The Harbinger Challenge League is unique in that alongside its game mechanics, we also introduced a new decipherable language. The community has been collaborating in an effort to decipher the meaning behind the Harbinger Glyphs. We wanted to share these efforts with the wider community and look further into the language, the design behind it and to give some hints about its hidden secrets.





Right away, some canny community members started theorising that the language may not be a simple english cypher; Redditor "IPostStupidThings", in spite of their username, proposed the theory that a piece of Harbinger text might consist of glyphs linked by connecting symbols, and these glyphs were words connected by symbols that denoted their interaction.



This theory proved to be popular and as such, work began on figuring out the potential meaning behind them. Player "Toshis8" created a forum post sharing his findings, and he and other exiles have been working hard to determine the meaning behind the various symbols in this thread here.

The language is suspected to be pictographic, similar to egyptian hieroglyphs, which means that some symbols may be determinable by their appearance. One theory is that some symbols appear to be heavily contextual, so a word could have a different meaning when used in a different context. Every day, these exiles get closer and closer to deciphering the Harbingers' secrets.



We wanted the language to be something natural, something that provided a theme of mystery and uncertainty. The language isn't a puzzle that Exiles need to solve to gain advantage in the game, but is a glimpse into another culture's life and history.

The language was created as something simplistic but realistic, something that provided clues to their origin as well as telling their history when translated, especially from their unique item's Flavour Text.

When arranged in a specific order, the flavour text from the Harbinger unique items tells the history of the Harbingers, and what led to their arrival in Wraeclast. It's not going to be a simple task to translate it!



Some symbols would never be known with certainty, without hints being dropped. Here are two such symbols that are not easily translated to the Wraeclast tongue:

The symbol of the God of Domination, whom the Harbingers seem to have some connection with.

Spirals can often be found on the land and creatures the Beast influences. Because of this, the Harbinger glyphs represent The Beast as a spiral.

It has been great to see the community come together in their attempts to decipher the language. Hopefully together the secrets and objectives of the Harbingers can finally be deciphered, before it's too late...