Eastport Trade Language
The language with which most Black Steel personnel grew up, represented within the game by English, is regarded and used among the trade empires of the Broken Sea region as a trade pidgin, relating to and sharing words with many other languages in the region and abroad. Almost all humans in civilized countries known to Black Steel personnel speak this language to at least a minimal extent, especially to the extent they deal with trade and other matters of foreign exchange, and most sentient beings who deal in any way with humans do so in this tongue as well. Proficiency with the language varies widely from place to place and from person to person, and differing dialects can sometimes make communication challenging, but most people are able to convey and understand simple and especially commercially relevant ideas in this tongue, from the high walls of Illenia in the north to the palaces of Havandia in the south, from the university of Athelenia in the distant west to wild desert plains of the Teigarant Freelands in the east, and perhaps beyond.
Though little regarded as a "high language" by some in the more distant reaches of the world known to Black Steel, this "trade pidgin" is in fact a rich and complex language, sufficient in breadth of expression not only for commercial purposes, but to serve as the default language of international diplomacy. It is the first language of most coastal towns and provinces up and down the Fire Coast, where most Black Steel personnel were born, and also of Eastport itself, perhaps the single most important trade city in the known world. Moreover, in the course of their research, Theril, Dargon, and Quix have found documents supposed to be many hundreds of years old, in countries separated by thousands of miles, written in a language that appears to be an archaic form of the very "trade pidgin" they speak. The origins and history of this language have not been explored in any depth by Black Steel personnel, but if Dargon's theories are correct, it could shed light on the cultural history of the entire known world.
Grat'han
Another surprisingly widespread language is shared by the many tribes of Grat'ha; though dialects have diverged significantly in some cases, virtually all human inhabitants of the known jungles speak variations of the same basic language. The similarities are strong enough that members of different tribes separated by hundreds of miles of dense jungle can usually make themselves understood to one another if members are introduced. Grat'han tribes tend to be heavily steeped in ancient traditions, and this likely affects their language as well as the rest of their culture, but Theril would nonetheless estimate that the languages of distant tribes have only been diverging for a few hundred years at most. Another possibility is that widespread language vectors are keeping distant tribes in relatively close communication and therefore limiting language drift, but no candidates for this role have as yet been found. Llaesira's Grat'han trade network might qualify, depending on its extent, but according to observations by Herring, Theril, and Telaeri, as well as Llaesira's testimony, the network arrived in the northern reaches of the jungle best known to Black Steel too recently to have been a factor there. Recent discussions with Llaesira and especially Dotrum however have suggested to Theril that there really might have been a universal Grat'han language and culture just a few centuries in the past, based perhaps upon worship of (and intervention by) the serpent-like jungle gods whom Dotrum worships.
Other Human Language Groups
In addition to the language with which Daryan and Osiavia were raised, purportedly spoken in the extreme east, far across the northern sea, any number of local languages and dialects are known to various Black Steel personnel, including various traditional languages used by people who dwell inland from the Fire Coast, and several western language groups encountered by Dargon and Quix in their recent travels. Various dialects of Sheradi language spoken along the peninsula are also known, some of which are eccentric enough to be incomprehensible even to those who grew up with the language in less isolated regions such as the Itheshian Confederacy (these languages also bear some resemblance to that which is grudgingly shared by Ephinos and Rhedas). Naturally, the native languages of the most powerful trade nations in the region have impacted local dialects of the trade language considerably, so that people who have traded long in the area are usually able to communicate with bits and pieces of Espaish in rural Espava; Shalasian inland across the Shalasa desert, especially among its nomads and bandits, and even Old Havandian in the high courts of Virhas and on the wide plains between jungle and sea. More opaque to the average merchant are the deep, guttural language of Korv, in which Thorm Casati alone of Black Steel personnel is fluent, and the various dialects of Teigaric spoken in the eastern deserts and arid plains. Korvan in particular appears to share less in common with local dialects of the trade language than with the language of the nation's non-human sentient population.
Other Races' and Non-Human Language
With the magic inherent in their genetic make-up, which can allow for relatively convenient long-distance communication, and their long generations, which tends to slow linguistic drift, it should come as no surprise that the elven peoples known to Black Steel have far less diversity of languages than their more numerous human counterparts. The various dialects spoken by woodland elves encountered in the Grat'han jungles, the tropical forests of Scabbard Isle, and throughout Tornbring Vale, are closely related to each other, to those of the elves among whom Theril lived some of the earliest years of her life near the Fire Coast, and even to the native language of Black Steel's single resident moonlight elf, from somewhere in the distant northwest. The shadow elves of course have been (according to most histories) separated from the rest of their race for many thousands of years, but even their language, at least as spoken in Night Harbor, is reminiscent enough of their distant cousins' tongues to invite inevitable comparisons (though typically not comprehension). Goblinoid languages, by contrast, are wildly divergent, to the point where two tribes living within a dozen miles of each other might not be able to understand each other's tongue at all. The various types of beastmen known to members of Black Steel, with their differing vocal apparatuses, have if possible even greater difficulty in understanding one another. To the extent that goblinoids and beastmen interact with humans at all, the prevailing human language in the region, or a dialect of the Eastport trade language, is almost always used for the purpose. Very often, these are even the languages used for negotiations between tribes of goblinoids or beastmen, when such negotiations are held at all.
Other sentient species' languages are little known to Black Steel, as few have heard them spoken except on rare occasion. Those dwarves, dragons, nethygi, and the like who have spoken with Black Steel members at all have almost always done so in human languages, speaking too few words in their own tongues for any assessment to be made about those languages -- certainly not about their distribution among those creatures' societies. The same might be said as well of the serpent language of Grat'ha, only recently encountered, mostly in rituals associated with the jungle gods.
