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Inscription

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 9:45 pm
by Warner
A developer who did character modeling and effects for the recent Elder Scrolls Online trailer released this render of the Nord hero featured in the trailer:

Image

Source: http://cghub.com/images/view/413626/

Does anyone know what the writing on the horns say? And what the symbol on the center-piece of his helmet may mean?

Also, I'm new here, I hope this topic is alright.

Re: Inscription

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 10:01 pm
by Avron the S'wit
Welcome to the forums!

I can't see it that well, but it almost looks like runes from the dragon language. I don't see any exact matches for the one in the middle. That would be the only thing making sense in the lore for a Nord, anyway, and it doesn't look like Daedric or Dwemer, and it wouldn't make much sense for either of those. (The wiki appendices has some cool info on the alphabets of Tamriel. Albeit a bit broken, given our limited knowledge of Tamriel linguistics, let alone orthography!)

Or it's just old fashioned runes, which is possible. :P

Re: Inscription

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 10:09 pm
by Archer
Its not the dragon language. If you look closely, you'll see triangles featured in the runes. No letters in the dragon language have triangles, or any shapes for that matter.

I'm going to go with just regular runes.

Re: Inscription

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:22 pm
by Chaos the N'wah
It's vaguely reminiscent of the Falmer/Dragon Alphabet, which given that Ysgramor developed a runic transcription of the Nordic language based on Elvish principles late in the Merethic era could support this

I'd venture a guess of a corruption of Falmer and either the dragon alphabet or Atmoran pictorial runes

Re: Inscription

Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 6:39 pm
by Abel
This model was made by an employee of Blur studios. Blur studios makes CGI and 3D trailers for big companies like Zenimax, Sony, ... and has nothing to do at all with Zenimax or the development of the game.
Looking at the level of detail of the model, I'm pretty sure this won't be used in-game and was only produced for the rendering of the trailer.
My guess is that the artist just added some regular runes to add some extra texture to the horns.

Re: Inscription

Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 9:38 pm
by VirtualWeasel
Those look like a rune [&@%!] of the Elder Futhark or one of the older European runic alphabets. Can't guarantee it though.
From what I can tell, this is not a "known" TES alphabet that I have seen, and based on Abel's post, it is most likely worldly-based, as opposed to a fantasy language.
I do recognize a few characters on it from some sort of alphabet, but I don't recall what type/culture of runes that was.
I can look into it... one moment.

EDIT: It looks like what you're looking at in this is somewhere along the lines of the Ancient Phoenician alphabet, or perhaps an offshoot of Old Italic alphabets. Regardless, it's going to translate to nonsense either way.
And, this probably wasn't the answer you were looking for... but oh well. You learn something every day.