probably yelling about kell

I. The text

·      Das – unknown, probably a location within London.

·      Kajt – a swear word

·      Kösa – I am sure

·      Køt - king

·      Krös Mejkt – Stone Forest

·      Makt – island where White London is located or its city-state

·      Maktahn – adjective/demonym

·      Nijk shöst – please, I beg you, I ask you

·      Nö kijn avost – I don’t fear death

·      Ön vejr tök – The story goes

·      On vis och – dawn to dusk

·      Ös reijkav vösk – you (s.) + unknown + leave (you must leave?)

·      Ös-vo tach? – are you busy?

·      Ös vosa nochten - you (s.) + your + unknown

·      Öt vosa rijke – for your loss

·      Öva sö taro – he is in the city

·      Övos norevjk - unknown

·      Rhaask – a type of alcohol

   ·   Sijlt - river in London; meaning unknown.

·      Tovach ös mostevna - unknown

·      Vosijk - unknown; possible relation to Sijlt? The ij sound is relatively common, but the sij combination is not.

·      Vösk – leave

·      Vos och? – what is it?

·      Vöxt – bound

Ia. The names:

Alox - close to Alexander, Greek, “[one who] defending men”

Astrid - Scandinavian, “god’s beloved, god’s beauty”

Athos - Greek, name of a mountain and Titan

Beloc - Catalan? Belloc, “beautiful place”

Gorst - English, “gorse-dweller”

Holland - English, ultimately derived from Dutch Holtlant, “wood land”

Nasi - a Hebrew male title meaning “prince”

Ojka - very close to Korean Okja, “jade girl”

Ros - not a name that I could find, but a common word in many languages. Take a deep breath: Latin for “dew,” Swedish for “rose,” Irish for “headland,” Danish the imperative for “praise, commend,” Dutch for “horse” or “redheaded, russet,” Romanian for “gnawed.” (I keep telling you guys, Ros totally got eaten after he died…)

Stol - Danish for “chair, heap, cluster.” (chair as in throne…?)

Talya - Hebrew for “dew of God.”

II. Miscellaneous observations + a summary on pronouns:

Ös – you are; singular, possibly informal/ vosa - your

Öva – he is

Övos – conjecture, she is

There does not seem to be a definitive first-person singular pronoun. The use of an actual pronoun (you/he/she) also seems to be rare; it is usually implied based on the verb conjugation.

Makt is lifted directly from the Swedish word for power, which itself derives from the same Old Norse word. Swedish as a language indicates the subject and object of a sentence by word order (usually subject-verb-object as English does, although in subordinate clauses it goes verb-subject-object), does not conjugate verbs based on person or number, and maintains two genders for its nouns. Old Norse indicated subject and object through the use of cases (totaling four: nominative, genitive, accusative, and dative) and had three grammatical genders.

On the other hand, the distinctive ij sound is much more characteristic of Dutch. The Dutch language typically follows the English word order of subject-verb-object, but in certain cases will also use verb-subject-object, such as yes-no questions ( “Saw you the king?” where English would have “Did you see the king?”) and imperative sentences ( “Go the book read” for “Go read the book”). Standard Dutch maintains three grammatical genders, although some regions have collapsed the difference between masculine and feminine. The use of cases is mostly obsolete.

Dane and Vortalis are not obvious fits into the language. Potential immigrants?

Of the six male names we have, five are named for some kind of feature in the landscape. A possible trend.

III. Potential applications for fic:

Kell has absolutely mixed up ön (‘the’) and on (‘dawn’) because they sound so similar to his ear.

Depending on which language influences you lean into for Maktahn, Holland might have trouble remembering the English word order of subject-verb-object (ex: “I Astrid see” instead of “I see Astrid”), assign gender to nouns that don’t have them in English (ex: “The door, she is brown.”), and/or mix up pronouns.

Lila outsmarted Kell so he would take her to red London just like she tried to outsmart Alucard when she killed his thief and wanted to get on the night spire.

bc genuinely what was the plan?

1. freak kell out, get him drunk so he accepts the job and smuggles the black stone back to red london (hope he is not curious or looks inside the package at all)

2. when kell gets to red London, send a few mindless, compelled mercenaries after him (hope they can defeat an antari) and retrieve the stone.

3. mercenaries bring stone to astrid-controlled red london citizen. astrid and athos cast a spell together at the same time using the stone halves. barrier comes down.

just WHAT about this required kell being the messenger? why couldn’t holland just go to red london and give the astrid-controlled citizen the stone?

“they were afraid holland might use the stone to break his soul seal” — no, they weren’t. the danes sent holland after kell to retrieve the stone. if they thought holland could use it break the seal, they never would’ve done this.

“they were afraid holland might get caught” caught doing what? smuggling the black stone to red london? have him as travars into a random red london forest with no one around, and have the astrid hand-off happen there. problem solved. holland isn’t getting caught simply transporting a stone, trust.

“they needed plausible deniability if it failed” — if what failed? the smuggling? holland is not failing to simply put a stone in astrid’s hand (see above point.) there are so many easy ways to avoid failing here that are a lot simpler than what they came up with.

remember, kell is NOT the one who was supposed to cast the door-breaking spell. he was never going to be. they can’t implicate him for that. ONLY the smuggling. they used him purely as a delivery service. supposedly because it was the best choice? when in reality, using kell required involving tons of other compelled people, stealing palace guard swords, and creating a huge trail of evidence.

basically there is NO reason for kell to act as the messenger here. holland is fully capable of doing it himself. kell was literally only used for the transfer of the stone between worlds and nothing else. bc they planned to take the stone back from him immediately (within minutes of him returning to red london, in fact). he was a drug mule. but…they…already…had…a…perfectly…good one…in holland ?

using kell just created unnecessary extra steps and complicated/risked their plans.