Eccentric Script
A form of writing consisting of phonetic characters arranged in a circle so that the text begins at the center and spirals outward. In its purest form, the letters of Eccentric Script are connected into a single, unbroken spiraling line. This form can be observed, for instance, in the great inscription filling the Pavilion of the Nine Winds, which is in fact the earliest known specimen of Eccentric Script. Presumably an ancient dialect of Pulotian, the Pavilion inscription remains undeciphered to this day, despite its ritual importance.1
Later Eccentric inscriptions, such as those at Lunesdale, are of course in the Western tongue, and the characters simply more ornate versions of our familiar letters. Extant fragments range from law codes and tribute lists, to funerary monuments. Eccentric Script remained popular for ceremonial use even to the very end of the Septarchal Era, when it strongly influenced the design of the Constitutional inscription in the Zenith Chamber.
Variations
Even as it continued to be used for monumental inscriptions, Eccentric Script evolved in the second century SE into a form of poetry called Eccentric Verse. A poem in this style was written down in the characteristic spiral shape of Eccentric Script, each sentence exactly one loop long, so that the sentences grow in length as the spiral widens. The art form continued well into the following century. A representative poem penned by an anonymous Naturalist:
Night.
Traffic overhead.
Infernal machines trouble my sleep.
When the skies are clear, so will be my mind.
If Man had been meant to fly, he would have been given wings.
It is difficult to resolve the matter of whether the text inscribed on the Pillar of Ascention was a variant of Eccentric Script, due largely to the conflicting nature of the first-hand accounts. Cid Kamakawiwo'ole insisted, to his deathbed, that the helical inscription on the Pillar was a single, unbroken carved line that he alone could understand, but his companions on the Second Expedition unanimously swore that the carvings were ordinary Western letters. Indeed, it may well have been in his memory and to defend his honor that the Ebon Legion were sent on their ill-fated Third Expedition to the Pillar.
—Iohannes Edgardus Quobertius
1 One theory proposes that the Pavilion inscription is in fact a fragment, apparently the earliest extant, of the Prophecies of Beral. But this is dubious at best, for although we do not know what sounds are represented by the line patterns of the inscription, they exhibit none of the regularity we would expect from a text with such a limited vocabulary as the Prophecies. More promising is the so-called Calendar Theory, which suggests that the markings are not phonetic at all, but represent cycles of climate. The notion becomes all the more plausible when one notes the similarities between the Pavilion markings and certain notations used in Meteoromancy. If this theory is ultimately borne out, the Pavilion inscription could well be the key to deciphering the Pulotian Date System. (Of course, the question then arises as to whether the inscription is really Eccentric at all, or whether it has been read backwards all these years and is in fact Encentric.)