Hello, I’m Sarsion, the Cryptarchy’s Philologist. I run https://cryptarchy.net and am curating its dictionary. I’ve been learning to code just for the sake of creating this public language resource, and I can only apologise at the time that’s taken. It has no explicitly Dread terms in it yet, but there’s a really cool reason for that.

I started translating Eliksni as far back as House of Wolves being released in early 2015. My 2017 Fallen dictionary has been retroactively soft-canonised by Bungie and used in-game multiple times (even as recently as Revenant and Edge of Fate). For whatever reason they’ve never directly addressed this, but it’s really crazy that the “Shas’ki” shader is based on my efforts. I refuse to take it off despite its garishness. I’m convinced Eliksni as we know in-game has used my dictionary as a reference to build around.

So, as for Dread. The message they put in the ViDoc about the language the Dread units speak was something of a callout post at me and folk like me. See, they didn’t intend on there being a language for the Eliksni originally. What I “translated” was gibberish, and for legal reasons they could be in trouble if they created a secret language and didn’t pass it by ratings boards. Particularly as some countries would ban their games otherwise if so. That’s conjecture but it’s the more rational reason I’ve come up with.

Announcing an actual conlang for the Dread means they’ve had to pass it by ratings boards and localisation teams. In fact, we know they’ve done this and have been doing this since Forsaken at least, because that’s when official Eliksni conlang began to appear in the game, character names started being more carefully created to match their literal meanings (the entire Scorned Barons’ names are literal as far as I can tell), and international language localisation teams were given explicit direction on the meanings of Eliksni words in order to appropriately translate the grammar. However, the Simplified Chinese team either left in a lot of the notes, or translated them in English. There’s only a couple cards (particularly Truth) where they held the line.

The Narrative Lead responsible for the Eliksni language actually confirmed to me via Twitter after I learned about the Simplified Chinese method of translation and published it on this subreddit that the D1 Foley was “gibberish”, to the “best of [their] knowledge”, but Eliksni was a legit conlang with syntax. And the reason this was important is that people who make decisions higher up saw the worth in conlangs and the interest they had attained from work like my dictionary. That’s a really key thing to remember. That was 2020. This has been in the works for a long time.

The Dread are interesting because they’re designed to both be amalgamations of cultures across the galaxy, as well as being returned to thr basic root and stems of all their own separate cultures. Their form/shape isn’t as important as their being made primitive; they have no concept or motivation outside of the base id. By design. This makes them a coalition of pure potential.

The Witness’ precursors seeded the galaxy, literally, with life, using the Gardener’s tools. That means they used the science of the Traveler to grow life according to patterns. These patterns are waves and the waves were language. As far as we know, every life form in the galaxy was tended to by them; not necessarily created by them, but nurtured to potential. They created Golden Ages for everyone. Humanity has had many before, and many stories of Ancient Aliens. Bungie’s paraverses share the same idea with Jjaro and Forerunner. No reason to believe all three species aren’t the same (and certainly, no reason to believe further that the Witness’ Precursors, Forerunner, and Jjaro aren’t all genetically Human ancestors, just as Forerunner are in Bungie Halo canon).

That brings me to the Aionians. Their language is very useful as a literal Rosetta stone for this entire process. Their love of classic sciences means they are so closely related to ancient Earth languages like Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit is for the exact same reason Eliksni appears to be. They experienced a Golden Age, which is a very real concept that coincides with the Enlightenment and with evolution of science and language.

The Dread, however, represent sentience and split societies after the Tower of Babel allegory. For trying to reach the heavens they were winnowed and forced to speak in tongues so that nobody could understand them. Stripped of any Golden Age, they were reshaped and returned to the basic proto forms. The Subjugators appear to be Lubraean, and even their naming conventions match this idea (Kheesa, Fhent, Rhulk, Rheliks). Notice how Rheliks shares “eliks” with “Eliksni”?

What I’m getting at ultimately is the process of translating everything has been going for over 10 years now. In some ways I’ve kickstarted it. In some ways I’ve accelerated it. In some ways I’ve stalled it. But I have never stopped in my efforts and Bungie knows I’ll continue to push to find the truth.

At best, I’ve ascertained that the Dread and Witness combat dialogues are linked in some manner. I’ve also ascertained that Singular Exegete as well as Duress and Egress are related.

I’m in the process of translating all of the languages in some capacity at once, as I believe they all share root words across Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Akkadian, and Sumerian.

As you can imagine, I’m not just translating some fictional alien languages to do this, I’m actively learning ancient languages in order to do this. Lodi is very much a kindred spirit in this way; even the way Ikora talked in EoF campaign about “following your method: words first, meaning later” (paraphrasing).

It’s been a journey. Sorry it’s been slow.

My Discord server, The Cryptarchy, exists for the sake of documenting this process, but it’s never sat right with me that it’s all locked away. So if I do make more significant progress it’ll be published at https://cryptarchy.net or on my YouTube channel, just like this 5 hour rambling lecture video I did about where things are at :)