Editing Acrozatarim/Appendix 1 (section)

==Languages of the Drakkath==

'''Drak''': The most widely spoken group of languages in the lands of the old Drakkath Empire, Drak is generally considered a common tongue amongst the peoples of the region.  Originally stemming from the Drak tribes from whom Rangkun Yun emerged, Drak is a ritually significant language; it was apparently constructed by Ephras in the earliest days of the Dawn, when the Divine Creative Urge still reigned over the Elder Gods.  There have long been assertions that Drak holds hidden messages from the Great Elementals within its structure and symbolism, or that it is particularly potent when used in elemental magic.  In the modern day, a great number of variants and local accents across such a wide region mean that Drak is more correctly a collection of related languages than a single unified one; however, the most common form, called Sky Drak, serves well enough in most of the Drakkath regardless of local customs.

'''Crimson Drak''':  A very specific and antiquated form of Drak, Crimson Drak is associated with the Imperial and aristocratic families and government of the Drakkath Empire.  In the modern day, its use is largely limited to Sukhumvarang; however, various old sites, tombs and texts are Crimson Drak and hence its study is important for scholars and scribes.  Old laws and precendents may be taken from tomes that were written in Crimson; some old heirlooms are inscribed with Crimson glyphs.  Only a very few loan-words from Crimson survive today in common use in the Sky Drak tongue; however, the written use of Crimson is sometimes used in ceremonies or for important symbolic matters.  An even rarer variant of Crimson Drak, Vermillion Drak, is supposedly only to ever be written under certain elemental phases of the sun, and has great meaning and import when done in this way.

'''Azure Drak''':  Azure Drak is another Empire-era form of the Drak language; however, unlike Crimson, Azure remains in relatively common (albeit specialised) use today.  Azure Drak is a rather limited language for communication, but is tailored instead for the rapid transmission of orders, governmental information and the calculation of mathematics and commerce; it evolved from Sky Drak during the Drakkath Empire initially amongst merchants for business purposes, then spread to the lower echelons of the Imperial bureaucracy before it was recognised and classified as a language in its own right.  Today, Azure Drak remains a form of short-hand and aide to merchants and traders.

'''Viridian Drak''':  Viridian Drak is an odd variant of Sky Drak that is purely a written language; it is commonly used by playwrights and songwrights as an underpinning and framework when creating artist texts and music.  Trying to speak Viridian Drak aloud sounds like poorly chopped-up Sky Drak with a nonsense rhythm.

'''Huronese''':  While there are some differences between West and East Huronese, the languages are similar enough that they are mutually intelligible.  Huronese is widely spoken in the lands of Huron alongside Drak, although there are certain regions within Huron where Drak is actually the more dominant tongue.  Unlike Drak, Huronese is proudly considered as a truly 'human' tongue, surviving several attempts by Elder servitors to purge it from the Huronese people during the Dawn Age.

'''Naserian''':  All the languages of the Drakkath region evolve and change over time, picking up loan words from foreign tongues, but Naserian is a particularly mongrel language even by such standards.  The underlying foundation of Naserian is a mixture of Sky and Crimson Drak, but with extensive influence from the many and varied origins of Naskha's original priesthood.  Naserians proudly consider it a particularly good language for the discussion of aesthetics, higher philosophies and magic.

'''Carthagian''':  Carthagian shares no roots with any of the local languages, although it has acquired certain similarities and shared certain words as the centuries have passed.  It possesses surprising levels of subtlety and complexity; there are various forms and tones for different levels of politeness and formality, and an extensive vocabulary for descriptives in particular.  Carthagian also places a certain amount of emphasis on body language and other non-verbal cues to add finesse to what is being spoken.

'''Kyrosi''':  Another truly foreign language, Kyrosi is even stranger than Carthagian.  It uses very different sentence structures to Drak, different forms of writing, and is a highly symbolic language filled with hidden meaning and significance that can be hard for a non-Kyrosi to learn.  However, it has famously been said that a master of Kyrosi can communicate the depths of emotion, joy and despair while wearing a mask and speaking in a monotone; the language is a deep and powerful tongue that relies entirely on the verbal.

'''Ascarian''':  The Ascarian tongue shares a long history with Drak as a neighbour, and has exchanged various words and underlying elements with Sky Drak over the centuries.  What can confuse foreigners is that a lot of Ascarian meaning and symbolism comes from putting the present in context with the past; even a common conversation on the street of a trade-town may make references to ages past and lessons learned by distant ancestors.  There are a myriad of variants of Ascarian across the steppes and tundra, to the point where distant blood-clans may find it very hard to communicate with one another.

'''Servitor Languages''': The languages of various servitor species are wide and varied in nature, depending on the purpose of the servitor in question; some are deeply talented linguists, others speak simple, blunt tongues that can deliver the straightfoward information that they need.  The most famous is probably Draconic; the dragons possess a remarkably complex and subtle tongue, and the language has been used by artists and writers upon occasion. 

'''Other Languages''': Non-human species possess their own languages; the watery tongue of the sahuagin septs, the croaking languages of the lizardmen, and so forth.  Of particular note are trolls; for such ferocious creatures, they retain a high level of linguistic understanding and a language that seems far too complex and deep for the species' needs.  This is commonly considered as further evidence that trolls are a fallen, tainted form of an older species.

'''Umbral''':  The mysterious Umbrals remain a focus of study for many Drakkath scholars, and understanding their language is an important part of that.  It has no resemblance to any known human tongue, but certain translations have been managed; unfortunately, not enough Umbral text has been recovered to really piece together any answers about the vanished civilisation as yet.

'''Elder''':  The Elder Gods communicated with their servitors through an intermediary language that they crafted; many servitor species possess a seemingly innate understanding of Elder glyphs that must have been engineered into them.  Whether carved hundreds of metres high into a mountainside or etched in tiny patterns around an arcane object, these glyphs possess fixed meanings that seem somehow embedded in reality; there was never any lingual drift or change or evolution, and the meaning of a glyph to one who knows the language is evident even if the glyph is partly damaged or eroded.  There are few scholars who have learned any Elder glyphs, and they only have access to some few hundred from what was an original library of thousands woven by Ephras or stamped by Gilam.


''GM's Note: Again, I may be missing some stuff here, but can always add more later.''

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