spuriusbrocoli: flavoracle: vronos: sarpadianempiresvol-viii: goblintinkering: Do we have any lore o
spuriusbrocoli:flavoracle:vronos:sarpadianempiresvol-viii:goblintinkering:Do we have any lore on this optimistic lady here? What is a Vizag Atum? @sarpadianempiresvol-viii and anyone else he knows (seriously what is magic dad’s blog name and can we petition he name it magic dad because I only know him as magic dad)I don’t know anything about this person. Vizag Atum sounds like it’s associated with the Skirsdag. Tagging in @vronos even though Garruk killed him.Strictly flavor text-only character at the moment and no context for the title. If BFZ stands as a model for depth, the details of her title will likely be included in the Innistrad Art Book. James Wyatt doesn’t mess around when it comes to attention to detail.Based on similar flavor text in Scorch the Fields and Zombie Apocalypse, I suspect that Minaldra is some kind of oracle or soothsayer. I would speculate that “Vizag” is the name of a place or group, and that “Atum” is a title or office. Hey @spuriusbrocoli!! Any linguistic clues you can parse out from this? Welp, mere hours after making a new phonologist friend, it’s time for me to throw my phonological credibility to the wind.As others, including @sarpadianempiresvol-viii have pointed out, much of the aesthetic for Innistrad borrows from 18th century Prussia (maybe later, Germany was a bit of a backwater until Bismarck, but that’s splitting hairs). This includes many of the proper names of Innistrad: Videns, Wittal, Effalen, Hanweir, Havengul, Selhof, the Ulvenwald, etc. And the fact that the Spirits of the plane are called “Geists” is a direct lift from German, as is the card name “Sturmgeist”.So on a hunch, I checked out the German translation of the flavor text, which was… not helpful. It’s still attributed to “die Vizag Atum”, though interestingly, it uses the feminine article, so it’s a lady office (which makes sense looking at Westvale Cult Leader).That said, “Vizag Atum” doesn’t especially sound German. It’s an allowable German construction, but to me it sounds decidedly un-German. It reminds me more of Lovecraft’s attempts at ‘alien languages’.But now before you all start hammering #emrakulconfirmed into the tags, I want to point out two things: (1) this judgement is pretty much apropos of absolutely nothing, and were I given it by a native speaker in an experiment, I would kindly nod my head, then make a note of how the consultant may be unreliable; (2) there’s an obvious connection between Westvale Cult Leader and Westvale Abbey, the latter of which turns into the very German-sounding ‘Ormendahl’, which in turn mentions ‘Skirsdag’ and 'Griselbrand’ by name.So at the end of the day, I think I support the connections to the Skirsdag, which makes a lot of sense, given the uniformity of their mechanics/colors. Something something not a phonologist, etwas etwas Deutsch, something something #emrakulconfirmed.Awesome phonology commentary is awesome. Thanks for taking the time to share your expertise! -- source link
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