Demonslayer was lost to a man and a woman...

[K.I.L.E.R]

This is the lore in Exile: Escape from the Pit. Have we ever discovered who this man and woman were?

 

Edit: I should add that the group carrying Demonslayer were killed by a man and a woman.

[Lilith]

Everyone misunderstands that line. It's a slightly old-fashioned idiom: "killed to a man and a woman" means all the men and women in the group were killed.

[Aran]

The more common misinterpretation (but apparently also wrong) is that exactly one man and one woman survived. The "killed by a man and a woman" is more of a long shot grammatically, but I'm an ESL speaker myself and pretty much learned English by playing Exile.

[ex post slarto]

It doesn't say "by". It says "to". Think of it as "down to the last man and woman" with some words dropped.

[Alorael at Large]

But it wasn't killing down to the point where one man and one woman were left. The idiom means killing until every man and everyone woman was dead. It's much more common for the phrase to just be "to a man" which also means everyone.

 

—Alorael, who is intrigued by the possibilities of replacing prepositions in the phrase. Killed betwixt a man and a woman? Beyond a man and a woman? During?

[ex post slarto]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

It doesn't say "by". It says "to". Think of it as "down to the last man and woman" with some words dropped.

Originally Posted By: heliotypes of heliotropes

But it wasn't killing down to the point where one man and one woman were left. The idiom means killing until every man and everyone woman was dead.

I didn't mean "down to the last X" by itself, I meant "killed, down to the last X." With that context I think the idiom is clear. The actual quote in-game is:

"They were all killed, to a man and woman, and the items were scattered."

[Actaeon]

The lack of clarity, I think, comes from the gendered nature of the phrase as it usually appears (to a man), and the odd task of making such a thing gender neutral (to a person? down to the last individual?).

[Dintiradan]

"They were all killed, every last one of them, and the items were scattered" would be how I would do it.

[Alorael at Large]

I wasn't trying to correct you, Slarty, but "down to" doesn't have a single meaning either. "Taken down to one hit point" doesn't mean there are none left, it means there's one hit point left and you're not dead. "Down to a man" would logically mean that there's one man left, right?

 

Dinti's phrase is clearer to those who aren't familiar with the idiom, but now I've played through three iterations of the game and it's never struck me as odd or awkward before.

 

—Alorael, who will just chalk it up to an idiom lesson. One, consider what it might look like to ESL speakers if it's not obviously an idiomatic phrase. Two, gender neutrality can sometimes be very cumbersome.

[ex post slarto]

Correct. The problem is that neither idiom for "down to" exactly matches the syntax here, even if you discount the missing "down." Compare:

 

(1) "Killed, right down to the last man and woman."

 

(2) "They were down to the last man and woman."

 

(3) "Killed, to a man and woman."

 

I think the syntactic point that the correct semantics hinge on is the fact that the idiom modifies the act of killing, not the people who are (or are not) left.

 

Note that I'm not defending the sensibility of this idiom, nor its use. It just seems to me that this is how it works and that it is reasonably comprehendible.

[Lilith]

to give an example of a related idiom, a coffee that's "good to the last drop" doesn't mean that the last drop isn't good

 

Originally Posted By: Eldest Wit

—Alorael, who is intrigued by the possibilities of replacing prepositions in the phrase. Killed betwixt a man and a woman? Beyond a man and a woman? During?

 

there's a jerkcity comic that i really wish i could post now

[K.I.L.E.R]

Thanks guys, it seems the phrase was lost on me. I was 9 years old at the time.