Template:List of Languages

• High Realm: The formal language of Dynasts and pa tricians of the Blessed Isle, as well as their servants. All official business of the Realm is conducted in High Realm. Its written form is a phonetic alphabet of complex brush work characters.

• Low Realm: The tongue of the Realm's commoners, generally constituting local bastardizations of High Realm drifted into near-incomprehensibility to outsid ers. It shares the written stylings of High Realm, but often uses simplified character depictions which can be rendered without brushes or careful calligraphy. * Old Realm: The native language of the spirits and those that created them, as well as of the Fair Folk. It was widely spoken in the First Age, especially by savants and sorcerer-engineers, and used for many official documents. Characters must have Lore 1+ or Occult 1+ to learn this language. There exist several styles for writing Old Realm, the most extravagant of which is a complex glyphic system where symbol arrangement is as important as symbol choice, and the same phrase might be read in several ways, often as a deliberate choice by the writer intended to impart subtle and layered meaning.

• Dragontongue: Derived from recovered elements of a priestly language that was lost during the shogunate, luminaries of House Mnemon birthed and spread this language over the course of two centuries. It is a mix of Old Realm and High Realm, with elements of a lost sho gunate tongue, and excludes the mind from the wider, more dangerous concepts inherent to Old Realm, keeping a person in mind of the Dragons, the Poles, the natural world and the Perfected Hierarchy. It is a beautiful lan guage more than a scholarly one, and even in satrapies which have been thoroughly suppressed by the Realm, there is a rush by savants and poets to learn this language of poets and princes. Its written form utilizes very chal lenging yet beautiful brushstrokes.

• Riverspeak: The language of the Scavenger Lands. The Guild has promoted this loanword-filled tongue as the unofficial “trade language” of the Threshold; it is prob ably the most widely-understood language in Creation. Its written form employs a simple glyphic alphabet whose characters can easily be shaped with a quill, stylus, or even a stick of charcoal.

• Skytongue: A language family spoken in the North. Its written form employs a simple runic alphabet.

• Flametongue: A language family spoken in the South. Its written form employs a sophisticated alphabet of flowing lines and curves; meaning can be greatly influenced by the manner in which characters connect to one another.

• Forest-tongue: A language family spoken in the East, beyond the bounds of the Scavenger Lands. Its written form consists of a wide array of branching ideograms, connected vertically and diagonally.

• Seatongue: A language family spoken in the West. Its written form consists of a simple alphabet of lines and dots whose connection to one another can be exceed ingly complex.

• Guild Cant: A secret language spoken only by members of the Guild. Its written form is composed of simple horizontal and vertical lines, designed to be able to be written quickly and unobtrusively when necessary.

• Local Tongues: Creation contains countless languages spoken by specific “barbarian” tribes, insular ethnic en claves, isolated island-dwellers, and various other small groups. Four such languages may be learned with a single Merit purchase.