Edun script

The Edun script is a set of graphic signs based on the glyphs of the Edun logography.

## History

The ancestor of the Edun script was a logography, originating soon after Thirēan peoples migrated to the Central Regions. At this time, glyphs were carved into stone. Over time, this glyphs came to be used more flexibly, increasingly in the direction of syllabic encoding while retaining some logographic use. Another notable shift was switching from stone to palm leaves as the default medium of encoding, leading to an increasingly curvilinear glyph shape. As sound changes occurred, inconsistencies in spelling reforms and systemic uses began to arise, varying wildly across provinces.

Shortly after the founding of the first Empire of the Sun (the period of Ancient Edun), scribes decided to standardize the script, creating a system called *sopfyekhtsut* (lit. "opened writing") and a standard spelling. This system was enforced by royal mandate, resolving many problems with the system.

Later rulers of the Empire refused to update the script, believing the traditions of their ancestors to be sacred and ignoring rampant sound changes in the language. By the time of Classical Edun, the writing system had remained untouched for a thousand years, and its divergence from the spoken language left it one of the most difficult writing systems in history. However, as the script had never been use by the lower class, this complexity helped to further the gap between the upper and lower classes.

### Children Systems

The people of Nekāchta first encountered the Edun script during the time of Old Nekāchti. Recognizing the script's needless complexity, and free of the Empire of the Sun's religious doctrine, the Nekāchti based their own script on a heavily modified and simplified version of the Edun script. The Nekāchti script was quickly adopted by other True Thirēan languages, and was eventually adapted to transcribe Ilothwii (albeit with heavy modifications to accommodate Ilothwii's more complex phonotactics and foreign sounds that never had counterparts in Nekāchti).

## System Overview

The precursor to the Edun script started out as a logography carved into stone, which depicted words and meanings. Later, the speakers started using them for both sounds and meanings, leading to each glyph serving as either a determinative to ensure the meaning of the word, or a rebus to indicate pronunciation, leading to the formation of a logo-syllabary. This lasted even when the inhabitants of what is now Tsannur started etching glyphs with styli on palm leaves, and when the Sopfyekhtsut was created. The Nekāchti script did similar, but only for the [a] syllables, which the scribes decided to stick with, feeling they most often kept their quality during a time of Classical Edun, when the script now had needless complexity. They would then invent diacritics to represent the other three vowels of their language, while also taking symbols that indicated their long forms, said symbols also appearing at the beginning of words. The Ilothwii variant operated the same way as that, but with extra symbols to indicate other sounds, and new diacritics to indicate the remaining sounds as well as missing ones.

## Gallery

The original script.The current edition.Old Nekachti edition.Ilothwii script(formerly)Nekachti script(current)Ilothwii script(current)