My understanding of history, prehistory and archaeology is intimately tied up with my understanding of linguistics and archaeogenetics, all topics that interest me greatly. Because of this, I've defaulted to a structure of human populations in Old Night that are also closely tied to ancient genetics and linguistics. Let me, therefore, go back to a post from several months ago about languages, and reiterate and slightly rewrite or edit it, and from that base, let me talk about the various populations of humans that you could find in the Old Night setting, as well as ones that you could potentially pick from if creating a character that's human in the RPG.
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Common. I like the use of the word Common, because it's understood by all and is used by both D&D and Tolkien both. For all intents and purposes, Common is the language of the Hill Country or Humberland, and is also called Humbrian. For our purposes, it is equivalent to English. Because of the presence of Humbrian colonists, traders and more throughout the region, Humbrian has become... well, Common. There have been significant inroads of the language as the native language (albeit with different accents, perhaps) throughout much of the region. While clearly not everyone speaks Common fluently, or in some remote places at all, throughout the entirety of the Three Realms+, you can usually get by pretty good if it's the only language you speak.
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| Anstal Tane, a classic Humbrian |
Humbrian is closely associated with the Humbrians, of course, and their country, the Hill Country or Humberland. For purposes of comparison, the Humbrians should be like British Americans; essentially the same as the British, but in a newly settled frontier territory. Unlike in the real world, the Humbrians don't have access to return home, however; Humberland is their new home and there's no going back even if they wanted to, nor can they be supplemented by new arrivals or settlers from the old homeland of Culmerland (et al.) Except more Medieval rather than Colonial in dress and manners, etc.
Old Culmerian. The original language of the majority of the hillmen settlers, and the direct ancestor of Common. Hasn't been spoken in many centuries, but old texts are still around, and there's a vigorous academic interest in old Humbrian languages and languages from the Old Country before the Colonists came to the Three Realms+. Real world analog: Old English.
Normaund. While not directly closely related to Old Culmerian, a strata of Normaundish aristocrats ruled Culmer for a time. While they were eventually assimilated and integrated (mostly) their language was distinct for many years, and many old texts in this language still exist too. It also added greatly to the vocabulary and structure of Common, and the dividing line between Old Culmerian and Common is somewhat arbitrarily pinned to the start of the Normaundish influence. Real world analog: Norman French.
Brynach. A language that existed alongside Old Culmerian, and predates it in what was later called Culmer. In spite of its age and lower prestige, this stubbornly didn't die for a long time; there are still a few older people in rural parts of the Hill Country who speak or read this language, although there's not nearly enough of them to maintain a viable speaking base, and nobody speaks this as their every day language. Real world analog: Gaelic and other British Celtic languages.
Skellish. Distantly related to Culmer, but from a neighboring Old Country kingdom called Skelldale, some of the Colonists spoke this language. While all have assimilated linguistically to Common, literature in this language is important because it maintains elements of history and myth that were analogous to what the Old Culmers would have believed, but which they themselves lost. Real world analog: Old Norse.
Timischer. The native language of the aristocracy of Timischburg. Most of them still learn it, but for various social reasons, their Tarushan subjects have resisted using it natively, and the utility of the language has faded. As more and more trade with the Hill Country has penetrated the region the last several hundred years, most people in Timischburg have learned Common, and because the Tarushans and Timischers have largely resisted using each others languages to a large degree, Common (with a German accent) has largely emerged as the consensus language that both groups already knew and were willing to use to speak to each other. Timischer is on its way to becoming a dead language; well known by the scholarly, but spoken very infrequently, even in the homes of the native Timischer nobles as of the last few generations. However, it retains prestige legal status in Timischburg; signs are written in it, and many documents, especially older ones, are written in Timischer. Timischer nobles also use it to speak with each other when they want to separate themselves by language from those around them. Many Timischers of lower social class use it as well as a kind of insider language; Timischer mercenary companies push it as the official language of their companies (although most speak it as a second language) and some Timischer criminal groups outside of Timischburg have cultivated it as a way to keep their communications more secret.
Similarly, Old Timischer, as it sounds, the language of the Timischers, but archaic. As Old Culmerian is to Common, Old Timischer is to modern Timischer. Real world analog: continental early Medieval Germanic languages, such as Low Franconian (Old Dutch) and High Franconian (Old German) which makes sense given the analog of the Timischer Old Country homeland of Carlovingia with the early Medieval Frankish kingdoms of the Carolingian dynasty.
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| Alpon von Lechfeld, a famous Timischer scholar, enjoying retirement in his private library. |
Tarushan. Tarushan is the native language of the "aboriginal" people of Timischburg, which largely corresponds geographically with the old kingdom of Tarush Noptii. As noted above, it has no official status, but the Tarushan people still cling to it stubbornly, and many of the old Tarushan people refuse to learn or speak or read Timischer. Tarushan has less official status, but more actual use, and there are people in the rural areas, or among the Tarushan Gypsies who only speak Tarushan, with at best a smattering of Common. There are a number of older documents in a slightly archaic version of Tarushan that predate the arrival of the Timischers as well. Tarushan is clearly related to some of the other older languages in the region, although distantly, and has cultural, linguistic and presumably also genetic ties to the ancient kingdom of Kinzassal, which we'll cover later.
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| Claud Lupescu, a Tarushan young man |
Tazittan. This is a minority language, distantly related to Tarushan but not mutually intelligible, of a number of primitive, rustic and hostile peoples deep in the wildernesses of Humberland, like the Haunted Forest, especially on the eastern slopes of the Sabertooth Mountains, and the Tazitta Badlands, of course. Although it descends from a literate society, there is no written Tazittan that anyone really uses today. For a social analog, you could consider Tazitta to be not unlike the Sioux language spoken in the 1860s or 1870s—except that there is less open conflict between the Hill-men and the Tazitta, mostly due to no resources in Tazitta territory tempting Hillmen settlement at the moment. The geographical and social limitations of this language make it one that's unlikely to be of much use for PCs, except in a campaign that features this isolated population of Tazittans, however. Although much more primitive in their dress and equipment, as befits a xenophobic and isolated population living in a hazardous and forsaken place like the Haunted Forest, physically and genetically, the Tazittans more or less resemble the Tarushans in their build and coloration; the original phenotype of the Kinzassal people who were ancestral to both.
Drylander. Spoken mostly on the Baal Hamazi peninsula, this is the native language of the area, and while not related to Tarushan and Tazittan, etc. it does seem to have borrowed from it, and some of the Drylanders have genetics that appear similar to those of Old Kinzassal. Today, as Baal Hamazi is a broken, Balkanized land of tribes and city-states, the language's status is questionable. Still spoken in many remote tribes as the only language, and the official language of some city-states such as Baal Hishutash—one of the most conservative of the city-states, or Baal Ngirsu, one of the most isolated. Otherwise, as traders and travelers from beyond have come to the land, their lingua franca, i.e., Common, has largely replaced Drylander in most of the more cosmopolitan or connected city-states, and even among many of the more nomadic Drylander tribes.
Their language also seems to be unique, although with some odd similarities with some of the very old Humbrian Old Country languages, like Old Culmer and Skellish—some have posited that there's a link. That said, this idea is sketchy and not widely accepted. The Drylanders are usually seen as their own people, and if there is some distant connection with any other people, it's distant enough to not matter. The Drylanders are usually tall, and have pale eyes, with extremely pale gray being more common than elsewhere, although blue, hazel and lighter brown are not unusual. Their hair is usually dark, but often with a reddish tint, and their skin is ruddy, even for those who don't spend most of their time outside like the nomadic ones to.
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| Pretty typical nomadic Drylander |
Kurushan. The language of the Kurushans and their Northlander cousins. Like Timischer or Drylander, it is more associated with past glories than the current situation; Lower Kurushat is more and more disconnected from "regular" Kurushat to the north, and the Kurushans are left to their own devices in a land where they are not the majority population. While still spoken in some northern cities, especially in old Kurushan noble houses, few indeed could function if this is the only language you speak. It still remains an important administrative language in Lower Kurushan cities, but most people on the street will be speaking Common instead. The Elementalists came out of the Kurushan population, and before they manifest their elemental natures as young teenagers, they tend to look like Kurushans; who are very similar in many ways to the Drylanders physically, although with slightly flatter faces, higher cheekbones and often epicanthic folds.
Pallaran. The final language related to old Kinzassal is Pallaran, the language of the Corsair Coast. Unlike most other regions in which a Tarushan-related language exists, Pallaran is still a pretty active language, and many people along the Corsair Coast speak it as a first and only language. That said, Common has made inroads here as well, as many traders and adventurers have come to this area, or the corsairs—and legitimate traders—from this region have sailed northwards. It is also the most divergent of the various "Tarushan" languages, as the people themselves are heavily admixed with some other population that is now anonymous other than the linguistic and genetic trace that they once existed.
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| A Pallaran man off of the Corsair Coast |
Kinzassal. The language that stands at the heart of the Tarushan language family. While it only briefly belonged to a single political entity, and always had a variety of dialects, its importance in the romance of the Kin Twilight, and the semi-imagined legendary Golden Age of all of the splintered kin that later broke off from this brief period of near unity is hard to describe; even the Humbrians, who are not themselves descended from the Kin, are drawn to this romance. That said, although it would seem to be like Latin, and it's various descendants variously like Spanish, Romanian, Italian, French, etc. in reality there's not nearly as much textual evidence for this language as there is for Latin, and Kinzassal was a much more savage and primitive place than Rome anyway—more like the Bronze Age society; further removed and very foreign to the inhabitants of the Three Realms+ today. Most of the "texts" of this language come from weathered carvings on standing stones and other ruined places rather than from actual texts. That said, because of the various things that happened in this time, there's intense academic interest in the period of Kinzassal and its artifacts.
Nizrekh. The language of the island chain off the west coast that is the remainder of Atlantis; although Nizrekh is an unrelated language spoken by people who arrived after the fall of Atlantis. It is not related to any other language, and since the Nizrekhi are isolationist and remote, few others speak their language either.
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This next batch is made up of languages that native to demihuman populations, but since this is both a deep dive into the various human populations but also into the languages of the Three Realms+, they have to at least be noted.
Grendling. The language of the Grendlings, or Wendaks, the actual descendants of Atlanteans who were on the mainland when Atlantis fell. Because the Grendlings are themselves a debased and rapidly devolving population, super xenophobic and isolationist, few speak this language other than them, and they teach it to no one. It is—presumably—a distant descendant itself of the language of high Atlantean civilization, but even that is not for sure, and certainly they don't resemble each other much now. The Atlanteans relationship to humanity is dubious. The Grendlings are not exactly human anymore, and the Atlanteans, their direct ancestors, probably were, but were very different than any human population around today.
Thurse. The bestial language of the thurses, at least of Thursewood. Because the anatomy of thurses is very different than that of humans and demihumans, it is widely considered impossible to learn to speak this language, although it is possible to learn to understand it... assuming you can do so without being killed and eaten.
Orcling. The language of the orcs and goblins from Gunaakt. Still widely spoken amongst that race, especially the most recent arrivals in the area, but not by much of anyone else. There are few written texts in this language, and many orclings who have been in the Three Realms+ for more than a couple of generations have lost this language and only speak it haltingly if at all. While obviously not a human language, it needs to be mentioned because it's not an insignificant one, and some scholars are taking an interest in it as the Orcling population becomes more important.
Nyxian. The language of the minority population in Hyperborean Lomar. The majority Zobnans who founded the city no longer speak their original language, and only speak Common, or whatever other trade language they've learned. The Zobnans mostly speak Common, and have no records of their former language, but it was probably a dialect of Nyxian.
Infernal. This is the primary language spoken by those from the Realms Outside such as daemons and elemental-like creatures like ifrit, although myriad other tongues exist amongst this diverse breed as well. In addition, this is the language of magic, so a smattering of it, at least, is known by any practitioner of the arcane arts. Perfect fluency in this language, on the other hand, is almost impossible for any mortal to achieve. Despite that, it was very fashionable in old Baal Hamazi, where the demonic taint of their bloodline was a source of pride to the ruling caste, to speak Infernal natively, and many noble houses took great pains to ensure that their children didn't hear any other language until they were five years of age. Some households still speak Infernal in the home, and it is still a pseudo-living language in some of the successor states to Baal Hamazi, but native speakers are few, and fewer every day.
Dagonic. This is a bizarre pre-human language, remnants of which float around on isolated and moldy standing stones and other areas. Intriguingly, it appears to have originally been a underwater language. Few people on the surface can even make an attempt to learn it, due to the challenges of speech that an underwater language had to have overcome, and the language itself is only known from very scanty and fragmentary remains, making fluency all but impossible for even the most dedicated scholar. For all intents and purposes, it is a written language only, not a spoken language, since there are no speakers that anyone knows of at all, and how to pronounce the language is anyone's guess.
Atlantean. Very little is known of this language, which was presumably the distant ancestor of the modern disappearing Grendling (Wendak) language. Because most documents, archives or carvings in this language disappeared under the sea, scholars are forced to try and interpret a very limited corpus of texts that remain, and their interpretations of what is represented is divisive and wildly divergent from each other. Really curious and foolhardy linguists could find living memory of spoken Atlantean from the Mind-wizards, like Gothan from the Heresiarchy... if they survive the experience.
Because I'm deliberately running a game that is sorta D&D-like mechanically, but which is meant to be played much more like Call of Cthulhu is played, these old languages can be very important when researching the blasphemous secret history of the Three Realms+, but unless the characters are Lovecraftian also in the sense that they are academics, sages, and professors, it's unlikely that they'd know any of those languages; it is more likely that they'd have to utilize the services of an academic contact, such as Drancent Hewe or even Professor Alpon von Lechfeld to help translate anything that they find. Or... in a really, really bad pinch, one of the ancient Heresiarchs.
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