Two cultures for Pb

There is more to come, but have this for now. In advance, thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

THE CHURLIAN TRIBES

NAMES: Always ending in a vowel. The higher-status someone is, the more syllables they have; being addressed by one syllable is practically a dehumanization.

Low-class names

1 Tavo

2 Kesi

3 Dali

4 Vana

5 Yesu

6 Tadi

High-class names

1 Taragonsedia

2 Hasanatona

3 Togadimara

4 Grasendyvari

5 Vedrasinotamo

6 Stasinakitha

DRESS: Somewhere between a Diesel-age pilot and Native American regalia.

1 Well-worn denim overalls embroidered with clay beads

2 Fur-lined bomber jacket with fringed sleeves

3 Fanny pack made from a hollowed-out crow

4 Jeans with wildlife patterns embroidered on the knees

5 Bomber cap with feathers sticking out of the sides

6 A suitcoat woven from serape fabric

TRINKETS:

1 A mineworker’s Imperial punch card; despite looking like swiss cheese, it doesn’t meet the criteria for “sufficient labor”

2 A clay amulet with the icon of an eagle, its eyes sparkling amethyst

3 A doll woven from dead grass; three blue beads are tucked away in its chest

4 A tarnished ankh bracelet scratched silly and bent in half

5 A small red pouch of warm-smelling spices

6 A jar of beatified liquor, clear and bitter and burning, labelled with angular animal designs

7 A hand puppet of a comically villainous Imperial enforcer

8 A ring of rusted iron in the shape of a propeller

APPEARANCE: Skin like rich tanned leather, hair like the earth after a rain or silver as startuff, eyes like brilliant tigereye. Some (5%) are born with blue eyes, clear as crystal, marking them as clairvoyant Seers.

ACCENT: Like a British person trying to impersonate an American.

CUSTOM: When there’s a feather lying alone on the ground, you must burn it as soon as possible, or that feather will tether the bird’s spirit to the material world after death, and no one wants a Phantasma infestation.

RELIGION: Spirits emerge from an undifferentiated mass of being, each expression of life in the material world simply one facet of that great beyond spirit. The older a creature is, the closer to the One Spirit it becomes- immortal, mythopoetic creatures like Yellow Bison and the Moonshine Crow are said to be near-pure avatars of the One Spirit made flesh.

CURRENCIES: Bead strings- yellow beads are used to buy necessities like soap and candles, blue are used to buy frills like massages and murals, red are used to buy dangerous equipment like weapons and chemic, and purple are used to buy luxuries like jewelry and buildings. The type of work someone does determines in what bead they are paid; a common laborer gets 3 yellow beads and 1 blue bead a day, while a notorious mercenary would get 3 red beads and 1 purple bead per mark. (3 beads of one color and 1 of another is a good estimate for small potatoes payment.)

REGION: The Churlian Fields are primarily rolling hills (40%), dry grasses (50%) and wetlands (10%), dotted with hulking, rusted antediluvian relics (30% on a given mote) of technologies decommissioned well before the Age of Aerodynes.

ARCHITECTURE: Simple geometric shapes and elemental designs melding closely with the landscape and terrain features; Churlian architecture is characterized by its simplicity and an almost symbiotic relationship to the surrounding landscape and symmetrical circular designs. In colonized regions, the aesthetic difference between Iodinian and Churlian design is very stark, some sociologists calling the incongruity symbolic.

FOOD: Standard Fare: A honeyed cut of yeabu* along boiled tubers. Fine Dining: Eagle’s blood pudding and berries served in the hollow of a melon. Travel Fare: Yeabu jerky and tack.

*Yeabu: a spotted, tripedal beast of burden native to the Field most notable for its protruding forehead. Female yeabu ritualistically headbutt each other when squads come in conflict. Behind the cranial protrusion is a wall of fat to protect the brain, frequently utilized by Churlians for long-burning candles, food preparation, and preservation.

MUSIC: Meandering and out-of-time vocals accompanied by plucked/bowed chordophones like Kagus and Vilas, traditionally with little to no percussion and/or one or multiple sustained pitches that move to create harmony. One of the best-known songs is the Ballad of the Skymonger, a culture antihero who stole the gift of flight from a falcon.

THE SACCHARINE DYNASTY

NAMES: Flowing, overwrought, sounding as if a group with a hyperbolic spirit played Telephone with archaic European names. House names are typically two vaguely Asiatic syllables, serving as surnames (Tsollinarit Vo-Tran) just as often as titles (Mirilando de Prisstil of House Ye-Khar).

Low-class names

1 Salthen

2 Iolde

3 Vernus

4 Yordic

5 Ralfodo

6 Kendris

High-class names

1 Xainaphen

2 Terrophilius

3 Mimsley-Hattington

4 Carnigelia

5 Fyordinham

6 Rufadelpho

DRESS: All of the following are gender and class agnostic.

1 Ball gown covered in orbs (1), flowers (2), bows (3), knives (4), bells (5), or hats (6)

2 A fine ruffled suit coupled with a coin veil

3 A leotard covered in glittering quartz

4 An animalistic masquerade mask with genuine matching furs

5 Half of an ocean-blue silken gown sewn to half of a crushed red velvet  suit

6 Nothing but a thick coat of paint 

TRINKETS:

1 A music clef-shaped locket containing a sliver of antimony

2 A darkwood Kithremba (like a cross between a sitar and a banjo) named Ethel missing two strings, one of which is being used as a garrote somewhere

3 A gold-on-black scroll containing saucy messages in impeccable calligraphy; both the sender and addressee are married nobles of rival Houses

4 A badge of watch from House Do-Rahck in the shape of an 11-pointed star

5 A cotton candy-pink iron stiletto carved with the name of a fallen House

6 A bill for ‘a buggy covertly laden with sufficient explosives to destroy a small house’

7 Three turquoise octahedral dice stained brown with blood with pips in the shape of butterflies

8 A bowl carved from a Crystal Crab carapace and mended a la kintsugi

APPEARANCE: Crazy bod mod, a sign of both discipline and wealth, is the norm (80%). Underneath are pale, diamond-eyed folk who tend to the tall and lanky side despite their diet.

1 Entire body bleached/tattooed cotton candy pink

2 Entire body bleached/tattooed baby blue

3 Entire body bleached/tattooed lavender

4 Entire body bleached/tattooed stark white

5 Entire body bleached/tattooed some other color, or with swirling designs

6 Eyes are an unusual color (1-4), have a strange pupil shape (5), or are monochrome (6)

7 Crystal implanted into forehead as “third eye”

8 Poems carved into foot-long fingernails

9 Pointed, elfin ears laden with gauges and piercings

10 Forked tongue, frequently tattooed with alchemical symbols

11-12 Roll d4 times and combine

ACCENT: On a class spectrum from Italian (lowest of low) to French (highest of high). There is much social stigma around speech impediment, lisps and stutters most common in this region; if you want to make a killing, covertly advertise yourself as a linguistic therapist around a lesser-known noble house.

CUSTOM: You must eat all food you are presented with in its entirety (crumbs are frowned upon), and take care to avoid any sort of mess. To do otherwise is a great disgrace, you slovenly slob.

RELIGION: The head of each House is divine, their power corresponding  to their position on the socioeconomic hierarchy. The Emperor (praise be) is the autarch-god-lord of the Dynasty. The Saccharinians live in a world where a god can be stabbed in the back and replaced; it’s no surprise that Viadolphus Machiavelli’s “the God-Prince” was such a hit.

CURRENCIES: An uncountable myriad of bills, each representing a very specific, concrete asset that one can claim and use. The “grain-store” is the most common (enough grain to make a week’s worth of bread), while the “arsenic-vial” is among the most coveted. Making new bills along with new pieces of technology is common; the “printing-press” caused quite a stir when it hit the market.

REGION: Dominated by chromatic spires of pure sugar crystal (80%), the remainder covered in crushed rubble and crystal dust (20%), the deforested litter of centuries of excavations. Pools of sugar-water in and around which Crystal Crabs congregate are common (30% on a given mote).

ARCHITECTURE: A mash-up of the mythic European castle aesthetic and Islamic/faux Arabian architecture. All hyperbolically grand and splendorous; often optical illusions are employed to make them look larger and more boastful than they really are, frequently resulting in Neuschwanstein levels of nonsensical geometry. Tempered sugar-mortar and ‘concrose’ (sucrose concrete) are construction staples.

FOOD: Standard Fare: Candied poultry with a side of sparkling sugar water and a bowl of cold pinto beans. Fine Dining: A main course of breads and rich Crystal Crab* and tuber stews followed by up to fifty courses of desserts. Travel Fare: Rock candy and dried turkey legs.

*Crystal Crabs: crustacean creatures who have evolved shells of sweet salt to dissuade predators. Nest in hallowed-out warrens within crystal spires next to bodies of still liquid. Develop hive minds under duress, but always a sucker for shiny baubles.

MUSIC: The Saccharinians invented the symphony orchestra and are emerging into a Baroque period, filled with candlelit opera, prickly counterpoint, and ever larger and louder ensembles commissioned by the bored patriarchs and matriarchs of the upper crust Houses.

Languages of Pb

 IODINIAN

Iodinian- The lingua franca of the Iodine Empire’s domain. Sounds like potatoes sizzling on a pan. Puritans deride the slew of loanwords that have crept in over the course of Imperial expansion, and it takes a Proficiency of at least 3 to remove them from one’s vocabulary, though those loanwords allow one to say basic idioms and phrases in all languages marked with an asterisk.

Low Chemoglyphic*- This language, with a script closely resembling a mix between chemical formulas and sacred geometry, is the preeminent tongue of the Church of Her Red Word, in which most Poetic holy books are written. Sounds like the war-cry of an angel. It is an aping of High Chemoglyphic, the language of magic, and one’s Proficiency in High Chemoglyphic is automatically 1 less than one’s Proficiency in Low Chemoglyphic.

CHURLIAN

Minespeak*- This language developed as the result of Imperial mining conscription, and it is the discordant blend of the Old Song and Iodinian. It is most frequently heard in Imperial mine-cities in the Fields, and sounds like rocks colliding with each other as they roll down a hill.

Old Song- This is the oldest widely-surviving form of oral communication, flourishing in the face of the Empire’s attempts to wipe it out. It is a music as much as it is a language, with rhythm and pitch endowing as much meaning as syntax and pronunciation. It sounds like the cries of a mother bird set to Gregorian chant. All who sing along understand some fragment of the phrase’s meaning, and even CHurlian animals are capable of such.

Symbography- More of a pictographic system than a language, Symbography is the visual language of the Churlian tribes. Appearing like Art Deco petroglyphs, they record the mythic history of the Churlian tribes from the Bridge Age and before on towering cairns the Empire have been fervently demolishing since before colonial efforts began.

SACCHARINIAN

Gluci*- The high-class brogue of the Dynastic sugar-crystal palaces. Due to its nuanced tonality and subtle consonant differentiations, it pairs suspiciously easily with Jabber, and as such any speaker has equal Proficiency in Jabber while speaking Gluci. Sounds like golden scissors gently slipping through a bolt of silk.

Chitter- The language of lepers, the itinerant, and the sugar-crystal crabs that make their nest in the glucose spires. Even knowing how to speak it is enough to make you a pariah in high society circles, which is why “chittertongue” is such a popular insult the world over. It’s almost entirely click-based, and sounds like tapping wet pieces of glass together. All lepers intuitively know how to speak it, their Proficiency growing with their symptoms.

BURSINGR

Fjordi*- The language of the low-elevation Bursingr peoples, those who live on glacier-barges and in caves carved into snow-clad cliff-faces. Coldwind speakers regard Fjordi speakers with condescension, but Fjordi serves the trade tongue of the confederate. Sounds like a reed flute after being submerged in mud.

Coldwind- The language of the high-elevation Bursingr peoples, so insular and storied that some people regard them as a myth. Coldwind allows a speaker to hear what the wind is saying, so long as it chills the bone as it whispers. Sounds like a last breath at the hands of a silent strangler.

GOLGOTHAN

Geol- A close cousin to the Old Song, Geol is closely guarded by the sages and griots of the principalities. It is an entirely oral tradition, and allows one to speak the languages of stones, minerals, sufficiently bastardized metals, and potentially dead ancestors, as well as know the resonant frequency of any object with a glance. Masterful speakers of Geol can make mountains tremble and boulders fragment. Geol sounds like the clacks of thousands of magnets colliding and repelling.

Earthbound- The language of the exiles banished to rest their calloused feet upon the scorched, accursed ground. Pity the poor pilgrim who mumbles their prayers in the tongue of the outcasts. Earthbound sounds like rain evaporating out of a steel bowl. Gain Proficiency in Earthbound when exiled from the suspended cities of the principalities.

Ediph*- The primary language of the Golgothan jungles and mesas at large. It is in Ediphisian script that the first of the world’s religious texts are written, and some linguists claim that there are ten thousand words for divinity. Jury’s out on whether this is hyperbole or not. Each principality has its own dialect, which you can put Proficiency in to be more highly regarded by the constituents of that principality. Sounds like hearts beating in time to an eschatological liturgy.

OTHER

Vermin*- The language of Verminfolk, occasionally appropriated symbolically by marginalized communities or rebellious organizations. Originating from Haven, the metal insect city in the star-shadow of the Husk, this language sounds like the buzzing and whirring of a plague of locusts. Most insects can understand its rudiments.

Jabber- This is not a language in and of itself, but rather, a way of speaking a language that subtly implies either a hidden message or the exact opposite of what is stated. Everyone understands sarcasm or facetious tones, for example, but one who is Proficient in Jabber can endow their words with more sophisticated alternate meanings, up to a point where advanced Jabbertongues can have two conversations at once. Comes in two mutually intelligible dialects; Cant, the language of thieves, and Doublespeak, the language of politicians.

Blade- The language of warriors and of the weapons they wield alike. Learning Blade and combat training are almost indistinguishable, and any seasoned tactician worth their salt would pay a soldier who knows Blade extra. It sounds like blood ecstatically swimming out from its prison and kissing its steel liberator in joy. You gain Proficiency in Blade every time you win a formal duel with your primary weapon.

Heretic- The blasphemous tongue of those who revel in the ways that came before the Poetic sects. Knowing but a word of it labels you an enemy of the state in the highest order no matter where you find yourself. One can learn Heretic not through study, but through pain; when one emerges from torture with their spirit unbroken and their faith intact, they gain 1 Proficiency in Heretic. Sounds like the noises of a phantom pursuer one hears while alone in the forest.

Lunacy- The language of the Lunatic Harmony, a fringe religious sect that believes in something strange called a “moon”. Apparently it is what provides the Æther’s luminosity, and is a big orb of… rock? Cheese? Something like that. They’re not taken very seriously on the large stage. Sounds like the gentle burbling of goldfish typing on typewriters, whatever those are.

LANGUAGE RULES: Start with 4 + WITS Proficiency to put into languages. 1 Proficiency means that you can speak snippets of a language with a heavy accent, but enough to get by for a day or two. It also means that you can differentiate between the writings and verbalizations of languages within the same family as yours. 2 Proficiency means you can speak basic sentences with a limited vocabulary, but approach fluency. 3 Proficiency is equivalent to a native speaker who doesn’t specialize in language use and serves as 1 Proficiency in languages of the same family. 4 Proficiency is rare even among intellectuals, representing an incredible grasp of linguistic function and manipulation. There are more languages than exist on these lists, and not everything written here is necessarily true.

Again, this one’s just for me. I tried to synthesize some cool things that my forebears had done with language, and I think I still have more to do in making these languages more interesting, but I have enough that I can get to the table and improvise, particularly because I mostly wanted these in place to start making commentary on interlinguistic power dynamics, and these do that as-is just fine. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.