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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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List of questions for Bloodraven (Lya with us this time):
1: Seastone Chair. What up with that? (20 minutes total for comprehensive, non-technical answer)
2: Anything Lya wants to ask.

Total time: 5 years.

... Lya delays the inevitable end of everything for another 100 years, not to prevent total oblivion for as long as possible, but because it would interrupt her studies in an unignorable fashion.
 
The fact that Draconic has no real way to address someone superior to you is an automatic disqualification in my books. You don't run your court on a language that is incapable of expressing differences in rank adequately.
 
I'll cede that. It seems sensible enough to find some other courtly tongue, if any.

But High Valyrian is probably the best for our purposes of wide-scale unification as an official language.
 
Azel said:
The fact that Draconic has no real way to address someone superior to you is an automatic disqualification in my books. You don't run your court on a language that is incapable of expressing differences in rank adequately.
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So, any meeting between dragons is solved by body language?
 
While I really don't like it, Valyrian seems really our best bet. Though I hope Westerosi and Low Valyrian will merge into Imperial over time.
 
Just think of it like High Gothic and Low Gothic. ;)

Edit: That is to say, one is the language that is kept in stabler form by people who tend to live far longer than the peons around them, and the other is the amalgamation of hundreds of tongues, with their own sub-dialects depending on region... or continent... or plane.
 
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DragonParadox said:
OK Finally polished off Asha's character sheet (There was a lot of indecision about which prestige class to build towards). You will be getting it in the upcoming update.
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I completely forgot! If Asha was with Theon and Moonsong, she must have leveled up too! That's two baby PCs at level 4. :D

I must say, I'm very excited for our invasion.

Also, regarding our official language, there does need to eventually be an official language.

My suggestion is to have some top-tier linguists, maybe like a couple hundred or so, work together for years and come up with an easy to speak and read/write language entirely, perhaps drawing from existing languages to make transition easier. This they teach at schools to all children or to any adults who want to learn. And in the meantime, while said official language (which hereby will be referred to as Imperium unless a better name comes up) disseminates properly, we just split it up by continent. Westeros is governed in Common, Essos in High Valyrian (since all the low Valyrian Languages can relate to High Valyrian better than they can to other Low Valyrian languages).

Government officials are required to learn both due to necessary cross-continental communication.
 
I like the idea of mashing up the four elemental languages, make it a research action for an Aecanum of each planar alignment. :V
 
As I said a couple days ago, I still think Draconic would be best. We could simply add new vocabulary to make speaking with subordinates and superiors more practical.

Draconic is as close to a universal language as we're going to get in any D&D setting.
 
Either way with the languages, we control the schools and we control the future. Just have every single kid learn whatever we want the official language to be and it'll do the work all on its own. Granted, every few decades there'll be language drifts, and also regional & cultural drifts, but nothing that can't be adapted to.
 
I think we're approaching this whole thing from the wrong direction. While we should take heed of, and account for languages and try to sponsor certain tongues to have some semblance of consideration for what people in positions of office or court will speak, and also in aide of trade, the argument was that an empire with multiple official languages struggled to maintain cohesion and govern itself adeptly because of the degree to which drift could potentially disenfranchise subjects.

If every single government official has access to areas or objects that grant them universal, or near-to-universal understanding of languages, ala Tongues, then language is no longer a barrier. It is simply a logistical matter.

Ancient empires we know of did not have magic to solve problems via lateral thinking.

We do.
 
Crake said:
I think we're approaching this whole thing from the wrong direction. While we should take heed of, and account for languages and try to sponsor certain tongues to have some semblance of consideration for what people in positions of office or court will speak, and also in aide of trade, the argument was that an empire with multiple official languages struggled to maintain cohesion and govern itself adeptly because of the degree to which drift could potentially disenfranchise subjects.

If every single government official has access to areas or objects that grant them universal, or near-to-universal understanding of languages, ala Tongues, then language is no longer a barrier. It is simply a logistical matter.

Ancient empires we know of did not have magic to solve problems via lateral thinking.

We do.
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Lost of places with Tongues as an area effect would do wonders, but that doesn't mean I don't want to work towards an official language. For the legions alone, they'll be drawing from all of our kingdoms and provinces in Essos. I don't want to have to teach the men new languages while they're in the army, I'd much rather have done that while they were still children.
 
Again, it shouldn't be ignored as a concern, but it isn't so dire as to cause inability to adequately provide leadership and direction across our realm, or even stifle trade.
 
Crake said:
I think we're approaching this whole thing from the wrong direction. While we should take heed of, and account for languages and try to sponsor certain tongues to have some semblance of consideration for what people in positions of office or court will speak, and also in aide of trade, the argument was that an empire with multiple official languages struggled to maintain cohesion and govern itself adeptly because of the degree to which drift could potentially disenfranchise subjects.

If every single government official has access to areas or objects that grant them universal, or near-to-universal understanding of languages, ala Tongues, then language is no longer a barrier. It is simply a logistical matter.

Ancient empires we know of did not have magic to solve problems via lateral thinking.

We do.
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It's a good short term solution, but the spell tongues is quite high level so it's expensive to craft items for it, and it usually takes precious body slots that could have other magical items in its place. I think tongues needs the neck slot, so if you us an amulet of tongues you can't use an amulet of pfe.
 
Also, for teachers, I think we should use Calligraphy Wyrms instead of Arcanums to train our first generation of teachers. They're far cheaper.

It's obviously not a pressing need, but at some point we should start planning a school, one that doesn't teach magic like the Academy, but instead prepares massive numbers of teachers to be sent out into the Empire. We set up each teacher in a city or town (multiples for larger population centers) and have them provide a free education, teaching whatever standardized language we decide on, basic mathematics, maybe a bit of history, and some civics. Particularly promising students could be earmarked for recruitment into the Academy if they show signs of unusual intelligence or the first sparks of magic.

Each school could provide a simple meal for the students, too, which would improve childhood nutrition across the Empire and having somewhere to send the children for some portion of the day would allow their parents, most likely their mothers, to do more without being tied exclusively to childcare.

This would be relatively cheap for us and would be one of the first steps required to changing most of our citizenry from a great mass of ignorant commoners into a useful, sophisticated society. It's also a great method of acculturating the next generation to be more in line with what we see as the united culture of the Empire, rather than the various disparate cultures common to each region.
 
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Azel said:
The fact that Draconic has no real way to address someone superior to you is an automatic disqualification in my books. You don't run your court on a language that is incapable of expressing differences in rank adequately.
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Draconic can adress superiors, I'm interpreting Viserys' comment that it lacks the excessivly self-demeaning speechforms usual to adress the Bey from below.
Looking at the Draconomicon words for "above" and "below" exist, as well as Leader.

Just because a language comes from a culture of beings too proud to use particularly smarmy language doesn't mean it can't express rank at all.

@DragonParadox
Maybe you could throw in some IC-knowledge of the unusual aspects of Draconic compared to most mortal languages?
 
Goldfish said:
Also, for teachers, I think we should use Calligraphy Wyrms instead of Arcanums to train our first generation of teachers. They're far cheaper.

It's obviously not a pressing need, but at some point we should start planning a school, one that doesn't teach magic like the Academy, but instead prepares massive numbers of teachers to be sent out into the Empire. We set up each teacher in a city or town (multiples for larger population centers) and have them provide a free education, teaching whatever standardized language we decide on, basic mathematics, maybe a bit of history, and some civics. Particularly promising students could be earmarked for recruitment into the Academy if they show signs of unusual intelligence or the first sparks of magic.

Each school could provide a simple meal for the students, too, which would improve nutrition across the Empire and having somewhere to send the children for some portion of the day would allow their parents, most likely their mothers, to do more without being tied exclusively to childcare.

This would be relatively cheap for us and would be one of the first steps required to changing most of our citizenry from a great mass of ignorant commoners into a useful, sophisticated society.
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I don't even want to consider this unless the Calligraphy Wyrms are in the hands of loyal and experienced PCs. That seems like a far too easy way to get them stolen and into the hands of our enemies.
 
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