That said... That's Act II, and is only about half of the content. (Not counting the stat blocks at the end.) The other half is split about ⅔ to ⅓ between Act I and Act III, and the good news there is that with some modification to make it fit and make it less railroady and make it perhaps less D&Dish, I could actually use this material. In fact, I even got on Hero Forge and made an orc cultist assassin (and found a goblin assassin that I'd use here too) based specifically on the idea of the Yarash cultists running around in Act I. The trope of the big dark lord appearing after being summoned and having to be defeated or banished back again, which is the finale in Act III is maybe a bit tired, but it is a classic. And there's other stuff going on in Act III, like the attack of the city simultaneously by a barbarian raiding force and an orc race riot are both interesting things that can be adapted. I was also pleased to see the option of an incursion of snakemen during this too; down with the dumb idea of friendly, nice snakemen! They're freakin' snakemen. They're bad!
But Act I was what I liked the best, and which I can find material to adapt most readily to my Curse of the Corsair Coast when I get down to it. I'm less likely to enjoy the multi-part McGuffin quest, but a race around town against murderous cultists to figure something out before they do, where you feel like they're often one step ahead of you, is a good thing.
I spent just a few minutes after finishing it getting my next pdfs in order to read, so I started the next on the Freeport Trawl, Creatures of Freeport, already. But I'm going out of town tomorrow, so I won't be doing anything with that for a while. I decided to ditch the trawls in the short term, and picked up Libris Mortis to take with me on my trip, along with Scaramouche. I was going to read that before I started my trawls, so I'm still going to go ahead and do so. And I do still want to finish my Kindle novel on this trip too. Those go fast if I just spend time reading it. The book is probably only about 300 pages if I had the physical copy.
I'm also continuing to listen to some of these Wandering DM podcasts. I'll probably listen to quite a bit more while road-tripping this long weekend. Right now I'm wrapping up one on languages, which I picked because it's a topic that I'm interested in. My current D&D character, Vantz Maledictus, speaks Common, Draconic, Primordial and Undercommon. Draconic because he's a sorcerer, Primordial (which in 5e, has four "dialects" which used to be the old Elemental languages from 3e) and Undercommon just because I've always liked that language.
Not that it comes up very often, but I've always liked the idea of these fantasy languages, and not everyone can simply understand everyone. It also means that sometimes one guy who speaks the one language that you need gets his moment to step up here and there. It doesn't come up a lot, but when it does, it's interesting. It can interesting, but it's still important, I think, for there to be a "Common" or something like that, because it can also be frustrating if it's too big of a deal in game.
Anyway, I'd never thought of languages for Old Night, but I did give some thought to them back when I was in the Dark•Heritage Mk. IV and Mk. V versions of the setting years ago, based just a little bit around ideas from D&D. D&D, especially in its many expansions, has way too many languages, but if you look at the "basic" stuff in the SRD, you get a manageable list. 3e had twenty listed languages, as below:
| Language | Typical Speakers | Alphabet |
|---|---|---|
| Abyssal | Demons, chaotic evil outsiders | Infernal |
| Aquan | Water-based creatures | Elven |
| Auran | Air-based creatures | Draconic |
| Celestial | Good outsiders | Celestial |
| Common | Humans, halflings, half-elves, half-orcs | Common |
| Draconic | Kobolds, troglodytes, lizardfolk, dragons | Draconic |
| Druidic | Druids (only) | Druidic |
| Dwarven | Dwarves | Dwarven |
| Elven | Elves | Elven |
| Giant | Ogres, giants | Dwarven |
| Gnome | Gnomes | Dwarven |
| Goblin | Goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears | Dwarven |
| Gnoll | Gnolls | Common |
| Halfling | Halflings | Common |
| Ignan | Fire-based creatures | Draconic |
| Infernal | Devils, lawful evil outsiders | Infernal |
| Orc | Orcs | Dwarven |
| Sylvan | Dryads, brownies, leprechauns | Elven |
| Terran | Xorns and other earth-based creatures | Dwarven |
| Undercommon | Drow | Elven |
Standard Languages
| Language | Typical Speakers | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Common | Humans | Common |
| Dwarvish | Dwarves | Dwarvish |
| Elvish | Elves | Elvish |
| Giant | Ogres, Giants | Dwarvish |
| Gnomish | Gnomes | Dwarvish |
| Goblin | Goblinoids | Dwarvish |
| Halfling | Halflings | Common |
| Orc | Orcs | Dwarvish |
Exotic Languages
| Language | Typical Speakers | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Abyssal | Demons | Infernal |
| Celestial | Celestials | Celestial |
| Draconic | Dragons, dragonborn | Draconic |
| Deep Speech | Aboleths, cloakers | - |
| Infernal | Devils | Infernal |
| Primordial | Elementals | Dwarvish |
| Sylvan | Fey creatures | Elvish |
| Undercommon | Underworld traders | Elvish |
I actually like the 5e list better than the 3e list, I think.
That said, in the past, I've used languages more as a source for names than as something that really matters in the setting. I need to give some thought to how they work in Old Night. This post right now is just the first noodling of thought; I'll have another one where I actually finalize languages that are relevant. I think it likely that "Common" will be the language of the Hill Country. While the hill-men don't necessarily all come from the exact same ethnic origin, (just like the Medieval British could be Celtic, Saxon, Norman or Dane, etc.) they've all settled on a single language in the generations that they've been in the Hill Country, and only a few still have any academic knowledge of older tongues that are out of vogue and no longer used. There are still traces of accents that are social class based; higher classes, especially in Garenport and Northumbria in particular, may have a Normaund-like accent and use Normaund names, and frontier country folk may still have Brynachian names and accents (Scottish) but they no longer speak those languages. "Common" is a descendant of Old Culmerian, which would be represented by Old English if it needed to be represented at all. That said, Old Culmerian, Normaund and Brynach, Skellish, or Carlovingian (Old English, as I said, plus Norman French, Scottish or other British Celtic, Old Norse and Old Franconian or some other German language) may be important for research into old documents. But only dedicated academics will still have any ability to decipher any of those languages.
The Timischers originally spoke a different, although related language, and more of them still remember it, but I'm going to rule that most of them also speak "Common" by now, although with a different (German) accent. The Tarushans do have their own language, which they stubbornly hold on to, but most of them speak common. Tarushan would be like the indigenous languages in Mexico; still with plenty of speakers, but almost anyone who speaks one is bilingual with Spanish, and the use of Nahuatl or Mixtec or whatever is low prestige and not acknowledged by anyone with any political or social power. Related, but not mutually intelligible with Tarushan is Kinzassalian dialects of the Tazitta tribes and other indigenous Old Folk of the Hill Country—but these people are so outside of the social and political structure of the Hill Country that they mostly only rarely acknowledge that they even exist, and it's only in vast wilderness areas that the Hill-men claim but haven't settled in, like the Haunted and Chokewater Forests. While not mutually intelligible, Old Kinzassalian was mutually intelligible (although markedly different) from Old Tarushan, if we're getting back into documents that are centuries old. And I should point out; that kind of research is an important part of the use of languages in my type of game. It's not just "can anyone speak to the bugbears here?" like in D&D, but the Call of Cthulhu-like attempts to research weird, ancient and foreign documents that might have knowledge that's forbidden, but necessary for what's going on.
Anyway, I'll also figure out what's going on the the Baal Hamazi and Kurushat and Corsair Coast region when it comes to languages, as well as what languages come with the orclings from Gunaakt. But I do also want to point out this text from my older treatment on languages:
Infernal: This is the primary language spoken by those from the Realms Outside, 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. Because of this, it takes two skill points to earn this language, not one.
Despite that, it was always very fashionable in 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 living language of some importance in some of the successor states to Baal Hamazi, and amongst the hamazin in particular.
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. Roleplaying note: Because of the difficulty in learning this language, it takes three skill points rather than one to do so. Also, 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.
Spending skill points is obviously an old leftover from my d20 days, so I also need to figure out how characters learn languages in Old Night's system now. I also had this old text, which I've slightly edited to include my new names, and this will probably be what I do.
I think for Old Night, at least, at character creation, I'd let characters roll a d4, modified by INT score (but never able to go lower than 1 or higher than 5) be the number of languages you know, and you can pick them from the list. I wouldn't adapt the colorful rules about how many skill points it takes to learn Infernal or Dagonic, if someone wanted to do so, but I would insist that each player who picked one of those languages explain how they learned it, since you can't just go buy the Rosetta Stone program for Dagonic or Infernal. What about learning languages after character creation? TBD still... but I'll give it some thought.
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