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The runes in Durlag's Tower

jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,829
in Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
I'm talking about these:
4o4mu22dm0ms.jpg

Specifically, does that writing say anything comprehensible, in any known runic alphabet? In my cursory check of Wikipedia, I couldn't even find an alphabet that had all of those runes. That rune with the twice-crossed bar that shows up twice in the first word is particularly troublesome.

I thought that it would be a transliteration of some English phrase, but it's either more obscure than I expected or just plain nonsense.

Comments

  • AciferAcifer Member Posts: 153
    edited December 2022
    That's Dethek, the Dwarven runic script. The twice crossed bar is an "N".
    It is an English phrase and means: NONE BUT THE DEAD
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,829
    "The" dwarven runic script? My basic search turned up Cirth, the runic script used by Tolkien's dwarves (with several variants). But then, I suppose inventing an alphabet for a fictional setting is a whole lot easier than inventing a full language, especially when it's not done from scratch. I suppose this one was put together specifically for D&D, copying runes from various existing alphabets and shuffling the phonetic meanings around?
  • AciferAcifer Member Posts: 153
    jmerry wrote: »
    I suppose this one was put together specifically for D&D, copying runes from various existing alphabets and shuffling the phonetic meanings around?
    Dethek is the runic script of the dwarves in the Forgotten Realms setting and was first described in "Dwarves Deep". I believe it was created by Ed Greenwood:
    https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Dethek#See_Also

  • AerakarAerakar Member Posts: 1,024
    Insightful, thank you for sharing @Acifer
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