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The Forgotten Prince remembers

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pain servant

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%Long Post Warning% Some Thoughts on the Writing System of Tir'su

Recently, while slacking off, I’ve been pondering how the gith people’s Tir’su script should be written. Below are some of my rough ideas—feel free to discuss them with me.

Prerequisite Knowledge: Tir’su is the primary writing system of the gith language. It arranges each word into a circular, wheel-like pattern (this pattern itself is called a Tir’su), with each letter forming a "spoke" of the wheel. Sentences and phrases are formed by connecting multiple independent Tir’su. In the githyanki dialect, each word is written clockwise, starting from the top. The githzerai dialect, on the other hand, starts writing each word from the bottom, filling the circle counterclockwise. A Tir’su word is shown in Figure 1, and Figure 2 displays the Tir’su alphabet (a fan-made computer font).

We need to understand that Tir’su is primarily an inscribed script (though there are scenes in bg3 of Githyanki writing them on paper lol). Their main publications are slates, and judging from the game assets, these slates aren’t very large—they can be held in one hand and carried around (Dak’kon brought the Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon with him all day, Voss can put his Orpheus fan fiction in his armor too). Thus, from the perspective of the writing medium, the spatial efficiency of Tir’su is very crucial.

In our everyday writing, letters or characters are usually arranged in straight lines. Consider a character with a width *w* and height *h*—for a word with *n* characters, the rectangular area it occupies is roughly (assuming negligible spacing between characters):

W_linear = n * w * h

However, when these letters are arranged in a circular ring, the area occupied by a word is approximately:

W_circle = π * h²

Note: For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume the Tir’su writing system has a upper limit on the number of letters per word, so the circular ring can accommodate all the letters of a word without overlapping strokes. Alternatively, perhaps the gith don’t care much about stroke overlap—otherwise, we’d also need to consider the width of horizontal strokes, which seems related to individual writing habits.

This means that when n ≤ π * (h / w), a circular ring occupies more "paper" space (I know Tir’su is carved on stone) than linear writing. Based on game assets, the height-to-width ratio of Tir’su letters is about 10:3, meaning that for words with fewer than 10 letters, circular writing takes up more space than linear writing.

So, how many letters do Tir’su words typically have? According to the Forgotten Realms wiki, the longest known official Tir’su words are *Vlaakith’ka* ("In Vlaakith") and *Ir’revrykal* ("pain servant"), each with 11 letters (the word formation rules suggest even longer words are theoretically possible). However, most words aren’t this long. Thus, from the perspective of writing a single word, Tir’su already occupies much more space than linear writing, making layout considerations especially important.

First, let’s examine the designs from bg3 in Figures 3 and 4.

From the perspective of our prerequisite knowledge, this modeling is utterly nonsense. If a closed circle represents a single word in Tir’su, then this modeling implies that a single ring contains one word. But we know that the closer to the center, the smaller the circumference—so wouldn’t words near the center have to be shorter, or letters near the outer edge become more sparse? Consider a slate with a diameter of 15 cm, which is easy to hold in hands. In real life, the typical text height for printing is around 12 pt (0.42 cm), meaning this slate could fit at most 17 words. Judging by the amount of information we read from Tir’su slates in the game, 17 words seem far from sufficient—unless the gith language has some even more convoluted word-formation rules that haven’t been officially documented.

Returning to the "one closed circle per word" approach, one idea is linear layout: arranging the rings in a rectangular grid. However, given that the writing medium is stone slate, a rectangular layout doesn’t seem to align with gith aesthetics.

That leaves only one option: circular layout. Here, I come with two approaches, as shown in Figure 5 (apologies for the crude drawing).

- A. Concentric Circle / Tessellation Layout: Easy math, assuming a character height of 12 pt and leaving the center empty, a 15 cm slate could fit roughly 207 words. From the perspective of a middle school essay exam, that’s enough to explain something fairly clearly. Moreover, the Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon seem to follow this layout, as shown in Figures 6 and 7.

- B. Spiral Layout: Some religious manuscripts use a similar layout, as seen in Figure 8.

I doubt any culture using this layout would accurately perform mathematical curve-fitting while writing, so I won’t bother calculating exactly how much text a 15 cm slate could hold at 12 pt font size. However, if we consider the most suitable Archimedean spiral with equal spacing between arms (where the spiral parameters are a = 0, h = πb), a quick code test suggests a 7.5 cm slate could fit about 60 words, as shown in Figure 9, and for 15 cm slate the plot can be very unfriendly for the trypophobia guys 😅, the approximately result obtained through integral calculation is roughly 245 words, more than the tessellation approach.

Although the spiral layout can carry more information, one issue with it is its strong asymmetry compared to the tessellated one, which doesn’t seem to fit gith aesthetic sensibilities.

In conclusion, the Tir’su writing form most closely resembles the tessellated concentric circles. Additionally, since Tir’su has word separators, stone carvers could simply draw vertical lines instead of using spaces that might disrupt the visual harmony.

*Sigh* this is what I spend my time thinking about while slacking off in the lab. Honestly, I’m done with myself. 🤡 BTW my ideal version of Tir’su writing would be:

1. From both a historical-cultural and calligraphic perspective, I strongly think the gith should use a logographic system—but that’s asking too much of dnd game designers. I forgive them.

2. Abandon the "one word per closed ring" restriction and adopt a layout like the manuscript in Figure 8. This would dramatically increase writing density, look more aesthetically pleasing, and make the modeling in bg3 perfectly reasonable.

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Very young prince and very old knight

Once I start drawing such sweet pictures it means that my real life is too bitter 🏳️

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usually, i try to base my HC on source material, even if they are a stretch. But one of my unfounded headcanons about Blurg (that i conjured out of thin air) is that he was born and raised in the fishing village

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Some recent sketches of Kim.

I really like the lines where the Composure skill says something about him :)

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idk, I just wanted to draw these two but I was too lazy to try very hard

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It's sooo good I cry 🥹🥹

serene old man for @des-no9's birthday!

Happy Birthday to youuuu! Hope this year brings joy and many beautiful moments to you <3

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I kneel down

he's such a princess

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The exiles