The "forgotten" Guild of Linguist

[MystMan]

I'll admit... I don't call E=MC^2 a very simple equation. Simple in formula, maybe, but not simple at all.

Not in my mind.

[Jojon]

I think that nothing that powerful could be simple... You know what I mean? My strongest theory is that they're just what the name implies: great <i>words</i>. Simply words with certain meaning, words that aren't used in everyday speech and writing, but are reserved to the Art.

The problem with single very powerful statements, is that what they gain in scope, they lose in flexibility. If I, for instance, had a word that meant: "guy that walks into a bar at three o clock in the afternoon, wearing a yellow-spotted iguana on his head and ordering a serving of fish and chips with chocolate sauce", I could express something very specific with a single word, but it would be of no use for anything else and I'd require a gargantuan vocabulary, whereas having separate words for things like iguanas and fish and means of quantisation, means you can puzzle together complex statements from more atomic ones. :7

It's like lego bricks - with the basic bricks you can build pretty much anything, but an imaginary single huge piece perfectly forming a model of the Taj Mahal, would be of little use for anything other than building a Taj Mahal model.

Chinese idioms, that are so plentiful, too are constructed from smaller parts; look, e.g, at the more polite form of "you". It consists of the symbol for the regular "you", combined with the one for "heart".

Heek, all around us and we ourselves are complex constructs built from more elementary parts; I tend to think of multicellular organisms as walking/swimming/waddling/whatever coral reefs. :=)


When we got "End of ages", I got rather stuck up on the title, which to me suggested that with the freeing of the bahro, there could be no more linking through books. I formed a little theory that the act of writing a descriptive- or linking book, would bind a bahro slave to that book - a slave that would from that point be forced to do the actual linking, shuttling book users to the book's destination, like somthing of a quantum elevator boy. The writing in the book would in this case be for the eyes and mind of that bahro.
Fortunately this theory has since been refuted. :)

I know there would be people picking apart Gahrohevtee's design and grammar, but do you seriously think people would seriously wonder why these words didn't actually <i>create</i> Ages (or should I say Books?) OOC?

Haha, of course not. :) Hence the little "winking eye" emoticon, whose purpose is to extra clearly flag irony. :7

[MystMan]

lol, I musta missed the emoticon.

Yeah, I see what you mean. I, unfortunately, have no experience from EoA. Everything I gather has to be from other sources. It's downloaded onto my comp, it just never worked.

Yeah, I see what you mean there... But then what about the Fissure? I know I'm going all the way back to Riven, but remember how you fall into the Fissure and end up in another Age? Like how the fissure viewer ended up at the Cleft. But actually, that's how I always imagined it. That each symbol had a specific purpose. Maybe not quite as specific as your preposed word, but yes, like Chinese, which has what, 5,000 characters? And probably the symbol itself is built up of smaller parts. Ha ha, now we're back to Gahrohevtee speculation.

[Jojon]

My own theory on the fissure is rather mundane. It states that as the stuff and people fell into the Riven fissure, into the multiverse "hub", they were drawn towards the Riven descriptive book, or rather the place where it was written and the initial link originated and that the spot, next to the volcano, where they wound up, is right above K'veer.

The theory has a number of weaknesses (Did Yeesha write Relto in K'veer?) and most people insist that the cavern is not beneath the volcano, but I like it and intend to stick to it until I hear anything better. :)

(EoA placed the great shaft in the caldera, but I'll write that off as a matter of convenience and go with the undefined-but-not-the-volcano placement in the novels. As I see it, you should be able to enter the tunnels through a rift in the caldera and still have a several days long walk ahead of you, due to the network switchbacking and spiralling wildly as you decend. I am also sure the D'ni planners wouldn't want a door right into the cavern from the surface, where any prospective wildmen could storm in with stone hatchets and M16s at the ready. :7)

[MystMan]

Yeah, I see one other HUGE weakness... What about the fact that nothing else ended up at the cleft? I'm sure that gigantic sword would be noticeable. And Gehn wrote Riven, right? Didn't he do most of his writing in the library? ha ha, I know that causes a slight shift and doesn't discount your theory, but still...

Hm, I haven't read the books in years, but I remember it being in the volcano- but, agreed, certainly not the caldera.

I completely agree with you that the fissure is a multiverse hub, though, and that they wouldn't have made a door straight into D'ni. Ha ha, remember their reaction to Anna, to one woman? They would certainly think that any surface dweller would be a savage.

[Nadnerb]

Well, just as a side note, the huge knife DID end up at the cleft. According to Myst V, it landed in the caldera of the volcano.

[MystMan]

Ha ha, wow. That's funny.

I never would have guessed. But I always thought it was random, personally... but maybe not...

There's really very little doubt that the Bahro are in some way involved in the linking process, though... Maybe they are ferriers? I dunno, I like that idea.

[Jojon]

There's really very little doubt that the Bahro are in some way involved in the linking process, though... Maybe they are ferriers? I dunno, I like that idea.

It's a tidy little concept, but we have official word that the linking
abilities of the books and the bahro, while similar, are not connected - both have the property in their own right and for all that my little theory proved wrong, I'm happier this way - don't think I would have wanted to write any ages, if that had meant enslaving somebody. :)

The great shaft, I'd place somewhere between the volcano and the lodge, near a rocky outcropping, in which the actual unfinished and plugged-up entrance would be. I am sure, though, that the circle of fine surface sand, caused by the vibrations from the drilling below, has been blown over by now, even though it lasted years, between the building of the shaft and Anna and her father's coming across it. :)

EDIT: Mind you, if the circle was formed, not by the drilling, but by seismic activity literally hitting the huge resonance box that is the shaft, like a drum, as Anna's father said, It'd probably reform now and again, with new ground reverberations. :7 (Great way for us to find it, should we ever get to do the entire surface-to-cavern journey, come to think of it... :7)

[MystMan]

Aw, man... Ha ha. I'll admit, I'm kinda unqualified to propose theories. Mainly because of my lack of knowledge of EoA.

When did we get that word?

But the involvement of the Bahro may only be to the extent of using their glyphs. And that's not out of the question... Is it?

[sonic'son]

Sorry, i didn't follow well ; to sum up a little bit, are you talking about :

-the linking process (how the the descrition give a picture on the book) ?

-the symbols of the garohevtee ? (what the symbols could represent and how they have to be organised to give something or something else)


what is important to me is to see maybe something for MORE (not only this but in this topic yes )

the linkingprocess ... not the more important i remember its like cristalisation not very explanable :s

but symbols : it's very possbile that RAWA or other person have one copy of the garohevtee (miller for example )

and then they could explain a few symbols : what they mean and what they give...

i wait for that i hope we will see something like that more or less soon