Languages of Valador: Monster Languages

Monster Languages

The Valadian Empire considers any race that is not dwarf or elf as a "monster," decreeing they should be eliminated on sight. Though some places may be more accepting of halflings, or a shopkeeper may have a goblin slave, they are still always considered nothing more then monsters. However, many of these "monsters" have cultures and societies of their own and with them, a development of language. While most Valadians and their allies would have no use for learning such languages, many adventurers study and learn these tongues, as they are more likely to run into such creatures out in the wilderness and dark places they explore.

Fey: Fey is the basis of the Elven tongue, so much so that those that speak Elven can often understand the basic concept of something spoken in Fey. However, while the elves codified and shorten the language to more effectively communicate with the shorter lived races, Fey have had no need for that. Fey remains a lyrical, floating, long language, beings that live forever have no need to speak in clipped phrases and sentences. Ask a fey how it is feeling and it may be an hour before she finishes her answer, explaining each nuance in her feelings, allowing each word to resonant and carry on the wind. Fey are also ever changing, like nature herself, they are always changing and their words change with them. Words change in tone and strength, flow and length, making the language hard to pin down accurately. Unlike the pure Chaos tongue, however, words generally maintain the same ideal, meaning that when one learns the root of a word, they cause usually adapt to any changes after hearing it a few times. Still, the length of the language and its massive vocabulary so depending on pitch, tone, and cadence makes Fey one of the least learned languages, often requires decades to master even the simplest structure.

Goblin: While goblins are scattered into numerous tribes throughout Valador and their languages has hundreds of dialects, it does come from a common root. Goblin has a distinctive rhyming quality, with many of their words ending in vowel sounds and a short range of consonant, mostly hard sounds. Many words in Goblin also features swallowed sounds and clicks of the tongue and emphasis is given to certain words and commands by repeating a word twice. Goblins have a very simple vocabulary and because of this, they often steal words from other languages to identify things they don't often come into contact with. These words tend to still take on a Goblin sound however as goblins often inject vowels to separate syllables in their borrowed words, particularly "u" sounds. While dialects vary, it is often in terms of borrowed words, making each dialect easy to figure out if one knows the root and what other races exist around them. Goblin is one of the most often learned "monster tongues" because of the simplicity and large number of goblins found in Valador.

Gnoll: The Gnoll tongue is, unsurprisingly, mixed with a many canine traits; yips, howls, growls, even posture, showing of teeth and rising of hair factor into the gnoll language. Gnolls, being a slaver and raider race, have a lot of words used to describe people and items taken from others, words based on their worth, usefulness, and selling price. Conversely, gnolls have few words for working and creating things themselves. Art, as a whole, is a foreign concept to gnolls and they have few descriptive words in their vocabulary besides base emotions and primal urges. Gnoll is a particularly hard language to learn, for it is much like learning the language of a wolf or dog. While figuring out the intent of a word is simple, the need to be expressive in body and fur dynamics as well as vocal sounds makes it difficult to discern the actual words. Gnoll is only learned on a very simplistic level by those races that bother to try it, as some concepts, phrases, and words are simply impossible do to without a thick coat of fur. Most of the Valadian Empire and their allies would rather kill a gnoll then trying to talk to it anyway.

Orc: Orc is a deep, harsh, guttural language, punctuated with growls and fierce delivery. Much of their words relate to killing, death, and the glory of bloodshed. While this is not unexpected given the orc's nature, what does surprise scholars is how much the language resembles early human tongue. Not quite Valadian and not exactly what was used by humans before, Orc certainly shares some common ancestry with these languages. For many scholars this poses a question if orcs also share a common ancestry with humans, something hard to determine with a lack of written or coherent oral history of the orcs. However, the similarities makes this an one of the easier tongues to learn by many humans. Along with Goblin, this is the most common of the "monster tongues" learned by adventurers.

Languages of Valador: Common Languages

The three most prolific races of Valador, the humans, elves, and dwarves, have each developed their own unique tongue. The languages are very indicative of the races that created them and their development was done with little influence from the others. Because of this, each language is very distinct and separate from one another.

The Common Tongue of the Valadian Empire: Often referred to Valadian or simply Common, this is the language of Valador's most dominant species, the humans. Valadian formed from the various tribal dialects of early human cultures and much of that is still reflected in the language today. Valadian is a very harsh and guttural language, with short, sharp words and an aggressive sound. Due to human's penchant for wanting to quantify things, Common has many words in its vocabulary, creating a new word for each new thing discovered, instead of simply identifying it with previous descriptive words. This process confuses the other major races, which often dissuades them from using the language unless absolutely necessary.

Elvish: Elvish is a derivative of the Fey language, brought over with the elves when came from "beyond the horizon." Like the Fey tongue, it is a flowing almost song-like language, developed to allow words to easily flow into each other and be carried lightly on the wind. However, over the years, the elves formed the language into their own, creating something distinct from that of the Fey. Because of their interactions with the races in Valador, Elvish has become much more truncated then its Fey origin, ideals that may have taken hours to express in Fey now only take several minutes in Elvish. Still, the language tends to be very long winded and the need for properly controlling the pitch and tone of one's voice in order to speak it correctly means that only those from other races with much patience can ever master even conversational levels of Elvish. This make Elvish the least spoken of the three common languages, something that suits the elves perfectly.

Dwarvish: Once considered a closed language, spoken only by the dwarves, Dwarvish has begun to spread beyond its native speakers as they've begun to interact with the rest of the world. Dwarvish is a simple language, with direct and straight phrasing, devoid of metaphor and complex structure. The language would be considered beautiful if not for the manner in which it is spoken. Like all things they do, dwarves speak loudly and with great passion, speaking even simple instructions with pride. It is not proper form to speak Dwarvish softly and the concept of whispering is lost to them. Many scholars of other races who learn the language are often embarrassed to speak it due to its boisterous inflection.

Languages of Valador: Alignment Languages

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.