Does anyone know what this fantasy script is from?

Question

My friend keeps on writing it, yet he won't tell me where it's from.
He says the third line from the top says : "for what reason."

Wingdings? I have no idea but it looks inspired by egyptian writing to me :/ — dot_Sp0T, Jun 01 '17 at 16:00
@FuzzyBoots I thought that runes were essentially linear. Very few curves/circles. I thought the same at the beginning, but just too many curved "letters". — eshier, Jun 01 '17 at 16:41
@FuzzyBoots too inconsistent to be a real set of runes. I recognise some of them, but very few, and there is too much difference between them. This is a ugly mash up of many different alphabets, and I'm going crazy as I can't recall where I already saw the leaf shaped one ./. — motoDrizzt, Jun 01 '17 at 16:50
Runes don't tend to have curved or horizontal lines because they were used when carving onto wood or stone. This language might be based on runic languages but isn't one itself due to the horizontal and curved lines. Not 100% sure though. — maguirenumber6, Jun 01 '17 at 16:57
Does not look like Cirth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirth). — FuzzyBoots, Jun 01 '17 at 17:07
The more time I spend on this the more time I'm wondering if your friend just made it up themselves. — santyclause, Jun 01 '17 at 17:08
At a guess this is english transliterated into an alphabet that is a mashup of several real alphabets. So techniques to solve a mono-alphabetic cipher should apply. The thing that looks like two Xes is almost certainly a consonant and the vertical rectangle is probably a vowel. Circle with a dot in it is almost certainly 'E'. — zeta-band, Jun 01 '17 at 17:43
Kinda reminds me of Agents of Shield. Where the people effected couldn't stop writing in the alien language. Is your friend ok? Do we need to call Unit? let us know if they sprout tentacles or something. :) — Erin Thursby, Jun 01 '17 at 18:03
So it's just symbol replacement? (|) is o, triangle with tail is A, etc? — Ross, Jun 01 '17 at 18:57
How is this on topic? You call it a "fantasy text" but since it's undecipherable, what basis do you have for saying that it's fantasy or science fiction? — user14111, Jun 01 '17 at 22:16
@user14111 OP's friend implies that it is from a scifi / fantasy work. — wizzwizz4, Jun 02 '17 at 14:57
I submitted a translated version to one of the answers. When you see your friend, tell him a random skull on the internet told you his chalkmanship is atrocious and that "horrible" has two Rs and an E on the end. — Pharap, Jun 04 '17 at 17:24

score 356 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 04 '17 at 17:26

356

Wow, this takes me back. This is the script of the Royal House of Riftgard, from Brian Jacques' Redwall series. Specifically, it is featured in Triss.

Here is your friend's message in full:

edited Jun 04 '17 at 17:26

Pharap

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answered Jun 01 '17 at 23:49

Adele- Nexus of Potlucks

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What does it say, I (and possibly others) am too lazy to translate it myself! – Edlothiad Jun 02 '17 at 08:32
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@Edlothiad LIFE IS STRANGE WHY WHY TODAY FOR WHAT REASON (first bit) – Jon Clements Jun 02 '17 at 08:56
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@JonClements, You're not the hero we deserve but the hero we need. – Edlothiad Jun 02 '17 at 09:03
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Life is Strange. Why why today. For what reason. Why does this keep happening. School is horrible. Is (whlor?). Are we not. – DisturbedNeo Jun 02 '17 at 09:08
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Corrected for a couple of spelling errors / words that are cut off from the picture. Can't figure out what that one that really looks like "whlor" is supposed to be though. – DisturbedNeo Jun 02 '17 at 09:09
@DisturbedNeo yeah - spent 15 mins trying to think what that is supposed to be and gave up. That's going to bug me the rest of the day. – Jon Clements Jun 02 '17 at 09:43
Seems like a variant of the Runic Alphabet – Mark Rogers Jun 03 '17 at 02:09
@MarkRogers To me, it looks more like an amalgamation of elements from Cyrillic, Phoenician, and Egyptian. Ah, Redwall. – can-ned_food Jun 04 '17 at 14:04
Wow! Congratulations on your answer. People must really like this answer: 224 upvotes for a mere 5000 views is pretty impressive. – Adamant Jun 04 '17 at 19:24
Don't know if that helps with deciphering, but the character w in whlor is written wrongly. There is a vertical stroke on the right end that doesn't belong there. – Narusan Jun 04 '17 at 20:04
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@Adamant I think people are reacting to the fact that the "correct" answer is below a "helpful, but not correct" answer (in that it doesn't technically answer the question of "where is this script from"). Of course, that's just because the other answer is accepted, but still. – Tin Wizard Jun 05 '17 at 17:50
Good ol' RHOR. I love the Redwall series :) – Wayne Werner Jun 06 '17 at 17:12
Yep, this is definitely neater than the accepted answer. Good job reaching the 3rd highest answer post on SFF.SE. – Voronwé Jun 07 '17 at 09:59
Your answer is likely to very shortly become the most-upvoted answer on the site. – Adamant Jun 12 '17 at 16:22
@Adamant- Not sure I deserve it. I hate to cop to it, but there was very little research involved. I just read the series religiously as a kid. – Adele- Nexus of Potlucks Jun 13 '17 at 23:49
@AdeleC Oh, then I'll call some friends over to downvote and balance it out. Hahah. Just kidding … – can-ned_food Jun 17 '17 at 04:41

score 141 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 02 '17 at 17:26

141

EDIT: Adele C. seems to have found the actual language. So go give them some love.

I feel that after pouring over possibly hundreds of fictional languages trying to find an exact match I can confidently say that your friend made the language up on his own. That being said I have spent even more time trying to decipher it and below is what I have so far arrived at.

"Life is strange why why today for what reason (?)y does this (?)eey happen in (? 'sc' maybe?)hool is hori(?)l (misspelled horrible maybe?) is (?)lor are we not"

I am fairly confident in most letters though a few are guesses based on letters surrounding them. Based on the content that seems reasonably accurate, I think there might be more to this message that is either scrambled, cut off, or whatever else. My current library of letters can be seen below. Excuse the messiness of it.

If you can improve upon this, please do.

edited Jun 02 '17 at 17:26

Shokhet

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answered Jun 01 '17 at 19:23

santyclause

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Yep...I'm up voting Adele's but gotta up-vote yours for decoding effort! – Kerr Avon Jun 02 '17 at 00:36
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You mean 'alphabet', not 'language'. – Jun 02 '17 at 10:33
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@Hurkyl To be more specific, it's script, not alphabet. – paddotk Jun 02 '17 at 16:01
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@poepje An alphabet is a type of script, and since this is a simple cypher for the English alphabet, it's also an alphabet. – Marq Jun 03 '17 at 10:59
@Marq An alpabet is a script based on the Latin or Greek scripts. Runes, Chinese characters, hieroglyphs; they're all scripts but not alphabets. – paddotk Jun 04 '17 at 22:15
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@poepje: an alphabet is a script with consonants and vowels. As opposed to syllabaries, abjads (e.g: Hebrew and Arabic, where symbols represent consonants (or, arguably, the class of syllables with a given consonant), and short vowels are represented in modern times via diacritics), abugidas (e.g. Devanagari, Tibetan, where symbols represent syllables with an implied vowel, and can be modified to have a different vowel), pictographic scripts, ideographic scripts, logographic scripts, ... – ninjalj Jun 04 '17 at 22:47
@poepje What ninjaij said! See the excellent omniglot for more information and examples. – Marq Jun 05 '17 at 06:26
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We need your decoding skills over at [puzzling.se]! – Mithical Jun 05 '17 at 07:07
This is like a considerably less engaging version of Gold Bug by Edgar Allen Poe. – RLH Jun 06 '17 at 11:50
@ninjalj but the Phoenician alphabet is called an alphabet despite not having vowels! – Dmiters Jun 16 '17 at 18:46
@DmitryNarkevich: I've seen it called a proto-alphabet, a consonantary, or an abjad. – ninjalj Jun 17 '17 at 09:57

Does anyone know what this fantasy script is from?

2 Answers2

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