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Original page in Japanese. This is the English-translated version since some people asked for it! :)

Script in the Lor Starcutter

I couldn't find much linguistic information, but I found some patterns(...? or lack thereof), so I've put my findings together. Maybe it will come in handy when making fanart?

Findings

To get right to the point, all script in the Lor is a combination of 8 symbols. These symbols look different between the top scrolling section, the bottom scrolling section, and the center screen where info about Lor and Landia are shown. The orientations are the same across the largest area in the center screen, so I assume that is the "correct" orientation.

The scrolling sections in the top and bottom are a bit complicated. The top line and the bottom line are the same string of symbols, rotated 180 degrees from each other. Compared to the center screen, the top screen is flipped vertically, and the bottom screen is flipped horizontally.

Now back to the center screen, Landia has a string of symbols where they are written vertically. The orientation of the individual symbols are the same as when written horizontally (on the center screen). In other words, and they are not rotated 90 degrees, similar to vertical/horizontal writing in Japanese.

The overall characteristics of the text is that 1) there are 8 base symbols, and that 2) there is always 1 to 5 red-toned characters at the start (left side) of each phrase or sentence. There was a single exception where there was a pattern of red-yellow-red.

Uses

Here are some ways that one may be able to expand upon these findings, perhaps for things like fan-creation worldbuilding. These are not expanding on the lore whatsoever, just me having fun. I may add more in the future if I think of something new.


Boustrophedon

Boustrophedon is a writing system in which the direction of the text changes every line. It was used often in ancient languages such as Ancient Greek and Etruscan. As for modern natural languages, the only one (that I could find) was the Avoiuli script, used in the Raga language in some regions of Vanuatu. I wanted to look further into Avoiuli, but had to stop myself since I was getting way too sidetracked from the task at hand. I did find a very interesting paper on the topic though [Japanese].

By the way, apparently the conlang Ithkuil uses a boustrophedon script, but I couldn't find information on that anywhere else. [EDIT: I later found out that it indeed is written boustrophedon. I just had to search in English lol]

In any case....

Usually with boustrophedon, if the first line is written left-to-right(→), the line below it would be written right-to-left(←) with mirrored letters. Most instances are like this, including Ancient Greek and Etruscan mentioned earlier.

However, there also exists a variation of this called reverse boustrophedon. In reverse boustrophedon, the line direction also switches every line, but instead of being mirrored, each line is rotated 180 degrees. This is very rare, the only example I could find being the undeciphered ancient script of Rongorongo.

I remember there was a script where the lines rotate 90 degrees (in a sort of spiral pattern), but it was way too hard to find it just based on that characteristic. It exists...trust me...!!!!

Anyways, that was a sort of starting point for how to expand on the existing material. Apologies for the open-endedness; there really isn't any proper ending to this idea.

Conclusion

As you can see, the script in the Lor isn't anything that's able to be deciphered like in Forgotten Land, and instead is simply a few letters scattered randomly to give the appearance of a language.


Future notes
  • Write up the parts i gave up on when i have time. also actually redraw base shapes (center screen orientation)
  • Want to check out Crowned Magolor's hand circles too, for art purposes (maybe put together here as wii/rtdl scripts group)

2024/06/21 Posted

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