Krubers Runesword

Fatshark Lounge
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Well, i had a bit of time on hand and translated (i tried, at least) the runes on Krubers shortsword from his Sword & Mace combo (edit: and more). The combination is different on both sides, same runes though. I used this for translation.
Read from hilt to tip.

Off side first:

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Gromdal (an ancient artifact) Drung (to defeat, vanquish, conquer, smash) Zaraz (Gift) Gorm (old, high, wise, powerful, bearded) Gromthi (Ancestor) 1.Dreng 2.Drengi (1. slay in combat 2. Slayer, one of the cult of Slayers)

My attempt at translation:
Ancient artifact for smashing (as?) a gift from a powerful ancestral Slayer.

Inward side (what you look at with inspect weapon):

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Gromthi (Ancestor) Drung (to defeat, vanquish, conquer, smash) Gromdal (an ancient artifact) 1.Dreng 2.Drengi (1. slay in combat 2. Slayer, one of the cult of Slayers) Gorm (old, high, wise, powerful, bearded) Zaraz (Gift)

Ancestors smashing ancient artifact (for) a Slayer (as) a powerful gift

I would like to know what Fatsharks idea was, but i think i came close.

Other dwarven weapons only use Khazalid letters, not actual words like the shortsword (easier to translate, to). The one-handed axe says Okri Dori, for example.
The other dlc weapon with runes, the dual hammers, use only 3 runes (also words), also re-used from Kruber (as he has more, overall, i know dwarfs came first :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:): Drung (to defeat, vanquish, conquer, smash), Gorm (old, high, wise, powerful, bearded) and Zaraz (Gift), in varying sequence.

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I was looking the elven weapons up some time ago, too, but those were more word combos, like ‘stealth/shadow death’ and ‘sorrow death’ for the daggers.

Ah well, there is another dlc weapon with a lot of runes, the one-handed axe for Kerillian, gonna translate that too.
(Time passes while i look it up)
Their rune alphabet is called Eltharin. Not as much work has gone into their language as into Khazalid, sorry elf mains, dwarfs win this round. It has only words, and less runes overall. Also, some of their runes have contradicting translations, like Elthrai, which can mean doom as well as hope, or Yenlui, which can mean both harmony and chaos.

Back to the axe: some of the runes are mirrored and different from inner and outer side, and are not coherent in it. Also, the last rune on the bulge is very hard to make out, i think it’s Arhain.

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I’ll list the words from the inner side, outer side is just the same but backwards.

Arhain (shadows, night, stealth, secrets, perfidiousness), Skale (Guardian dragon, strength and honor) or less likely Ildir (the chained dragon, duty, obedience), Charoi (strength, ferocity, mane of hair), those 3 again; Arhain, Skale, Charoi, then Cynath (chill, death, silence, loneliness) and last but not least Lacoi (might, glory, fear of death).

That was some effort, i will not try to get some meaning out of those umgak elgi runes (you see, kinda biased here). I’ll leave that to others, if they want.

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Hey, awesome work! :smiley: I admit, I never figured the runes meant much of anything!

I think Eltharin is meant to be a super-subtle language, and these dual meanings only come out in context . . . probably makes more sense to Elves.

So Kruber’s Sword from the Sword and Mace is clearly Dwarf-made. But what’s interesting to me is that the sword is also scaled well for a dwarf - it’s very short for a human. Makes me wonder if it is a Dwarf Sword that simply got into the hands of humans later. While swords are rare among Dwarfs, they’re not unheard of.

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A truely intellectual language for high IQ beings. Of course dwari scribblings are easier to understand, they had to dumb them down for those smelly uncultured apes who are drunk 24/7.

Are humans even capable of making Rune weapons in WH? In most fantasy lore, it’s only the dwarfs who can make rune weapons, it’s normally a Dawrf only skill or tradition passed down. In some fantasy worlds, Elves can make Rune weapons as well, but humans are normally never are capable of it.

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As far as I know, no, only Dwarfs make Rune weapons in Warhammer.

That isn’t to say Dwarfs are the only ones that can make Rune weapons, they are just the only ones that do.

Runes themselves are basically the Dwarfen alternative to wielding the Winds of Magic. Due to their innate inability to wield them, they basically just take magic by the balls and hammer them into their weapons and armor.

However, other races such as the aforementioned humans and elves have no need for runes, because they are already capable of wielding the Winds of Magic.

So yes, in theory, a human could sit down with a Runesmith and learn how to make Rune weapons, but they don’t really have any reason to. Either they just learn the magic they want to wield, or they just get the Dwarfs to make the Rune weapons for them while they concern themselves with more important matters, like flamboyant clothing and stylish hats for the nobles.

WHFB wiki article I more or less stole this information from.

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Interesting link, thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

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Most of the glowing weapons don’t have runes proper on them, so perhaps some (at least) are human (or Elf)-made enchanted weapons, which are a thing, afaik. Also, notably, enchanted Elven weapons are known in prior lore to glow with a blue light - there was one described like that in the Sigmar trilogy of novels.

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We are talking about a fictional language right?

I am an educator in Latin and Ancient Greek. I know plenty modern Romance languages as well. A suggestion; word order is not like English in most languages!

For a more “accurate” translation, you would parse the words (their meaning), figure out their parts of speech, then make something intelligible out of English.

What your doing is so awesome :grin: so don’t think I’m being negative. Just looking at your translation, at first glance, why not something LIKE 


An ancient, powerful gift (weapon) FROM (they gave the gift) the slayers ancestors (for killing).

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Aye, lots of things don’t translate well to English and vis versa. It’s like Swedish, if someone asked you what the clock was, and you wanted to say it was 6:35, six thirty-five. In Swedish you would say, Klockan Ă€r fem över halv sju. Which would translate to something like, the clock is five over half on the way to seven. :joy:

This is interesting though. I remember back in my nerdy high school days, I tried to learn the old Elven language from the Elder Scrolls so I could translate things in the Elven ruins in Oblivion.

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Your very right. That’s what I mean by make your translation intelligible!

Translation is not word for word, so the translator has to use some “artistic license” in making it English, often using grammatical constructions in English that are NOT present in the original text :+1::+1:

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With fictional languages, people are usually lazy enough to not change syntax that much, though. They usually don’t even get a properly functioning language. My source there is a linguist I know who is making a conlang, haha.

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That’s awesome :grin:

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I mean, to be fair, the places and layout of the world in warhammer is heavily based on real life. Brettonia being France, the Empire being Germany, etc. A lot of places they barely changed the name. Albion for example is the old name of the English isle which they use. Pretty sure Nipon is how they say Japan in Japanese as well. Or is that Nihon? And Araby for Arab lands? As you know, there is no Australia in warhammer, just like real life.

So they really could of just based the languages off real languages, would of been so much easier. For the elvish language, there’s an actual Nordic language called Elfdalian . I think only like 3000 people currently speak it though
 Still, they could of kept it simple like that and since Elfdalian is decendent from old Norse, could of just used Norse runes. Had the dwarfs speak Gaelic or something. Suprised more fantasy media doesn’t do this.

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They are not in the TECHNICAL sense, but your still totally correct :grin:, I think. You noticed the allusions to Germany / France geographically, that’s true for the German language as well. Take “Ubersreik”; Uber is the German word for great / huge / etc., and the word “reiCH”, means kingdom / sovereign state. Ubersreik OBVIOUSLY has the same as the German, but changes the ending on Reich. You see umlauts (google it) used in the language.

Remember how your history instructors referred to the nazis as the third REICH? Ever heard the phrase “German Uber alles” (“Germany’s the greatest of all”)? Now you got it :grin::v:

Smoker, the language your referencing exists, it’s a dialect; in germany, for example, a German speaker from Munich would sound VERY different to you than a German speaker from DĂŒsseldorf ( that U has an umlaut :slight_smile: ) would sound. The only universal truth is the textbook German you were taught in high school is quite dissimilar to spoken German - to a linguist more so. Think North and south in America, Michigan compared to Georgia

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‘Reikspiel’, the language used by most of the Old World (at least the humans), is to germans like shakespearean english (early modern english) to today’s english. It’s a just a bit old and using a lot of archaisms, or like using thee/thy instead of you/your. You can comprehend it though, it’s not like ‘Althochdeutsch’ (old high german) which would be as hard as Middle English to translate for non-professionals.

Yeah, that’s true. I was trying to, but as a native german speaker trying to get order into english words translated from a fantasy language, i was to tired to do a great job on it. :grin:

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Du bust sehr weise JayJay :clap:

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Elfdalian, Ă€lvdalska in svenska is not a dialect, although, throughout history it has been treated as such. It is an independent language that came from old Norse and due to the isolation of the area, it developed into it’s modern version independently. It does share a lot in common with other Nordic languages.

And yea, Reich is similar in Swedish I think, we say Rike here. With the parliament being called the Riksdag, or the kingdoms conference.

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I’m just so sad we don’t get Araby as a playable faction for the Total War: Warhammer series

They would have been a great addition, albeit crowding the Vortex campaign.

Thanks :smiley: go work on that german though :wink:

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Bam!

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I mean, there isn’t really a lot to go about when it comes to Araby.

Their lore is lacking, especially when it comes to modern times (2502 I.C and up, which is where TW:WH takes place), their army roster is small, their named characters are few, they don’t really seem to have any campaign mechanics that would be unique to them., and, like you said, they wouldn’t really have anything to do in the Vortex campaign.

However, isn’t there still, technically, a possibility for them to appear in the third game?

We know that Daemons of Chaos (Most likely as a single faction with 4 differents Legendary Lords, rather than 4 standalone factions), Chaos Dwarfs, and Ogre Kingdoms are coming out, with the fourth faction most likely being Cathay, since it fits geographically, and it’s unique enough to become it’s own faction.

But what to do from there?

All the major factions in WHFB would be implemented by then, and I’m pretty sure CA would still be up for pushing some DLC races.

The only things left are Dogs of War, Kislev, the Southern Realms, Nippon, Kingdoms of Ind, and Araby (coincidentally, most of them being human nations).

Nippon and Kingdoms of Ind seem to be the most obvious candidates, but there’s already a bit of overlap between Cathay and Nippon, and Kingdoms of Ind are kind of in the same boat as Araby, having almost nothing going for them.

If I have to guess, CA will most likely just make a single “Eastern Kingdoms” race, which would encompass both Cathay, Nippon, and Kingdoms of Ind combined.

Dogs of War and Kislev would most likely come next, both because they would fit geographically, but also because they are unique enough (Kislev already has unique buildings and commandments) on their own.

While the second game only has 2 race DLC, the first game had 4 (5 if you count Warriors of Chaos), so if we’re lucky, CA might get around to making Araby eventually, but you are correct in that it is unlikely.

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I bet you’re happy xD

I started a Vlad campaign 2 days ago. I’ve almost taken over most of the Empire, got Karl Franz on the run and he’s just down to Altdorf. But last night before I went to bed, all the dwarven kingdoms and Wood elves declared war on me XD

Isn’t that a lot of land though? It’ll be interesting none the less.