Talk:Frigidazzi
Frigidazzi's magic words[edit]
I think the magic words Frigidazzi uses make a little more sense if you go back to the original Latin.
"Vex" in this article here is defined as "agitate", which is the plain English language of the word. However, it comes from the Latin "vexare", and besides senses of the word which are aligned with the plain English derivative, it can also be used to mean "shake", "jolt", and "toss violently." I think Frigidazzi's spell is intended to stir passion in the Avatar -- passion being in this sense a torrent of feelings that toss you around -- that is to say, they stir you. This directly reminds one of a quatrain from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar -- "Vexed I am / Of late with passions of some difference, / Conceptions only proper to myself, / Which gives some soil, perhaps, to my behaviors." To be "vexed with passions" is actually a common phrasing in many religious texts. The Buddha, for instance, is quoted in English translation as saying, "A mind troubled and vexed with passions is impure, and on that account it never sees the Way." In a 1917 book, The Meaning of Faith, "Some of us are vexed with passions that affright us; to yield to them would mean disaster, to restrain them is beyond our power, and nothing earth contains exhausts their vehemence or satisfies their fierce desire." One translation of the Word of Power "vex" might be "stir", as in stirring up. A relevant synonym for "stir" in this context would also be "arouse". If one "stirs" up emotion, one "arouses" that emotion.
The word "nox" in Ultima clearly is the Word of Power for "poison", but it also has the meaning in Latin of "night". So with the above mentioned said, for the spell "Vex Nox Flam", a very appealing translation could either be literally "arouse night fire" or figuratively "arouse night passion" or "arouse passions of the night". The word "nox" could have the sense of both poison and night, to suggest some link between poison and night, and the overtaking of your body with the power of the night as it works on you like a poison. So you could imagine that the word "nox" in the sense of "poison" could also read, if one wished, as "corruption", and the translation could also read as "arouse fiery corruption". This isn't as poetic as "arouse night fire", but it might be the most literal reading of "Vex Nox Flam" if one were to read them as Words of Power. "Corruption" might also though be interpreted as "sin", so it might read as "arouse firey sin".
Another spell not mentioned here is "Vex Veni Nox", which Frigidazzi uses in the beginning to make you decide to stay and come closer to her for a kiss. "Veni" could be tied to the Gargish word "ven", which is defined in the Gargish language dictionary as "find", but in Latin, "veni" means "come." Following similar logic as before, "Vex Veni Nox" could translated as "arouse coming [of the] night", or you can prefer "finding" to "coming", although "coming" has many connotations here that align with the meaning of the scene in the game. Or as in a possibly more literal reading, "arouse corrupted coming", or "arouse corrupted coming [together]"/"arouse sinful meeting" if one wished that interpretation.
Lastly, the article mentions "vos" in "Ort Vos" as having no clear translation. But in Latin, "vos" is the plural or polite form of "you". So, possibly, the meaning is to suggest that she's imbuing you a certain form of "magic."