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Aiffe β Condemnation
Published: 2013-08-25 01:41:22 +0000 UTC; Views: 2023; Favourites: 38; Downloads: 4
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Collaboration with . I have her permission to post it here.Tumblr link! I recommend checking that out because there's some notes on the language used in this picture, plus you get to see a bit more of the context. (I may upload the whole thing with the ask and all, but I wanted to get the large version of this animation out there since we worked so hard on it.)
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Comments: 8
Wow! This one is amazing! Thumbs up! *and up it goes to my favorite folder*
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I saw this on tumblr and I was axtatic! the poor thing, the females in his life betrayed him. but why? I dont get it, he seemed to be doing all he was told to do. for power? greed?
and, btw, can we maybe get a trenslation of the text? I tried to decipher it but couldnt.
these are so great 
have you considered collaborating on an actual comic of his story? I think, if you can spare the time and effort, people would love. I certainly would!
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(Without saying too much, they do have a reason for it. He definitely did something to piss them off.)
And yep the text is pretty undecipherable since a lot of it is words I made up, and the cases aren't available anywhere. It's: βOrthβarnus Llotht z'ressum ussar, xsa ussa khelthetan silβolt Istaghavraem.β And this is how it breaks down (anything not from the wordlist we invented):
The language is verb/subject/object, and uses cases rather than prepositions.
"orth'arn" is basically invest/bestow, it's in the past tense there. We used the conjugation from the wordlist, since it's fine for just past tense, but we'll probably come back and do more with verbs later.
Lloth is pretty obvious, the t on the end indicates the genitive case.
"z'ress" is "power," that's straight from the wordlist; the ending indicates the instrumental case.
"ussa" is the first-person pronoun, here in the locative case. It's from the wordlist, and though I adapted the case system from some of the pronouns on that wordlist, it doesn't use the English-like system there.
"xsa" is on the wordlist as "damn," but my drow don't have a concept of Hell in that sense (they do have an afterlife, it's just different) so I consider it to mean more "condemn."
"ussa" again, this time unmarked because it's in the nominative case.
"khelthe" basically means...any living being (or the remains of one) that has a body and is/was animate. (The root "khel" is on the wordlist, though I don't like how it's used for words like "everybody" verbatim, that's going to change.) It's usually used to mean animals, but doesn't preclude people. It's in the accusative case.
"sil'ol" is "name," here in the genitive case.
Istaghavrae is obviously his name, here in the instrumental case.
Putting all this together, a literal translation: "With the power bestowed on me by Lloth, I condemn the creature named Istaghavrae." (Taking a few liberties with concepts that don't translate perfectly.)
A smoother English translation would be, "By the power vested in me by Lloth, I condemn the creature known as Istaghavrae."
I also used the idea of two alphabets (caps and lowercase) differently from how we use them--similar to how in Japanese, hiragana is used for most things, with katakana used for foreign words and emphasis, rather than using capitalization to begin sentences and mark proper nouns as English does, the drow (and all elves, for that matter) use one alphabet for regular speech/writing and another for magic, since magic is intoned differently. This is all in caps, so it's intoned as a spell, and is the beginning of one.
The last bubble there is just "ISTAGHAVRAEM," which I imagine has to be pants-pissingly terrifying, to hear your own name spoken in that tone. The context does not help any with that.
And
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I really admire you for going all that way to modify the language. it sounds as if the 'cases' used are like what I have in my own native tongue. (I speak hebrew. english is a taught language for me.) we have seven structures for each root word, according to active, passive, usage and so on, and then there are conversions for past tense, present and future tanses. and there are also male and female endings for each word.
Β I do have several languages pending that I'm in the process of building. one is what I call "ancient dialect", the other is drow and I had plans for elven as well. but these are all drafts since I dont have the time. I use the generic languages for now and will edit once I finish my degree and have less stress piled on my shoulders.
but thinking aobut my work, even though my spoken language is so different than english and I could well use it in my creation, I never did. perhaps because I write in english most of the time, and so I think in terms of the english grammer.
kudos for branching out beyond that! I think its a great concept, and the writing itself looks great
that said, poor thing. *pats Ista* he looks so forlorn in that pic you put below this one, its painful. I lean towards the healer characters and all of them (the three that I have) are acheing to help him right now.
of course I'd like to see a comic! even if its black and white it would be awsome. but I get how the blog helps with developing the story arc. I develop characters by RP, but its much the same. another person asks your charcter questions and your character reacts and tells its story bit by bit. I'll be waiting for more!!
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*nod* I thought you might, since your profile says you're in Israel. Many languages have cases! also natively speaks a language with cases, and did most of the heavy lifting on that, since English is the only language I speak well, and I struggle with cases. I definitely think drawing on Hebrew would work well.
This language is still a WIP, but we burned through most of the case stuff in one all-nighter. I'm still combing through the semi-official wordlist, pruning words I don't like (some of them are just, REALLY, guys?) and adding words I think would be useful. Plus we have way more grammar and stuff to do.
The eight cases we have now are nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental (which sometimes kinda acts as ablative?), locative, vocative, and...one we kinda made up so I'm not sure if there's an official grammatical word for it, but I've been calling it the potential, which is kind of similar to would/should/could, though it isn't related to past or future tense, and can be used to express envy or regret. Eight just keeps cropping up in their stuff, too--it's a magic number for them.
Nouns also have genders, but the default gender is female, so only the male words are marked. The female default carries through a lot of it--like the default pronoun is "il," which can be understood as "she," and "he" is "iluk."
We have ideas about Elvish too, but for story-related reasons it would be a more complicated language, so we're kind of putting it off. We couldn't even begin on it without having the drow language first. Basically, in this version of it, they started out as the same language. The drow tongue (Ilythiirra, I don't care if that word has a different history in canon) changed relatively little, because the drow were isolationist and didn't interact much with other cultures. Surface elves, on the other hand, ended up having their language influenced by many other peoples, and also developed the habit of creating deliberately obfuscating slang, as a sort of gatekeeping to make Elvish harder for non-elves to learn. So it's both hard for the reason English is hard (being cobbled together from a lot of different languages and having a lot of redundancies and inconsistencies) and hard just to be assholes about it. It develops at a pretty fast rate, to the point that the way an individual elf speaks does change over their lifetime, to keep up with it. There are also several different dialects, which vary mostly in pronunciation, but can at times be almost unintelligible to each other, though trade keeps the basics consistent and keeps it from splitting into actual different languages.
What this results in is that it would be relatively easy for a surface elf to learn the drow language, since it bears many similarities to the root of their own language, but drow would struggle with surface Elvish, because of all the added junk. Istaghavrae himself speaks several languages aside from his native one, including Common and Deep Speech, and probably knows enough to get by with the basics in the Abyssal language, but never really manages to learn modern Elvish (though he can sort of pick out parts of it just from similarities to his language, like basic things--he's even better with ancient texts because it's closer) in part because there's considerable animosity between surface elves and drow...to say nothing of reactions to his affliction.
We don't exactly RP, but we work out plot events and also feelings/dialogue and stuff in IM, it's a very loose format, but basically the story exists, just not in a form that lends itself to easy consumption.
And awwww at the healers. <3 I'm afraid he needs more healing than anyone can give....
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well, it defiently would have helped if I had another me. by that I mean another person pasionate about my world as I am, who would help with building it. though I help Ril and she helps me, we have different worlds and Mirro is based off earth while Averine is an entirely different world. we share ideas, but also try to keep originality in our own works, which is a delicate balance. having to work on it all alone in terms of structure and languages and so one, is not easy.
Β
I did notice Drow love the number eight. I assumed it was because of the spider goddess. I tried coming up with sound reasons for it, and in my own world I came up with this: my drow goddess (Maliyoth, or Liyoth, if you will) was the last spirit to stop the big race among the stars and join the other spirits that were standing still in awe of all that was around them. unlike her sister, Teu, who was the fourth to stop, she was the eighth. Liyoth was the first to claim her number, as she was proud of being last, and actually joined the others only because she could bare being torn from her 'sister', her joined spirt, no more.Β since she was proud of being eighth, she created her first children with eight limbs, just like the third gods created the seal- like creatures as his children with three limbs, for example. (not all gods followed that rule, but then, some have greater egos than others.) every creature she created had eight limbs until they created the firt sentient beings, at which point she joined with her sister to create their children together. XD my drow goddess is a complex creature and due to things that happened throught the history, she became angry at the other gods and tot his day thinks they stole her sister from her. anyway, since she likes the number eight so much, her children think its sacred. that's why I removed the snake whip from that culture. it struck me as wholly out of place. I found a good replacement and made it a holy artifact of a drowess. (I'm currently in the process of writing a race sheet on my drow, depicting history, creation, culture, subspecies and so on. I hope to upload it here when its ready.)
as for languages, though my drow and elves are cousins, I dont think I will keep the same language for them, though I bet there will be some joined words. and of course I wil need a more guttural dialcet of drow for my deeper subspecies. I have my work cut out for me.Β heavens have mercy.
well, by RP I mean we brainstorm over IM, then post at each other from IC pov. we're not using dive and such. its freeform.Β we just found it more fun this way. we get to develop chars by trial and error.
XD I have mind healers as well. all in all, its theri empathy that draws them to him. especiallly Ther who had his fair share of grief concerning drowesses.
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