• Lore • [Viden] Creators' Insights

[Whisper]

Around the Campfire

It occurred to me that there were things about the city that I would have to put somewhere, but I had no idea where to put them. They could end up making the Viden Lore far too wordy (thus no one would ever bother to read it as this generation is plagued by the TL;DR bug)... and they might be missed by people who might be interested by them if I were to post these gems in my scrapbook. So.. that's the story of the birth of the amazing Insights Thread!

In here I, and any future Viden Prophets, will be able to post little insights into the city, from the true nature of the vilification of the Naerikk, to the hierarchy and status system of the citizens and natives of Viden. I hope you enjoy these little eggs.. and I hope you read them even if you don't, because they will give you the best idea of how Viden really works!

[Whisper]

Language

The other day, Incubus (bless his soul) was helping me with a very old character of mine, trying to bring him up to speed with the new systems and the like. He was very surprised at Virikai's lack of fluency in the Ancient Tongue. He even went as far as to tell me about my own race! 'Tis a terrible shame he was misinformed by a PC who has misunderstood the Lore.

It seems that this is a common theme around the staff and players: they believe that the eídisi are all fluent in the Ancent Tongue and cannot speak anything else. As the creator of both the eídisi and Viden, I can definitely tell you that this is not true. If you have a quick gander through the Lore of Viden, you will notice that the eídisi only make up about 30% of the population of Viden. That is tiny, in reality. In order of them to communicate with the majority (humans) they must be able to speak the Common Tongue. The city has a number of official languages, but the most common is Common. All education, with a few exceptions, occurs in the Common Tongue thus anyone studying in Viden must be at least conversational, and anyone going through Primary and Secondary education in the Academy would be fluent.

It is true that some eídisi families may use the Ancient Tongue as their native language, and raise their children that way, thus there is no reason why an eídisi character cannot be fluent in the Ancient Tongue. In point of fact, many eídisi try to use the Ancient Tongue in order to distance themselves from the humans and exclude them. However I really must emphasise that Common is still very important and almost all eídisi would also be fluent in Common as they do not make up the majority and in no way are they the heart of what makes Viden tick. (The eídisi are entitled to have two fluent languages on top of the broken one, as part of their multilingualism).

!	Message from: Whisper
	For any of you who may have acquired a Knowledge regarding the language of the eídisi or Viden that you feel contradicts this post, and you want it changed a little, please speak to me or another Prophet, and we will work to rectify that Knowledge in order that it fits in with the Lore of the race and the city.