Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Gurv Sep 27, 2010 5:14:32	This isn't one of a million threads asking what it is. The Prophecy is seen in the movement of the stars and moons, etched into mountains, and written in a thousand other places. The dragons have been studying it for ages; they have recorded and translated vast amounts of information. What is required to do so? If the PCs stumble upon a previously undiscovered mark of the Prophecy, what skills and information do they need to possess to "read" it? I assume that knowledge of the Draconic language is key; it must use a script inspired by the Prophecy. And huge ranks in Knowledge (arcana). But what, exactly, is involved in turning a whirling pattern seen in the ripples of a pond into a cryptic revelation of the Prophecy?
#2 naturax Sep 27, 2010 6:28:57	Maybe it's knowledge of what has been gained so far. I imagine that dragonmarks (wherever they happen to occur) are like kanji, except that no one has a certain definition of what all of the components mean, and therefore they can't be sure what the composite symbol means. But the dragons and demons who have been studying the prophecy for ages have thousands of years of evidence that a certain symbol corresponds to a certain event, and this is compiled, studied, and of course interpreted. So PCs would need to have access to at least your book on Draconic Prophecy 101, which maybe has the most obvious or most frequently occuring elements, in order to have the vaguest idea what the new symbol means. And if it contains new elements, then they'd have to do what the dragons and demons have been doing: guess, then wait and see what happens. You're basically asking the PCs to fill in the blanks, I guess. Also, I just noticed this on wikipedia and it's something I'm going to remember to play up regarding the Prophecy: "kanji are said to have one or more different "readings". Deciding which reading is meant depends on context, intended meaning, use in compounds, and even location in the sentence. Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings."
#3 ReasonForTreason Sep 27, 2010 18:12:41	My prophecy is interconnected with each and every part of itself, defines it's meaning by referencing various other parts and cross-referencing other marks that will appear, once something else has occured. Yeah, to me, it's pretty messy stuff, and to deciver it, you best start at the beginning. Which is why there are only a handful of people who "understand", and a lot of others (i.e. the antagonists) who think they understand, but can't possibly understand the whole complex. While individual elements might seem pretty clear and straight forward, they are actually just an endless, dead-end "when-if" script, that was made redundant aeons ago.