>I'm a bit puzzled about written Western. Isn't that a writing system
>that all the people of the West could read and understand even if they
>didn't speak the same language.
Which is broadly true for Medieval Latin and Arabic, both of which were read by people whose spoken dialects could be mutual gibberish or a completely different language (such as German or Persian).
>Are some writing systems magical in Glorantha?
Kralori writing is specifically said to be "complex emblems of a higher reality" Glorantha Intro p184, and Emperor Mikaday is described as putting up inscribed rock obelisks so that the Kralori masses would read them and become enlightened.
I believe similar magical scripts can be found throughout other parts of Glorantha.
In the Lunar Empire, this would be the older Buseri script as opposed to the standard Plentonic script. From its origins, I would hazard its magic deals with astronomical matters and that its strict grammatical rules are based upon possible planetary conjunctions.
A possible magical usage might be this: a Buseri wants to know how well he will do in the forthcoming exams. He writes down the question and notes both the date which he asked the question and the date of the exam (he could also pose a question about an indeterminate time period). He then begins to transpose the planetary letter values in his question with the equivalent planetary letter values for the time period he is interested in. If the resulting stream of symbols contain more good symbols than bad, then the omens are favorable and vice versa. On rare occasions they might spell out something intelligible, such as "YOU WILL FALL OUT OF A WINDOW" which gives him something to worry about...
Western script is magical, not the least because God wrote in it (or Zzabur fashioned the best possible writing system depending on whom you believe). I suspect that writing a statement down can reveal that it is logical or not or whether one outcome is better than another. However the various sects will (naturally) have different criteria for determining a logical statement or a better outcome such that one's perfectly reasonable statement becomes another's rank heresy.
I suspect that in Pamaltela (and perhaps Melib), Artmali scripts form the basis of magical writing. Purely on the basis of the Blue Moon's connection with secrecy, I assume that even though its principles are well understood, Artmali inscriptions are not normally understandable in and of themselves. This is because written Artmali requires the reader to know a "key" to unlock the passage's meaning. Most public inscriptions preface the main text with the key (in Fonrit, this might be something like "Life is Slavery"), but quite a few texts have no key which has to be obtained by other methods (i.e. instruction from a master, mind probes etc). Many ancient inscriptions from the Artmali Empire are well known but since the key has been lost, they are undecipherable.
I don't think the Orlanthi have magical writing as it favours oral traditions over writing. OTOH the Praxians have their knot-writing which does have some sort of purpose above and beyond their literal meaning.
>Are the Tradetalk and the Heortling languages written using
>the same technigue? (to which obviously the easiest answer
>is yes)
Yes. But I think Tradetalk's magic lies in its spoken nature.
>Are the Lunars and the Orlanthi using different writing systems?
Yes.
Peter Larsen:
>Lastly, John Hughes reveals that the Orlanthi script is borrowed, but
>there is no idea from where.
The Emperor's Tribe seems a logical guess.
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