Episode 21 - The Sea Lords Script
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: After nearly a decade of analysis, the Linguistics Department of Gabonium University cracked the enigma that is the Sea Lords Script and presents this report to the Most Exalted One, ruler of the Nobel Empire of the Last Peoples.
The Mutual Destruction approximately 3900 years ago wiped out nearly all speakers of the Earth’s language families existing at the time. While archeologists have located many records written in these languages, they had yet to discover a key to translating them. We suspected the Sea Lords Script was that key.
Our colleagues in the Archeology Department unearthed the Sea Lords Script in a trash dump on the North Star continent. Their courage to sail across the Sea Lords’ domain to reach new lands in pursuit of a better understanding of our past allowed us to make this breakthrough.
The Sea Lords Script consists of a flat piece of composite tree fibers approximately 2 decarts wide and 8 decarts long. Its author used carbon-based substances to inscribe pictures and text on both the front and back surfaces. Our colleagues found it pressed between two pieces of clear olslik, the substance derived from decomposed ancient flora and fauna used by our human ancestors in nearly all aspects of their life prior to the Mutual Destruction.
The pictures depict a Sea Lord swimming through its aquatic domain, dorsal fin at the ready, blowhole and grey snout held high as if mocking its less fortunate land-based neighbors. These pictures are what gives the Sea Lords Script its name. Next to these pictures is written 38 paragraphs of generally similar lengths. We long thought these paragraphs contained the same information but in 38 different languages. The characters in the text match those the University’s archeologists have found in the same trash dump and elsewhere around the world.
Through painstaking analysis, we determined one of the 38 messages is written in ancient Swahili, a Bantu language and early predecessor to our Shaxuth. Following that discovery, we began work using the other 37 messages to translate a myriad of pre-Mutual Destruction texts.
We believe the Sea Lords Script provides important insight into human-Sea Lords relations prior to the Mutual Destruction. While some scientists argue the Sea Lords only arose after the Mutual Destruction, filling the void at the top of the evolutionary ladder caused by a vastly diminished human population, we conclude the Sea Lords Script proves this nefarious race of water dwellers schemed against humanity well before then.
Even among those convinced the rise of the Sea Lords predates the Mutual Destruction, there was much speculation as to the meaning of the Sea Lords Script. What was so important it needed repeating in 38 languages? Was it a call to arms to the human population to resist the Sea Lords? Was it propaganda spread by traitorous human allies of the Sea Lords? Was it instead an order from the Sea Lords to these disloyal people to betray their own kind and instigate the Mutual Destruction? We now confirm the Sea Lords Script was a warning to the human population against a plot by the Sea Lords to destroy humanity. However, the plot was not what resulted in the Mutual Destruction. Instead, the plot was designed to kill our ancestors’ young.
The insidious nature of the message compelled us to advise the military of this dastardly attempt the Sea Lords made against the human race in the past. It appears their recent efforts at mind control using their high-pitched screeches is just the latest in a long line of plans to use communication as a weapon. The Sea Lords Script serves as a reminder we must be ever vigilant against our eternal water-borne enemy.
Below is our translation of the Sea Lords Script. Be advised the sinister nature of the plot is not for the faint of heart.
WARNING: Dolphin toy not suitable for children under 3 years. Small Parts might be swallowed or inhaled.
About the author
Jason E. Maddux is an aviation attorney, who uses writing speculative fiction and children's stories as a creative outlet each night once his two daughters are in bed. After spending his youth moving around the southeastern United States, he now resides in northern Virginia. Follow his writing through his website or on Twitter.