NiChow Hieroglyphs (nee-CHOW)

The NiChow Hieroglyphs is a strange set of writing or language that was found painted, drawn and even chiseled into abandoned structures all throughout the coastal town of Ni Chow. It was discovered when the first human settlers reached that part of the Melan East Coast around the year 50GM.

When settlers first arrived, they found the remains of a large village with numerous constructed homes, buildings and other structures that, while they had fallen into disrepair and in many cases were unsafe for habitation, the ravages of coastal existence had generally bypassed them. Many homes and buildings were sufficiently repairable, and the settlers began to move in. A great mystery was where the builders themselves had gone, why they had seemingly left in the middle of the night (in some cases, plates, urns, utensils and other paraphernalia were found scattered in a recently lived-in fashion). A smaller mystery was the presence of writing on the walls of the structures. The language was unrecognizable, and did not seem to belong to any group the settlers had ever encountered before.

After they were determined to be non-runic and non-magical, the structures were deemed safe to enter and to renovate, providing an almost-ready made city to inhabit. Over time the characters and symbols were deeply studied but little to no headway has ever been made in translating them.

The basic structure of the hieroglyphs is circular, or more precisely, arcical. Combinations of arcs from a common size circle would seem to create individual letters or phonetic sounds, depending on the length of the arc, its placement in the imaginary circle of the letter and how many are in the circle at one time. In addition, occasionally there are large and small circles-within-circles, complicating understanding. While some progress seems to have been made over time in identifying patterns in the glyph structures, no headway has ever been made in deriving a consistent combination to the letters, or anything resembling a vocabulary.

The residents of Ni Chow have never seen signs of the previous inhabitants returning, nor have any other clues surfaced that would give any indication to their identities. The majority of the people consider them to be simple decorative patterns on their homes and buildings.

Theories

Several theories do exist as to the origin of the writings and the people that created them. The most commonly accepted theory is that a disease or plague wiped out the inhabitants, and the writings were warnings to other people not to enter the buildings for their own protection. However, most feel there would somewhere be residual signs of bodies or other biological evidence, but none has ever been discovered. Some believe the original inhabitants built the structures and were driven out by invaders, an environmental disaster or wild animal infestation. It still does not explain the writing and their meaning or significance. A small percentage of people believe the inhabitants turned into ghosts and still roam the material plane searching for victims.