Latin spells in classic D&D video games

Video games based on the rules and world of Dungeons & dragons have been a staple for a long time. Three games released in 2000 to 2002, widely regarded as classics of the genre, draw on the traditional pairing of magic and the Latin language: Baldur’s Gate II (2000), Icewind Dale (2000), and Icewind Dale II (2002). Ancient Romans didn’t accidentally set off fireballs every time they had a conversation. But in these games, when characters cast spells, you hear the verbal component of the spell as an incantation in Latin.

The traditional D&D response to aggression: a fireball in the face. (Baldur’s Gate II: enhanced edition, 2013)

This isn’t typical. The original Baldur’s Gate (1998) and the Neverwinter nights series (2002, 2006) have spoken incantations, but with nonsense syllables, not in Latin. A re-release, Baldur’s Gate: enhanced edition (2012), switches to the Latin incantations of the 2000 sequel. Most other games from that period — Planescape: Torment (1998), Ruins of Myth Drannor (2001), Temple of elemental evil (2003), and more — have no spoken incantations at all. Neither does a new game shoehorned into the older series, Baldur’s Gate III (in early access since 2020).

Fans of the classic games have made attempts to decipher the incantations. Unfortunately a shaky knowledge of Latin, on the part of both the voice actors and the fans, has led to uneven results. This is just a note to give some annotations.

Note. Attempts at transcription/translation: ‘BelgarathMTH’, 2013; ‘Magpie Randoms’, 2017.

First, some links with the actual sounds:

• Latin incantations in Baldur’s Gate II, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale II: YouTube
• Nonsense syllables in Baldur’s Gate (1998 version): YouTube
• Nonsense syllables in Neverwinter nights: YouTube
• Nonsense syllables in Neverwinter nights 2: YouTube

The Latin is inconsistent and a bit sloppy. Different voice actors pronounce words differently. Scio ‘I know’ comes out as either see-oh or ski-oh. Alia ‘other things’ gets stressed randomly on the first syllable (correct) or the second syllable (wrong). Some syllables are muffled by reverb or other sound effects. In one incantation the first word is omitted in some sound files, included in others. In another incantation, the first word isn’t a real Latin word.

A nasty trap for some Frost Giants: a wizard in the process of casting Death Fog, a spell belonging to both the Alteration and Evocation schools. (Icewind Dale: enhanced edition, 2014)

The D&D rule system divides spells into eight ‘schools’ of magic. In the video games, each school has its own incantation, with different voice actors depending on whether the spellcaster is male or female, wizard or cleric.

The incantations can be accessed directly and exported from the game with a tool called Near Infinity. The relevant files are in the game’s WAV directory: CHA-FM01.WAV to CHA_FM08.WAV and CHA_FP01.WAV to CHA_FP08.WAV (FM = ‘female mage’, FP = ‘female priest’); and CHA_MM01.WAV to CHA_MM08.WAV and CHA_MP01.WAV to CHA_MP08.WAV (‘male mage’, ‘male priest’). There are also some additional files with voice only, without magical wooshing noises.

Each incantation consists of three words. They’re not sentences. They have no syntax, and they aren’t meaningful as sentences. It’s better to see them as combinations of ‘power words’, to use D&D terminology: three independent magical utterances. The incantations are as follows:

Spell school	Incantation	Translation
Abjuration	Manus; potentis; paro	Hand(s); of someone powerful; I prepare
Conjuration / Summoning	[Facio;] voco; ferre	I do; I call; to carry
Enchantment / Charm	Cupio; virtus; licet	I want; merit; it is permitted
Divination	Scio; didici; peto	I know; I have learnt; I seek
Illusion	Veritas; credo; oculus	Truth; I believe; eye
Invocation / Evocation	Incertus; pulcher; imperium	A doubtful man; a beautiful man; authority
Necromancy	Vita; mortis; careo	Life; of death; I lack
Alteration	Praesi; alia; fero	[Nonsense word]; other things; I carry

Some of these look like they may be mistranslations of English words. Imperium, in the Evocation incantation, is probably intended to mean ‘power’, but really it means ‘authority, position of command’. A better word to suggest magical energy would have been potestas or vis. And the moral connotations of virtus seem a poor fit for Enchantment spells: perhaps it was perhaps intended as a translation of ‘glamour’ or something of the kind

The only ones that could possibly be construed as whole sentences are the incantations for Abjuration spells — something like ‘I prepare powerful hands’ (taking manus and potentis as accusative plural, rather than genitive singular as in the table above) — and for Necromancy — ‘I lack a life of death’ (taking vita as ablative). These don’t make much sense and they’re not good matches for their spell schools. It really is best to interpret all of them as a sequence of three separate ‘power words’.

Summoning a water elemental to fight the BBEG: a Conjuration/Summoning spell. (Icewind Dale: enhanced edition, 2014)

Here are some additional notes on each incantation.

Abjuration. See above on interpreting this as a complete sentence. The sense ‘I prepare powerful hands’ is a bad fit for Abjuration spells, which are about dispelling magical effects or protecting against hostile spells. The fact that the syntax actually works is presumably just a coincidence. In any case, this sense would require both manus and potentis to have a long vowel in their final syllables; and that isn’t how they’re pronounced in the games.

Conjuration/Summoning. The first word facio is partially or completely omitted in mage sound files. In Baldur’s Gate II it is completely omitted by female mages, and partially omitted by male mages; in Icewind Dale it is completely omitted by all mages. Clerics pronounce the word in full in both games. The second word is pronounced by female spellcasters as vaco, which would mean ‘I am empty’ and is certainly not the intended meaning. Ferre ‘to carry’ is the infinitival form of fero ‘I carry’, which also appears in the Alteration incantation.

Enchantment/Charm. The intended meaning of virtus isn’t obvious: neither ‘moral merit’ nor ‘proficiency’ (the usual meanings) are a good fit for Enchantment spells; see above. Licet receives a variety of pronunciations: sometimes with a hard c, sometimes a soft c; the i is sometimes as in fight, sometimes as in fit. Both pronunciations of c, /k/ and /tʃ/, are legitimate for different varieties of Latin. The same is true of didici, in the Divination incantation below.

Divination. Scio is variously pronounced see-oh or ski-oh. Didici ‘I have learnt’ is unique among these incantations as the only past tense verb form. On the pronunciation of the c, see on ‘Enchantment/Charm’ above.

Illusion. The third word can easily be misheard as oculos (accusative plural form) in some sound files.

Invocation/Evocation. In authentic Latin the first two words are gendered adjectives, which imply a male entity (‘a doubtful man, a beautiful man’. This is probably not intended. It is easy to mishear the last syllable of the noun imperium, making it a verb, imperio ‘I command’; but the final -um is clear enough. See above on the inappropriate sense of imperium.

Necromancy. Mortis (genitive singular ‘of death’) is pronounced mortes in some cleric incantations (‘deaths’, plural). Careo may be a mistranscription: it may have been intended as a non-Latin variation on caries ‘rot, decay’ or cariosus ‘rotten’, which would be a much better fit for Necromancy spells. Then again, some voice files clearly pronounce the word with a stressed e. Stressed e must be careo ‘I lack’; unstressed i suggests a non-Latin variation on caries ‘decay’.

Alteration. In all versions the first word is praesi, which isn’t a real Latin word. It was presumably intended as a form of praeses ‘protector, guard’, which is what some Alteration spells do (Stoneskin in Baldur’s Gate; Wraithform; etc.). Alia ‘other things’, representing spell effects like shape-changing, is sometimes mispronounced with the second syllable stressed; the correct stress is on the first syllable (AH-lee-ah).