Well, there's nothing to spoil here really, other than the fact that randomly around the world you'll find five bottles with flying insects inside them.

What drives me mad about them: on the underside of the lids, there are strange runes, pictured here:
The runes don't seem to match any of the in-game languages (Daedric, Aldmeri/Dwemeri, or Draconic) and while several of the letters match real-world glyphs, there's no one language that seems to cover all of them. For example, the last letter on the Bee jar, as shown oriented at the top of the image here, looks most like the Phoenician "Bet" but several other letters shown don't match that language. Others match nordic runes, and all of them kind of look like Roman (ie "English") letters... but if so, "ZWKT" "Mt" "DKT" "PIg" and "JWt" doesn't really mean anything to me.

Theories range from these bottles being a part of some grand genocidal Thalmor ritual to just being the "signature" of various Bethesda artists.

Any thoughts here guys? This is likely nothing, but it's one of those things that's going to mess with my head until I get it figured out.

This is the most likely answer. It's the initials of the artists, written in "Rune-ized" English. Just a neat little inside thing.

The thread I saw on this a couple of days ago had some kind of huge conspiracy theory that spanned through all the DLCs and into the next couple of games (I think, I got bored about halfway through the second Wall O' Text). The whole thing was just absurd, on the kind of scale that requires several consciousness-altering drugs followed by visitations from angels.

Of course, now that it's been written up, Bethesda may be using it for ideas. Damn, maybe I should have finished reading it.

Stop pulling your hair out.

It's customary for game devs to put their initials (or family's initials) in obscure places in their work, and hiding them under the lid of a jar that you have to rotate to see is pretty darn obscure. It's like an artist signing his name to a painting. I could cite many other games that do this with landscape formations making letters when viewed from above, hidden rooms with wooden plaques spelling initials, the placement of objects or trees spelling out a name, etc... this is normal. There are all kinds of easter eggs in Skyrim -- did you find pac-man yet?

-Loth

I immediately think of the nordic futhark rune alphabet.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/runic.htm

That IS the point! To drive you mad... make you crazy...

Speaking of runes though. Any thoughts on what the circles with lines in them that are carved on various buildings are?

Pacman? Tell me more about this one.

Shadowmarks, they're thieves' guild markings. There's a book about what each mark means, several copies of it are in the Ragged Flagon.

The problem is, they don't match up with the initials of any of the artists that worked on the game.

Then they could be the initials of anything, the devs first love, first born, favourite school teacher. They could be anything or nothing. In another game a dev hid a rusted out car in a medieval world, because he liked cars.

If devs are coming up with overreaching, interwoven subplots and managing to hide them pretty well, Beth need to double their pay and make them do all the writing.

Yeah they do... especially if you take some of the sequences to mean an entire family's worth of initials. Those bug jar letters could include the first initial of a dog for all we know.

-Loth

PS Pacman is somewhere in Markarth. That's all I'm saying.

it's a conspeeeeeeeeeeeeeeracy!

Fun reading for you, OP;
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1321482-the-real-story-to-skyrim-hidden-in-insect-containers-is-it-true/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1321279-epic-mystery-runes/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1321726-skyrim-conspiracy-theory/

The Reddit OP's entire theory appears to be based around a "translation" that makes no sense. His line of reasoning seems to go: "this rune looks kinda like this other rune of the Futhark, but... like, weird and backwards... and that rune means horse... and Whiterun's symbol is a horse... so that jar is the Whiterun jar. The other jars... well, um... they're the other CITIES! PENTAGRAM! FULLMETALALCHEISTOMG" and just devolves into drivel that no longer has anything to do with the insects at all.

I would buy the runes as being part of a fictional alphabet, perhaps whatever language Ysgrammor adapted from the Aldmeri alphabet, but since we've got no other sources to compare it to, that whole line of inquiry is moot.

I would not be surprised if gamesas employees have an office pool going about how many threads get started here about the bug jar letters. There's gotta be at least 5 by now... I wonder if somebody's made some money yet or not.

-Loth

Its a secret plot made by the queen of bugs, go seek her, she will ask you to find her 5 pots... And then she will take over skyrim with a bug army, each generals name is on the pot.. Sorry for spoilers!

Quest reward: Wings of the queen of Bugs

Unfortunately both quest and reward are only accessible via the creation kit.

Seriously though, that could make a good storyline for a quest mod maybe.

I want a genie in a bottle.

Very correct Red