So there's a new glyphic language in Skyrim, found in the Oghma Infinium and various other texts (the "arcane scribblings" such as http://i40.tinypic.com/23o0fq.png, http://i40.tinypic.com/2lwnmvr.png, http://i43.tinypic.com/23wryns.png and http://i39.tinypic.com/szvl9u.png). I've determined page 4 of those is a simple substitution cypher of English text, which reads as follows:

"Alduin's civilization was the Dragon Cult of Atmora. He's basically the Dragon God on earth. The Dragon High Priests are his acolytes, and everythign is ordered."

The error with "everythign" is in the source text, but the punctuation is not. It seems a little incomplete, and I suspect the text is a snippet of something else, but it serves as an adequate key covering most characters to compare to the other pages. I believe page 1 reads:

"Alduin a varia o nrdica de Akatosh es superficialmente parecese com o seu colega nos"

which is interesting in that it resembles portuguese, spanish or italian.

The first page of the Oghma is way too hard for me to read--the characters are too tiny--but the large diagram in the middle of the first page has prominent glyphs on the three "flaming" circles which are outside the central disc: M, S, and G. Based on position and size, I'm guessing the flaming circles represent celestial bodies, M and S being Masser and Secunda, but G being unclear. Its relative size suggests the sun, but I can't think of what G would stand for.

Anyway, I'm wondering what these new glyphs are. I'm not sure what I've found is actually meaningful, they may just be snippets of text from random places, but I've never seen these glyphs before and they don't resemble any meric runes nor daedric. They also appear similar to those found inscribed on the Eye of Magnus, though a quick examination suggests there is almost no overlap in the characters. Any thoughts as to their nature?

I've not deciphered any of the texts, but Skyrim uses fonts for all it's foreign scripts. This particular one is called "Mage Font" and is just a cipher of English (in all caps). I'll type up the alphabet.

[edit] http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/3721/magescript.jpg

Interesting, thanks. Here I spent a couple hours this morning attacking it with cipher tools to derive my key, heh.

Sadly this all doesn't tell us what it means, but it might just be decor and not genuinely meaningful.

Half the fun is in figuring it out yourself

Page 1 appears to be a quote from http://imperial-library.info/content/varieties-faith-empire, which reads "Alduin is the Nordic variation of Akatosh, and only superficially resembles his counterpart." This matches up with the various piecemeal translations one gets when plugging the phrase into a translator. Galician yields the closest translation, once some of the words are corrected a tad (nrdica becomes nordica, com o becomes como, etc.) If I had to guess at a Tamrielic language, I'd say that it's the same one as was used in the Nu-Mantia intercepts.

Working on the other pages now.

[EDIT]Translations!
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/649/arcane00.jpg
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/1664/arcane02.jpg
http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/3230/arcane05.jpg
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/123/arcane04r.jpg
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/6870/arcane06.jpg

Brilliant translation work, I would have though Bethesda wrote the pages just for effect. However, the only think I can make any sence of is "Skyrim" and "Septimus", which I guess refers to Septimus Signus?...So I haven't really learnt anything

Shamefully, I have to say : "Don't f*** with me Mason, what do the letters mean"?

The page 1 quote also mirrors the horribly difficult-to-read scrawlings, which are in English--that text is exactly the quote from Varieties of Faith. IIRC, at least that page come from the book labelled "Shalidor's Insights" from the College quest. My speculation is that this could be intended to imply that Shalidor was translating between the two. I'm not sure that makes sense--was Alduin banished before Shalidor's time and the line between Akatosh and Alduin already muddied for the Nords, and would this text have dated back further still?

Page 2 is curious. I suspect the majority of the page is in hard-to-read English again, but the octogram in the center uses the new glyphs, though it's unclear that they have any specific meaning. The design could be some sort of symbol of the Divines, eight outer elements surrounding a ninth.

Page 3 is mostly gobbledygook. The left column reads "QACONDUZIUOAQUI AESTEP" and the right "QESKYRIMSEPTIMUSVIVEEMU". I found the presence of "Skyrim" and "Septimus" curious, but the rest is unintelligable to me. The golden ratio spiral simply has the characters S, T, U, V, and W, from largest to smallest.

Page 4 doesn't match the pattern of 1 in that the glyphs are clearly english, and curiously loose. My personal suspicion is that the text is a snippet of a design doc.

What about this?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Oghma_Infinium

Essentially, what http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/nklj2/you_know_those_runes_on_the_lids_of_the_bug_jars/c3bcrsa?context=3 has been trying to do is to decipher those pages found in the unpacked skyrim files to find clues about future dlc/games/prophecy etc and the bug-jar conspiracy.

Thanks for the translation Lady Neverar


EDIT: I'm posting the reddit link because other people have translated SOME of the pages, aka, don't bother doing it again, unless it's to verify the accuracy.





My original guess was that these 8 surrounding the 1 correspond to the 9 towers that support Mundus, White-Gold being at its centre

Doing Oghma now (or trying to - some of the symbols are too small to make out). I highly doubt that it's anything meaningful - the most these sorts of texts have ever contained are easter eggs. I remember us getting all worked up over the Dwemer runes way back when, don't care to repeat that experience

[edit] *Reads whole reddit thread.* Sweet baby Talos, everyone deserves a tinfoil hat after that one.

The word Aestep does sound familiar. Is aestepping some kind of process?

You might be thinking of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop? AE does exist as an Ehlnofex word, though, meaning and/duality.

The more of this I read, the more I suspect this is all for flavor and no hidden meaning lies within these texts. Ah well.

Here's what the http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/5991/oghma1.jpg looks like to me.

Hm, my money is on the left-hand circle's character being S, not R. Note how evenly rounded the loop is compared to either O or R. Also, looking at the orientation of the characters, it suggests the circle with the G character being the bottom, with the element joining that circle to the main disc being vertically oriented. Design looked better at an angle, or meaningful?

That would make it SMG - submachine gun?

Hmm, except for the obvious example of the first page, I wonder if these are supposed to be translated directly to English. It doesn't seem to produce anything meaningful except for two proper nouns, Skyrim and Septimus. As a possibly interesting excersize, what if you match the Mage Script font to the dragon language font, and try to translate that?

How so? Both are just different fonts for English (Draconic has a few extra 'letters' to stand for double letters).

I mean instead of converting Mage Script's "A" to the English "A", convert it to the Draconic "A", and try to form dragon language words.

Since they're all English letters, no conversion is necessary. An A in English is the same as an A in Mage and in Draconic. So whatever it says in the translations up there is what it says regardless of language, and it's not draconic.

Um, no, I explained my hypothesis in the initial post--I'd guess M and S represent Masser and Secunda, the moons. The large central circle which contains the spiral could be Nirn. The large circle with the G character might be the sun, but I can only speculate at to what G could stand for.

Okay, I'm almost 99% positive that bottom line says "lockbox iceberg para que o"... which Google detects as Spanish and says, "iceberg for lockbox or".

EDIT:
The first part of the bottom section says "o iceberg foi criado", and the last part says "lockbox iceberg para que o". In Portuguese, these are "the iceberg was created" and "lockbox for the iceberg" repsectively.

"the iceberg was created around the lockbox by a person unknown cities within the last few hundred years this person demonstrated the encour Oghma Infinium recognized as a treatment in the saddle away from evil and the band for the lockbox iceberg"

That was a joke.

I guess I didn't see that comment. It's noteworthy that according to the lore, the sun and the stars are the holes pierced by Magnus and his et'Ada during the creation. This is where magic(Magicka) comes from. If we're dealing with powerful conjuration magic here, then the sun is most likely involved.

Secondly, Masser and Secunda is the dead body of Lorkhan, and the other 8 planets of Nirn's solar system are the other Aedra (8 Divines). Following this theory, the various circles on "Nirn" could be the active Towers.

That translated page of the Oghma looks suspiciously like dragon words.

Because this new generation of TES players deserves its own Egg of Time.

Okay, so to flesh out part of my original question: this text is new as far as I can tell to the series, and does not resemble any Meric or Daedric characters. Also of mild interest is that Daedric script is almost completely absent from Skyrim. Any thoughts as to its nature, and why it appears in the Oghma Infinium as well, while prior incarnations contained Daedric?