SPOILER - Hidden message discovered

[Lucent]

So, I was browsing the images released recently of Legacy of Kain: Defiance, and I noticed something, a message (very easily translated) hidden in a screenshot. By no means is this message ground-breaking, but it does however echo off of a previous sentiment about "keys".

Here is the original image.

Here is my translated image with explanation.



Interesting. Also, I've come to think that the outermost fonts are "Wizard-Speak" but I'm not sure. I'm going to dig thorugh my fonts and see if anything matches up.

Cryptic... Cryptic.

~L

Edit: Brain Fart- Lovecraft is H.P. Lovecraft, the author who wrote about Cthulu, the SQUID GOD. Seems the book really is the key... to knowledge possibly about the Ancient Elder God himself.

Edit 2: Scrutinizing that specific image more, I now see that the "winged" statues in the picture do indeed have -feathered- wings, yet have Wolfen heads. Perhaps the "Lost City" from BO1 which features lycanthropic creatures holds some connecion to LOK: D?

[Camus Audron]

whoa...that's amazing!...have you tried this on SR1/SR2? or BO2 for that matter? I think it's an amazing breaktrough to find a post BO inscription which is actually a message =O

Do you know anything about cthulu? I have heard he's similar to EG before, but never heard anyone describe him at all.....

I cant seem to find these were-ancients you talk about, could you point out where exactly on the pic they are? and why you think they are wolven?

[Lucent]

Right and left sides of the original image, the statues with the pointed wings. Examining them zoomed in (espescially the one on the right side of the image) you can clearly see pointed ears, long snouts, and defined eyes. Their bodies are obviously humanoid, but their faces are clearly neither human, vampire, or hylden.

As far as translating anything in the Soul Reaver series or BO2 that's a negative. I havent' seen anything this obvious yet in the series as far as mural inscriptions go.

No luck however on the 'Wizard Speak' font, it just isn't the same thing, I'm beginning to think judging from the upper ring's positioning that its not a font at all, but pictograms.

[Stephenls]

Your translation link is broken.

[Lucent]

It's working fine for me. Try refreshing this page, my system admin and I are doing some work on my web server and uploading some things, so it might cause the image to go offline briefly. Just refresh till it works ^_^

[Vampmaster]

Looks like there's more of this language in the book itself. It's too small to read, but maybe it will give a clue to events later in the game or the events of future games.

[hippiechk]

COOL!
I just love finding classic literature references hidden in modern technology.
And it reminded me of my Dante's Inferno post. Though yours is much more solid than mine. Nice job!

[Stephenls]

I see the problem now. For some reason, I can't access the "http://www.ffasylum.com/" domain. Could someone email me the image?

EDIT: Oh, yeah. My email isn't really visible. It's STEPHENLS at SHAW dot CA.

[scotfried]

I also couldn't see the graphic or get to the site. Any ideas?

[Stukedogg]

Could someone please just tell me what it says?

[Stephenls]

Huh. I'm not the only person who can't access that domain, it seems.

[Eternal Emperor]

Cthlulu is only the understandable parts of a chant about the elder god, the rest is just gibberish.
Remember, once Cthulu wakes up we're all screwed, we are just a dream to this slumbering diety. I've read a few of the Cthulu stories, and they all end with the main character killing themselves (or being murdered by a dark cult) because they couldn't handle the truth of the matter. Everything they ever knew was twisted because they found just hints of what was really going on.

[Lucent]

Try this link.

I have the image being displayed straight as an image in the first post, it should just show up. I'm not sure why It's showing fine for me and not for anyone else. If this link doesn't work, let me know and I'll move it to a secondary server.

[Evelin The Winged]

Three leters, one word: WOW.

[scotfried]

That link works great for me Lucent - Thanks!

[gehntheberserker]

Can someone please upload that pic in another server ?!

[Azazel]

Try this.

[Stephenls]

Hey, that is cool. Very cool indeed. Thanks, Lucent!

Originally posted by Eternal Emperor
Cthlulu is only the understandable parts of a chant about the elder god, the rest is just gibberish.
Remember, once Cthulu wakes up we're all screwed, we are just a dream to this slumbering diety. I've read a few of the Cthulu stories, and they all end with the main character killing themselves (or being murdered by a dark cult) because they couldn't handle the truth of the matter. Everything they ever knew was twisted because they found just hints of what was really going on.

You have some of the facts wrong.

Great Cthulhu is not, strictly speaking, a deity. He's an alien life-form that exists in more dimensions than we do, and who is thus able to take advantages of cosmological rules that we can't. Nor are we his dreams. In the world Lovecraft created (the Cthulhu Mythos or just the Mythos), humans are utterly insignificant products of a series of cosmic coincidences, no more significant in the larger scheme of things than fungi or plankton, and what we call "sanity" is a series of lies we've told ourselves to shield us from this. Humans who are in the know invariably abandon ethics and morals, for both are meaningless in the face of cosmic apathy embodied by the blind idiot god Azathoth who burbles and screams at the center of the cosmosamid the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

We are not his dreams, and we are not his anything. Great Cthulhu sleeps beneath the sea in his sunken city of R'lyeh, dead and dreaming of the time when the stars are right again and he will rise. Upon that day the lies humanity has constructed for itself will shatter and all people everywhere will be lead into a new way of life, shouting and killing and reveling in joy even as we find ourself extinct. And as for Great Cthulhu, he won't even notice. What are we to him?

The vast majority of Lovecraft's work has passed out of copyright and into public domain and can be found on this web page, just waiting to be read at your leisure. I recommend The Nameless City, Pickman's Model, The Dunwich Horror, and I don't really recommend The Call of Cthulhu but you should read it anyway because it's his most famous story and so everyone does.

As for correspondences to Lovecraft's work, the Elder is much closer to Nyarlathotep than Cthulhu. Nyarlathotep is the only Great Old One to actually pay attention to humanity, after all -- the rest of them might as well be migratory glaciers for all they care about people.

[blincoln]

Stephenls is right.

The phrase "Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" isn't gibberish, either. It means "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

Lovecraft was an excellent writer.

[Lucent]

I eagerly hoping to get some more screenshots with translateable messages. That was actually an interesting endevor, I'm going to keep a sharp eye out from now on.

"The Book is the Key"

spoiler:

Cthulhu's form isn't that traditionally of a tentacled face, shelled body, two-eyed creature with large bat-like wings. In LOK it could be the Elder. When you are talking about the book, could it mean this.

"The name "Hash'ak'gik" is only used once in the game -- when Kain finds the secret, bloody altar in the depths of the catacombs beneath Avernus Cathedral. There's passage of "scripture" found here, which reads":

"And Hash’ak’gik spoke unto the world, and all who heard trembled. “Bring me your first born, and shed their blood upon the altar of the world, so I might take nourishment from them. Do this without question, or suffer my wrath for eternity.” And its will was done. "

Unless it is a different book.

If they are not the same entity. The Elder, Cthulhu and Hash'ak'gik that is. Then the Elder and the Hash'ak'gik may be different demonic entities who want to bring about the coming of their master, "Cthulhu". What a twist that would be. Even the most powerful demons are the pawns of a great evil?

This has been mentioned, but what if the first born the book speaks about may be Raziel. He was after all the first born of Kain's lieutenants.

Then again, I'm probably reading too much into all this, this is probably some gaming puzzle in Defiance, that and nothing more.

[Stephenls]

Originally posted by blincoln
The phrase "Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" isn't gibberish, either. It means "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

Indeed, although that hyphen really ought to be an apostrophe. Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Cthulhu R'lyeh!

Originally posted by Draken
"The Book is the Key"

spoiler:

Cthulhu's form isn't that traditionally of a tentacled face, shelled body, two-eyed creature with large bat-like wings. In LOK it could be the Elder. When you are talking about the book, could it mean this.

"The name "Hash'ak'gik" is only used once in the game -- when Kain finds the secret, bloody altar in the depths of the catacombs beneath Avernus Cathedral. There's passage of "scripture" found here, which reads":

"And Hash’ak’gik spoke unto the world, and all who heard trembled. “Bring me your first born, and shed their blood upon the altar of the world, so I might take nourishment from them. Do this without question, or suffer my wrath for eternity.” And its will was done. "

Unless it is a different book.

If they are not the same entity. The Elder, Cthulhu and Hash'ak'gik that is. Then the Elder and the Hash'ak'gik may be different demonic entities who want to bring about the coming of their master, "Cthulhu". What a twist that would be. Even the most powerful demons are the pawns of a great evil?

This has been mentioned, but what if the first born the book speaks about may be Raziel. He was after all the first born of Kain's lieutenants.

spoiler:

And again, that's way, way closer to something Nyarlathotep would do. Just like him, in fact. Whereas Cthulhu doesn't really care about first-born children or anything, Nyarlathotep loves cruelty and destruction of human life. He's also the closest to anything "in charge" of the universe, since Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub-Niggurath are all mindless (well, as we understand minds).

spoiler:

Then again, I'm probably reading too much into all this, this is probably some gaming puzzle in Defiance, that and nothing more.

spoiler:

I don't know. I don't really expect to have a puzzle based around translating a script -- it could just be something the level designers put in for fun. It must be more satisfying than using meaningless combinations of characters to decorate the floor and walls.

You may be on to something, maybe the Elder has a creature similar to Cthulhu working for him. Perhaps he wants to set up Kain or Raziel to awaken a creature similar to Cthulhu who will try to destroy the main character. After all such a being would be aggravated after thousands of years of sleep. Could it be a mini-boss? What a twist it would be if such a creature helped out Kain or Raziel defeat the Elder.

[soniqstylz]

Originally posted by Draken
"The Book is the Key"

spoiler:

"And Hash’ak’gik spoke unto the world, and all who heard trembled. “Bring me your first born, and shed their blood upon the altar of the world, so I might take nourishment from them. Do this without question, or suffer my wrath for eternity.” And its will was done. "

This has been mentioned, but what if the first born the book speaks about may be Raziel. He was after all the first born of Kain's lieutenants.

Actually, I think you're on to something here.

spoiler:

Couldn't you say that Kain shed Raziel's blood in the Abyss. Raz was changed into the Elder's "Soul Reaver" to feed him the souls (or so we might think). #^&*, I dunno what I'm talking about here.

[TempySmurf]

Alright.

I tried to blow up lighten and sharpen the book and try to decipher the words.

I think this might all be mind tricks because it's so blurry, but I think the first line is "the key".

Then it gets even worse, and the second line looks like.. "down in"

and the last line is horrible but could possibly say "hell"

which doesn't really make any sense.

I'd say I'm about 98% wrong on this but I thought I'd share anyway.