Maybe it's just markings of the jars previous owner like the M+ just being some old guys jar for his dentures called M+

Oh, I know the answer to this one.



:flamethrower:

I thought that too, but why would they use real world runes? I've looked at anglo and nordic runes, but it's sort of vague. If someone knew what Nord runes looked like we might find out, lol. It says in the wiki they used runes, but never shows them.

I just looked under my bee jar and, I can see why the OP would THINK it says "bat" but I think it's just a bunch of random lines that coincidentally look almost like a word. I mean the "B" doesn't really look like a "B;" it just looks like a misshapen triangle.

I found the butterfly in a jar and had been wondering if it was unique, seeing as I had only found one in my 150+ hours of playing, I guess this thread answers that question, lol. I wasn't aware there were other bugs in jars though.

Butterfly in jar: I used to be a pig like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.

HAHA! That movie will be on TV soon too

They're characters written in elder futhark.

I found a butterfly in a jar in a small alchemist shack on the Southside of High Hrothgar. If you head Souhteast from Ivarstad you should find it.

Sweet! Someone knows!

Please translate it for us. The words will be like a jumble - since the jars are not in a specific order - to find the phrase.

Let us know.

It was stated somewhere before in the thread... some of the symbols are not in the traditional elder futhark abacedary, yet It may be any of the multiple variations...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_alphabet

The dragonfly jar word could be translated to "LEG" with elder futhark.

There's also the chance that the words we come up with are not in English (that'd be too simple maybe?) but also in ancient nord so we must first decipher then translate or find the modern day equivalent of ancient nord language... or maybe stop thinking so hard.

To those just catching up.

Moth I concur translates as 'EN', but I insist on the Dragonfly translation being 'LEG'...
perhaps a variant of the runic alphabet contains the characters I haven't found, namely the one that looks like a 'g' and a 'k'.

The second character differs from the "N" a bit.

ROLF

After spending some time in the forums and reading the average reasoning for the complaints, that could very well be mistaken with a serious assertion.

Nordic Runes:
http://hem.passagen.se/vsen/public_html/images/Image15.gif
http://hem.passagen.se/vsen/public_html/images/Image13.gif

When I squint I think Butterfly becomes VIP/WIP and Dragonfly becomes NEL Moth becomes either EN or MN and torchbug NHEY but the Bee runes doesn't look anything like the nordic runes except the last symbol being an N

It kinda reminds me of some Cyrillic letters but I'm not feeling up for the whole decoding game right now.

You get to duel a guy named Ash, you stand opposite each other, you then throw one jar and he throws another then the bugs pop out of the jar and fight each other.

I still don't see why they'd use Elder Futhark for this. And some of those letter are only vaguely similar to them anyway. Even Anglo runes are just somewhat similar.

Yeah, I noticed the underside of the butterfly lid while trying to move it around.

[censored], I've never found a bee in a jar before. Where'd you find that?

Do these characters correspond to the runes of the Daedric alphabet in any way?
It'd make more sense than them using a real world character set.

They're very different from the ingame runic alphabets - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Appendices.
Futhark isn't an exact match either, but it's nearly there.

I can't do a thorough comparison right now 'cause I'm on a low-end 'droid with a tiny screen. However, if you take into account the scrawled nature of the marks on the jars, they do seem to match Daedric runes, at least to a degree.
Elder Futhark may be close too but I maintain that it would make very little sense and would be a major break from tradition for Bethesda to have copied a real world runic alphabet almost wholesale.

I'm mildly experienced in reading runes for divination - some of these make more sense if read that way:

Bee - Thurisaz, Hagalaz, Nauthiz

Literally - Thorn, Hail, Need

Figuratively - Battle/strife, sudden, drastic change(usually bad), Need


Butterfly - Wunjo, Isa, Possibly Berkana(but it's backwards and a line is missing)

Literally - Wishes, Ice, woman/mother

Figuratively - Wishes coming true, blockages, feminine/motherly

Dragonfly - Nauthiz(reversed), Ehwaz, Laguz

Literally - Need, Horse, Lake

Figuratively - Need(needs not being met when reversed), Companionship or travel, Emotions

Moth - Ehwaz, Nauthiz

Literally - Horse, Need

Figuratively - Companionship or travel, need

Torchbug - I think this is upside down in the image. when flipped, it says Jera, Ehwaz(reversed), Hagalaz, Nauthiz

Literally - Year, Horse, Hail, Need

Figuratively - Passage of time, Companionship or travel, Sudden drastic change, Need



I don't think this is helpful at all, but it's info that I didn't see earlier in the thread.