Hello everyone. With the recent update I have discovered some new graffiti phrases scrawled on maps where they previously were not. I have not played every map since the update, far from it, but I found a bunch of new phrases so far only in Relay Station and Comms-Plex.
There were posts that broke down the first batch of phrases we’ve had since the CBT so I won’t go over all of them but it is worth noting that nearly all of them were determined to be phonetic transliterations of English into Dark Tongue runes (which are technically WH Fantasy rather than 40k but I guess it still works) and most of them just typical heretical bile-spewing like “death to the false Emperor”, “KILL, MAIM, DESTROY”, etc. Unfortunately, this batch seems to be very different.
I had identified 9 distinct phrases in the first group, 6 of them being transliterated English, 1 being the Dark name for Beasts of Nurgle, and the other two remain undeciphered as far as I know.
1-1. “Gu’nagh’gyrhan” translates to beast of Nurgle
1-2. “aksho [Nurgle] dhakh” This one is a fusion of symbolic and phonetic runes. In some phrases they sound out “Nurgle” and in others, like this one, they use the symbolic rune to identify him. “Aksho” means “to search for” but “dhakh” is unknown. Possibly a fusion of dark “dhar” and battle “akh” but we’ve had no other hints as to what it could mean.
EDIT: After some additional research, it turns out that this is a line from a Nurglite daemon summoning ritual according to the 2nd ed Chaos Daemons codex. It translates to “Nurlge shall be called with death”.
1-3. “bhakghurhaani aaghkwaami” Really no ideas about this one. Ghur means brown but it could be pure coincidence. Other than that, nothing at all. Some people suggested it might be name, after all we still haven’t seen that Dreg boss dude the scab captain kneels to in the trailer, but that’s our best guess.
EDIT: Thanks to Fulnec below, this one is solved. It is actually “bahk’ghuranhi’aghkami” which translates to “great unclean ones”. Greater daemons in bound?
EDIT: Well, that’s all the first batch solved, then.
Now, we get to the current batch. I’ve so far found 6 distinct phrases but I’ve also noticed that some show up repeated only in part as I will note below.
2-1. “tekwaalaash / aakh srhaagh” As noted before akh is battle and/or bloodshed.
2-2. “yaash tekhaalaash aakh / srhaagh trhaal” Again, akh is the only identifiable word.
EDIT: I initially thought the first two words were a single large word and the second line was a single word but other instances of this phrase seem to have spaces there. This means that 2-1 is likely a fragment of this phrase rather than a novel sample. There is a difference of one letter but heretics aren’t too keen on spelling.
2-3. “aakhaah srhaagh”
2-4. “srhaagh / izht / laash”
2-5. “motaash khaagh / srhaagh / bhaaarush” This one in particular I have seen split up with the first line on it’s own and in other places lines 2 and 3 together, meaning it may actually be two different sentences but I saw it intact enough times to count it as one together.
2-5A. “motaash khaagh” A partial of 2-5.
2-5B. “srhaagh / bhaaarush” Another partial of 2-5. repeated twice. Some of the graffiti in Comms-Plex is written pretty close together giving an initial impression of a novel phrase.
2-6. “aaak yaash / werhaakh som” The first word is a different spelling from the other akhs but could be the same due to the language being phonetic and not overly concerned with spelling. Or not.
EDIT: Replaced with a better picture.
2-7. “motaaakh / sezaaar” This one seems to contain an alternate version of motaash seen above.
And now for the disappointing part. I have no idea what these are supposed to say. The paltry lexicon in the fandom wiki gives no hints beyond the one word. Then I remembered that the Total War people had made a bunch of words for their beastmen to say and I looked up that and found this:
Just a simple cipher but it looked promising. I plugged in what we have … and it came out even worse nonsense than it went in so that’s probably not it. So I’m at a loss and I have to ask for help. Does anyone have a more complete lexicon from some old rulebook (the 2nd edition WHFB Chaos Daemons has already come up)? Do you happen to see a deciphering pattern? I mean, all but 2-6 and 2-7 contains the word srhaagh but I haven’t been able to find this word anywhere online. Yaash and tek(w/h)aalaash also repeat.
I was thinking that people who put out these sorts of puzzles usually give some hint as to the answer and in the first batch the decipherable phrases were mostly transliterated English. Does anyone recognize these as being a different transliterated language? Swedish maybe? Doesn’t sound like it but some of the English transliteration was pretty wonky too. Or any thing else?
I don’t think it’s purely nonsense because some of these new phrases match or are very similar to some of the cultists callouts, and those were voicelines that have been around for a while so the whole thing seems like it was planned out and designed. I just lack the key. If anyone has any epiphanies or any other new graffiti phrases that I have missed, please share them. I’d love to know what you think.
Dark Tongue phrases:
1-1: gu’nagh’ghyran
1-2: aksho [Nurgle] dh’akh
1-3: bahk’ghuranhi’aghkwami
2-1: tekwaalaash / aakh srhaagh
2-2: yaash tekhaalaash aakh / srhaagh trhaal
2-3: aakhaah srhaagh
2-4: srhaagh / izht / laash
2-5: motaash khaagh / srhaagh / bhaaarhush
2-5A: motaash khaagh
2-5B: srhaagh / bhaaarush
2-6: aaak yaash / werhaakh som
2-7: motaaakh / sezaaar
25FEB: Added translations for 1-3 and 1-2. Fixed several typos.
01MAR: Added 2-7, 2-5A, and 2-5B. Replaced 2-6 with a clearer version. Compiled list of phrases.
