Language

Languages & Writing

Kor is the ancient common tongue of mortals. It was first spoken by the King to early Humanity and remained the inherited language of the Heir peoples that arose afterward. Kor predates writing and continued as the principal shared language throughout Riftmoor.

Voklek is the mysterious language of the Wardens, spoken among themselves while they used Kor when addressing mortals. The Wardens later taught Voklek to the Elves, and knowledge of it gradually became associated with scholarship and high education. Many ancient manuscripts, technical works, and taxonomic names are Voklek, and educated Elves traditionally formed the largest mortal body of Voklek speakers.

Kodigra is the writing system originally developed for Voklek and later adopted for Kor. Its highly rational phonetic design uses curved vowel symbols based on mouth position and straight-lined consonants systematically arranged around voiced and unvoiced sounds. Because Kodigra represents speech sounds rather than the vocabulary of a particular language, it proved readily adaptable to Kor and eventually became Riftmoor's standard system of writing. A reader can therefore recognize and pronounce a Voklek text written in Kodigra without necessarily understanding its meaning.

Author-side: Kodigra draws from Latin codex and Greek graph, giving it roughly the sense of a code for writing. Voklek (Latin vox: voice + Greek lex: speak). The Warden language was practically a mix of Latin and Greek and was the language used in Riftmoor's taxonomy.