Anvil Vale Languages

Tongues of the Dwarrow Folk

• Dwarven: Called dwarrowcánan in its own language, this is the language of the Anvil Vale and the dwarven citadels above it. Much of its concepts, if not specific words, have found their way into other languages along with crafts such as smithing and masonry, such that the wisest of craftsfolk are often educated in the language. Dwarven is a language that lends itself well to chants and less so to song. Dwarven is written in the árd samla, the high runic alphabet of dwarf-kind.
• Gnomish: The gnomish tongue is related to dwarven, with generations of linguistic drift that came about from the gnomish sojourn into the Feywild. When they returned, the language was still close enough to allow both dwarves and gnomes to roughly make out what one another were saying, but they are distinctly different languages. It is notable that it is not just the rock gnomes who speak this language natively, but also the forest gnomes. Gnomish is also written with árd samla.

Tongues of the Elven Folk

• Elvish: The elf-tongue is an ancient one, said to have been spoken for centuries or millenia before any of the Elder Folk rose. Though it isn't jealously guarded, many elves act pained at the pronunciations of other folk in its cadences, so much so that all elves learn the Common Tongue to spare themselves the experience. Nonetheless, it is avidly learned by others, particularly musicians, for some of the finest lays are in the elven tongue. The lettering style of elvish is called certhas.

The Common Tongues

If there is a virtue to Humanity, it is that they are wide-travelers, curious to a fault, and desirous of seeing what lies beyond the horizon. As such, it is no small wonder that their tongue has become a language used by many and wide folk.

• The Common Tongue: Though it has been a long time – including the rise, height, and fall of a great Empire – since its humble trading origins, the Common Tongue continues to be used. Though scholars can track the location and era of a given piece of writing from its specific grammar and vocabulary (and the accents of those who speak it), the Common Tongue hasn't changed much. Of course, this is by and large because it is a fairly simple tongue to begin with, mostly useful for communicating concepts of trade and finance. It has, however, proven to be remarkably useful over the years, and adaptable, absorbing elven terms of art and magic, dwarven crafting and martial terminology, and the like. Though this steady accretion of phrases, the Common Tongue does a great deal more than discuss trade today. Common today uses the Imperial Corpus, a system of lettering devised in the height of the Empire. Before the Empire, it tended to use the written alphabets of other folk, most often the árd samla or certhas.
• The Imperial Tongue: Though it began as a simple traders tongue, the ancient Empire rose on the power of that mercantilism and spirit of exploration, and the Common Tongue became refined by the Imperial elite. The academies of the ancient Empire sought to expand their linguistic prowess, innovating and expanding the terms included in the corpus of the Common tongue to embrace historical and philosophical concepts that Common had previously borrowed (badly) from other languages. Though it is rarely spoken today, the Imperial Tongue is still sometimes used in formal education and in written texts. The Imperial Tongue is written in the letters of the Imperial Corpus, a system of lettering specifically designed to prevent it from being used using other lettering systems.
  • (A character may choose to start play with the Imperial Tongue instead of the Common Tongue, and can be understood by those who speak Common, but his conversation is always slightly stilted and overly formal-sounding, possibly inflicting disadvantage on certain social checks as a result.)

Tongues of the Fey Folk

• Sylvan: x

Tongues of Goblins

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Tongues of Dragons & Other Primordials

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