Languages

The Western trade tongue is mostly unknown in Hazad outside the nobility and merchants (who often use Cardacci instead).

Common Languages

Language	Notes	Script
Hazadi	De facto common tongue of the East; native language of the nobility	Phoneme characters, right-to-left
New Imperial	Descendant of Old Empire common speech; former trade tongue	Old Imperial alphabet, left-to-right
Azari	Dozens of mutually intelligible dialects	Phonetic in Hazadi or Old Imperial script
Aman	Language of the Highlands	Descendant of Old Aman alphabet
Western Trade Tongue	Mix of Cardacci, Langue de Terre, Reichspiel, New Imperial	Old Imperial variant
Elven	Spoken by almost no one but elves	Degraded Old Elven, right-to-left
Dwarven	Spoken by dwarves and some scholars	Runes, right-to-left

Educated Languages

• High Imperial — the educated tongue of the Old Empire, preserved by its aristocratic families; used in older religious and current academic writing. Gnaeus’s native language.
• Court Hazadi — flowery courtier/poet Hazadi, written in flowing calligraphy (fashionable on clothing; the medium of Safia ibn-Akar’s prize-winning work).
• Cardacci, Langue de Terre, Reichspiel — the Western kingdoms’ tongues. Reichspiel is the Morschatti tongue, spoken in Morrschatten; it is Lindse’s only language, and Ari is the only member of the party who speaks it. (GM)
  • Ari speaks all three — the party’s whole western-language capability sits in one bound elf. She has been teaching Gnaeus Cardacci, which he now has in broken form: enough to work western merchants and expats without a translator, not enough to be subtle in it. (Aaron)

Highly Educated Languages

• Celestial — the language of magic and the oldest religious texts; its alphabet can be written in any direction; only fractionally understood by anyone.
• Old Aman, Dwarven, Bodhi (the people beyond the Red Wastes).

Restricted Languages

• Old Elven — spoken form lost; some writings remain. Studying it risks “inviting the Wrath once more,” but some scholars are bold. (Scholars claiming written Dwarven derives from Old Elven get punched.)
• The Black Speech — the Corrupted’s dialects; no full written form; learned by those who study the enemy.
• Infernal — the language of the Damned, a corrupted Celestial. Learning it is a Church death sentence.