can help me understand this sentence's meaning?

[Miller3173]

Sorry, my native language is not English so it is not easy to enjoy this game. too much difficult words and expressions. anyway i cant understand this meaning of following sentence

Excerpt in Githyanki disc(Title : The Folly of Zerthimon)
: That in building an empire, we proved ourselves no better than our former slavers. Gith retaliated with silver. so began the war for the One Sky.

"Gith retaliated with silver" ??????? i cant totally understand 'retaliate with silver'
no hints in google and dictionary. can you help me to understand?

[Quillithe]

The gith use silver swords, so it's probably about that - they were fighting.

Honestly it's not your English, the Githyanki texts can be a bit cryptic to kinda give an alien feel

[CorwynCorey]

Those are written more as poetry, less as prose.

So this :

Originally posted by Quillithe:

The gith use silver swords, so it's probably about that - they were fighting.

Honestly it's not your English, the Githyanki texts can be a bit cryptic to kinda give an alien feel

[Lani]

It's a variant on "They answered with steel" which in English is an older way of saying "They chose violence" or more basically "They chose to fight". They deliberately use some stilted English for the Gith. And yes, they use silver for their arms (weapons and armor)

It's like Withers who they want to make sound like old English by using 'thee' and 'thou' and 'doest', which was Middle English as spoken by the peasants. (A whole generation of LARPers grew up thinking it was the speech of the nobility in stead, it's hilarious)

[Doomvora]

This specific text is talking about Zerthimon who forged the Silver Sword of Gith which is a legendary artifact of the gith. Zerthimon is a githzerai which are basically the "good guy gith" whereas githyanki are the zealots that ended up following vlaakith.

It's basically talking about the civil war between Githzerai and Githyanki.

Assuming I interpreted this correctly.

[jonnin]

if you played the other games like this way back in the day, one of them was about the silver sword that you rebuilt from its fragments. These swords could sever the link between the material and astral plane, thus truly killing a mind flayer, and as such are the among the most important items the gith race has (by their own valuation of their stuff). So much so that they sent a sizeable army to collect the one in that game, losing dozens of warriors over just the pieces of one sword.

[Tenor Sounds]

Gith magical silver swords are very effective against mind flayers, that line is likely saying that they retaliated (or fought back against the mind flayers) with the magical Silver swords they developed.

[Runic Tunic]

As others said, I believe it's referring to gith's use of silver swords. It's similar for us when we say "we paid in kind with our steel" or "they paid with their blood"

In other words: fighting broke out, people were killed, etc.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Lani:

It's a variant on "They answered with steel" which in English is an older way of saying "They chose violence" or more basically "They chose to fight". They deliberately use some stilted English for the Gith. And yes, they use silver for their arms (weapons and armor)

There's your answer OP.

[Miller3173]

i appreciate to everyone who answered to my question. those were very useful to understand game background too.

[Mizu]

Originally posted by Lani:

It's a variant on "They answered with steel" which in English is an older way of saying "They chose violence" or more basically "They chose to fight". They deliberately use some stilted English for the Gith. And yes, they use silver for their arms (weapons and armor)

It's like Withers who they want to make sound like old English by using 'thee' and 'thou' and 'doest', which was Middle English as spoken by the peasants. (A whole generation of LARPers grew up thinking it was the speech of the nobility in stead, it's hilarious)