The Nidavellir Message

Understanding the Alphabet

While the Celestian Message has been known for a few years now, the Nidavellir Message is something that I only recently uncovered and could not find deciphered anywhere else on the internet. A few months ago I was playing Wizard101 when I noticed that the runes carved into the walls and doors of Nidavellir, Grizzleheim looked similar to the characters on the concept map, hence the reason why I call this code the "Nidavellir Message." Digging around on the Wizard101 Central Wiki, I realized that these runes also appear on "The Wisdom of the Sword" plaque in the Helgrind Warren.

Unlike the Celestian alphabet, the Nidavellir script has different characters for upper and lower case letters, and unfortunately all of the guides I found online were either incorrect or incomplete. To get some help and a second opinion on the translation (I wanted to make sure that other people got the same answer as I did so I could verify the message), I called upon the help of Jones Ross (whose @'s can be found on the homepage of this website).

The next problem we encountered, though, was the fact that the image of the concept map that we were using was incredibly grainy and impossible to make out the details. It was the only image that existed of the concept map at the time (until now), so Jones Ross actually emailed Bryan Lian and got a higher quality image of the map, which I have been using so far on this site.

The Translation

Using a computer program and some inferencing skills, Jones Ross and I were both able to translate the same messages:

As mentioned before, the complete message is written near Grizzleheim on the actual map portion, while only the first line is written next to Grizzleheim's icon on the list. I'm not too sure why this is, but it's something similar that occurs with Skull Island and Mooshu; my prediction is that they indicate which alphabet comes from each world as the Nidavellir alphabet can actually be found in Grizzleheim and Ancient Mooshu canonically comes from Mooshu.

Anagrams or Annunciation?

What struck me the most about the message, aside from its eerie question, is how some letter are capitalized while others are not. At first I thought it was just a mistake -I thought that the first letter of every word was simply meant to be capitalized- but the capitalization of specific letters seems too deliberate. So, I took out the capitalized words and tried some tricks on them.

HOW Did You Learn Our DifFicult Language

HOWDYLODFL

Running this sequence of letter through an anagram generator, I got the following results:

Odd Fly Howl

Fold Old Why

Doh Wold Fly

Hod Wold Fly

Dhow Old Fly

Yeah, not much here. The letters could possibly spell out a character's name that isn't actually a word and thus could not be picked up by the anagram generator. However, I haven't found a match yet.

Otherwise, the capitalization of certain letters may just be an aspect of this language; perhaps the use of a capitalized letter indicates the stress of a syllable in a word. Or, the difference in capitalization isn't just about capitalizing a word: it could mark a different sound being made. After all, the Nidavellir alphabet is partially based on old Hungarian runes, so different characters make up certain sounds that we don't have/consider in English.

The Lore of the Runes

While questing in Wizard101, I noticed that the Nidavellir message appears in final boss room of the Ander's Holt dungeon. Not only was it the same alphabet as the one on the Concept Map, but it displayed the same exact message. I learned later on that this message also appears in some of the boss battles where tomes are found.

Given that these runes appear next to a tome in the game that belongs to The Lore of the Runes quest line, I decided to look into the dialogue of these quest interactions. Here's what I gleaned:

• Some Grizzleheim runes "offer magic power" while others tell the history of Grizzleheim

• The character who gives the quest claims that "great power hides within the runes"

• Some runes were first carved by a "mighty wizard" who "learned the letters of Fate"

• A person can become a "rune-master" by learning how to carve, identify, and cast runes

For a full transcript of the dialogue from this quest line, click here.

Remaining Questions and Predictions

1. Why does the Nidavellir Message appear in various Wizard101 dungeons and on the Concept Map? Is it just a design that was recycled by KI artists for effect?

2. Who wrote the Nidavellir Message on the map? Marco Pollo or Erika the Red?

3. Why was the Nidavellir Message written on the map? Does it imbue the map with power?

4. How does the Nidavellir Message help us find El Dorado? Does it lead us to Erika the Red instead?

5. Who is the "mighty wizard" referenced in The Lore of the Runes quest line? Is it Merle Ambrose, Erika the Red, or is it Marco Pollo himself?

6. Who is the "our" referencing in the Nidavellir Message itself? Did the bears originally write this to question how foreigners figured out the runes?

7. What even is the answer to the question "how did you learn our difficult language?" Is it an answer that we as the players must answer ourselves?

I know there's a lot of questions that I just can't answer, but I do have a prediction for the storyline of Pirate101 when the game is eventually updated. I believe that our pirate, needing to decipher the Nidavellir Message on the map, will try to find Erika the Red. In the process, our pirate will have to become a rune-master, as alluded to in The Lore of the Runes quest.