

GRAALEK: AN ANDORIAN ALPHABET
(Version 1.0) By S. John Ross
Copyright 1999 by Last Unicorn Games,
presented with their permission.

Graalek is a Windows TrueType font containing the glyphs for "Graalek,"
the written Andorian language described briefly in Among the Clans, the
Star Trek RPG sourcebook for the Andorians, which I wrote along with Steve
Long and Adam Dickstein (guided by the hand of our Fearless Leader,
Kenneth Hite).

Graalek was purchased by LUG as a graphic element; images derived from
this design decorate the pages and cover of the book. However, Paramount
avoids connecting alphabets to sounds in fictional languages created for
the Trek universe, so talks of including a chart mapping these characters
to the sounds of the language had to remain talks, and that element was
not included in the book. As with Klingon, the characters remain graphic
items that can be used for dressing, with any sound-mapping remaining in
the hands of the fans.

Note also that the versions of the Graalek characters used by LUG are in a
different style from the characters included in the font. The font-glyphs
are a bit more stylized, a kind of "Bookman Old Style Bold" to the plainer
"Helvetica" of the final LUG version, metaphorically speaking. However,
LUG does own the images included in this font, and may opt to use them for
decorative purposes in future supplements. In any event, they've given me
permission to share this font with the fans as a freebie on my website.

USING THE FONT

While this document doesn't include explicit sound-mapping, it was my
intent in designing the font that the characters mapped to the number keys
(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0) be the "vowel" sounds and the glyphs mapped to the
letter keys (a through s) be the consonants. I leave it as an exercise to
the fans to determine which is which, and I may include my own version (as
an unofficial "fan" item) on my site at some point.

Graalek is read top to bottom, right to left (see sample graphic included
in this archive). This means to make a Graalek document, you just type
normally in the word processor, then turn the resulting printout 90
degrees clockwise! Paste the following Meaningless Gunk into wordpad and
print it in Graalek for a good sample:

6p7 9r0 a1b2 3d4e g5h7 8i9 k1 l2m 4n5 6p7q 9r0 a1 3d4e5 g5h7 8i0 k1 l2m3
5o 7q8 r0s b2c 3d4e5

Be sure to visit the Last Unicorn Games website at
<www.lastunicorngames.com> and buy some books to thank them for sharing
this font with the public. And for more Star Trek stuff, gamer-fonts, and
other toys and pointless distractions, visit the Blue Room!
<www.io.com/~sjohn>

- S. John Ross December, 1999 <sjohn@io.com>