Contributors: Blue, Aidan, Whaler, Erika, Jacob, Megido, Willow, Hiaen, Pip, Eels

Blue: hi i'm asleep but also i'm thinking that bc daud's motto ego homini lupus is latin that implies latin exists in the dishonored world which implies a lot and- *falls asleep again ok bye*

Whaler: Roman Empire! Also thinking of the rune thing with actually real life runes written on them. Which also implies things

Blue: YEAH like languages are cool and obvs everyone in dishonored speaks english but tbh like in reality it could be any language and like our perspective is english (or another language if u play in like. A different language). And like latin is the parent of several modern languages such as italian, french and also feeds into english - so u would assume that the latin would have originated in what is now Serkonos if we maintain the real world analogies but yea then i was thinking about ancient greek as well (another parent language fot modern day european languages) AND like whaler pointed out w the runes,,, idk... Anyways obvs it makes sense that Ancient Empires w languages that developed into the language used in dishonored BUT!!! that there is no other languages present in the dh games and idk something something something.

The next day…

Erika: Why do the clocks in Dishonored 2 have roman numerals? Were roman numerals before the current calendar? And the Abbey decided that those funky little shapes were ok they're allowed

Aidan: yeah, the roman version came before the gregorian if i’m remembering right

Jacob: Maybe it was in pandyssia

Erika: Maybe it was from some other landmass besides Pandyssia? If Pandyssia is Africa, they wouldn't have the Roman Empire

Aidan: idk about it being in pandyssia considering it isn’t even considered an independent state, they wouldn’t put pandyssian letters on clocks

hmmm maybe the civilization that the outsider was originally from is an equivalent to rome- wait that wouldn’t make sense

Jacob: why do you say that?

Aidan: just cause rome is still a thing today and the place the outsider came from is long gone

Danny: i mean we use roman numerals today and rome’s long dead

Aidan: yeah true I just mean in the sense that there isn’t really anything preserved in dishonored’s modern society about the place from 4000 years ago

Erika: But why would clockmakers use those numerals anyways? They could just use the Imperial numbers, not numerals

Mostly because of the Abbey thanks clavering

Although it was probably an oversight on Arkane's part

Danny: yeah im pretty sure the real reason is just "the game artists wanted it to look neat." like they use the latin alphabet i don't think any thought went into this fhdsklaf

Aidan: yeah i’m assuming it was just one of those things that’s so common in our society they included it

Willow: Maybe the ancient civilization in serkonos???

Hiaen: Ties in with Daud's motto being "Ego homini lupus", implying the existence of latin

Blue: YEA like i was saying the other day there is repeated evidence that ancient societies analogous to the ones we have existed in the dishonored universe. realistically, the "roman" civilisation would probably inhabited serkonos

Pip: i mean they use the latin alphabet, so i would find it stranger that they use arabic numerals given that there’s no contemporary MENA equivalent in-universe

also the fact that they drink tea!! tho i suppose wei gon exists. gunpowder, too.

also also the fact that they have the concept of "0" when an india equivalent doesn't exist. ho i suppose they could have come up w it on their own. but their mathematics would be.....interestingly developed, i imagine.

interestingly, the overseers would likely not have the same issue with the concept of 0 that the christian church had

Jacob: please explain

Pip: the christian church REALLY did not like the idea of there being a "0", because god was in everything and so they argued that 0 was blasphemous bc it was implying the absence of god/a place where god was not (i.e. hell, by some definitions) and therefore the concept was Evil

Hiaen: for both the latin alphabet and arabic numerals, we can chalk it up to gameplay practicability? same way that they speak english in both DH1 and DH2, it's just easier for the player (and saves the devs from coming up with a whole new language/alphabet/number system)

Eels: This conversation makes me think of how Tolkien encountered the whole "how do you make an alternate world make sense etymologically when we speak irl languages inherently tied to our irl history" and said ok cool i will create an entirely new history and 7389 new languages goodbye i am publishing books now

also when i write it in english it will be framed as a translation of old documents in other languages so i can do what i want don't @ me kings <3