However, in perusing the new Geek Monthly magazine, issue 20 with Greg Kinnear on the cover, I came across an ad for the new Driz'zt novel by R.A.Salvatore The Pirate King on page 3. The ad is a humorous pamphlet in the style of an airline safety card titled "Pirate Safety & Emergency Procedures" which warns what to do in case of a Driz'zt attack on your pirate ship. At the top of the page in the right corner, I noticed the caption "Safety On Board" written in 4 different fonts, including English, rellanic, davek and a 4th, unknown font, which I am assuming is a sample of the yet unrevealed draconic font.
It looks pretty cool, kind of a cross between Tibetan and Arabic scripts. The characters appear to be (mostly) connected by a horizontal bar that has hash-like descenders, some straight, some curvy. It also has a few little curly queues and diagonal accent slashes that rise above the horizontal bar. A very attractive font, from what I can discern from the 11 sample letters that I have seen.
I am eager to see the whole alphabet. My guess is that it will be revealed in the forthcoming Draconomicon sourcebook. Hopefully they will have a little bit about the draconic language as well.
What I did for my current campaign is to copy the letters from the pdf file into word.
As soon as you have each letter copied, it's very quick to write a couple things in "dwarven" or "elven" by copy-paste.
I don't know when though, I imagine it will be available to DDI subscribers at some point.
Just thought I'd note that the script is Iokharic, not Lokharic. As in Io, the creator god of dragons (see MM p74).
So it is! Good catch!
Gallery link here: wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4art/20081114
Image link here: wizards.com/dnd/images/Draconomicon/117680.jpg
Iokharic in particular looks like it could have been easily scratched in stone or on wood with a claw. Very fitting for a race that would more likely use their talons in lieu of a quill pen to inscribe warnings and mark their names around their lairs and such.
link to elven font (Rellanic): wizards.com/dnd/images/RacesNClasses_Gallery/113162.jpg
link to dwarven font (Davek): wizards.com/dnd/images/RacesNClasses_Gallery/113163.jpg
I like how the elven font looks elegant, lithe and organic, almost "art nouveau" in style. It very much captures the elven spirit:
Dwarven on the other hand looks regal, imperious, and steadfast--exactly the kind of script you would expect to see carved into monuments, above triumphal arches, on tombstones and cenotaphs, and in codices of laws. Davek is superbly suited for a race that works in stone:
www.danielreeve.co.nz
Sadly, the "font" section of his website is empty at the moment. But there is a lot of nifty art and maps and logos and such to be seen there.
I did find a link to a website for the "Dragon War Chronicles". I'm not sure if this is a coming movie, game or novel or what, I haven't really heard of it before. But the cool thing is that there is another nifty script below their logo on this page: http://www.dragonwarchronicles.com/dwcSite/index_main.html that looks pretty cool. I am assuming that Daniel Reeve designed the script for them. Looks influenced slightly by Hindi in style. While not really related to D&D, it is a very nice looking fantasy alphabet.
Link to a pic I googled of 1 through 9
I wonder if that was the inspiration?
Regardless, it would make some sense. Brush strokes with a calligraphy paint brush and scratchings with a claw both lend themselves to large single strokes.
Why exactly are you posting this?
He's probably trying to point out the fact that it's wierd that someone reinvented the wheel. Especially since the FR Dwarven Dethek was THE Dungeon's and Dragon's Dwarven script for years, independent of setting. Not sure if that was true for the Elven one too.
Why exactly are you posting this?
Because we are all nerds who get our jollies from stuff like this
He's probably trying to point out the fact that it's wierd that someone reinvented the wheel. Especially since the FR Dwarven Dethek was THE Dungeon's and Dragon's Dwarven script for years, independent of setting. Not sure if that was true for the Elven one too.
Frankly i think the new Davek looks better. Same for the new Rellanic.
The characters look more 'individual' and different in the new ones, wheras the old ones, especially that old Elven script, they all look very similar.
this kid made the font using the pics. unzip it, an save into your font library
To be honest, I think the old fonts look like crap compared to these new ones! I am particularly a fan of Davek.
Agreed!
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/245546-iokharic-script-font.html
this kid made the font using the pics. unzip it, an save into your font library
SWEET!
I got bored and did some more poking around. Apparently he also created the dwarven and elven fonts.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/246242-rellanic-elven-davek-dwarven-fonts.html
:D
EDIT: It's fixed, all from a simple reboot.
As nice as the fonts look in the books, they look even better as part of player handouts ;). Thanks!
Of the six scripts mentioned in the PH, we've got fonts for three. Wonder if we'll see the remaining three? Common doesn't sound too interesting; Barazhad does though and Supernal is an angelic/devilish script, so that's gotta be cool ;).
.
I've been waiting for the fonts to be released by Wotc, maybe as part of D&D Insider. No need to wait though: Siberys has done great work on the Iokharic font, as has Guyanthalas on the Davek (4e Dwarven) and Rellanic (4e Elven) fonts.
As nice as the fonts look in the books, they look even better as part of player handouts ;). Thanks!
Of the six scripts mentioned in the PH, we've got fonts for three. Wonder if we'll see the remaining three? Common doesn't sound too interesting; Barazhad does though and Supernal is an angelic/devilish script, so that's gotta be cool ;).
.
Personally, I hope that the "Common" alphabet is just a stylized version of the Latin alphabet. After all, that's the "common" alphabet of the vast majority of D&Ders, right? Why not keep it simple?
I've been waiting for the fonts to be released by Wotc, maybe as part of D&D Insider. No need to wait though: Siberys has done great work on the Iokharic font, as has Guyanthalas on the Davek (4e Dwarven) and Rellanic (4e Elven) fonts.
As nice as the fonts look in the books, they look even better as part of player handouts ;). Thanks!
Of the six scripts mentioned in the PH, we've got fonts for three. Wonder if we'll see the remaining three? Common doesn't sound too interesting; Barazhad does though and Supernal is an angelic/devilish script, so that's gotta be cool ;).
.
Barazhad! Barazhad seems cooler to me than Supernal, but I want them both, particularly with them having some kind of apparent link. I'm not sure how they would look, I could buy Supernal being very flowy and graceful, with Barazhad being bold and broad strokes. However, I kinda want Barazhad to be twisting and chaotic while Supernal is very smooth and dignified.
And I found that he mentioned this interesting bit in his December 18, 2007 newsletter:
"he last few of months have been very busy indeed for me, with the TORn map (which has been such a lovely project to be involved in), work on two movies (The Laundry Warrior and Underworld 3), creating a second set of the Treaty of Waitangi documents for a television documentary, and creating some more Dungeons and Dragons runes and alphabets for Wizards of the Coast. This was one of the projects I hinted at in the last newsletter. I had created three alphabets then – Dwarven, Elven and Dragon – and now I’m working on two more."
Well, I assume the last two fonts are probably Barazhad and Supernal.
Now, this was a year and a half ago, already, and we haven't seen them pop up in print, yet. But there is a big lead time required for publishing books, over a year or so, so I imagine we will see one soon. My best guess is that we will get to see Barazhad appear in the upcoming release: The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos due out in December 2009.
The blurb from WotC reads:
"Fiendish dungeons and elemental battlefields await...
A hotbed of adventure opportunities await you in the roiling maelstrom of the Elemental Chaos–a plane of titans, elementals, genies, slaads, and demons. This game supplement builds on the overview of the Elemental Chaos presented in the Manual of the Planes⁚ game supplement and explores the tumultuous plane in greater detail. From the City of Brass to the githzerai monastery of Zerthadlun to the spiraling depths of the Abyss, adventure lurks behind every lava waterfall, across every icy battlefield, and beyond every raging lightning storm.
This game supplement describes the Elemental Chaos in detail, featuring key locations throughout the plane. It also presents a multitude of new monsters, mighty primordials, and powerful demons, as well as adventure hooks, encounters, hazards, and everything Dungeon Masters need to make the Elemental Chaos a featured setting in their campaigns."
If so then maybe Supernal will appear in a supplement featuring the Astral Sea sometime in 2010.
It would be really nice if D&D insider would make the D&D fonts available for download on the DDI website! If any of you DDI staff see this post, please consider it!
Hope that helps ;).
To your 'fonts' folder. Mine is under Settings -> Control Panel -> Fonts. For simplicity, download to your desktop, then copy/paste the file once you've found the right folder; you can erase the original file from the desktop when done. Then, when you next open up a word processing program (like MS Word for instance), the iokharic font should appear in the font window. Select it and you're good to go.
Hope that helps ;).
Quite Right!
Alternately, do a search for "*.ttf" on your computer, then go to the folder most of them appear to lurk. Just make sure you have the "search system folders" option turned ON. This is useful if your fonts are hidden somewhere weird, which I have encountered on occasion. ;)
Looking forward to these new fonts mentioned recently. :D
Quite Right!
Alternately, do a search for "*.ttf" on your computer, then go to the folder most of them appear to lurk. Just make sure you have the "search system folders" option turned ON. This is useful if your fonts are hidden somewhere weird, which I have encountered on occasion. ;)
Looking forward to these new fonts mentioned recently. :D
It tells me the file is in use, shows a little bar sayng installing Iokharic, it loads to 100%, the pp-up vanishes, and then... nothing. No instalation, it doesn't go into the folder, nothing.
A couple of those look suspiciously like the numbers on a Mahjong set.
Link to a pic I googled of 1 through 9
I wonder if that was the inspiration?
huh... those aren't just in Mah-jong. They're the chinese numbers
Well the five looks different from what I'm used to, what with that 'person' radical added there and the seven and four are slightly off too. I mean there's a mouth in the four!
I figure these must be a more ancient style.
huh... those aren't just in Mah-jong. They're the chinese numbers
Well the five looks different from what I'm used to, what with that 'person' radical added there and the seven and four are slightly off too. I mean there's a mouth in the four!
I figure these must be a more ancient style.
Well, the chineese had those Imperial Dragons... it would be perfectly reasonable if they wrote in Draconic fonts.
It tells me the file is in use, shows a little bar sayng installing Iokharic, it loads to 100%, the pp-up vanishes, and then... nothing. No instalation, it doesn't go into the folder, nothing.
I... don't know what would cause that.
Do you have access rights to the folder? Did the file simply jump to the bottom of the list instead of where you moved it to?
Did you restart your computer? (rule #1 about fixing things)
Where do I save the iokharic to?
In XP (that is Home, Professional, or x64)
Best way use Windows Explorer
mouse over to the start and right click
Explore all users
Find your Hard Drive and the Windows folder
it will have a + to the left. click it and open the folder
look down to you see Fonts
just drag and drop it in there
Now here is the caveat that I tell everyone that goes and purchases the 1000 fonts cds. Having a ton of fonts you will never or hardly ever use does slow the loading of your computer. Since it will load EVER single one. So if you don't plan on using it often (talking to those with the 1000 fonts and such) just put it in the directory use it and move it to the desktop in a folder called fonts. When you need to use it again just repeat.
I still have my Star Trek and Star Wars one in my fonts folder.
It tells me the file is in use, shows a little bar sayng installing Iokharic, it loads to 100%, the pp-up vanishes, and then... nothing. No instalation, it doesn't go into the folder, nothing.
I would open Word or any other document production software that uses fonts and you will see it as an option to use. Well with Iokharic it is just symbols so unless you have a lot of fonts you might want to rename it.
While there has been nothing from WotC to suggest it is actually in there, I note that Daniel Reeves (creator of the Rellanic, Iokharic, and Davek scripts) has said on his website that he was commissioned to create 2 more scripts for WotC, and he said this around a year ago. He never said what those alphabets were, but I am hoping one was Barazhad. I note also that the Draconic script was revealed in the first Draconomicon book. So I can't think of any better book in which to reveal the Barazhad script than The Plane Below. I assume also that the last remaining script is Supernal, which I imagine will find its way into an as yet unannounced "Plane Above" sourcebook to be released at a future date.
I wonder what this script will look like? Sinister and demonic? Or simple and basic and blocky? In my head I picture something medieval and Gothic, like a cross between Klingon and Blackletter. But then again, it is an old script, primordial, elemental; so it might instead look very simple, composed of rudimentary shapes--the basic "elements" of written characters. Dwarves and dragons have ties to the primordials, so maybe their scripts evolved out of Barazhad. Perhaps if you extrapolate backwards from those two alphabets, Barazhad might look like something they could have both developed out of.
So hopefully it's in there. Only 2 more weeks to go before we find out! I will be terribly disappointed if it's not.
(creator of the Rellanic, Iokharic, and Davek scripts)
What's Rellanic?
I'm not near my book right now, but if it isn't elven, I'd like to find a font for it.
It looks pretty darn neat. It does indeed look like something that both the Draconic alphabet (iokharic script) and the Dwarven alphabet (Davek script) could have evolved out of; I see a few elements that suggest an ancestry between the scripts.
It looks primal, jagged, ominous, and a little wild and unrefined--exactly appropriate to the Elemental Chaos. It is also evokes a sense of restrained might with a tinge of danger mixed in. It has the feel of black letter or a gothic style font. I definitely like this script. It seems a natural fit for use by demons and elementals. It's just what you would expect to see scrawled in blood on an abyssal parchment, or carved into the mausoleum of a djinni caliph.
The wait was worth it. Daniel Reeve did another fine job crafting the Barazhad script, and I am so very pleased to finally get to see it!
Now if only WotC would please, please, please make these fonts available to DDI subscribers so we could make maps and prop documents with them for our campaigns, that would make for a very nice Christmas indeed!
So Plane Below came out today. I got my copy, and on top of it being just an all around swell book (some really great stuff in there!), I was also super pleased to find on page 53 the Barazhad script of the Primordial language.
Awesome! I was hopin that script would be in there. Im definitely going to have to get me a copy of that book. Aside from just being interested in the planes of D&D, im also interested in the languages, so this book definitely sounds like a win win.
Now if only WotC would please, please, please make these fonts available to DDI subscribers so we could make maps and prop documents with them for our campaigns, that would make for a very nice Christmas indeed!
That would be very cool if they did that, and for all the other fonts too. If nothing else hopefully someone with some font making software will scan it in and fontify it and share it with the rest of us.
Plus, I have a couple of writing systems of my own I created, and would like to see if I could make a font out of them. Not sure how hard it will be or if I will pull it off, but it would definitely be fun to try.
It is my plan, after Christmas expenses are taken care of, to buy some font software in January. I have been checking prices and comparing different programs. I am very interested in trying my hand at making fonts. I would like to maybe take Draconic and make some variants of it, maybe a hand scrawled version, and then maybe a couple of illuminated and caligraphic versions, such as they might use in Thay, or as you might see in scrolls or magic tomes. Maybe something that looks like a stone-cut version for use on monuments or tablets. I can see also playing with a few different styles of Barazhad as well. And elven too.
Plus, I have a couple of writing systems of my own I created, and would like to see if I could make a font out of them. Not sure how hard it will be or if I will pull it off, but it would definitely be fun to try.
Sounds interesting, looking foward to it!
Per Amazon the release date is April 20th. Looks like this book will probably have the mysterious Supernal Alphabet inside. This is the last of the D&D fonts that they had commissioned (as far as I can tell).
The Supernal script will probably look very nifty. I imagine it will appeared dignified and regal, yet flowing. Perhaps like Burmese, Javanese, Thai or Sinhala. Or maybe more akin to Georgian Mkehdruli. Tibetan or Bengali are a nice model, but they look a little too similar to the Draconic font, so I imagine Supernal will look very different from that. Probably more curvy than angular so as to contrast with Primordial and Draconic. If they were going for a more alchemical look, they might go for something like Sabaean or Glagolitic. Whatever the design I am really looking forward to seeing what it is. Guess we will find out in 3 months!
I mean, this was the companion book to The Plane Below, which did include the Primordial Alphabet. So the Supernal alphabet should have been in this one, right? There's even a sidebar about Supernal writing on page 98, but no picture of the alphabet! Seems like this would have been the perfect place to put the art for it. Even looks like it was intended to go there...
Was it an editing oversight? Did they just forget? Did the Art Director mess up? I think the Art director might have dropped the ball.
I cannot tell you how disappointed I was with this omission! I have been waiting months and months and months for Wizards to release the final font they commissioned for the Supernal alphabet. I have no idea what other product they could have intended this for. I can only assume the Art Director just had an epic fail. Or maybe there was a rights issue or something. I cannot fathom.
The other thing is, the chapter headings have a draconic glyph at the start of each page. What the heck were they thinking! They should have used the Supernal characters to start the chapter headings! I mean, sure, the Draconic characters looked great in the Draconomicon and other books they have done that way, and I am sure the art department was just continuing the theme, like they were on autopilot. But seriously, they commissioned a whole alphabet for the celestials and the inhabitants of the Astral Plane, and they have been sitting on it for a couple of years! This was the ideal time to unveil it! And wouldn't it make sense to use it as the an art element in the chapter headings instead of the Draconic alphabet characters? Just sloppy, lazy, thoughtless editing in my opinion!
I mean, there looks like there is some nice stuff in the book, don't get me wrong. The Supernal script was not the only reason I was buying the book. But it WAS a major reason, and I am just sorely disappointed in the editor and art director for so colossally missing the boat on this one! Lost opportunity! Angry, upset customer!
Not to denigrate the rest of the book, because I can console myself with some of the other excellent stuff that does appear to lie within. Maybe when I cool off I will appreciate it better. But I am just so boiling mad about them yanking my chain for a couple of years with the Supernal script and then it not being the book. Jeeze! It's going to be hard for me to let that one go.
www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-h...
You'll need a free account if you dont already have one but if you scroll down there is a link for the Barazhad font. I havent tried it yet, just downloaded it myself, but I hope it turns out to be useful.
I haven't heard about Supernal, but I plan to look into it now and if anyone else has heard anything about it recently please update. ^-^
My suggestion: do a font pack of all the 4e commissioned fonts as part of the resources available to the website subscribers. They could include the unreleased Supernal as part of the font pack.