New Lore: Chronical of the Shieldbearer

[Pirotess]

We have a new riddle to mull over this morning! Sigil has released what they call a "lore puzzle" for us to solve. The lore fragment is entitled "Chronical of the Shieldbearer" and we've added it to our Lore Section in the Thestra category. Additionally we have started a thread to decipher the fragment on our forums. Why not stop by and add your thoughts to our musings?



Larynn Avari of TenTonHammer has also published a new article this morning entitled "Why Do We Play the Games We Play?". In her article Larynn investigates some of the reasons that drive people to play MMOs for hours on end. Give it a look.

Forum Debrief:

• Jansan describes how crafting skills will advance - Full thread
  
• Crestone describes Sigils programming process... - Full thread
  
• ...And commiserates with a forum member attending college - Full thread
  
• Taranis clarifies his position about Vanguard on Xbox 360 - Full thread
  
• Jansan confirms that you can be successful just being a crafter... - Full thread
  
• ...And confirm that its possible to fail work orders - Full thread
  

[Lycrist]

The deciphered text reads as follows ( highlight to read ) :

[TRANSLATION]
We who were chosen observed the
comet for ? days before we
understood its import unto our
masters lands. True to our oaths
we went forth to ...
The -enemy- had indeed come to
that place. -He- was skilled with
sword and spear and masterful in
-his- study of sorcery. -He- transfixed
our armor in flames and stopped our spells
before they could harm -him-.
In the end we defeated -him-,
not through arms and magery but through
???
[TRANSLATION]

Here's how I got started, for those wondering :

[EXPLANATION]
There were three or four two character words. Two of those words had one character in common (the h with the bar on the top), and so I focused on those two to start deciphering. In the second word, the character was the second letter, and in the first word, the character was the first letter. In both words there is logically only one vowel, and it had to be this character. Knowing that, in the case of the character being the ending letter, the vowel could not be a, u, or i; because there are no two letter words that end in those vowels (that are commonly used, at least). Also, because the other two character words start with this letter, it cannot be e. The only vowel this character could be is o. Then, you look at both two character words that you now know half of. The first one can be either or, of, on; the second to, so, go, no. Based on the frequency of the second character in the first word, I concluded that it must be f, because it wasn't used very much throughout the piece, and r and n would have been more frequent. With the second word, g wouldn't fit because the character was used frequently throughout the piece. At that point I tried t, s, and n; t worked to connect with many of the o's. Once these three letters were in place, nothing looked "wrong" just yet, so I continued down this path. There was a three letter word that was f o _ ... logically r would be the most common letter to end that (although g would have worked, the character in question was used very frequently, as r would be in English sentences). With f, o, r, and t ine place, things started to "look right" even though alot of the puzzle was still missing. From that point I just picked a word that had only a couple missing characters and put in the logical missing letters and it become easier and easier as the pieces fell into place.

FYI, to begin, I typed all the characters out into a text editor using symbols on the keyboard as substitution and just did "Replace" to fill in everything.
[EXPLANATION]

[Pirotess]

Thanks for the heads up Lycrist. Nice job!