Dwarf has technically been around since the release of Empyrea part 1, but it seems that no one has even noticed the runes that decorate the buildings in Inner and Outer Athanor. Though I refer to them as runes, they're actually not based in any real runic alphabet-- they're completely made up by KingsIsle and they almost look like scribbles at a first glance. Because the only people who live in Athanor are dwarves, I've dubbed the language "Dwarf" despite the language have no canon name. In fact, the runes are never referred to in the game, which leads me to believe that they are simply decorative Easter eggs for players like myself to decipher.
I figured out the cryptogram by choosing a longer scrawl of text that I knew would translate to a complete sentence. I focused on the scripts on the outside buildings and... well the results are pretty funny. Apparently one is a reference to the Rifleman's Creed spoken by US Marines, which is honestly a very strange reference for ice dwarves. My personal favorite is the banner that simply says "BANNER."Â
I guess dwarves can be tall enough to hit their heads on their own low door frames
This is written on a statue base
So, the Athanor dwarves are not exactly creative, but they evidently have their own writing system. The alphabet I have is incomplete, but I highly doubt I'll be able to fill in the other letters given how small Athanor is and because most of the messages are simply reused. Here's what I have so far:
Also, tracing these runes from the buildings was super hard, so shout out to Julia StormSong from Wiki101 for helping me get the shapes!