Editing 593: Voynich Manuscript

{{comic
| number    = 593
| date      = June 5, 2009
| title     = Voynich Manuscript
| image     = voynich_manuscript.png
| titletext = Wait, is that the ORIGINAL voynich manuscript? Where did you GET that? Wanna try playing a round of Druids and Dicotyledons?
}}

==Explanation==
The {{w|Voynich manuscript}} is a very detailed book written in an unknown script, describing plants and recipes, most of which lack a real-world analogue. Over the past few decades, linguists and cryptographers have unsuccessfully attempted to decode the book.

{{w|Tabletop role-playing game|Tabletop role-playing games}} (such as {{w|Dungeons and Dragons}}) are fantasy games with extremely detailed descriptions of fantastical worlds.

After being shown the manuscript for the first time by [[Megan]], [[Cueball]] argues that it should be obvious that it's just an ancient role-playing-game rulebook, since the human tendency to invent fantastical worlds must have also existed in the past.

After concluding this, a shocked Cueball then asks in the title text how Megan got her hands on the original manuscript (which is in the Yale University's ''{{w|Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library}}''). Megan unexpectedly suggests the prosaic activity of playing {{w|Druid|Druids}} and {{w|Dicotyledon|Dicotyledons}}, assuming such a game could be defined by the manuscript.

Note that the use of the pronoun "your" in the last frame is anachronistic, as in early modern English it was used as a plural pronoun, or as a singular pronoun only to a superior; the proper pronoun would be "thy": "Thy Druid doth lose two points."

Note also that it's ''{{w|glossolalia}}'' not ''glossolatia'' at the third panel.

==Transcript==
:[Weird root vegetables surround a strange script.]

:[Megan holding up book.]
:Megan: This is the Voynich manuscript—a book, allegedly 500 years old, written in an unrecognized script. It's some kind of visual encyclopedia of imaginary plants and undeciphered "recipes".

:[Cueball opens the book.]
:Megan: It could be a hoax, a lost language, a cipher, an alien text, glossolatia—no one knows.
:Cueball: No one? But it's obvious.

:Megan: ...Obvious? Linguists and cryptographers have been stumped for decades.
:Cueball: They forget. Human nature doesn't change.

:Cueball: Just imagine someone found a book from <u>our</u> time, full of lists, illustrations, tables, and long, dry descriptions of nonexistent worlds written in an invented language. What have they found?
:Megan: ...Dear Lord. It ''is'' obvious.

:500 Years Earlier:
:[Three people are standing around pawns and a die. One is holding a sheet of paper, another is holding a book, the third is holding a scythe.]
:Person #1: Forsooth! I concoct an elixir of courage.
:Person #2: Nae! The source booke sayeth that requires some wolfsbane!
:Person #3: Your druid doth lose two points.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]