Language

[Note for others: This may be a temporary article, and will change a lot when history is finalized. Right now I'm working getting the mechanics of how I want to do this rather than a language list. My goal is to have this be as easy to understand while having more roleplay and a flair of accuracy.]

Language in Parvolon as a mechanic works differently from *Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition* and *Pathfinder*.

## Giving Your Characters Languages

Your character's languages depend on three key factors: your race, your location, and your background. The different species of Parvolon do not have the same anatomy, so learning a language used by another species will be hard and may even be impossible. In human society, space separating people is also a huge factor what languages people know and do not know. Finally, knowing how to talk with foreigners may or may not be important for your prior career, so your background will play some sort of part in both *how many* and *what kinds* of languages you might know at the beginning of your adventure.

For making your character, you can add three kinds of languages: *your native language*, *acquired languages*, and *bonus languages*.

### Native Language

Your character's *native language* is the very first language they learned, the language they were taught by their parents and spoke with their local community. For simplicity, this is simply the combination of their species and their nationality; it is presumed that your character can communicate somehow with any other member of their species that lives in the same nation as your character does. As an example, if your character is an Orc living the Ostrov Union, they would speak something like *Orc-Ostrovian* natively. The exception to this is if your nation is an empire, where you instead use a region within the nation rather than the whole thing.

This is more of a guarantee that your character can communicate with their local community rather than the language they speak across most of their adventures. Many people in the real world natively speak languages like *Irish*, *Yoruba,* *Nahuatl*, or *Hmong,* which are spoken by the common person but are still rarely used for official business (But consider how impressed these people would be if a foreigner spoke their folk language with them!).

Being a minority in their nation, a member of a small nation, or wanting to interact with foreigners for trade or diplomacy are key reasons why your character will naturally acquire more languages before their adventure begins.

### Acquired Languages

*Acquired languages* are any languages your character has learned for the purpose of speaking with other groups in society. Rather than learning more folk languages, your character will want to be strategic and learn the languages of commerce and government. These are what real linguists would call a *bridge language or lingua* *franca*, and are what the D&D "languages" are probably meant to be.

You learn a certain number of *acquired languages* based on your species and your background; check these sections for your total. You may pull from the *world language list* later in this page up to the total number of languages you can learn. The world language list indicates where each world language is spoken so you can choose carefully. Some languages have conditions based on their difficulty for other species or rarity, which are also marked. This includes languages on the list that are *secret* or *special*, like Draconic. Most DMs will ask that you use most of your language slots on languages that are somewhat sensible for your character to know prior to their adventures.

**You must use a language slot for a world language that is official in your home nation, and you can ignore any barriers to learning it. This language has likely been necessary for your life before your adventures.**

### Bonus Languages

If you have a fairly high Intelligence score, you gain bonus language slots on top of your modifiers from your species page and your background. See the table below for how many additional languages your character knows based on their Intelligence.

[this will be a table, idk numbers]

## Language-Related Checks

The goal of this system is to make language important while not being as intrusive on gameplay as other systems, and the main factor that influences this is the number of language-related skill checks you need to make. *All skill checks relating to language will use Intelligence unless the DM specifies otherwise*. You will **never** be asked to make a check to communicate basic ideas in a language you are proficient in.

### When You May Need To Make A Skill Check

You will need to make a skill check when trying to communicate with someone who you share no proficient languages with. These will usually be people in a country distant from your own or from a different species, however members of your our own nation who are isolated from others - like farmers high up in the mountains - may have no need to know any world languages.

When making language checks, you will often try to communicate with gestures and short phrases to get across your point. A DM might decide that the idea you are trying to express is too complex for someone to understand who does not know any languages you know. If a language you know and a language they know are marked as related to each other, you can take advantage with your save; it is likely you can use technical words that both languages have to communicate in broken speech.

You may also need to make a save if trying to communicate an idea that cannot be expressed in some *special* or *secret* languages. For example, there are probably not enough hand signals in *Common Orcish Signs* to explain the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus to another character. Your DM will determine whether this matters or not depending on the description of the language in the *world language list* and potentially how creative you can get with grunting and signing differential equations.

### Special or Secret Languages

***Draconic.*** *Secret*; rarely studied by those other than spellcasters and people with a close tie to dragons, and very difficult to learn. This ancient tongue is the language of true dragons, dating back to before the near extinction of their kind in the Great Freeze. Every dragon seems to have their own dialect of it, and it is intertwined with the secrets of Draconic Magic. This language is spoken by Dragons, Half-Dragons, and members of dragon cults.

***'Tsilivo.*** *Special*; of Avian origin and difficult for others to learn. This is a whistle-based *creole* (a mix made from other languages) that includes many basic terms, but is hard to use for discussion of complex topics. It comes with the very interesting benefit that Avian speakers can project it up to five miles away and remain understandable, while non-Avian speakers can do so for around two miles. Spoken by some members within every Avian community.

***Common Orcish Signs.*** *Special*; of Orcish origin, meant to be easy to learn. This is a sign language developed by the Orcish Empire that has become a standard in most Orcish-majority regions as a way to communicate to groups who may not share a spoken language. The language was developed for military purposes, so it has a lot of signs for complex battle maneuvers but might be missing signs for even basic peacetime topics. Some signs also require some sort of pole-like object to communicate, like the sign for "hit them *this hard* with your weapon." You can not speak Orcish Signs if you are *restrained* or *grappled*, other than of course the sign for "I am bound, someone help me." Pretty much any standing army of Orcs has some who understand it, and some Orcs who otherwise do not speak a language may know Orcish Signs.