foolish mortals think this is some kind of game.. those labels allow the demons to take possession of you.. that's the point of writing the words in their language.. they can now use that face like a puppet..
Back in high school I invented a runic language like this and I used it to cheat in German class. I was always drawing fantasy/scifi scenes on my notebooks and I would write all the German verb declensions into the scenes, like on Thor’s chest or the side of a spaceship or whatever, and then have the notebook on the floor while taking the test. Straight As in German and now I can’t fucking speak German.
At some point I switched my games from German to English, my English skills probably improved more in the first two months of doing that than in the 4 years of classroom English I had before then.
I’ve heard similar from the people who took French or Spanish as ellectives, it seems schools are the worst place to actually learn a language (I’d say including your native one, I learned more about German in Philosophy class than in German class)
Note, that's not the joke, wikia images are just weird. For whatever reason the ?cb=whatever bit causes hotlinking to fail. Stripping that leads to an image of a ...bouncer? from the show Gravity Falls with face tattoos reading "head" and "chin" https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gravityfalls/images/3/35/S1e3_works_for_me.png
You wake up, Durge style, and look around. Don’t remember your name. No idea what you are. All you know is that you’ve been marked by infernal runes, engraved into your skin.
You search high and low and after much effort, and months of travel, you eventually stumble across a demon who is willing to trade a favor. In exchange for you making him a sandwich (with the crusts cut off), he will translate these hellish symbols.
“Shoulder.”
“W… what?”
“It means shoulder.”
“What the hells does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m not the one who got the tattoo. I’m an infernal being not a psychic.”
“But… why the fuck would I get tattoo of shoulder? It makes no sense!”
“In case you forgot?”
“Bruh. If I forget what my fucking limbs are called I’m pretty sure I have other matters that are going to be more pressing.”
“Mmmike mmmwat?”
“Mother didn’t teach you any manners?”
(Devil just chews, staring you in the eyes)
“Oh yeah. Of course. Well, wanna try that again?”
(big swallow) “What other matters would be more pressing than discovering the names of your various body parts?”
“Like wh… forget it. Okay. Well now what am I suppose to do.”
“I dunno. Did you add mustard to this?”
“Yeah, it’s a little extra zing. I mean I revolved my whole new personality around discovering this. I thought it would lead me to the secrets of my existence. Of who I was. Of what I went through. Of why I ended up here in the first place!”
“Huh. Well you should have made a deal for that.”
“Fucking what.”
“Well dude, I’m a devil. While I may not be a psychic, I can hook you up with one pretty easily.”
“… Oh my sweet and sour Bahamut, what do you want?”
It doesn’t have to mean anything as long as it looks cool. I’m gonna get me a tattoo that says “Japanese tattoo” in Japanese, would probably look like this: 日本のタトゥー
True. I just had this whole image in my head for one of my characters. He had those tattoos and got them when he started worshipping Bhaal. Meanwhile they’re just like… infernal IKEA instructions. Dunno whether to shake the hand of someone at Larian or slap them.
Imagine doing some elaborate deal with Raphael for the promise of greater power through understanding of infernal runes only to get this fucking translation done.
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