Abandoned Vernacular

Question: The people of Arvum call those who have not bent the knee 'Abandoned' but is there terminology in the other direction? What do the Abandoned call the citizens of the Compact? I realize that the Abandoned are composed of many different people, many different cultures so there might not be a universal word/phrase but maybe there is a term that several of them use that is especially common in the groups that did eventually bend the knee?

Answer: One intentional misnomer is to think of the Abandoned as a single group, but there would be a good amount of slang that would vary an awful lot. 'Prods' to refer to prodigals that have finally bent the knee and joined the Compact would be a derisive term, though since Abandoned clans war against each other far more than they do against the Compact, most would just be using to mock large groups of Abandoned that bent the knee. 'the bowed' or 'the sworn' are general terms for people in the Compact, relating how they all have vows of fealty, with the former being more derogatory. The Mourning Isles tend to have much more hostile terminology, with 'slavers' being a frequent term to just describe Thrax.

Cannibal Abandoned

Question: Alistair jokes his parents were cannibals who tried to eat him. (Or is it a joke?) Are there any wild cannibal Abandoned tribes, or is eating your own kind too crazy even for Abandoned?

Answer: A tiny minority, but very real. Now, what most of the Compact wouldn't admit to, is even most of these tiny minority are pantheon offshoots rather than shamanism. The Clan of the Feast, for example, was started by a crazy seraph who was excommunicated for questionable teachings about Mangata and her Reflection, long before it was discovered why some of the townsfolk of his parish were disappearing, and that nomadic group does steal people, ritually sacrifice them, and then eat them in tribute to Mangata and Her Dark Mirror. Now, probably no more than a percent if all Abandoned, and probably more likely to raid other Abandoned and eat them, they are so rare they more make up horror stories than a real threat. But they do exist, and the 'Bone Gnawer' tribe fought recently by Redrain did not refer to animals, for example.

Shav Culture

Question: What is the general Shav culture and life like? Is it equivilant to historical barbarian tribes like Gauls or Mongols? Or is it a post apocalyptic fight for daily survival? Further are there any vestiges of former cultures such as what we recently saw with the Shave of House Marin, or is that a unique case?

Answer: Shav/Abandoned culture is kind of a misnomer, as there's definitely no single unified one. There are thousands of different tribes of Abandoned and hundreds of different cultures, though there's some main strands.

There's Abandoned that were never, at any point, members of the Compact or parts of noble houses. These are mostly found in the Northlands, as in days before the Reckoning the Northlands were almost entirely barbarian raiders against the more developed southern lands, particularly against House Valardin. The Reckoning saw most of the tribes unite under Queen Valeria, but perhaps seventy percent of the tribes fell under demonic control during the Reckoning, and have the largest porportion of extremely barbaric and savage shav tribes. Most of the more extreme practices, like human sacrifice, ritualized cannibalism, demon worship and so on are found in Northlands shavs, though it's not even close to homogeneous. Abandoned tribes are vastly more likely to be fighting each other than raiding the Compact, and there's cases when dozen of tribes, clans and former houses ally against one another and have fairly significant wars that the Compact barely hears about.

Secondly, there's the former houses that were lost during the Reckoning. The term 'Abandoned' largely comes from them, as the vast majority of the nobles and their domains stood and fought against the demonic invasion rather than flee for the safety of Arx, attempting to defend their holdings. Most of the tribal identities come as bastardizations of their old house identities, and some stayed relatively intact a thousand years later. Keep in mind, during the re-conquest of Arvum after the Reckoning, many of the Abandoned were pushed off the same ancestral land they defended and given to other branches of the same family that did come to Arx, or other noble houses, so there's some thousand year old grudges over stolen land, or betrayal by family.

Then there's the other phases of societal collapse. The next several hundred years after the Reckoning were constant warfare and generations of trying to regain control over pats of Arvum, as essentially nothing was under significant Compact control -but- Arx, Sanctum, Farhaven, Maelstrom, Bastion and the Lycene city-states. Details about this are particularly vague, as all history was lost, but Arvum was just starting to come into parity between Abandoned and Compact control by the time of the Elven War, which was another genocidal conflict that saw humanity nearly wiped out, and virtually all holdings of man falling, save much of the same fortresses that withstood the Reckoning. And this, in turn, produced another wave of Abandoned houses that developed independent of the Compact for another 500 years. And then following that, the Crownbreaker wars a couple hundred years ago tore the Compact apart again, and saw another wave of collapse, and surge of Abandoned.

So in short, there have been at least three periods of effective collapse of civilization, and all of them have produced independent Abandoned houses, and all have their own cultures, traditions. Some are post apocalyptic fights for survival, some hundreds of miles away in isolation past hard land that hasn't been visited in centuries and completely forgotten, are probably pretty well developed. With millions of square miles, a lack of reliable maps, and dangerous exploration, there's a lot out there that the Compact is at best only dimly aware of.

Shav Languages

Question: There have been several times that I have seen people slip into full conversations in Shav languages in public places. Most often, I have seen it happen amongst Redrain and Thrax characters using Northlands Shav, the context being implied that it's a second/native language in the northern cities of the Compact.

Since Abandoned are bad news and Prodigals are looked upon with varying degrees of suspicion, how should we be reacting to shav languages being openly spoken in the city? Are shav dialects looked upon as truly secondary languages in the Compact and, therefore, a-okay? Or should we be putting on our red 'Make Arvum Great Again' hats and getting huffy? Do Redrain and Thrax speak Northlands Shav natively up in their northern cities or is it strictly Arvani everywhere in the Compact? How should we feel when nobility have full conversations in public places in non-Arvani languages -- are those feelings different when they are Prodigal nobility compared to non-Prodigal nobility?

To expand on the previous question, there has been a lot of confusion about Shav Languages. I have played for awhile and over that period of time, have seen many people striving to learn more and more of the Shav languages and personally have had knowledge of them used in prps, including staff run prps. (edited again. Thank you to everyone who pointed out the misunderstanding of what was meant by that post written on a place I do not ready and only heard about. I believe the core of my questions are still pertinent)

I understand that it shouldn't be the primary language used in the city, but it seems odd to liken shav languages to thieves cant. To compare it to modern day America, when I attend family reunions, people toss in quips and small conversations in the language of our ancestors... even though we've been Americans for many generations. So, the question is... is it really that far fetched to do so in Arx with shav languages? Especially for those houses considered Prodigal Houses? Couldn't it understandably be seen as a cultural identifier? Such as for Redrain. We are not shavs, but some of our houses were up until recent generations.

Answer: To clarify something, none of the shav languages are precursor languages that existed before the Reckoning. All of them are pidgins created from Arvani, and an entirely different tongue for each of the regional dialects that was very much not Arvani, and the people that have a clue talking about this might have missed the implications from it, as it was to show the different foreign influence on each of the different regions, which is hard to discuss without spoilers, but all of the languages are more recent developments, with 'recent' being the last thousand years.

That said, it's been a thousand years with at least three different apocalyptic eras that saw a complete breakdown of civilization and annihilation of history just during that epoch. When a language has existed for thirty generations, it's safe to assume some people would begin to think of that as an important aspect of Abandoned cultural heritage, and it's entirely sensible that prodigal houses would maintain it, even if it would be seen as crass and uncomfortable in the eyes of Compact traditionalists to have public conversations in the language of The Enemy. But there's a few important factors to consider.

The pidgins were developed by Abandoned tribes to identify each other and signify they are not part of the Compact. Groups that were completely isolated obviously would not have developed a shared tongue that is universal to the literally thousands of different Abandoned houses, tribes, and clans. Extraordinarily isolated groups (which would be a very distinct minority), might have lost Arvani, but they also would not have gotten a shared shav tongue, it would be a unique and completely individual language for that tribe, and no player created house has fallen into that category (nor would I approve one currently).

It's considered edgy for nobles to learn it and speak it, though there's practical reasons, but it's very near universal for Abandoned tribes to still speak Arvani at least in a close enough dialect to be understood. Keep in mind again that Abandoned, and Arvani regions, are not ethnically homogeneous. They are not racially distinct from other Arvani at all. This does mean that one of the most feared Abandoned chieftains, if she didn't have tattoos or other distinctive ritual scarring, could likely pass for a regular member of the Compact with a change of clothes and hairstyle. Think of what this means in terms of feelings towards distinctive Abandoned marking, and potential Compact paranoia. And this cuts both ways, with Abandoned groups intensely distrusting outsiders and if they can't speak shav, they are probably Compact soldiers in furs trying to lure them out to kill them. Combine this with the overwhelming majority of Abandoned groups being hostile towards one another with generational blood feuds, and you have an awful lot of cultural baggage with shav languages.

Now, over the last thousand years, houses have joined and left the Compact. Some that had long periods of being Abandoned might still speak shav in private, and it became part of their heritage, but it's not more of a, 'Remember when our family were pirates 200 years ago? We talked like this to identify each other', and not necessarily seen as a regional aggregate in the way a lot of players would think. The oldest and proudest houses though, that can trace their roots back to the Reckoning, -never- had periods like that, so it could be a point of pride that they were never reduced to such a state or had a need to learn it. At best, it would be seen as a low-tongue vulgate, that might be embraced as a form of rebellion against formality.

Shav Vs. Arvani

Question: As a shav, would Arvani or the shav dialect have been learned first?

Answer: Arvani. That's the mother language for most shav, and the dialects are akin to a thieves' cant rather than a true language. Which means that it needs something to base itself on as a foundation. So Arvani is the native language for most shav (there may be a few exceptions but they are exceptionally rare) and the shav tongues learned later.

prodigal

Answer: While the Abandoned are all those men who live outside the law and protection of the compact, these men do sometimes find their way in - through conquering, capturing, swearing fealty to a Great House, or any number of reasons a displaced person might find a new home. These former-Abandoned are referred to as 'prodigals', as a reference to an old folktale about a prodigal son's homecoming.

Prodigals are members of the Compact, with the full complement of rights owed all citizens. How much they blend in with the general populace (and their welcome) can vary wildly.