Origin
Procedure
The Circle System is not as intuitive to write as Six Five or the Tridrant System, as there is no way to look at a grid or a tree to find which letter to write. If you were to memorize this system, I highly recommend that instead of memorizing each letter, you instead memorize the procedure of defining each letter.
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Start with a circle with eight points spaced every 45 degrees starting from the very top (this does not need to be exact). Then starting at the top point and moving clockwise, label the points one through eight. For simplicity, I often make six of these circles as it makes the chord drawing easier. After labeling each point, start at point one and connect chords to each point that is not directly adjacent to it (in this case, points two and eight). For every connection, write down the initial point and the end point below the circle. This will be where each letter will be placed. Then continue doing this for each point and making sure no repeat lines are drawn (example: 15, and 51. These are the same line but different directions). Once all of the chords are drawn, assign letters to each connection in alphabetical order excluding vowels and "y."
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With all the letters defined, now you can choose which letter you want and know which points to start and end at when writing. To write each symbol, start at the first point (the first number) and follow the curvature of the circle until you reach the second point (the second number). Always go the shortest distance between the points and if there is a tie, take the top facing or right facing side. For vowels, assign them special symbols (I use dots and lines) and place them in the center of the previous consonant. If the previous consonant was full or does not exist, you have the choice of putting them alone in a circle or omitting the circle all together and just writing them floating in space.
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Try deciphering this string:
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In this case, my vowels were all dots and lines. One dot is "A," two is "E," three is "I," four is "O," one line is "U," and an x is "Y."
The Circle System is the encryption system that set my standards on the quality I wanted from future systems. It was the first system that had a unique idea with a logical step that ties all of its aspects together. It always worked, it was visually appealing, and it was complex enough to not be able to use simple substitution to decipher.
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It was created late in my freshman year, inspired by a video created by a YouTuber named GorillaOfDestiny, who makes technical and mathematical systems to make the game of Dungeons and Dragons more relatable by grounding the magic in real world physics and math. In one video of theirs, they create a system to write spells using a circle with ten points, where spells are described by chords connecting the points of the circle. When I saw this video, I realized that I could make an interesting encryption system using a similar method.
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And so I began experimenting with circles and came to the realization that an eight pointed circle could contain 20 unique chords (excluding connections between adjacent neighbors) and that if I excluded all vowels (including "Y"), the alphabet could be fully contained with each letter having one unique symbol. To differentiate the system from the original video and to give it more of a visual identity, I decided the chords should follow the arc of the circle. This created space in the center, which I experimented with both by nesting more chords in the same circle and by adding vowels in the empty space. The freedom this system gives, while still retaining order and coherence, has made me extremely proud of what I’ve created.Â
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To this day, this system is one of my favorites, only being surpassed by Fences. Seeing a page of text entirely written in the Circle System is something special. Because of its nesting of vowels and double letters in each symbol, there are over 200 unique symbols which I (roughly) catalogued into a "library." This library is accessible     as a pdf.
Circle System in the Boelver
The circle system exists in the world of Phora Surin for a much more important purpose than it does in the real world. In Phora Surin, it is an actual encryption system used in the southeast region for general information transmission in the military. In Phora Surin, this system has six points instead of eight, accounting for the different language and religious customs that are followed there. The derivation of the letters is done in the exact same way as the normal circle system and overall is essentially the same system, apart from the different amount of points.
