Day 33

I've checked out the new book recipes. To make a lectern I need a specially-crafted bookshelf; for that bookshelf, I need a few books (to get the measurements just right, otherwise it falls apart); and for the books themselves some leather, paper, wool and sewing skills. Luckily, I have at least one of those things in abundance.


Making bookshelves with exactly needed proportions is hard. Making books is hard. Making paper itself is, as Nora would say, hard-hard.

To make paper, you gotta crush sugar cane (getting sugar syrup in the process, by the way), then grind it in much the same way as bone meal, drop it into a bowl, then hold it over fire long enough for the substance to become viscous like tar, THEN pour it into specially-smithed iron forms in small layers, and wait for it to cool down. Once cooled down and solid it becomes something vaguely resembling paper (the resemblance is stronger if you drop some bone meal while "cooking" crushed cane – then the paper tar is actually white, otherwise it just resembles thoroughly used toilet paper. Smells as such too, yecch).

All of that for just measly three pieces of paper. Can't cook bigger batches, or else pouring the right amount of paper-sludge becomes nigh-impossible. Spent a good part of the day trying to get everything right.

Books are relatively simpler. Take a piece of leather, trim it at the corners for a rectangle shape, drop those measly few paper sheets on top and start sewing all of this together. I imagine sewing is supposed to be the hardest part of it all, but, like I said, I have "that" in abundance. "That" being my sewing skills. Seven sisters and a whole lot of lost bets. Still, even for me it was somewhat challenging.

(On a second note, three pages is all it takes for it to be considered a "book" by the system . This diary is huge in comparison, and paper's much, much higher quality than mine; though I might still need to make a replacement or sew additional pages in the future.)

The bookshelf and the lectern itself were child's play in comparison – just some good old carpentry. I did spend a little bit extra time on making sure the lectern fit the exact proportions in the manual – if the thing can indeed help decipher the magical gibberish of the local books, I don't want it to stop working just because I'd made a tiny mistake somewhere.

Time to bring it to the library guy and see what he has to say. Good things, hopefully.


Brought the lectern. Book guy was quite excited (though it was muted – that's his age showing, probably). Started doing…something, then all but directly told me to go take a hike for some time and not interrupt him.

Should have brought something to trade.


I am proud to report that this whole affair has not been, in fact, a waste of everyone's time!

I got called back not long after the previous entry. The librarian had finished setting up whatever it was he was setting up, was ready to start translating and, naturally, wanted me to be present. The process of translation involved him simply placing the book down onto the lectern, and opening it. I was kind of worried that it wouldn't work, since I'd still botched the measurements a little, but after a few moments he gave me a thumbs up – it was working.

Unfortunately, our combined confidence started to falter once he actually got to translating texts. First five or so books we inspected were quite the same in everything but their covers – as the man had told me, they seemed to be simply filled with singular words like "dry", "sharp", "winter" and so on. Useful for learning the local language perhaps, but nothing more. Sixth wasn't much better, and I understood that even before being offered the translated result - there are only so many things the same symbol string written over and over can mean.

(The word was "hot", by the way, having been scribed for ten pages straight.)

Finally, we hit the jackpot of sorts, in the face of book number seven. From the get-go, it looked to be different - the cover was really poorly put together; later on, when I saw him start trying to read, then stop, take off and wipe his glasses and sigh dejectedly - well, I didn't hold out much hope there either. At first.

That's when the librarian translated the very first few words as

"guide survival"

"by: me"

It was certainly..."something".

By "something" I mean "someone who has clearly never spoken ValeanEnglish but decided to write an elaborate guide, probably with the help of a lousy translator". A mouthful description, maybe, but an apt one for sure. It was a mind-numbing process for both of us, having to essentially translate the same text twice; but, after a while, it'd gotten easier. Not to mention that, despite the crappy wording, the book ended up being full of genuinely useful tips and tricks, again not unlike prof. Port's lectures: from talking about how much more efficient fishing is under rain (something I knew), to talking about growing trees from saplings (something I wish I knew), to talking something about "best coordinates for hunting ores" (not sure what those coordinates are). There was even a section dedicated solely to describing "mobsters" - monsters. While it did not hold much new information for the "mobsters" I've already fought (I'd have gotten great use for that had I found this book in the early days), at the very least the guy had provided more sensible names, as well as described some I haven't encountered before.

Unfortunately, a whole lot of information was lost - this guidebook was really not in the best condition; the last few pages completely burned and unreadable (including stuff on those "coordinates" - something to do with needing "com[unreadable]"). There was also a single sentence scribbled on the leather cover at the end of the book (past all the burned pages) that went something like "DONT BED NETHER". Wonder what that is all about.

Moving on from this book, we went ahead and checked the rest of the "library"; sadly, save for one, all of the books were the same kind as the first few - filled with random disjointed words. The "one" mentioned was unique in a sense that it was a single ripped piece of scorched-looking coarse paper fixed together to a pair of leather strips with a tiny sharpened bone fragment.

If I thought trying to understand that broken Valenglish book was painful, then this was downright torturous. Even translating the symbols sepaarately into letters did not make a shred of sense - the words wouldn't form properly, at all! The librarian was quite literally pulling at his hair, while I'd gotten a stark demonstration of what it probably feels like to be illiterate. It took us a long while - had to hunker down in the village for the night - before starting to see any sort of pattern. Even with that, it wasn't easy trying to decipher the writing - the man gets full credit for being able to crack the code. As it turned out, the sentences were formatted in such a way as to have words be read in the opposite order; all of the words had had their first and last letters switch places as well.

So in the end a sentence like "Vale is located on the continent of Sanus" would sound something like "Sunas fo tontinenc eht no docatel si Elav". Yeah.

The text is written in a diary format, and as such was probably from one. I've decided to copy it into my own diary; mostly because I find it intriguing. Not today, though, that's for sure. Let it be known that mental work can be just as tiring as physical. Plus, the librarian said that he was getting his skill back or something, and would pay handsomely for pay handsomely for batches of clean paper to practice "something" on.


I've been getting back into PAYDAY2(tm), hence very liberal and inconsistent update times over the past month or so. Maybe I'll end up writing a story on that too, in much the same style as my Far Cry one (which, if you're a fan of Far Cry 2 or are just itching for something to read, you should check out - I'm really proud of how it turned out in the end).