THE HELLGATE’S AVERAGES

This is one of the articles that was submitted to the Secrets of Tibia 3 contest. It was written by Bacca Chewie.

I. INTRODUCTION

We can mention an infinity of theories about the famous language 469, but the fact is: we don't have anything concrete. Well, almost anything. There are many signs that the way to understand this complex language is through mathematical calculations, and it was these same signs that led my research to the discoveries you will see below. Let's start from the beginning, the place where practically the entire collection of the language 469 is located, the Hellgate's Library. There, the librarian responsible for the place - and one of the few in Tibia who speaks this language -, the NPC A Wrinkled Bonelord makes it very clear to us when we ask him about his language, replying that only "a genius that can calculate numbers" could decipher it.

And who is better than a Bonelord to show us the way, right? Besides the example above, we can find evidences that is necessary to use mathematics to translate language 469, as in the book "You Cannot Even Imagine" where the narrator show us the creator of the language as someone who make calculations.

“...it was me who assisted the great calculator to assemble the bonelords language.”

Reinforcing the speech of the Bonelord librarian, this book expresses that calculation is a fundamental part of the language. Now think with me: if the language could simply be translated, wouldn't it be more accurate to call its creator "the great writer" instead of "the great calculator"? The book "Beware of the Bonelords!" also makes it clear that the language 469 is, in fact, some kind of mathematics:

“...it is not only a language but also some kind of mathematics.”

Considering this, would it be necessary then, instead of translating the language, to calculate it? This is the logic that allow us to take the next step.

II. DEVELOPMENT

It wasn't days nor weeks, but months using the contents of the books located at Hellgate Library in different calculations and experiments with the purpose of finding anything that could support this theory, after all, when it comes to mathematics, its natural to think that at some point we would have to obtain answers, so something happened when two simple math operations came in: addition and division.

To illustrate it, shall we begin with the shortest Hellgate's book, the Book 9, kept on the shelf number 6 according to the image above. If we count each of the numbers that are mentioned in the book, we will see that it has a total of 35 characters only. Now, if we decide to do the sum according to their value, that is, 2+1+9+7+2+7+8…, we will get the result of 155. Having these two values, we can obtain the average of the characters mentioned in the book by dividing the sum of the numbers (which in this case is 155) by the total number of numbers present (35), thus obtaining the final average of 4,42857142857143…

Calm. Isolated, this is a result that tell us nothing, however, when repeating the process with each one of the 71 books of the library, things start to get a little odd.  The table below is extensive but it has all the information we need for our discovery. Let's see:

As the process has already been explained before the table, we provide in it only the values of addition, division and their results, the arithmetic averages. Feel free to test the results. The first thing we notice as something odd is the precisely the value of the averages and this is the core of our discovery: all results, I said all results, have the value of 4 followed by a comma and many numbers. Isn't it curious how the average value of all Hellgate's books is very similar? To demonstrate this odd precision, it's enough for some texts to have just one more or less character for this average to be different from 4,....

As if that weren't enough, not only does the average for each book separately have a result similar to 4 but also the entire library. Yes, I counted and summed every number in every Hellgate book. There were 11.408 that when summed, presented a total of 50.246. It was a really exhausting work but I can say it was worth it! And guess the result? Well, see for yourself:

If you think things can't get any weirder, sit down because it's a long road.

III. ARGUMENT SUPPORT

This is the moment to analyze some of the averages obtained. At first glance, the Hellgate's averages have different values and if we look more closely, we'll see that they relate to each other as if they were somehow communicating. Let's use two books as an example to better visualize this kind of interaction, Book 6 and 9. See the two separated lines of the table below:

Did you notice anything strange? We're talking about two books with different content, different amount of characters and different sums, however, with exactly the same average. How could this be a coincidence? How could such different values give us the same long result with the same numbers? This definitely not a coincidence and in case you're still not convinced, I have more examples.

Let's look at the Book 36 and 37. Note that both also have the same average, however, looking more closely, the sum and the number of characters aren't only different but one of the books has exactly twice as many characters as the other, which leads us to conclude that Book number 37 has Book number 36 within it twice but with its contents mixed up. This, logically, means that both have the same average as the result. There is a comparison below that allow us to understand better the similarity between the two "texts":

It's like the language 469 was trying to tell us something! Well, in fact it is, we just don't understand it yet. There are other books that "communicate" in a similar way to those already mentioned but in a less discreet way, they don't have the double or half of the content, but the same amount of each digit in a different order thus maintaining the same average again. To prevent the explanation from becoming repetitive and so that we can move on to new observations, I organized in a single list with their sums, counts and averages, respectively:

This, players, has been before our eyes for over 20 years. The analyzes don't stop here, and to continue our research we need to leave Hellgate and go far away, to other ancient and mysterious locations. I'm talking about Isle of the Kings and the dangerous Kharos, better known as Ferumbras Tower.

IV. BOOKS OUTSIDE HELLGATE

There are two books in 469 that aren't in Hellgate. The first one is safely kept by the monks of the White Raven order, at Isle of the Kings. The another one, for some reason, is in possession of Ferumbras in his Citadel, at the island of Kharos. You can check the location of both of these books on the following shelves on the map below:

Both books are related by a similarity that may go unnoticed at first. The book found at Isle of the Kings is an identical copy of Book 35 present at the Hellgate Library, initially this didn't catch my attention but since many books with speculative copies dispersed in different places but I soon started to observe it with a new eye when I analyzed the content of the book located at Ferumbras Tower. Despite looking different when redoing the same steps as in previous books (sums, couting and division), I noticed something peculiar in its final average. The book of Ferumbras and the book of the Isle of the Kings have the same average. See the table below:

As with others Hellgate books mentioned above, those two books have the same characters but with the content reorganized. What are we missing? Why is this book separated from the others at Hellgate? Could this be a clue suggesting that the same book exists in traditional language at both libraries?

After reaching this point in this research I can't ignore other moments in which the language 469 is or was used nor what I could perceive when analyzing these occasions. I decided to organize them into topics because I believe this would be the best method to share my impressions with you:

• There are books at Hellgate that despite not having equal final averages presents to us results that are repeating decimal, that is, numerical sequences that are repeated infinitely, this is the case of books 1, 4, 7, 9, 11, 17, 20, 35, 38, 40, 44, 46, 47, 52, 54, 60, 61 and 67. There are also books with strangely precise averages such as 26 and 54;
• The NPC Avar Tar, from Edron, is probably lying when he says he knows a poem in 469, since most of the numerical sequences he says aren't present in any Hellgate book;
• The sentences said by the NPC A Wrinkled Bonelord, by NPC Knightmare during Tibia's 15th anniversary festivities, by CipSoft employee Chayenne in an interview provided to the fansite Portal Tibia on May 15th, 2009, in a poll carried out by the official Tibia website on April 15th, 2020 and in speeches of creatures such as The Evil Eye and Elder Bonelord doesn't present an averages of 4,... because they're just excerpts in 469 present at Hellgate Library and not only the complete content organized in a book;
• The book “74032 45331” present at the Secret Library  isn't in 469 since the only two numerical sequences present in it aren't found at the Hellgate Library.

V. CONCLUSION

The Hellgate's averages are the proof that mathematics is the way to translate this mysterious language spoken by Bonelords and is what has been kept in secret for more than 20 years what is stored on the shelves of this library. Therefore, there are two certainties that we can conclude from Hellgate's averages:

1. There is a hidden arithmetic reason behind the books waiting to be uncovered;
2. Nothing presented here is a coincidence.

I hope the discoveries presents here in this article serve as inspiration for other researchers and also Tibia, as a community, to stay united for a solution to the game's mysteries.

SOURCES: 

• Books "You Cannot Even Imagine", "Beware of the Bonelords!" and “74032 45331”: https://www.tibiawiki.com.br/
• Books in 469, images and NPC transcriptions by myself.