#decoding

disclaimer: I apologize in advance that I'm not going to be able to do image IDs for this post, because I don't really know where to start vis-a-vis describing a cipher alphabet. I'll put the full Illangan alphabet font sheet I made and the decoded message at the end, and show how much of the message is decoded after each image by using underscores to represent undeciphered letters, e.g. "_ower" for "power" when we don't have "p" yet.

the method Siobhan uses to decode this note is essentially guessing & checking - guess a word, fill in the letters from that word in other places you see them, see if any look familiar, guess again.

step 1: find "the". Siobhan first finds all the 3 letter words on the page, then notes how frequently they occur. One occurs 5 times, one twice, and the rest are single instances. She intuits that the one that repeats 5 times is "the".

["the" in red, the twice-occurring word in blue, rest in purple]

step 2: note every time the characters corresponding to t, h, and e appear in the note.

so, "the ___e_ __ _a_a___ __ __t ___e_ __ee__. ___ ___t ___ the ____e. _he_ the ____ __ ____, the ____ ___e_ __e ___ ___ _h_ __e__ the ___ht."

step 3: the twice-occurring word also has two letters at the end that are the same. In the adventuring party, Siobhan says it could be either "too" or "all", and since we already know "t" from "the", it can't be too. people have since pointed out that it also could've been "see", but we have "e" from "the" too. I will also say that "all" in this alphabet looks kind of like "all" anyway, just with the L upside down. Thus, we try plugging in a & l.

so, "the ___e_ __ _a_a___ __ __t ___e_ __eel_. all ___t _a_ the ____e. _he_ the ____ __ __ll, the __ll ___e_ __e ___ all _h_ __el_ the l__ht."

step 4: from this point forward, I am extrapolating what Siobhan did from my own knowledge of code-breaking and what words seem easiest to guess. "light" seems most obvious to guess next - "freely" is also kind of guessable, but maybe just bc i know that's what it says. so now we have i & g to plug in.

[new letters in purple]

so, "the ___e_ __ _a_a___ i_ __t gi_e_ __eel_. all ___t _a_ the __i_e. _he_ the ____ i_ __ll, the _ill ___e_ __e ___ all _h_ _iel_ the light."

step 5: from this, the most obvious words (to me at least) are "wield", "given", and "freely". i can see "shield" coming to mind first, but there's only one letter before i, not two, and we have h already. on their own, "given" from "gi_e_" and "freely" from "__eel_" might be difficult, but the phrase "given freely" can help spark that particular memory.

so, "given" gives us v & n, "freely" gives us f, r, & y, and "wield" gives us w & d. let's plug em in!

so, "the __wer _f ra_an__ i_ n_t given freely. all ___t _ay the _ri_e. when the ___n i_ f_ll, the _ill ___e_ d_e f_r all wh_ wield the light."

step 6: from this, "not", "full", "due", "who", "for", & "pay" are all fairly easy to guess. granted, "due" could be "doe", but that doesn't really make sense in context, especially now that we have "pay" and "given freely" translated. plus, "full" corroborates it. "die" & "dye" are ruled out easily bc we have i & y. "pay" could also be "may" (we don't have m), but with "price" right there, partially solved, with the same letter at the beginning, it makes more sense for it to be "pay".

"for", "who", & "not" all give us o, "due" & "full" give us u, and "pay" gives us p. plugging em in gets us...

so, "the power of ra_an_u i_ not given freely. all _u_t pay the pri_e. when the _oon i_ full, the _ill _o_e_ due for all who wield the light."

step 7: from there, we can guess "is" (if we haven't already), "price", and "moon". we're almost there, y'all

"moon" gives us m, "is" gives us s, "price" gives us c. plug em in!

so, "the power of ramansu is not given freely. all must pay the price. when the moon is full, the _ill comes due for all who wield the light."

which completes almost everything! except one....my old nemesis, the letter b.

step 8: intuiting "bill" from the phrase "the bill comes due". pretty easy, the main reason i didn't fill it in earlier is because at various points, it could've been "kill", "pill", "gill", "sill", "will", or a million other things. also, "comes" was very piecemeal until the very end.

and bam! we got it!

obviously, this is just one way it could've come together, a person with a mind for language like Siobhan has probably put it together a lot quicker and with less iteration. while the way my brain works is by focusing on individual words and what they could be, the way a sentence or phrase is formed is a huge help, and some may focus on the bigger picture or overall sentence structure more than I do.

tldr; everyone's brains are different and it's cool! this is one way to do it. i hope everyone had fun playing Siobhan Thompson Simulator 2k25. i love codes so fucking much.

also, here's my (sloppy handwritten) font sheet for the Illangan alphabet, as well as the full message written out in English and Illangan in said font!

"The power of Ramansu is not given freely. All must pay the price. When the moon is full, the bill comes due for all who wield the light."

or, written in Illangan: