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Forums » Epic Week 2022 » Scholarly Symbol (SOLVED)

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Tar

OH, okay that definitely checks out especially with the first clue - doing a quick skim of lore, there's engines across from those doors that help create the 'mortal flames' used for a cleansing process? It seems like there's two versions of mortal flames, a spell that individuals cast and one cast by the school here - could this count as a vital part of the doors wards?
Dragonfire Moderator

Of course this would be about the one and only Naomi Novik book I haven’t read, LOL
Kim Topic Starter Site Admin

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I'm all out of ideas folks. I dont know what its asking for.
Dragonfire Moderator

I think you've definitely been on the right track, Prescience. It's just a matter of digging and finding exactly what it wants, hrm hrm.
Dragonfire Moderator

When humans are mentioned in the second clue - are there other nonhuman entities in this series? I see there's something called the maleficaria. Anything else?
Tar

In all the reading up I've been doing, it's looks like it's just humans and mals - the creatures that go after young wizards to take all their mana.

That last clue definitely seems to be referring to the Graduation Hall or the gate therein, but I've tried almost everything I can think of that can be found 'in' either: save 'scouring engine', the proper term for the cleansing machinery I found just before the monsters respawned. That's pretty much all I've got, though. I'm out of ideas otherwise! I'd have to be more familiar than just pouring through sparknotes and wikis...
Dragonfire Moderator

Oh, there's a second bonus clue, now! "The school motto is a translation".

The school motto seems to be "In Wisdom, Shelter." What's it translated from?
Next person who gets a chance try:

In Sapienta Umbraculum

In Wisdom, Shelter

Malice, keep far, this gate wisdom's shelter guards
Kim Topic Starter Site Admin

Congrats on solving this symbol! The answer was "In Sapienta Umbraculum".

For those of you wondering how this answer could be arrived at, here's a quick explanation. :)

My current favorite author by a long-shot is Naomi Novak. In her scholomance series, magical/wizard folk call themselves "wise-gifted". Unfortunately, magical/wizard children are irresistibly delicious to monsters, as they are bursting with magic. Monsters eat almost all wizard children before they can grow enough to master their powers and protect themselves, with a death rate of almost 90%. So the wizard adults build a school that floats in a void, where they send their children to keep them safe. Alas, some monsters still manage to find their way to the school, and the death rate continues at about 40-60%. This is still vastly better odds than being on the outside. But the school itself, a magical construct, believes the slogan that it has been engraved with to be its one true purpose and decides to try and protect its students in a way that leads to its own sacrifice and likely total destruction.. The slogan, "In Sapienta Umbraculum" is translated in several different ways and into several different languages, but the most common english translation the wizards give is "to offer sanctuary and protection to all the wise-gifted children of the world". This translation appears throughout the school. However, the shorter, latin version, is inscribed on the gates that students graduate through once they are old enough to return to the real world, and is used as the anchor to a massive warding spell.
Tar

NICE. I never saw any indication that the motto had been translated in my searching, we definitely needed to rely on someone who had actually read this series. Way to go!

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