Jorvian

Jorvian is the language of Jorvik. It is a flowing language well suited to subtle debate, refined statements, and scientific inquiry. Jorvian is the living scholarly language of the Land.

Viewpoints in Jorvik tend to be centered on the individual body - much of their language and idiom is based on the body as well. A common method of speech is to "put" a body part "to" something. For example, a Jorvik man does not walk, he puts feet to road. He does fight, he puts hand to blade. He does not look, he puts eyes to.

Gasmith

In the sweeping wilds of Gasmithon, language developed a strange duality. There is a loud, clear, booming aspect of Gasmith useful for communication over large distances. Most words have a hushed synonym as well, often accompanied by some subtle hand gesture or animal sound.

The mood of a native speaker of Gasmith can often be gauged by which set he employs.

Gasmith tends to avoid certainty except in the present tense. It is difficult to talk precisely about what has happened, or plan exactingly for the future. The current moment, however, can be described accurately and efficiently.

English

All the common languages share the ancient English language as their root. The commonalities are still evident, similar to how Spanish, French, and Italian share Latin origins. Unearthed and preserved books and disks are usually in English, and it has become the language of ancient scholars and mystics.

Spoken English is rare. It never became a truly dead language thanks to the prevalence of recordings, but dialects blossomed and merged during the burn, becoming new principle languages in time. Still, knowing English gives one a better chance of communicating with some forgotten backwater, isolated borderland, or long-slumbering entity,

Ancipan

The language of Acadia is laden with allusions to religious events and sayings. Their words are not so different from Jorvian, but a deep and immediate knowledge of their faith is needed to communicate effectively. Ancipan is a deeply emotional language well suited to song.

The people of Acadia have songs and rhythms for every task: baking bread, hauling in the nets, weaving a basket, walking, fighting. The songs are to keep a pace and pattern in the work, and are not often related to the task at hand. However, the words which align with a particular part of the job have come to symbolize it in the language.

Since there's no correlation other than that such-and-such a word is what you're saying when you're doing so-and-so, Ancipan can sound like a string of sing-song gibberish to a non-native, even if they know the individual words. The tone and pairing of words sometimes affects their meaning as well.

Many of these songs are hymns or ballads, layering in more allusion.

Tutsg'gac

The cult of Thaia-thaan'ag created this language to allow for secret communication and to serve in their dubious rites. It is composed of nigh-unpronounceable gutturals, clicks, and rolling vowels. It springs from Gasmith, having a set of hand signals used for surreptitious conversation as well as booming throat songs in war and worship.

House of Ellis

Ellis walked the Land of Still Waters before it bore that name. A thousand years ago, she was a rare traveler, braving the dangers of the wild and the fear of the towns to bring news and healing to those in need. Little is known of her origin - she came out of the west, slowly and circuitously making her way across what would become Jorvik, into the fortified and frightened villages that bore the seeds of Acadia, then south, out of the lands and into memory and legend.

Where she walked she was lodestone drawn to heal the pain and woe of others. Those she helped and those she saved were grateful and asked how they could repay her, to which she replied either "Help another" or, rarely, "and walk a while". With this she doubled and re-doubled her efforts, sending ripples of hope and legend through those secret times.

She did not record her exploits, but others did, in story and song and rare scraps of written record.

Trollizard

The trollizard is an extremely abundant farm animal. This stocky creature grows to be around three feet long, nearly a third of which is its thick, flat tail. It otherwise resembles a cross between an alligator and a gecko, with perhaps a hint of frog. When the weather grows cold, they grow coats of short, gray feathers around their necks and torsos, shedding these in the spring.

The remarkable commercial success of the trollizard comes from its regenerative ability - if its tail is removed, it grows a new one in just a few months! Each tail yields about ten pounds of tender, red meat, and about two square feet of thick leather. Trollizard meat is commonly made into jerky, stews, and steaks. In addition, the beasts lay clutches of leathery eggs if particularly well-fed; something on the order of a dozen a month.

Trollizards are not picky eaters, either, and are fed on scraps and slop.

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