Godcarvings

Glimpsing into the future, one rune at a time.

Written by Acturus Albani ^{Who found his groove and is excited for what may come}

Godcarvings, also known by names such as Skycall, Heavenspeak, Nightmaps or Lúmenyle, is a written language which can be found in many places around the world of Arc - Tus, not belonging to any one culture or people and seeing extensive use during the First Age of the World, with some of the carvings surviving to this day. Nowadays, only a handful of people around the world now how to read them, and fewer still are mentally and spiritually prepared to do so.

For not everyone's mind is designed to attempt to read a godcarving and emerge completely unscathed. Most people faint after a few seconds of staring at the written message, waking up in a dazed and confused state. However, there are other, more extreme cases wherein the individual experiences varying degrees of adverse effects. In no particular order, the ones that have been reported are complete loss of all senses, severe alteration to perception (physical or metaphysical), impairments to cognitive functions, erratic and uncharacteristic behavior consistent with the onset of insanity or permanent amnesia. All these are usually classified under an illness called etching hysteria.

Those that are able to read it, however, know that the writing holds special properties, the most important one being the fact that it can convey messages that transmit visions of the distant past and the coming future if it has been properly written. Even when this is not the case, the language's written structure allows for non-linear reading, meaning it can be read in almost any order or direction and still be understood.

The language itself consists of a written component with no phonetic counterpart, making the process of reading it out loud impossible. Reading it requires extensive knowledge of the individual parts of what composes a carving, as well as certain tools that can facilitate the process with little to no side effects to the reader.

Although the name 'godcarvings' would suggest only a single form to pass down information, godcarvings can be written over any surface with any sort of writing implement, be it awls or quills, provided said item or items have been infused with the necessary magic to impart the carvings with their unique properties. Unfortunately, these infusion methods have been largely lost to the passage of time.

The language is used almost exclusively by the members of the Order of the Twelve Solars, a secret organization once dedicated to the preservation of the world from its ancient enemies, as a way to communicated divined futures or revelations gleaned from previous World Cycles, times when the world's population was annihilated before rising once more at the whim of the gods or by some cosmic accident. These became crucial to the Order's efforts against Alvoch the Awoken, the traitorous solar responsible for the changing Cycles, yet were not enough to stop him definitively.

Nowadays, some of the members of the revived Order have a sufficient grasp on its writings to begin reading them again. Because of their nearly unknown existence and possible cognitive hazard, lesser godcarvings have been used to communicate shorter, less meaningful messages that nonetheless warn of upcoming disasters, as was the case with Lyra Crendameth when writing to her father Elmeyon.

Writing System

The godcarvings' 'alphabet' consists of several shapes and forms that could be more accurately compared to a distorted map of the night sky. Individually, these components can be identified yet make little sense, representing a word by itself but lacking the proper support to be coherent. When viewed as parts of a whole, however, they can adopt a multiplicity of meanings.

Syntax

Heavenspeak is a non-linear palindromic language, meaning that it can be read in multiple ways and still convey the same message. This means that there is no real grammatical structure to the language, although the people that can read and write it have made attempts to categorize and organize it. Said attempts have always ended in the same place where they started: there is no structure and there is no real need for one.

Native to

Unknown

Commonly used in

Anywhere in the world, most concentration of readers in Filmente

Writing system

Runes, lines, shapes and forms that represent words and sentences

Language family

Unknown

Current readers

Less than 50 in the world