ToCha'r

Origin

ToCha'r is a fantasy script for the language of the Dwarves of Ehtome-Naom in the swords & sorcery roleplaying game, Worlde Arcane.

Notable Features

ToCha'r means "depicted thought," the 'r being a past-participle mopheme.
Whereas a large percentage of characters in other writing sytems (especially connected scripts!) are contiguous strokes, 14 of the 16 consonant characters in ToCha'r break in the middle, with each half connecting to its neighbor but not to its other half. Thus in ToCha'r, contiguous lines often represent two halves of two different characters.
The vowel [ɔ] (open-o) is not available in ToCha'r; depending on environment, [a] or [o] must substitute.
ToCha'r contains syllabic characters in its writing system that do not occur in the spoken language.

ToCha'r characters

Sample text

Sample text in the ToCha'r script

Transcription and transliteration

Transcription and transliteration of the sample text in ToCha'r

Creator's Note

When in mid-1998 I found came across the writing-based roleplaying game Lands Of Aniada, (later to expand as Worlde Arcane), I built myself a Dwarf character wearing a metal collar inscribed with runes. For expediency's sake--or was it just laziness?--I used a Klingon font for the inscription. The game's manager liked the look of it and asked to use the writing for the new Dwarf homeland that he was creating for the game. I had to confess that I had stolen the lettering, but to make good on the gaff I promised him an original writing system that he could use without worries of plagiarism or copyright infringement. Well, I got a little carried away as usual ... but it worked out to my benefit, because on the strength of my submission he promoted me into the game's management cadre :) and years later I am still with the same game, still having tons of fun.

I have not (yet) built a font for ToCha'r, mostly because the character mapping would be a nightmare just for the syllables, not to mention the glides. Furthermore, the kerning, both horizontal and vertical(!) would be extremely challenging. Yet furthermore, I managed to lose/destroy/delete the original "clean" vector graphics for the characters. I did, however, scan a hi-res JPG and recreate a set of vectors: they're rough, but it looks alright for pseudomedieval Dwarfen scrawls.

--töff (email)

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