Status Updates From Sublunar

Written in an epistolary style keeps the book somewhat ambient, as though we are not to derive meaning from the story, but instead arrive at a sense of understanding how things were for people who had the ability to write things.

O, Haraldai, tu mane žavi, gąsdini, masini, atstumi, trauki!

Strange one

I am quite certain that Erik Lange would be the first to sincerely regret that great sums of the lord’s money were spent so mindlessly on sin, degradation, and depravity, especially if he knew that I was in your lordship’s service and had already told you everything, or the essentials anyway.

Clear entire day and night, mild weather and there reigned χασματα; in the morning ♀ could be seen intensely red till it went a degree supra horizontem, then she was not so red.

[Greek: chasmata = chasms?, ♀ = Mars, Latin: above the horizon.]

Clear at first then dark, clear during afternoon and night till midnight, since appeared mirifica chasmata rubri et versicoloris. Patches of fog, mild northwest. Northeast, morning gloom, since sunshine and hard frost. The north, quiet, snow.

[Latin: Wonderful red and multicoloured chasms.]

Knowing before she married him that Otte Thott would die prematurely had made the loss easier on her and little Tage, she said, and added that my parents’ thoughtlessness had left me defenseless against the grim powers of ♄ and ♂ and ♀. However, I should not despair but trust in our savior and his imminent Second Coming, as clearly heralded by the new star and the great conjunction.
[♄=Saturn, ♂=Mars, ♀=Venus]

Falk Gøye has burned every page of the theological piece he has been working on after Tyge gave him his honest opinion on its form as well as its content.

The fallen leaves light up in glee at their own swift transfiguration, but before long everything will be brown and gray on the island, the sky gray, the sea around us gray. A small trickle of embers through the clouds at occasu et ortu ☉is, more like the blood from a schoolboy’s flogged back than a flaming river rushing through Tartarus.

[Latin/i>: Sunset and sunrise.]

I only saw Master Brahe in the seated position, but it is my impression that he is at once fat and hunched, thus manifesting the worst traits of both the noble and the learned. His speech is nasal, even shrill, perhaps as a consequence of his having lost part of his nose in a duel, a section now patched with a leaf made of bent metal and smeared in rosy ointment.

But all night long this boy was the main object of my maledictions as I lay trembling with cold under my cloak in the steadily pouring rain. Dirteater! I hissed under my sopping cloak in the sopping field, rascal! Flabby lump of dough! Inutile terrae pondus!

[Latin: Useless weight of earth.]

Master Haxell returned my plea with but an emission of pituita flung upon my person, or rather upon my hat; a catapulting of phlegm from the corner of his crooked mouth to the brim of my cap whence it trickled to my forehead and soaked my brows and lashes.

[Latin: spit, phlegm.]

A tabby saunters in his direction, gives a fiery yellow glance, brushes against his leg and announces itself with a meow, as tender as hellfire licking sinful flesh. Vae, vae, sceleste!

[Latin: Woe, woe, wicked one!]

But were we to look beyond shame, whether at the lice or the stars, the direction of our gaze would matter not. Despiciendo suspicio. Suspiciendo despicio. Pudet me utriusque, frater. Shame gathers around this world. Drizzles down from above to condense in a thick membrane around us.

[Latin: I despise suspicion. I suspect despiciency. I am ashamed of both, brother.]

Need to keep this for easy reference as the text often uses the symbol only.

Eheu, frustra vinum redolenta, exclaimed Morsing, whose boots were almost struck; he claimed the expression is from Cicero and is used to describe the wine-reeking shreds of half-digested food that Marc Anthony once spewed forth onto the tribunal before the very eyes of the crowds, and with this learned anecdote Tyge’s rightful anger was somewhat appeased.
[Latin: Alas, in vain, I smell of wine.]