Sacred and Terrible Air

This translation is the result of a deep love for the Elysium world, first brought to life for English-speaking audiences through the memorable Disco Elysium game. We are a couple of fans who (like many others) wanted to devour everything else set in the same universe after we finished our tearful and emotional playthrough. We were greatly animated when we found out about the existence of a book, yet quickly saddened when it became clear that it was not available in English – even worse, the Estonian original was also out-of-print by the time we discovered it. Further investigation turned out that an English translation had been planned, even in the works at one point, but fell into uncertainty and seemingly indefinite postponement due to the complexities regarding the fight over ZA/UM’s IP rights and legal troubles. Thus, we decided to go ahead and arrange the translation ourselves. We were able (with some effort) to acquire a copy of the Estonian “Püha ja õudne lõhn”, then used our own funds to pay for a professional translator and an English editor to complete the work. What you have in front of you is the outcome of several months of painstaking work to not only bring the original writing into English, but also deal with the complex turns of phrase and novel concepts involved in the book, in a way that is faithful both to the original author and to the existing translations from the Disco Elysium game. There were many instances where we had to think and work closely with the whole team in order to best bring forth the meaning of a certain word, sentence or concept. Of course, we didn’t have access to the author himself (though would’ve loved to!), so in some situations we had to go with our own interpretation and adaptation – if we got it wrong, we apologise in advance and hope you’ll forgive us. We’ve also added a glossary for your reference with some of the less familiar terms and place names, as well as the “epilogue” which came out as a “lost chapter” in a blog post some time after the book was published; unfortunately, the original text appears to not be available any more, all we had was a summary which we translated as well. Needless to say, if at any point a “real” translation created with the author’s blessing does appear, we will be first in line to get a copy, and hope you will too! If you find this work useful and would like to support us for the effort, any amount in BTC is welcome here (but only if your heart says so): bc1qglm0paegamuk0s39ej2h7xtdugyxy4apql206e Enjoy and remember: No Truce With The Furies! The Translation Team, 2023