The Languages of Argent
Within the world of Argent, language stems naturally, and isn't magically gifted to races because of the circumstance of their birth. If you grew up in Auburn, you will speak the language of the people, in that specific case, Seddenese. There are a number of these languages throughout both of the shells of Argent, detailed below.
Ambien is a language loosely based off of the draconic tongue of old, and uses the same script. Spoken by the nomads that reside in The Amber Ocean. These nomads in time split off to form their own civilizations, taking the language with them. It sounds much like draconic, with a harsh use of the tongue and hard vowels, but has slowly become softer over time as smaller mortal races began adopting it.
Like all elven tongues, the sea elven language of Coraan has many loose connections to the draconic language, including the script. The language overtime developed a number of clicks, and pops. Things that would allow the language to be more audible underwater. This language was taught to the people of southern Iquanial over time as the people of Coraar expanded more inland.
The dwarves of the Broadcrags were incredible in many ways during the golden years of Dalrum. One of these ways was their ingenuity. They invented many things on their own at record paces. Ideas like the wheel, pulleys, and other ground breaking inventions were childs play to the early dwarven people. One of their great inventions, was language. The people of Dalrum spoke a language written in easy to identify square symbols, with each symbol portraying a sound. Though the language was full of many harder sounds, as to be better heard over long distances, it still holds an almost romantic elegance to its phrasing.
The human nation of Decit sits on the northern edge of the Seddenese shell. The language, unlike many of the languages of Argent, has no relation to the draconic tongue. The language is written in it's own script, which is renowned as being incredibly pretty. Lots of swirls and circles and other things that make it's written form look artistic and stylish. The language itself is soft, with lots of rolling r's and soft s's. As if the language itself was written by snakes.
The elapidaen language, Lapia, written in the draconic script borrowed form the elves, the language of the eels finds itself all across Sedden. Being as that the Shelf is one of the worlds largest hubs for commerce, this slippery script finds itself marking boxes transported as far out as Decit or Veno'mia. The language, similar to Coraar, is a deeper language. One meant to be heard underwater, as well as above ground.
Written in the language of the Wretched, Omeic is a language that only really took hold after Omen'ans fall from grace. With hell spawn mating with mortals, and the thugs and brutes that remained in Omen'an almost fraternizing with the fiends, it was only a matter of time before the language of the wastes integrated into mortal tongues. Written in the wretches scripts, Omeic is a language based on volume. A word at a whisper could mean something entirely different when screamed, another when moaned, and then another thing when spoken normally. Most Omeic words have multiple meanings in this strange and hellish way. Quiet conversation in Omeic is nearly impossible, though many words have formed colloquial replacements to make up for that fact.
Like many elven languages, Seddenese, also known as Filyan, is the language that first took to the surface. Spoken by the winged elves of Filyn, and taught to humans far and wide by their elders oh many years ago. This language has picked up popularity because of it's simplicity, with simple and easy to recognize sounds that aren't complex to mouths not used to them. Though the script is draconic, the language has evolved far beyond that.
A language of the hands, SSL was created by a number of scholars within Filyn to assist specifically with the tongueless wanderers of Friggamn speak. In time, this language slowly caught on as many who simply couldn't or chose not to talk and allowed a new line of non-verbal communication for those who needed, as well as thieves, and people in other silence requiring occupations.
A language that has developed due to the separation of the tribes people and the main Seddenese speaking people of Sedden. The language is spoken from the back of the throat with R sounds being rolled and the words being short and tight sounding as well. The written language is sharp, clear cut runes since those are the easiest to carve in Ice and stone seeing as those are the only writing materials that would survive in the harsh wasteland.
The language of the mice, Murian. Spoken by the inner province mousefolk more than the coastal, this traditional and overly complex language is made of a combination of hand motions, nose twitches, chitters, and squeaks. Few humans can even speak the language, and those that do, on the receiving end, seem to have an incredibly poor accent. The language takes an incredibly long time to say anything in, and it's written form is entirely hieroglyphic. Few even recognize Murian as a language, despite it being surprisingly popular among traders. It in itself, given it's complexity, is a secondary thieves' cant.
The roiling and boisterous language of the people of Halfhill is not spoken by many outside of it. Having grown in relative isolation from the larger Searan population, this unique language has many homophones developed over a love for jokes and clever storytelling. Saying one thing and meaning very many true statements is a talent practiced by many of the region.
Developed in isolation after the fall of the dragons by the Dark Elven societies of the Dim Periphery, Dimtongue is characterized by its touch-capable form, allowing communication in the language in complete silence and darkness, provided that two conversationalists can physically touch hands. While the written form holds to the legacy of elvish script, the spoken form is quite staccato where surface elvish is more lengthy and flowing. This is not to say that the language itself is brusque, only that the words are short and stamped versions of their elven ancestors.
The Surreal-tinged Searan offshoot of the Heraldwood, spoken by most of its sentient denizens. Uses Draconic script, as most elven languages do, but is rarely written. El-Sear carries a lot with it from the languages it hails from, those of the Surreal, and Searan.
Spoken throughout the J'tett Desert, the tonal, purring and yowling language of the Felis kingdom uses a form of writing designed for a four-fingered paw, with parallel scratches indicating words or concepts, and combinations of these used to form complex and freeform multipart glyphs. The greatest poets of this language are often polydactyl Felis who can craft the most beautiful and complex word-forms.
In complete contrast to Felisten, which only a racist person would assume is the same, Felza is more like Searan in it's regulated sentence structure, though the language is unique in both written and spoken forms. It is a soft language easily spoken at a whisper, with a compact, linear, flowing script that lends itself very well to being carved in wood, unlike block lettering. It was born in the sunward deserts of Sear and remains in constant use in The City of Drapes.
The goliaths deep in the caves under Colossus Reach have their own language composed of various clicks, plosives, and sharp non-silibant sounds which lend themselves to echo in the stone caverns. The written system grew out of a lack of material for paper and a need to be legible in dark conditions. It consists of either raised dots in intensely dried hide or indentation stamped into stone with a metal tool.
The language of the Sourceways Sear, NiTaXuRa was inherited rather than made, according to goblinoid mythology. Boasting its own tense for metaphors, NiTaXuRa is a precise language, with many overlapping words - such as having 14 different words for leaves, each with their own cultural connotations. Consequently, NiTaXuRa is a ponderous, slow-spoken language. Due to the oral tradition of goblinoids, NiTaXuRa does not have a written script of its own. When written word is absolutely necessary, the Mnet script is used instead. The Wildhome dialect is condensed, often eschewing more complicated or esoteric words in favor of a simpler word that gets the approximate point across, for ease of speaking. The Wildhome dialect, in turn, has a faster cadence to it.
Spoken during the revolution in Veleiuri Ward and still used by Genasi who walk the borders between the districts with impunity. This languages script was created from scratch, and the language itself is still developing. Created originally as a way to communicate without alerting the elementals of the ward, Quartercant uses a series of noises that only genasi can truly master making, though others can try, to make an odd sounding language that nearly all in the Compact are taught.
The Common tongue of Sear, decended from Draconic and taught to the humans of Sear as a gracious gift from the Great Dragon Vandria. When the dragons first encountered the humans of Sear, they were fearful. They had this idea that if they were to mistreat the mortals of this age, a catastrophe like the one the happened not so many hundred years ago would happen again. So they taught them language, and magic. The language that that butchered ancient draconic tongue became is Searan.
This language is spoken by a select few. The creatures of Regret rarely speak to one another, and developed in their lonesome. The fiendish lord Volmu resides here, keeping his subjects to himself, eternally mourning over his lost Sin'thea. This language has a number of harsh hissing sounds, as well as hard vowels, making each word sound longer than it may normally read.
The language of the cluster of shards of Defiance housing the city of Omenbridge. This dialect is shared amongst the most socially developed lands of Defiance, and therefore even though this language is mostly shared amongst Enmity, Vanity, and Euphoria, others across Defiance tend to know simple phrases from the langauge. This tongue is soft on the throat to speak, but requires a lot of lower growls, causing it to come off as incredibly intimidating when spoken by larger beings.
Much like Illvain, the fiendish lord and daughter of Sin'thea, Ill'na, created this tongue. She passed this language along to those where language was hard to find. It's a very similar tongue to Illvain, but over a number generations the language has become a more complex and less learner friendly dialect. Much like Ill'vain, this language is composed of similar growls and sounds like them.
This language was developed by the Sin'kine of Phobia and taught to the creatures of Isolation as the Phobian's began to grow more socially. This especially became the case when the spider queen Alyse took charge, and gave the people of Phobia her freedom. This language is composed of a number of clicks and pops, creating a sound akin to that of more insectoid languages.
The people of Defiance have always spoke, and when language was first passed on by Sin'thea to her children, the tongue spoken was called Sinvain. Vain, meaning 'Language of'. This language is nearly forgotten, and has been replaced by Vengean, Ill'vain, and Ill'vogue. This language is difficult to speak, with large complex words, and a very arbitrarily disorganized grammatical system.
Where many regions have common tongues, either do to trade or cultural blending, Vengean is a mishmash of the other wretched dialects turned into one rather inconsistent and impossible to reverse engineer by outsiders. This language mixes together the sounds of the others to create a very difficult to listen to language for outsiders. If you're not familiar with the language, it'd sound like someone is switching between different languages as they went; which in some ways they are.
This growling, snarling tongue is filled with short, punchy vowels and rolled syllables. Kar'tar is by far the most direct of the Surreal languages. This is a necessity, given how many members of the moon court will stop parley and start fighting at a moment's notice - many encounters with the Moon Court don't have the luxury of wasting time using six syllables where two would suffice.
This raspy tongue sounds like draconic gibberish to the untrained ear. Indeed, Cinocardian was created with the express purpose of bringing the prideful dragons of the Material Reality down a peg. Cinocardian is a tonal language, and it's constant shifts between low and high tones sound almost mocking.
The tongue of the ancient dragon societies of old. Taught to the dragonkind originally by Shiwa, and made into it's own masterful form of communication by the early dragons. The tongue itself is spoken by dragons, meaning many sounds that our mouths could make a dragons could not. The language has no O, for example. It's written in an odd script, that only clawed creatures can efficiently write in. Each word is a symbol, starting as a circle and becoming more complex the closer to the center you go. A dragon will embed it's claw into a surface, and scratch inward, then twist, scratch inward again, and so on, doing so in different patterns to make different words. More modern dragons, like those of the Eminent, use large clawed gauntlets with quills in the tips so they may write on paper and immortalize their words.
The language of the gods, Tiao'oum is a complex and difficult to understand series of sounds that was, according to the celestials themselves, the first language to ever exist. Created in an instant by Shiwa, and formed in her mind as the perfect language. The language is missing a number of words that define mortal language, because many things that are important to mortals just don't occur to the divine, and don't appear in their vocabulary.
The Languages of Sedden
Ambien
Spoken By: The Friyan, The HarnanAmbien is a language loosely based off of the draconic tongue of old, and uses the same script. Spoken by the nomads that reside in The Amber Ocean. These nomads in time split off to form their own civilizations, taking the language with them. It sounds much like draconic, with a harsh use of the tongue and hard vowels, but has slowly become softer over time as smaller mortal races began adopting it.
Coraan
Spoken By: The Corani, The Crustan, Those of the ShelfLike all elven tongues, the sea elven language of Coraan has many loose connections to the draconic language, including the script. The language overtime developed a number of clicks, and pops. Things that would allow the language to be more audible underwater. This language was taught to the people of southern Iquanial over time as the people of Coraar expanded more inland.
Dalran
Spoken By: Those of the Broadcrag Frontier, The Ra'skivansThe dwarves of the Broadcrags were incredible in many ways during the golden years of Dalrum. One of these ways was their ingenuity. They invented many things on their own at record paces. Ideas like the wheel, pulleys, and other ground breaking inventions were childs play to the early dwarven people. One of their great inventions, was language. The people of Dalrum spoke a language written in easy to identify square symbols, with each symbol portraying a sound. Though the language was full of many harder sounds, as to be better heard over long distances, it still holds an almost romantic elegance to its phrasing.
Decitian
Spoken By: The DecitansThe human nation of Decit sits on the northern edge of the Seddenese shell. The language, unlike many of the languages of Argent, has no relation to the draconic tongue. The language is written in it's own script, which is renowned as being incredibly pretty. Lots of swirls and circles and other things that make it's written form look artistic and stylish. The language itself is soft, with lots of rolling r's and soft s's. As if the language itself was written by snakes.
Lapia
Spoken By: The Elapidae of the ShelfThe elapidaen language, Lapia, written in the draconic script borrowed form the elves, the language of the eels finds itself all across Sedden. Being as that the Shelf is one of the worlds largest hubs for commerce, this slippery script finds itself marking boxes transported as far out as Decit or Veno'mia. The language, similar to Coraar, is a deeper language. One meant to be heard underwater, as well as above ground.
Omeic
Spoken By: The OmeicWritten in the language of the Wretched, Omeic is a language that only really took hold after Omen'ans fall from grace. With hell spawn mating with mortals, and the thugs and brutes that remained in Omen'an almost fraternizing with the fiends, it was only a matter of time before the language of the wastes integrated into mortal tongues. Written in the wretches scripts, Omeic is a language based on volume. A word at a whisper could mean something entirely different when screamed, another when moaned, and then another thing when spoken normally. Most Omeic words have multiple meanings in this strange and hellish way. Quiet conversation in Omeic is nearly impossible, though many words have formed colloquial replacements to make up for that fact.
Seddenese
Spoken By: The Aubian, The Filyan, The Venian, The UnitianLike many elven languages, Seddenese, also known as Filyan, is the language that first took to the surface. Spoken by the winged elves of Filyn, and taught to humans far and wide by their elders oh many years ago. This language has picked up popularity because of it's simplicity, with simple and easy to recognize sounds that aren't complex to mouths not used to them. Though the script is draconic, the language has evolved far beyond that.
Seddenese Sign Language (SSL)
Known By: This language is used all across Sedden, artificially created by those of Filyn and Muria.A language of the hands, SSL was created by a number of scholars within Filyn to assist specifically with the tongueless wanderers of Friggamn speak. In time, this language slowly caught on as many who simply couldn't or chose not to talk and allowed a new line of non-verbal communication for those who needed, as well as thieves, and people in other silence requiring occupations.
Tungumal
Spoken by: Tribes of FriggamnA language that has developed due to the separation of the tribes people and the main Seddenese speaking people of Sedden. The language is spoken from the back of the throat with R sounds being rolled and the words being short and tight sounding as well. The written language is sharp, clear cut runes since those are the easiest to carve in Ice and stone seeing as those are the only writing materials that would survive in the harsh wasteland.
Murian
Spoken By: The MurianThe language of the mice, Murian. Spoken by the inner province mousefolk more than the coastal, this traditional and overly complex language is made of a combination of hand motions, nose twitches, chitters, and squeaks. Few humans can even speak the language, and those that do, on the receiving end, seem to have an incredibly poor accent. The language takes an incredibly long time to say anything in, and it's written form is entirely hieroglyphic. Few even recognize Murian as a language, despite it being surprisingly popular among traders. It in itself, given it's complexity, is a secondary thieves' cant.
The Languages of Sear
Blathadan
Spoken By: The Halfolk of HalfhillThe roiling and boisterous language of the people of Halfhill is not spoken by many outside of it. Having grown in relative isolation from the larger Searan population, this unique language has many homophones developed over a love for jokes and clever storytelling. Saying one thing and meaning very many true statements is a talent practiced by many of the region.
Dimtongue
Spoken By: The Dark Elves of Fallencrest and others of the Searan Dim PeripheryDeveloped in isolation after the fall of the dragons by the Dark Elven societies of the Dim Periphery, Dimtongue is characterized by its touch-capable form, allowing communication in the language in complete silence and darkness, provided that two conversationalists can physically touch hands. While the written form holds to the legacy of elvish script, the spoken form is quite staccato where surface elvish is more lengthy and flowing. This is not to say that the language itself is brusque, only that the words are short and stamped versions of their elven ancestors.
El-Sear
Spoken By: The Woodland beings of the The HeraldwoodThe Surreal-tinged Searan offshoot of the Heraldwood, spoken by most of its sentient denizens. Uses Draconic script, as most elven languages do, but is rarely written. El-Sear carries a lot with it from the languages it hails from, those of the Surreal, and Searan.
Felisten
Spoken By: The TetianSpoken throughout the J'tett Desert, the tonal, purring and yowling language of the Felis kingdom uses a form of writing designed for a four-fingered paw, with parallel scratches indicating words or concepts, and combinations of these used to form complex and freeform multipart glyphs. The greatest poets of this language are often polydactyl Felis who can craft the most beautiful and complex word-forms.
Felza
Spoken By: The Tabaxi of the City of DrapesIn complete contrast to Felisten, which only a racist person would assume is the same, Felza is more like Searan in it's regulated sentence structure, though the language is unique in both written and spoken forms. It is a soft language easily spoken at a whisper, with a compact, linear, flowing script that lends itself very well to being carved in wood, unlike block lettering. It was born in the sunward deserts of Sear and remains in constant use in The City of Drapes.
Mnet
Spoken By: The Goliaths of Colossus ReachThe goliaths deep in the caves under Colossus Reach have their own language composed of various clicks, plosives, and sharp non-silibant sounds which lend themselves to echo in the stone caverns. The written system grew out of a lack of material for paper and a need to be legible in dark conditions. It consists of either raised dots in intensely dried hide or indentation stamped into stone with a metal tool.
NiTaXuRa
Spoken By: The Goblinoids of the Verdant Expanse, and those of Wildhome.The language of the Sourceways Sear, NiTaXuRa was inherited rather than made, according to goblinoid mythology. Boasting its own tense for metaphors, NiTaXuRa is a precise language, with many overlapping words - such as having 14 different words for leaves, each with their own cultural connotations. Consequently, NiTaXuRa is a ponderous, slow-spoken language. Due to the oral tradition of goblinoids, NiTaXuRa does not have a written script of its own. When written word is absolutely necessary, the Mnet script is used instead. The Wildhome dialect is condensed, often eschewing more complicated or esoteric words in favor of a simpler word that gets the approximate point across, for ease of speaking. The Wildhome dialect, in turn, has a faster cadence to it.
Quartercant
Spoken By: The Genasi of the CompactSpoken during the revolution in Veleiuri Ward and still used by Genasi who walk the borders between the districts with impunity. This languages script was created from scratch, and the language itself is still developing. Created originally as a way to communicate without alerting the elementals of the ward, Quartercant uses a series of noises that only genasi can truly master making, though others can try, to make an odd sounding language that nearly all in the Compact are taught.
Searan
Spoken By: The Archon wards, The Genasi of the Compact, and the other human settlements of Sear.The Common tongue of Sear, decended from Draconic and taught to the humans of Sear as a gracious gift from the Great Dragon Vandria. When the dragons first encountered the humans of Sear, they were fearful. They had this idea that if they were to mistreat the mortals of this age, a catastrophe like the one the happened not so many hundred years ago would happen again. So they taught them language, and magic. The language that that butchered ancient draconic tongue became is Searan.
The Dialects of The Wretched
Guilti
Spoken By: The fiends of Regret.This language is spoken by a select few. The creatures of Regret rarely speak to one another, and developed in their lonesome. The fiendish lord Volmu resides here, keeping his subjects to himself, eternally mourning over his lost Sin'thea. This language has a number of harsh hissing sounds, as well as hard vowels, making each word sound longer than it may normally read.
Ill'vain
Spoken By: The fiends of Enmity, Vanity, and Euphoria.The language of the cluster of shards of Defiance housing the city of Omenbridge. This dialect is shared amongst the most socially developed lands of Defiance, and therefore even though this language is mostly shared amongst Enmity, Vanity, and Euphoria, others across Defiance tend to know simple phrases from the langauge. This tongue is soft on the throat to speak, but requires a lot of lower growls, causing it to come off as incredibly intimidating when spoken by larger beings.
Ill'vogue
Spoken By: The fiends of Hatred, Neglect, and Perjury.Much like Illvain, the fiendish lord and daughter of Sin'thea, Ill'na, created this tongue. She passed this language along to those where language was hard to find. It's a very similar tongue to Illvain, but over a number generations the language has become a more complex and less learner friendly dialect. Much like Ill'vain, this language is composed of similar growls and sounds like them.
Phobic
Spoken By: The fiends of Phobia and Isolation.This language was developed by the Sin'kine of Phobia and taught to the creatures of Isolation as the Phobian's began to grow more socially. This especially became the case when the spider queen Alyse took charge, and gave the people of Phobia her freedom. This language is composed of a number of clicks and pops, creating a sound akin to that of more insectoid languages.
Sin'vain
Spoken By: The old fiends of Defiance.The people of Defiance have always spoke, and when language was first passed on by Sin'thea to her children, the tongue spoken was called Sinvain. Vain, meaning 'Language of'. This language is nearly forgotten, and has been replaced by Vengean, Ill'vain, and Ill'vogue. This language is difficult to speak, with large complex words, and a very arbitrarily disorganized grammatical system.
Vengean
Spoken By: The vast majority of Defiance.Where many regions have common tongues, either do to trade or cultural blending, Vengean is a mishmash of the other wretched dialects turned into one rather inconsistent and impossible to reverse engineer by outsiders. This language mixes together the sounds of the others to create a very difficult to listen to language for outsiders. If you're not familiar with the language, it'd sound like someone is switching between different languages as they went; which in some ways they are.
Languages of the Surreal
Kar'Tar
Spoken By: The members of the Moon Court.This growling, snarling tongue is filled with short, punchy vowels and rolled syllables. Kar'tar is by far the most direct of the Surreal languages. This is a necessity, given how many members of the moon court will stop parley and start fighting at a moment's notice - many encounters with the Moon Court don't have the luxury of wasting time using six syllables where two would suffice.
Gloomtongue
Spoken By: The courtless denizens of the Gloom. Gloomtongue is an excellent example of occurrences in the Material influencing the echo realities. Gloomtongue is a touch-capable language like Dimtongue, though it is more aggressively tactile. Gloomtongue is not a tonal language, however volume does influence the meaning of words. When communicating via touch, force substitutes volume. Particularly mean-spirited curses are quite painful to experience.Etherrel
Spoken By: The members of the Emerald and Frolicking Courts. Etherrel, or "Skytongue", was handed down to the first creatures of the Surreal just as draconic was handed down to the dragons. Emerald Etherrel is a very precise language, with a word for just about everything. It has over 70 different phomemes, and some creatures require minor shapeshifting magic just to be able to say the full range of syllables; most humanoid species can't hope to pronounce everything. Frolicking Etherrel is a more accessible dialect of Etherrel, retaining the same grammar structure but simplifying the vocabulary to a more manageable 50 phonemes.Cinocardian
Spoken By: The members of the Lark Court.This raspy tongue sounds like draconic gibberish to the untrained ear. Indeed, Cinocardian was created with the express purpose of bringing the prideful dragons of the Material Reality down a peg. Cinocardian is a tonal language, and it's constant shifts between low and high tones sound almost mocking.
Ru'tikka
Spoken By: The members of the Grimm and Obsidian Courts. Ru'tikka is what most Material Reality creatures mean when they reference the Surreal tongues, and by far the most commonly learned Surreal language on the Material reality. Ru'tikka is filled clicks and a rather small selection of phonemes that are combined multiple times to create elaborate, complicated words. Obsidian Ru'tikka also features a tense just for reflecting the status of debt one subject owes to another. Grimm Ru'tikka typically doesn't utilize this tense.Lydian
Spoken By: The members of the Rose Court. This softspoken language sounds like a lullaby when spoken. This too is a tonal language, however rather than the inflection defining the word, it defines the grammar. Information like time, ownership, and blame are all derived from pitch rather than conjugation. Communicating in Lydian expresses a desire to connect with someone emotionally.Other Languages
Draconic
Spoken By: DragonkindThe tongue of the ancient dragon societies of old. Taught to the dragonkind originally by Shiwa, and made into it's own masterful form of communication by the early dragons. The tongue itself is spoken by dragons, meaning many sounds that our mouths could make a dragons could not. The language has no O, for example. It's written in an odd script, that only clawed creatures can efficiently write in. Each word is a symbol, starting as a circle and becoming more complex the closer to the center you go. A dragon will embed it's claw into a surface, and scratch inward, then twist, scratch inward again, and so on, doing so in different patterns to make different words. More modern dragons, like those of the Eminent, use large clawed gauntlets with quills in the tips so they may write on paper and immortalize their words.
Tiao'oum
Spoken By: Celestials and DeitiesThe language of the gods, Tiao'oum is a complex and difficult to understand series of sounds that was, according to the celestials themselves, the first language to ever exist. Created in an instant by Shiwa, and formed in her mind as the perfect language. The language is missing a number of words that define mortal language, because many things that are important to mortals just don't occur to the divine, and don't appear in their vocabulary.
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