Art Orcish Ajami - A Custom Alphabet

tl:dr: I've created a custom adaptation of the (classical) High Gavellian script for the purpose of writing Orcish.


Alright, but why? What does it mean? Why did I feel the need to make High Gavellian 1.5? Why did I call it Orcish Ajami?

It's called Ajami because I think Arabic script is neat. You can even see the influence above. The script probably has a different name in-universe. Now, onto the other stuff:

You might already be familiar with Wynnlangs because of our last big project. That wasn't a one-off deal. We're coming for every language. Every single one. Orcish is one of those, currently in progress, and this script is a small spin-off task from that. Which is to say, 'tis a fanwork. None of this is canon.

That out of the way: A running theme in All Roads to Peace is the absolutely horrendous translations and romanizations that have been going on from Orcish to Wynnic & Low Gavellian. Xoeinbor, Kreimu, and many others spend valuable quest time complaining about how badly their tongue - the writing system, especially - got done. Reverse-engineering this anthropological (orcypological?) disaster is one of the main design aims of the language.

Now, a big piece of the mystery is that we know the Orcs have their own writing system. It shows up in the medicine book of All Roads to Peace, but our character cannot read it. I asked around, and though I didn't receive a canonical answer, I managed to find the next best thing:

Spoiler: Word of St. Paul

Mayhaps not as gospel, but it's neat. We'll take it.

Hence, I felt it was best to create an adaptation of the Classical High Gavellian script (used by elves and Realm Beasts and whatnot) into a form more suited to Orcish.A form that still heavily resembled Classical in style, but was still its own thing.
I for one can't wait to help design the Villagers' even more stylized adaptation of the script (＾∀＾●)ﾉｼ. Alas, Orcish first.

The intention for the letter choices here was to make something that could have believably evolved from Classical High Gavellian, but that nonetheless would be transcribed by villager researchers (only familiar with Low and Classical High) in the most linguistically destructive ways possible. This script is a bloodbath. But it's a bloodbath that's well-suited to writing Orcish in its Wynnlangs form.

Just for completeness' sake, here are the original handwritten letters, as well as the values of the consonants in the international phonetic alphabet (IPA). Honestly, I prefer these to the pixel approximations. They're nice and swooshy, and have a good write-feel.

Spoiler: Handwritten

The script has a few more features, too. I'll go into more detail about them (and hopefully it'll get a bit clearer exactly what I was doing with this script) once I'm all finished up with the Orcish language proper, Coming Soon™.

- hmtn

 

I doubt Villagers would make their own script just to spite one "lesser" race, especially with their laziness.

The script looks nice tho, similar aesthetics but different.

?

Only until the ct give in. And. they. will.
Fear us.

 

It doesn't seem likely at first glance, aye, which is why I had it be more of a drifting scripts thing than an intentional shift. I imagine that the villagers had something like ceremonial Blackletter, if even more intricate.

My headcanon of what Selvut was talking about is that this ceremonial villager style, even if high-effort, became prestigious enough compared to the "rustic" Classical that the Vulgar script began to really heavily diverge from Classical, trying to mimic the more "civilized" ceremonial script.

This is all pre-niiazek-collapse too, by the way, so very far in the past. I imagine modern Low Gavellian script as all sleek and angular, still recognizable as a descendant of Classical if you know what you're looking for, but with a completely different vibe.

(⓿_⓿)
'TIS ONLY
A MATTER
OF TIME.

 

Very awesome. You should post a sample text using the script...

 

ZaHulveboon jo arxuo.

Spoiler: +Handwritten Examples

Spoiler: +Comparison to Classical High Gavellian

Villager-style romanization on top, meaningless gibberish that shows you how some letters are related below.

Just a note, none of this is final. I'm definitely going to keep tinkering with the script, and I'll release that final version alongside Orcish.