Each branch of the official religion of Valador has its own language to recite lecture and prepare scrolls and scripture, the languages of the gods themselves. It is rumored that the languages were rooted from a common theological tongue, formed centuries ago by the earliest unified human religion. Today, the three main faiths of the Valadian Empire each have their own distinct tongue and despite their shared ancestry, the languages today are so far removed from one another that a person able to speak one cannot understand another. This is particularly frustrating for adventuring clerics who, upon discovering an ancient spell scroll long forgotten, are dismayed to find it written in a holy language they are not familiar with. Because of this, many clerics learn alignment languages that are not of their faith. Alignment languages are taught by the church to only those of faith or of learned men of great renown (and great wealth). Not everyone of a particular alignment knows how to speak an alignment language and no non-human would ever be taught that language of the Valadian Empire's gods.
Lawful: A complex and wordy language, Lawful uses a vast array of words to convey and thought or action as detailed as possible while trying to do so in a very ordered fashion. Lawful is not a flowery language, but instead one that pieces together many words to create new words, mashing together adjective and nouns to create a single many syllable word to describe something as detailed as possible. Many scholars and burgeoning engineers learn Lawful in order to express detailed history, theories, and instructions. Lawful is the most widely learned of the alignment languages for those not within the clergy.
Neutral: Neutral is the most succinct of the three alignment languages and also contains the smallest vocabulary. Neutral conveys thoughts quickly, with small simple words that are devoid of personal feelings of a situation or object. Neutral has no words to describe personal feelings, instead relying on words that state absolute fact without bias. Because of this, Neutral is sometimes used in larger cities for the creation and documentation of laws, so that misinterpretation can be avoided.
Chaos: Chaos is ever evolving and changing, it is a language with little stable form. It is impossible to convey the rules of the Chaos language, for there is none. The language is fluid, a flowery language with complex rules for conjugation can shift into a curt monosyllabic language devoid of inflection within a few decades. Words change their meaning, drop out of the language entirely, or shift their pronunciation within a few years, making it a very hard language to master. Because of this, very little of the language is preserved in written form, and those items that are, can take a skilled Chaos linguistic many months to decipher. It is said that many Thieves' Cants, used by many thieving guilds throughout the land, were developed from Chaos.
No comments:
Post a Comment