Moksa

"I'll never hear the speech of my father's ancestors. None will."

— Sprisnunzha I of Ekoya

Moksa is an extinct language that was spoken by the Moksa people of western Zinruna prior to the Kosva invasions and briefly after the fall of the Empire of Zinruna. Modern historians generally accept that the language had gone extinct before the second century L.E. but there is no consensus on exactly when the last speaker passed or who the last speaker may have been.

Extinction

The Moksa, as with other Atashyi groups, were heavily repressed in the aftermath of the Kosva invasion of Zinruna. As part of the repression, the Kosva authorities regularly stole Moksa children from their parents, often whole villages at a time, to be raised by Kosva customs or, more rarely, to be gifted to tribes which had sided with them in their invasion to raise according to their custom. Following the collapse of the Empire of Zinruna, the various petty warlords who came to power began to view the Atashyi as a threat to their security and as such escalated their persecution. Speaking Moksa became an act of treason and whole villages were burned to the ground in an effort to ensure that the "disloyal" natives could never threaten Kosva supremacy. 
While the fragmented warlords coalesced into more centralized and stable kingdoms, the persecution towards the natives became less violent but conversely more methodical. Independent Moksa settlements were forcibly split up and their populations moved into frontier cities where they would live as minorities in their communities. Children born to native parents would be forcibly educated in the Kosva tradition and a generation would be raised to hate the culture they came from as "traitors to humanity." This generation either forgot or forswore the use of their native tongue and their own children grew up learning nothing of their ancestors' traditions or language.

Writing System

It is unknown if Moska ever featured a writing system as any Moska writings would have likely been systematically destroyed in the years following the Kosva invasion. While some have claimed to have discovered Moska writing, all claimed documents have been dismissed as frauds by the academic community. In fact, Moskai Vukharin is often shorthand in Ekoyan for something that will never be found.

Phonetics

No academic primary sources exist for the language and as such its exact phonology is unknowable. However, primary sources of soldiers who participated in the raids on Moksa villages and writings from those who raised kidnapped Moska children repeatedly refer to the language as having a "choked sound" meaning the language likely made extensive use of sounds originating from the back of the throat.