Runic script

Modern Runic script is a debasement of Low Runic, the mundane writing system of the titans. Low Runic, like High Runic (the language of power used by those same titans), was (as far as anyone knows) logographic (like real-world Mandarin), using an incredibly complex set of concept-runes, where placement in an aggregate rune had meaning. By contrast, Modern Runic (which has remained fundamentally unchanged since the end of the Second Age) is a true alphabet, with characters expressing sound values. It is used by Tumni (spoken and written by the dwarves) and Too-til (also called "Giantish"), spoken and written by the jazuu and giant-kin of Noefra. Titan-related races elsewhere in the world use other variants of Low Runic or completely other scripts.

Modern Runic is traditionally written in blocks of four characters, with each word having 4, 8, 12, or very rarely 16 characters. Normally, these are written horizontally from left to right, bottom to top, although older writers will often write bottom to top, right to left. Poetic writings are often arranged into square 2x2 blocks, with part of the art arranging the letters such that you can create multiple readings by changing the direction you read (at least for some phrases). "Perfect" sentences have a total number of characters that is a power of 4. The dwarves of Shinevog, as well as the Abandoned Clans, have started using Reformed Runic, where these numerical restrictions are removed and more letters are added to represent non-tumni phonemes (especially in loanwords). Traditionalists avoid loanword and instead form complex phrases.

Informal writing places spaces between words and varies the size of the symbols (with larger symbols indicating names and other semantic emphasis. Older, more traditional writing does neither of these (hence the rigid adherence to the 4x rule to ease parsing).

Letter Forms

Modern Runic has 28 letter forms, divided (among the dwarves at least) into consonants (or prime letters), vowels (secondary letters), and particles (unspoken letters).

Consonants

There are 16 consonants. Tumni and Too-til mostly disagree on assignment--they use very similar letter forms and sounds, but assign different letters to different sounds. Generally, words spelled the same (same sequence of consonants) will have similar meanings but will generally have very different sounds. Each letter has a name associated with it. A few of these can be palatalized by particles: d, r, l, n are the most commonly palatalized.

Letter Name (Tumni)	Symbol (UCS)	Transliteration	Sound (Tumni)	Sound (Too-til)
Fe	ᚠ	F	f	d
Durs	ᚦ	d	d	f
Reid	ᚱ	r	ɾ	ɾ
Kaun	ᚲ	k	k	χ
Hagal	ᚷ	kh	χ	k
Tor	ᚾ	t	t	t͡s
Gyr	ᛃ	g	g	ʃ
Tsoss	ᛈ	ts	t͡s	t
Sor	ᛋ	s	s	z
Lyogr	ᛏ	l	l	l
Bjarken	ᛒ	b	b	p
Madr	ᛗ	m	m	n
Paar	ᛚ	p	p	b
Zhul	ᛞ	zh	ʒ	g
Naudr	ᚺ	n	n	m
Chiss	ᛟ	ch	t͡ʃ	t͡ʃ

Vowels

There are 8 "normal" vowel forms (but note that vowels can be lengthened by particles. These generally keep their sounds consistent between Tumni and Too-til. One caution is that in writing, the number of letters is more important than marking all vowel sounds--words can be shortened to fit the 4x format by leaving out inconvenient vowels, usually an a or eh out of the last syllable. But different dialects will keep different vowels.

Name	Otsila	Ansuzh	Urum	Ikh	Yod	Elphas	Uhbas	Oeln
Symbol	ᚢ	ᚨ	ᚹ	ᛁ	ᛇ	ᛉ	ᚬ	ᛜ
Transliteration	O	a	u	i	y	eh	uh	oe
Sound	ɵ	ɑ	ɯ	i	ɨ	e	ə	œ

Particles

Particles have no sound, but serve ancillary purposes. There are four of them.

Name	Symbol	Purpose	Rules
Null Particle	A dot at the top center of the letter block	Added to lengthen words to fit the 4x rule	No more than 1 per word, cannot be first character. Usually added at the end.
Combining Null	A pair of dots at the center of the letter block	Added to lengthen words to fit the 4x rule	No more than 1 per word. Added between syllables.
Softening Particle	An apostrophe character at the bottom of the letter block	Added to indicate that the previous consonant is palatalized	Most commonly used with Durs, lyogr, Reid, Naudr and Sor. Poetically added in other places to make 2 characters out of one (ie Tsoss + softening -> Tor or vice versa). Not always added for soft sounds.
Accent Particle	An apostrophe-looking character at the top of the letter block.	Added to indicate that the previous syllable carries the accent	Most often used in poetry, but there are a handful of words where accent is critical to meaning in regular usage.