Codex of Yoth-Sathlyu (Yoth-Sath-Loo)

In 2721 AF a Chariot Class Ascendant Ship arrived in Earth orbit with an envoy from a hitherto unknown species self designated as the Intervention Angels. The creature made a number of astounding claims which confounded the observers who were sent to talk to it. It asserted that the intervention angels had direct access to the godhead which was the fountain of all reality underpinning the universe and it demonstrated some unusual physical and mental powers not seen before in any other alien species. These apparently inclined the awestruck observers to lend some credence to the envoy's words although at a later and cooler time we must question whether they were too credulous.
The envoy reported that it was here to assign a task to all the people's of Earth on behalf of God. It had brought with it, a fabulous text which it said was called the Codex of Yoth-Sathlyu.
"The Codex contains universal and particular truths of direct relevence to your species future in the universe. I am forbidden to tell you what these messages are since the act of translating them from the Codex is integral to their proper undertstanding. Each species must make their own translation. All I can tell you is that the work in cast in nineteen languages. Thirteen of them were once used by the thirteen great civilizations of the Yoth galactic supercluster. Another four belonged to the ancient Sathlyu ascendents. One is the language of the intervention angels and the last one, I am unable to say. The nature of each of these languages, you must discover if you are ever to succeed in translating the Codex."
The envoy went on to appoint a number of anointed partners instructing them in the ways of reading the codex and providing the basic information it said it was allowed to share to provide some initial guidance on how to translate it. A series of overlapping sections within the text, known as the rosetta passages provide a bridge from language to language with each language becoming successively more esoteric. Some of the key phrases in the first language were provided as an initial primer.
"Another intervenion angel will return in due course to judge whether you have been successful", the envoy concluded. "Do not fail the test!"
The Chariot Class Ascendant Ship departed without warning and without even setting any kind of expectation about exactly when the Earth would receive this second visit, from which it was presumed that "in due course" meant after an interval proportionate to the difficulty of the task.
As at 3180 AF, more than four hundred years later, there has been no second coming and the task of translation remains unsolved.
The Grammar Wars started in 2731, caused by a number of schisms in the ranks of the anointed partners. They were triggered by the most technical of linguistic disputes of a kind that would normally have never seen the light of day outside academia. Ostensibly grammatical, they were in reality about semantics more than syntax and they quickly became very nasty in character, with different city states supporting different factions.

Purpose

The internal purpose of the information which the Codex is trying to convey is mysterious and unknown whilst it remains untranslated. It is possible that its purpose is largely or even wholly bound up in the meta task of the translation itself. This was a definite implication from the envoy when the anointed partners were assigned to the task of translation. However, after all the layers of metaphorical wrapping paper have been removed from the present of the Codex, one must presume that there is something of value inside. If the instructions of the envoy are true, the meaning of the Codex, as elaborated via the act of translation will lead to invaluable truths specific to the human race and vital for its future existence. These truths, it is claimed, have been conveyed directly from God.
Maybe. And maybe not.

Document Structure

Publication Status

Five hundred and twelve copies of the Codex were distributed to the anointed partners and this has allowed for many competing teams to work on the problem of translation simultaneously.
It is physically realised in a trilogy of hard crystalline stones about ten centimetres tall, one blue, one red and one yellow, which contain impurities designed to cast micro shadow glyphs when illuminated by intersecting beams of laser light. To pick out different elements of the text, the lasers must be tuned to a variety of frequencies and the crystals must be rotated. The information density available though the proper ordering of these operations is very high.
The image at the head of the article, shows secondary transcriptions being subjected to "interpretation" experiments which push them through destructive modulated energy fields, one of the techniques favoured by the Bad Theologists. There are differing opinions on the merits of this way of working.

Type

Text, Religious

Medium

Crystal, Photonic

Authoring Date

2721 AF

Languages

In 3180 AF, the Nineteen Languages of the Codex have been decoded by the Bad Theologists to the following extent.

Seq	Name	Type	Progress
01	Middle Emaribokon	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Also called the Literal language. There is now a broad consensus on the meaning of all the texts in this language.
02	Kalafringian	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Also called the Classical language and almost completely decoded, although some small puzzles remain.
03	Upper Emaribokon	Yoth Supercluster Culture	A later culture with some tenuous relationship to Middle Emaribokon. This language is also called the Symbolist language and is well understood, if less so than Kalafringian.
04	Galtosian	Yoth Supercluster Culture	This language is also called the Metaphorical encoding and was a challenge to early analysts, although now with the benefit of improved translations of the Literal, Classical and Symbolist languages it is much better understood.
05	Fevaylian	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Also known as the Poetic language, this is the first of the complex encodings which did not yield to study for many years. Now it has mostly been interpreted but there are some troubling ambiguities which might be undermining efforts to comprehend the even more complex languages that remain.
06	Ulltic	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Also called the Massively Parallel language, Ulltic remained opaque until the Bad Theologists anounced an important insight in 2808 AF, which led to a good understanding of a large fraction of the text and renewed hope in the programme of translation
06	Darsailium	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Darsailium is also known as the Arcane language. It was "solved" with brute force AI pattern matching algorithms in 2820, using information from the Ulltic texts. There is much that remains mysterious about Darsailium, despite a broad consensus as to how to read it.
07	Jald	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Jald is the last language for which there are significant passages that have been decoded. It is also called the Empty language and is remarkable for the degree of implicit meaning and density of thought that is contained within relatively few symbols. Nothing was understood about this language until 3052 AF when descriptions in the Ulltic texts of the cultures of the species that used Jald allowed many implicit meanings in Jald to be derived.
08	Xantainian	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Fragments of Xantainian have been claimed to be translated, a hotly contested issue amongst the bad Theologists since no one is convinced. It is also called the Hard language.
09	Inaupe	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Dubbed the Super Hard language the word Inaupe, which is thought to name it, is the only thing currently known about it.
10	?	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Boundaries for the limits of language 10 in the codex, which is designated as the Scattered language have been tentatively identified but nothing else is known about it, not even its own name
11	?	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Given a working designation of the Low Transcendent language, this is the first where it is uncertain even where the text boundaries exist.
12	?	Yoth Supercluster Culture	Middle Transcendent
13	?	Yoth Supercluster Culture	High Transcendent
14	?	Sathlyu Ascendents	Reputed to be the first of the four Sathlyu languages, so simply called Sathlyu One, it lies far beyond the limits of the translation program in 3180 AF
15	?	Sathlyu Ascendents	Sathlyu Two
16	?	Sathlyu Ascendents	Sathlyu Three
17	?	Sathlyu Ascendents	Sathlyu Four
18	Mediative	Intervention Angels	There are, peculiarly, some clues to the Mediative language of the Intervention Angels which come not from the Codex but from hints dropped by the envoy, including its title. It has proved impossible to identify more than a frustrating hint of the Mediative language in the text, despite many attempts to skip to this level.
19	?	Source Unknown	The most mysterious of all the languages and reputed to contain the final revelation of the codex. The Bad Theologists call this language Thunder.