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Pictograms, ideograms and the like in Prax?


Robius

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Hi folks,

I bet this has been covered, but I was unable to locate much info. In your games do Praxians have means of communicating using patterns of stones or other symbols?

Apart from a written language on animal hide, can someone leave a message "Hunting, back in 3 moons" or a pile of stones meaning "tribe headed to the Paps" or something? 

Thanks! 

 

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You’re right! Nice work. Paris: Gateway to Adventure p.18 says:

Praxian

This language is spoken by the nomadic tribes of Prax and the Wastes. All the tribes there speak dialects, including the nonhuman Morokanth. It has no written script, although the Praxians do record some information with a complicated system of knots.

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6 hours ago, Robius said:

can someone leave a message "Hunting, back in 3 moons" or a pile of stones meaning "tribe headed to the Paps" or something? 

I can totally see Praxians having a crude symbol system like that, maybe even particular to every clan.

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Read my Runeblog about RuneQuest and Glorantha at: http://elruneblog.blogspot.com.es/

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7 hours ago, Robius said:

Hi folks,

I bet this has been covered, but I was unable to locate much info. In your games do Praxians have means of communicating using patterns of stones or other symbols?

Apart from a written language on animal hide, can someone leave a message "Hunting, back in 3 moons" or a pile of stones meaning "tribe headed to the Paps" or something? 

Thanks! 

As has been mentioned already there is no written form of the language, but some knot writing. I did some sample spirit maps to give some idea of how they work here:

Runes are universally used. These are really neat as I did them digitally, but they are likely scratched into a small piece of bone to convey the message, so

"Hunting, back in 3 moons" would be the hunting rune and the moon phase. 1135111775_Message1.png.98252d367d38dded6083e0e76a0c2d63.png

"tribe headed to the Paps" would be the tribe glyph and the Paps glyph.1732934880_Message2.png.6bfc702ee5431927a96bbc9c925bb437.png

 

they might have a personal mark before or after or surrounding the message.

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In my Glorantha (edit: specifically in Prax) there's an informal & varied method of encoding of trailmarkers into the environment.  Akin to -- but more subtle than -- blazes on trees, the tribes each have a suite of spots they know, and train their youths, where they leave trailsigns for one another.  Raiders & warbands often set up specific codes for specific missions or circumstances.

Examples would be a cracked boulder, or just the far side of the boulder from the trail (out of sight), or just over a rise in the ground, or below a dip.

At these locations, they leave specific *OTHER* piece(s) of the natural environment; specifics of the item(s) determine the message -- smooth rock(s) or rough, stick(s), different sizes & shapes of the object(s), etc etc etc.  There's a pretty complex set of communications possible, particularly if combining objects.

Different groups tend to use these to greater or lesser degrees.
 

But it's NOT "writing" in the conventional sense; and it doesn't allow for any sort of "written tradition" or knowledge-store.

 

Edited by g33k
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