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Post by QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS on May 6, 2015 6:31:03 GMT
QUALITY DISC0UNT SPELLBOOKS !!! ALL PR0DUCTS ARE OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY !!! !!! B.UY NOW !!! FIREBALL..........................120 Z0RKM|DS
MAGIC MISSILE.............83 Z0RKM|DS OUT OF STOCK INVISIBILITY.................198 Z0RKM|DS FLY.......................................161 Z0RKM|DS DETECT MAGIC................44 Z0RKM|DS GREASE..............................71 Z0RKM|DS TELEPORT...........................312 Z0RKM|DS WISH...................................4296 Z0RKM|DS WEB......................................55 Z0RKM|DS PERMANENCY....................542 Z0RKM|DS LIGHT...................................42 Z0RKM|DS COLOR SPRAY......................78 Z0RKM|DS !!! ALL PR0DUCTS ARE OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY !!! !!! B.UY NOW !!!
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Post by Mother Starlight on May 6, 2015 13:51:51 GMT
I am... not entirely sure whether to allow this.
QDS, do you ship outworld?
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Post by Leaf on May 6, 2015 13:57:29 GMT
I'm not sure they're going to answer. This smells strongly of automated message to me.
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Post by Dispersive Prism on May 6, 2015 15:20:41 GMT
These sound really interesting! I don't have any Z0RKM|DS, though! Do you accept alternate payment options? I would love to be able to spray colors!
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Post by Leaf on May 6, 2015 15:24:38 GMT
Prism, in my world, messages with the same general character as the one at the start of this thread are usually automated advertisements from people who want your money and don't intend to give you anything valuable in return.
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Post by QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS on May 6, 2015 15:24:42 GMT
!!! LOCATIONS IN FIVE WORLDS !!!
- Principality of Dusk
- Yendor Dungeons
- Grayskull
- Eastern Samothrace
- Elemental plane of Water
!!! AFFORDABLE SHIPPING !!!
- 20 z0rkmids first item
- 5 zorkm1ds each additional item
- 25 zorkrnids interworld delivery
- FREE SHIPPING all orders over 100 zorkimds !
!!! ALL PR0DUCTS ARE OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY !!! !!! B.UY NOW !!!
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Post by Dispersive Prism on May 6, 2015 15:36:44 GMT
Prism, in my world, messages with the same general character as the one at the start of this thread are usually automated advertisements from people who want your money and don't intend to give you anything valuable in return. Are you sure? That sounds like a thing that the Ministry would take issue with! And if the Ministry hasn't taken issue with Mr. QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS I don't think he is lying and trying to steal my money! Mr. QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS, do you have a way to convert Empire Standard Uderins to Z0RKM|DS? I think I would like to purchase spellbooks!
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Post by Leaf on May 6, 2015 15:41:30 GMT
Mr. QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS is almost certainly lying and trying to steal your money, but Mr. QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS is also almost certainly an automated process of some kind that stumbled on this forum by accident and couldn't take your money even if it wanted to, so knock yourself out, I guess.
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Post by Dispersive Prism on May 6, 2015 15:48:37 GMT
Okay! Well, to start off with I think he'll need my financial details, I use the bank of jjjjjjjjddd87366^66%55-WARNING USER HAS ENCOUNTERED A FATAL ERRORERRORERRORERRORhahanope:) >>>> 777733J773##%9/ REINTEGRATING WITH THE CRYSTAL NETWORK PLEASE WAIT. LOADING. LOADING. Anyway so if you could please send me the color spray spellbook that would be great!
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Post by Leaf on May 6, 2015 15:51:31 GMT
Well, this has been a fascinating look into how social norms differ across universes.
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Post by Mother Starlight on May 6, 2015 16:20:59 GMT
Well, it's not off-topic. I'm allowing it probationally; we'll see how it goes.
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Post by Andrew on May 6, 2015 22:16:51 GMT
I agree that QDS seems suspicious, but he does seem able to respond to queries in some fashion. Moreover, I have relatively little to lose if it is a scam. Therefore: - Are you able to accept alternate forms of payment (such as other types of currency, information, or non-magical physical goods like gold). If not, is there any way for me to get one of those exchanged for your type of currency?
- Do I understand correctly that, for an additional fee, you can ship to worlds other than the five you listed?
- Is the magic in these books likely to work for humans without this kind of magic native to their worlds, or even humans without any magic in their worlds?
- Are the books themselves magical in any way, or do they just contain information about magic?
- So that I know what I’m considering buying, can you give me the full title and author of one of the listed books?
Finally, a question for everybody else: if you use an interface for this forum which does not use the Latin alphabet (which is the alphabet English, my language, uses), could you please describe each of the occurrences of the apparent currency this guy uses? For example, for me, each mention in the first post is composed of the letters Z, O, R, K, M, followed by a vertical line, followed by the letters D and S. This is weird (we rarely use non-letters like that vertical line), but given the nature of this forum, I didn’t think much about it. However, in the second post, he doesn't use this spelling. Instead, the four different uses of this word are all spelled with different variations on z-o-r-k-m-i-d-s (the spelling from the first post, except with the vertical line replaced by the letter i; it might be relevant that this letter looks similar to a vertical line). The first one has the letter o replaced by the numeral 0, which looks similar; the second has the letter i replaced, not by a vertical line, but by the numeral 1 (which, again, looks similar). The third has the letter m replaced by the two letters r and n (which, together, look like the letter m). The fourth occurrence has the letters m and i transposed (which… does not actually look particularly similar). This doesn’t seem to make sense whether it is a scam or not. Could their culture perhaps have a taboo against saying the name of the currency or something?
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Post by Leaf on May 6, 2015 22:22:03 GMT
Latin alphabet here, so I can't shed any light on how the circumlocutions translate, but have you noticed that words like "buy" and (occasionally) "discount" are also... minced? "B.UY" with a punctuation mark interposed between letters, "disc0unt" with the letter O replaced by the similar-looking numeral 0. Perhaps the posting is meant to dodge some sort of automated filter designed to pick up exactly that sort of message.
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Cardea
Poster
words
Posts: 34
World: Adunka
Pronoun: she
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Post by Cardea on May 6, 2015 22:59:40 GMT
i lack the dyes to reproduce the words as they display to me. i am happy the translation magic writing leafs colour my words for you to see.
the zorkmids are in the bottom left of the noteleaf with the jagged shape of the currency but not in the colour of the usual currency but in a different colour.
the colours of the entire message are different, but not in the way of someone making up for a lack of a certain colour. the right colours are there but in the wrong places. it is enough to understand because the colours are quite close in parts of the message but in a few places they are wrong entirely.
perhaps the writer cannot see ultraviolet.
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Post by Andrew on May 6, 2015 23:35:21 GMT
Leaf, I had not quite noticed that. I had seen but not processed the B.UY; I hadn’t noticed the DISC0UNT because a capital letter O and a numeral 0 look almost the same. I haven’t heard of an automated filter for this, but I suppose it makes sense if the problem is still around in your world (I was hoping we might find some way of actually solving it soon, but apparently no luck with that). I wonder how long it’ll be before we can do that sort of filtering with enough reliability to want to use it; I don’t know much about software but it seems like that’s several decades beyond us.
Cardea, I cannot see ultraviolet, but the way your writing system works is very different from the way mine works. For me, color does not convey the meaning of written words in at least most cases; my writing works by having lines in certain shapes (called “letters”) written on a two-dimensional surface. The right letters in the right order form words. Words usually correspond to basic concepts, and when put in the right order can form sentences, which are usually-simple relationships of how those concepts interact. A series of sentences can express more complicated ideas. For especially complicated ideas, we often break the series of sentences into multiple paragraphs.
I don’t know the writing system used in the original message, but I would expect it to be one suited for the species who usually uses it. For example, if a large fraction of their population cannot see ultraviolet, I doubt they will use a system that requires it; if they cannot distinguish one squiggly line from another, I doubt they use one similar to my system.
In any case, the mangling for your writing system seems to approximate that for mine.
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