OOC: These translations are based on the documents shown
here.
Talon takes little note of the dwarf speaking with Jin as he has become consumed with deciphering the papers before him. He uses the back of the vellum sheet with the letter to Hankel and starts writing on it with a quill and he borrows from the bartender. He starts by listing letters down the side of the sheet.
A
B
C
D
E
etc, etc...
Then he begins the process of comparing the translated letter to the one still in rune form. Once he has the alphabet deciphered except for a few characters that remain unknown, he starts on the laborious process of translating the other rune covered sheet which holds much more text. Looking back and forth between his notes and the rune covered sheet, he begins mumbling to himself as he figures out the words and writing ...
[sblock=The Story]
'This is the story of the shame of Walryn as recorded by Bardir, King of Rioc Parvel.
The elder blue wyrm craved the lightening crystal that grows beneath Avenroc. He heard of it when dwarves from the mainland began mining into the belly of the island. Arkus Mast Gimlord was their king, and the only dwarf in history known not to fear the ocean.
The dwarves first landed on their tiny island-within-an-island lured by the presence of an active volcano. Unable to resist this natural forge, they established the stronghold of Rioc Parvel within its roots, and set to work.
They found little iron, and no gold, but what they did find surpasses even their wildest dreams. Now, when a dwarf finds iron, he will fight for it. If he finds gold, he will die for it. The lightening crystal, however, was as precious to these dwarves as their eternal souls.
Arkus was actually the one who first found the stone and understood its worth. He was leading a patrol on the rim of the mountain, when his foot struck a small blue stone embedded in the path. Curious, he examined it, and found that it appeared to be a blue fire trapped inside a clear crystal. Mistaking it for sapphire, he fashioned it into a jewel to adorn his axe and thought no more of it than a beautiful thing to look at.
All dwarven strongholds have their share of adversaries, and Rioc Parvel was no different. When storm giants threatened to destroy the dwarves work, a brutal war ensued. Arkus led the dwarves to battle and discovered that his ace was blesses with the gift of thunder. The very air shook with every blow, and blue light glistened off of the blade. It didn't take long for Arkus to realize that he had fashioned a relic by accident. The axe came alive, almost sentient, and his followers began to fear him. Giants fell before the axe, and soon the dwarves' supremacy was established.
Arkus wasted no time in taking advantage of his find. He ordered the mining of the mountain to increase in earnest. The largest single gem measured ...' "Something...must be a number" 'hands wide by' "Some other number" 'handspan deep. This they named The Moonstone. Cut with geometric facets, it was fashioned into a steel setting and positioned at the summit of the mountain. From there, it harnessed the power of lightning storms and channeled the energy to smaller stones for use in mining the rock below. Pressurizing these smaller crystals would release the energy collected by the Moonstone and shatter the bedrock with more precision and power than any dwarven machine.
Other weapons were also fashioned using the crystal until all of Arkus' personal guard held powerful weapons capable of slaying any natural creature, or so they thought.
Bardir was born to Arkus shortly after the war of the storm giants and when he was grown, it was he who had both the shame and the fortune to be trading with the mainland when the elder blue wyrm descended on the dwarves of Rioc Parvel.
Believing their weapons to be invulnerable, the dwarves engaged the wyrm, but quickly realized that they had been mistaken. The elder blue wyrm feared no lightning and using his own, he tore into the dwarves. Stamping them out like so many beetles, even the Moonstone itself was useless against him, and it did not take long for the wyrm to lay waste to Rioc Parvel and claim it for his own. Long he lay in the forges of the mountain. Mourning his mate, and guarding his scion, an egg he had carried with him.
The storm giants returned but kept their distance. As a gesture of tribute, they forged for the wyrm a helm that harnessed the power of his breath, but though he accepted the gift, he refused to form an alliance with them.
The island, on which Rioc Parvel stood was no stranger to dragons, the sisters' Sylvantex and Methanine lived in the forest to the west and seized an opportunity. They feared the power of the dwarves because of their numbers, but the elder blue wyrm, though powerful, was alone. The breath of a green dragon is death even to the blue wyrm, and soon the sisters inherited the dwarven plunder.
The egg, however, escaped notice. It hatched in a remote corner of the forge, and the baby wyrm, being exposed to the poisonous breath from within his egg, had unknowingly become immune. Craving food, and being small, he escaped the mountain, and notice. The creatures of the forest called him Walryn or Trickster, and as fate would have it, he moved into the forest lair that the sisters had left behind.'[/sblock]His back aching from bending over the bar which he had scribbled on while doing the tedious translation work, Talon finally looked up to notice the world around him again. Stretching his neck to work out the kinks, he glanced through the other papers they had recovered. With a rush of insight, he realized that the note which was partly transcribed was written by the Bardir in the story and that the Hankel the box was for would be his son and heir!
Looking at the map again, he realized with frustration that the letters were all different from the ones he had already translated. And with no partly translated page to start him off, it was much harder to decode. He guessed that the compass points were 'N, S, E, and W' and that the word under the bar with numbers could be 'miles'. This gave him eight letters to work with. Not enough though, after trying for a while more. Although one thing did catch his eye on the map. In the center of the island was a large mountain that could be a volcano, and the number of runes in the name beneath it might be right for it to be 'Rioc Parvel' like in the story. If it was, then the I, E, and L did match up from what he guessed based on the compass and the legend which he though was in 'miles'. And even worse, there was a third type of writing on the map in twisty flowing letters. Maybe he'd show all this to the others and see what they thought.
Moving to Jin's side opposite the dwarf, Talon laid the papers down and shoved them in front of his comrade to have him look at.
"What'cha think, Jin?" Talon asked the ronin.
Which is of course when he saw something new on the top of the chest itself.
"Gimlord!" Talon exclaimed.
"And if that's a G and that's a D... then I can put those in there..." Talon yanks the papers back again and starts scribbling furiously further deciphering the map.
"Those big letters at the top right would be 'Aleinhest', and by the compass is 'Rioc Stang' with 'Stang Torm' below that maybe? Some other stuff I can't figure out all the way... something, something, 'do not land'. Another something something 'The Modhet's Hand' Heh, it rhymes! Something, something, 'The _ _ rth Canal'. And the last something something, and 'The wom_' Maybe 'The womb'? And if that's a 'b' for womb, then the one above that is probably 'The Birth Canal'. Hmm, weird."
Leaning his newly found spear against the bar to look more closely at the runes inscribed on it, he slowly translates the passage that he reads aloud "When it is my turn I will show you my power. Hmmm, that was on that dagger down there too. Interesting." Talon finishes, finally still and thinking only to himself. His brain has had its biggest workout in a long while, and it shows. He orders a mug of Wayne's Ale for himself to dull the oncoming headache.
[sblock=OOC]Anybody wanna bet me some money that HMG's name DOESN'T stand for 'Hankel Mast Gimlord' ?? Any takers? Most of my day today has gone to doing this translation and typing this post. Whew! I'm tuckered out. It's been fun though. And the last minute stuff that 'Talon' figured out at the last minute when handing the papers to Jin was actually stuff I figured out right then as I was typing up the post and thought I had deciphered as much as possible. I was wrong. Maybe later we'll get a full translation and see how close I got.
Also, a question for HMG. Please tell me somebody grabbed that dagger that was inscribed with the same phrase as Talon's spear! I didn't stress on it because I had MY magic weapon and others were finding their own stuff and I figured it would go to somebody. Did we actually leave it behind on the table? Looking at the treasure list, I don't see anyone getting a dagger. Ugh. Hope we didn't leave it behind.[/sblock]
(I did edit it a little so you'll see some differences).[/sblock][sblock=dagger]Sorry. It's still in the thieves' den 
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