” shows again when “our” appears in the translation. Assuming that it is functioning a prefix possessive of the word to which it is attached, I can only assume (and hope) that bcharn is “slaves.” So “duabcharn” would literally mean “our slaves.” and that gives us some interesting grammar to work with as “thua” appears at the end of this section of the sentence prefixed to “stur.” That could mean “thuastur” = “you shall.”

Now this is sort of reminding me of the way Yoda speaks. “Through the Force, other things you will see.”

I’m beginning to think, at this point, that thua and dua both definitely are used as prefixes to nouns to mean a possessive.

btharumz thua mer zel.

GUNE your people’s GRAVULOI.

gune sou gravuloi

There’s not much here that we can do here, except GRAVULOI seems a little bit like an imperative version of a verb, If we take the Ayleid imperative suffix of “voy” and extrapolate that. Since we don’t have any actual Aldmeri to compare it with, Ayleid is the closest meric language that we have any sort of basis with.

Interestingly, “zel” may be the same word that appears in “Nchuand-Zel” and “Kagrenzel.” “Tel” in Dunmeri means “Tower.” “Fell” is a similar word meaning “City” that also appears in Dwemeris and may have a similar connection.

Also, “Gravia” in Ayleid means “ugly,” so I’m wondering if this sentence is giving an imperative to become “ugly” or a similar vein. Still, that doesn’t make much  sense at all. Then, there are also instances of “-voy” in this passage, and while many languages in real life have different forms of imperative, I think this may possibly be a different form of modifier or just an entirely different noun/verb.

I find it interesting that “thua” and “mer” appears in the Dwemeri version, but only “sou” in the Falmeri.

Dwemer: Abakch duumarkng tuathumz amakai, th abakch avatheled kagr tuamkingth mzan.

Falmer: sa metane sye garlis frey, as gondra doemera tarcel lane sou agea silya.

Translation: METANE SYE GARLIS FREY, by GONDRA DOEMERA TARCEL LANE your wisdom SILYA.

This sentence has less translation than any, but one thing is clear, “your wisdom.” Considering that “tua” is prefixed to “mkingth,” I’m willing to believe that “mkingth,” at least as a compound particle, means “wisdom.” Although, I’m wondering if this passage wasn’t at least partially misspelled or mistranslated, because I see “tua” appear twice, but only one version of it is translated. “Tye” in Ayleid means “you” so I’m conjecturing that “SYE” is the Falmer version and “tua” is the same. Now, in Ayleid, “TYE” may be the object form of “you.” I’m not too sure of this as “SYE” appears above and not in the same context, and doesn’t seem likely.

So that would make the translation “METANE you GARLIS FREY.” “Garlas” in Ayleid is the closest to “Garlis,” however that means “cavern” and I’m not so sure that’s what they mean.

Again, “Th” appears, but this time the translation appears to be “by.” This shows another similarity between Dwemeri and Ayleid in that one particle has several different meanings. If the Dwemer were interested in efficiency in their language, it’s quite possible that one particle started to take on several different meanings separately, as well, the meaning being clear in the context. (This is somewhat how Japanese works.)

I’m positive I’ve seen the term “doemera” before though, and preeeetty sure that the “mer” refers to “mer” as in “people.” If “doe” is another version of “dua” that might make “doemera” “our people.” However, the Dwemer version doesn’t show any hint that this may be the case.

Silya may be a version of “Sila” in Ayleid, meaning “shines” or “to shine.” If it is a past tense, it could mean “shone.” “your wisdom shines.” Sort of makes sense…

 Du chal fahlngark, che du fahl bthun ur.

nu hecta sou arcten, rias nu nemalanta ge.

You HECTA your ARCTEN, RIAS you NEMALANTA GE.

Now this is interesting. “Du” appears where “you” does, possibly indicating another state of “you.” “Thua/tua” seems to be predominantly a prefix, so this may be the non-possessive, second-person pronoun. It’s also similar to the Falmer/Ayleid “nu/ni” and one of the similarities Dwemeri still has with its cousins. “Duu” also appears aproximately where “SYE” does in the previous section.

Che is likewise interesting, appearing in the Dwemer script, as it is a Valenwood-Ayleid variant of “mer.”

ARCTEN could be a version of “Arcta” as in “Acknowledge” and may be more akin to “acknowledgement.” It likewise may be a version of “Arpen” which means “noble”

Looking over similar words to “rias,” I can’t wrap my head around anything but “ry” as the cousin to this. A thin limb, indeed, but if “rias” means “ry” and in English equals “as,” that would make it “You remember your acknowledgement, as you- SOMETHING.”

Breaking NEMALANTA down, it could be ne mala-nta, which is roughly equal to “never high” with some sort of modifier. It could be a compound of “mala”/”high” and “anda”/”long.”

I’m… sort of getting the impression it means “You remember your acknowledgements, and never rise again” or something along those lines.

 

Whew! That was a lot of work, but it’s been fun and interesting digging into made up languages like this. Someday, I really hope Bethesda fills out the languages of Tamriel and publishes a book or something on it. As of right now I do not know the existence of such a book, though I am aware of the places where you can learn the dragon language, which is kind of cool. There really should be something on the elven languages, though. The Elder Scrolls could be really great if Bethesda opened up the world like, say, Dungeons and Dragons did.

Games, TES: Skyrim

Re-posting “Life of a Dunmer”

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Back when Skyrim came out, I had made a post of humorous quotes about my in-character observations  of playing Skyrim for those first few weeks. Well… to me they were humorous, but we all know my sense of humor by now. Since my old blog is now no longer accessible, and now completely deleted since Posterous shut down their servers (thank you, Twitter, you assholes, for buying up one of the most promising blogging sites on the net.)

I didn’t want it to be lost. It was a good set of memories for me; running around Skyrim as a Dunmer for the first time. (FYI: I play Dunmer quite often because of their good range of versatility in the classes and also because they are hands down the best race to play as a vampire.)

December 2 2011, 4:54 PM

Skyrim: Life of a Dunmer

“Sergius at the College always pisses me off with insults. So I pick pocketed his boots right off his feet. He’s now walking around barefoot as if nothing ever happened, because he’s too embarrassed to say anything.”

“Arcadia must be blind. She keeps thinking I’m one of those damned Nords. I mean, it’s a bit difficult mistaking a Dunmer for a Nord. I could see someone mistaking an Imperial for a dark haired Nord, but the pointed ears should be screaming ‘Hi! I’m an Elf!.’ Let alone other things.”

“So I get that the mates at the Guild don’t mind me wearing my Nightingale armor around, Karliah, but the entire world has gone stupid. I walked around Solitude for a day and nobody batted an eyelash.”

“Every time I step out into the courtyard of the College, there’s that damn dragon skeleton, getting up and dancing, as if to taunt me. Then, there’s two more on the towers. I’m starting to miss cliff racers.”

“Oh, I stopped changing into my regular clothes when I’m in town. I wear my armor all the time now. Why? Because every time I stepped outside a damn dragon attacked. It got a little annoying having to strip right there in the street and put on my armor while the dragon burned the town down around me. I had to do that for a full week straight. I’m afraid the citizens of Dawnstar will never respect me for that.”

“Every once in a while, I wish Dirge and Vekel would say “Hi, boss.” Even Vex does once in a while, and I had to pinch a lot of pockets to get in her good graces. There’s only so much you can take of being called Brynjolf’s new protege when I’m the Guild Master. And Dirge. He just needs to relax.”

“Sometimes the guards will tell me my breath smells odd and ask what I’ve been eating. I find that odd in a land full of unwashed barbarian Nords.”

“I may be a bit jaded, but after slogging through Oblivion closing gates with the Vvardenfel militia, surviving volcanic eruptions and natural disasters, nights without moons and days without sun, the Great War, and wars with Daedric princes- fighting a lone dragon in the afterlife just seems a little bit anti-climatic.”

“I never expected Rolff Stone-fist to show up at my wedding. It’s well known how he feels about our kind, yet there he was. I suppose my fists made more of an impression on him than I thought.”

“You know, it might be a good idea to hide your gold better if you’re going to be teaching me pickpocketing. As it is, I’m just going to steal your fee back, you idiot.”

Games, TES Lore

The Races of Daedra; Deaths, Rebirths, and Love?

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Today’s topic is the Daedra. Not the monsters like the Clannfear or the Scamp, but the humanoid daedra like Dremora, Mazken and Aureals. There’s other daedric races out there, but few that we’ve seen so much of in the series. Therefore, races like the Aurorans, Spider Daedra and Winged Twilights are out of the scope of this post.

In Tamrielic lore, little is actually known about these  races and not much on the way their daily lives operate. We do known the Dremora call themselves the “Kyn” and have a strong hierarchical structure, as well have several clans. In addition, not all dremora clans appear to be in service to Mehrunes Dagon, or rather I should say individual dremora whose presence implies that there may be clans that operate outside of the Deadlands and in service to other Princes. Skyrim and Dragonborn strongly suggests there is some in service to Hermaeus Mora and Sanguine, for instance. In fact, Sanguine’s artifact, the Sanguine Rose, summons a dremora fighter.

From what I remember of Shivering Isles, and I admit, it’s been a while… The Mazken and Aureals of the Shivering Isles seem to have a similar structure to the Dremora as far as hierarchy goes, but we get more personal with them and as a result, it’s not quite as obvious. They are not enemies with varying levels of difficulty as evidenced in the generic names, like the majority of the Dremora we see in Oblivion.

Both races are female-oriented as opposed to the Dremora male oriented focus, though males of both species are more evident than dremora females, there being only one dremora female encountered in the entire series. The males of both Mazkens and Aureals are considered inferior to the females, even by the males themselves. Last time I played Shivering Isles, I seem to remember at least one male commenting somewhat unhappily about that. The similarities suggest that the Mazken and Aureals could be considered in the same “family” as each other, though they view each other with suspicion and more than a little rivalry.

The differences between the two races are in their physical forms and attitudes. The description from Shivering Isles of the Mazken implied they were more amiable to the mortal races, either being more drawn to them, or more tolerate and understanding of them, while the Aureals were more arrogant and looked down on mortals as a superior race.

Now, keep these things in mind, because I’m going to get into theories about their reproductive capability. This might be “who cares” to more casual players, but it’s somewhat important to people interested in the lore of the series, and the birth of certain individuals in the wider universe has been in debate in the fandom.

Recently, as in the past few months, I was going through some lore discussion forums and I noticed someone made a comment in response to someone else that the daedra absolutely do not reproduce and absolutely do not have gender and only appear as what they wish.

Poppycock.

This may be true of the Daedric Princes, and I’m not even sure about that, but this doesn’t appear true for the male Mazken and Aureals. If they could take any form they wished, why even have males of the species, unless it was out of some honor-bound sense of duty? It may be true of the Dremora, since we see only one female, and that might even have been an inadvertent error on part of the game devs, but then we need to think about Velehk Sain and the book about him, where one verse could be interpreted as that Velehk Sain was a murderous, rapacious pirate.

And as for the Princes, sure, they can take their own forms, but again, that style of thinking is completely disregarding the Tamrielic legend of the first Vampire who had been a Nedic Virgin and was raped by Molag Bal. Serana from Dawnguard won’t even speak of her initiation into Vampirehood and becoming a Daughter of Coldharbour other than it was “degrading.”

While there certainly are neuter species of daedra out there, at least these three daedric races appear to function more like mortals do. I mean, what reason do Velehk Sain and the Dremora Merchant have for acquiring wealth? Sure, you may argue that it’s out of boredom from an unimaginably old lifespan, but at Velehk Sain seemed attached to his treasure, and the Merchant seemed more interested in haggling. During the main quest line of Shivering Isles, the Mazken and Aureals are even able to die like mortals as their physical respawning thingamajigs were taken over by the forces of Order, preventing them from being recreated.

In Tamrielic lore, there’s a book called Racial Phylogeny or Notes on Racial Phylogeny depending on which game you are playing. The entire thing is about the reproductive compatibility of the different races, and specifically mentions daedra. The book offers no proof one way or the other that they are able to reproduce, but does imply that there have been stories of mortal races and daedra couples. This, combined with the fact that there are actual genders among the races of daedra suggests that they may, in fact, be capable of it. Dremora tend to be male, with only one known example of a female dremora appearing in Oblivion. The Mazken or Seducers and Aureals or Golden Saints tend toward the female side, with males appearing rarely and implied to be inferior to the females (what a refreshing change.) Now, while they don’t need to because they are able, through Oblivion’s power itself or through the Princes they serve, to be recreated or reborn or however you wish to put it, that does not necessarily follow they are incapable of it, just like they are aren’t necessarily incapable of dying.

Even more interesting evidence rests in Batltespire, where part of the story is that Mehrunes Dagon himself took a Dark Seducer as a lover. As a lover. Who then in turn betrayed him and was killed, et ctr et ctr. But it is quite interesting that there are examples of liaisons amongst the daedra themselves.

There is more than enough wiggle room here for this to be possible, but as it stands there is just not enough evidence to claim one way or the other that they can’t function. There is evidence, however, that they can die under certain circumstances and do have souls, and that’s enough for me that they can do the rest.

Games, TES: Skyrim

Re-posting “Skyrim, Spoilers, and those damned Nords”

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November 27 2011, 12:39 AM

Skyrim

Skyrim came out a couple of weeks ago. I’m thoroughly enjoying the game when I’m not being jolted out of immersion when I see the water clipping into the ground or that the game still suffers from many of the things that Oblivion did, such as terrain texturitis and closeup texturitis. Nor the fact that the Dunmer look like they have funky Romulan eyebrow ridges that I fully intend on fixing when the CK finally comes out, since even in Morrowind they didn’t look like that. Oh, and not to mention the x10 factor of game breaking bugs, such as Esbern’s voice bug or the Season Unending/Civil War bug for example. It seems almost as if Bethesda was so much in a hurry to get Skyrim released on that 11-11-11 date they skipped beta testing, and opted to rely on patches.

Considering how much they left in Oblivion for the Unofficial Oblivion Patch to fix, that makes me rather nervous. The UOP suffers from some bugs of its own, one where if you do a certain non-quest the Oblivion gate map markers will disappear. What will happen with Skyrim’s more advanced, more complicated system?

At any rate, they have at least improved the stealth system, making it actually possible for thief characters to be a viable option, something I’ve always been disappointed with in Oblivion. Also, mages are far more viable as well, and with a mod that tweaks things just a bit, are really very awesome. My first character is something of a combination of the two, like a Nightblade, so naturally she joined the College of Winterhold. During the Magic Anomaly attack, she shot lightning bolts from her fingers and destroyed all who stood in her way, along side of her college mates, who preferred more unusual forms of magic. Such as raising undead chickens.

One of my more favorite aspects of the game is sneaking around and sniping off targets with my Daedric bow. Bows actually do a decent amount of damage, and with enchantments, can actually kill someone in one hit, particularly of you have the perks to increase basic bow damage and sneak attack.

I’m a little disappointed with the whole enchantment system, on the other hand, as there’s even less to enchant in Skyrim than in Oblivion, and far far less than Morrowind. There’s also only one enchantment per item unless you have the Two Enchantments perk. To get a decent enchantment you practically have to be wearing a full suit of Fortify Enchantment gear, or find an Epic Item somewhere and skip enchanting at all.

Oh, here’s a video of an interesting way of completing Wolfskull Cave using only a bow and some luck.

I don’t know, there’s something satisfying about sneaking up on someone. It’s gotten better since Oblivion, but still, there’s times where I would be creeping around downstairs and some idiot upstairs had x-ray vision that could see me steal that loaf of bread. You can put a bucket on a shopkeeper’s head and steal them blind, but if the door is closed and they’re on the other side of it, you still get caught. Such inconsistency.

I may be biased due to my love of the classic-yet-almost-unheard-of Thief series, though. Now that is a stealth system I wish they would have used, it was one of the best, even in Deadly Shadows where the NPC AI was of questionable design (I mean, you can have the Pagans and the Brotherhood go at it in the streets and you’d be watching from a rooftop, the guards would find the body and still blame you. I mean what?).

Despite all that, I think the most value in Skyrim probably lays outside of the Main Quest and the dragons, so much hyped and yet it falls rather short. I was expecting more of an epic battle, kind of like the end of Oblivion, but no, it’s more of a personal quest over anything, and not a particularly epic one, either. That title would go to Planescape: Torment in Epic Personal Journey. I had to say I was a little disappointed with that. If I think about it, it really seems like a side quest more than anything. There’s only so many dragon attacks you can have before it gets boring.

And one last thing. Skyrim’s full of those damned Nords. They were annoying in Morrowind and Oblivion, but now it takes new heights. I can’t understand why anyone would even consider joining the Stormcloaks, especially if their character is an elf. The character of Ulfric seems to not grasp anything of what is going on with the Empire, being so obsessed with worshiping Talos and freeing Skyrim from the Imperial “tyranny,” he fails to see where the Imperials don’t like the Thalmor any more than they do. He fails to see that the Imperials may be planning another war, one that they might win, and everything he does in Skyrim negates that. One of the characters in Solitude said something to the effect that “Talos worship may be banned, but Tiber Septim was a man once, and this was his Empire.” and implied Ulfric was interested more in power rather than freedom. Because of this, I find Ulfric to be completely hypocritical. To worship Talos, or to preserve what he had created in life. What would have been better to honor him with? Ulfric has a lot of petty vanity and a severe lack of foresight.

Just got to keep my fingers crossed and hope the next game is in the Summerset Isles with all that delicious politicking and spying. And with the descriptions of the cities… That would make a truly epic game.

Game dev, Games, TES: Skyrim

Alchemy Overdose Mod

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So, one of my first characters in the Tamriel world was an Alchemist. It was a custom class, one that focused on the Alchemy skill with a side helping of magicka and some minor skills in One-Handed.

To me, the Skyrim perk tree for Alchemy seemed weak. So I started up a little mod that tweaked the heck out of the Alchemy skills to increase the potency of created potions. Most mods out there that tweak magicka didn’t really seem to touch the Alchemy skill.

I won’t lie and pretend I had balance in mind as so many perk tweaking mods do (and then proceed to make life a living hell if you actually rely on those skills coughstealthrebalancedcough), especially for high levels in the skill. It just seems to me that if you’re a Master Alchemist (or Master Anything really) you should be able to make legendary items. Since it’s a perk tree, alchemy will be pretty much the same if you don’t invest in the perks, but the idea behind it is to make the potions more useful than 2 seconds of freaking invisibility, for example, especially when starting out with Alchemy perks, and by the end, being able to do amazing things with the ingredients. I got really tired of having a billion useless potions in my inventory that weren’t worth selling.

To that end, I restructured some of the default perks, combining the perks dealing with beneficial potions into one set of perks, and creating a new perk with the leftover.

Instead of making the healing potions super strong and the other beneficial potions somewhat strong, it makes everything a little bit stronger in general, but the overall boost to healing potions is slightly less than what it is in default. I thought it was a good sacrifice to make. Poisons get an extra boost as well.

The leftover perk went into a boost for skill-based potions, so your smithing potion should work just a little bit better.

I also added some high level perks to increase ingredient gathering, my thinking is that an experienced alchemist would know how to use more parts of the plant, and unless my memory is totally failing me, that had been one of the added effects of gaining Alchemy skill in Oblivion.

From Oblivion, I really missed the ability to create two potions at once, so I added that back into Skyrim, too, placing it at the higher end of the skill tree.

A truly exceptional Master Alchemist should be able to do these things, I’m reasoning out. You hear the stories of what Alchemists and Enchanters can do in lore, but you never get to do them yourself. Likewise, I feel if your enchanting skill is at 100 and you’ve got all the perks you should be able to reconstruct the Staff of Chaos.

The mod itself is in an alpha stage, as I am not quite sure if I tweaked the skill potions properly, but testing it out should prove interesting.