VOR'KETH SSHEN

Liturgical Dialect · Parent Language: Grakh'tor · Restricted to the Vor'keth

There is a version of Grakh'tor that I will never document properly, because the people who speak it do not speak it to me, and the people who could tell me about it have told me only enough to confirm that I am right to suspect its existence. I have been given perhaps a dozen words of Vor'keth Sshen across thirty years, each one offered deliberately, at a moment of the speaker's choosing, never mine.

— G.C.P.S.A., private notes, 1198 A.P.

Vor'keth Sshen - the Witnessing Tongue - is the specialised dialect of standard Grakh'tor used internally by the Vor'keth shamanic order for theological communication, ceremonial liturgy, and restricted record-keeping. It is not a separate language in any structural sense: its grammar, core vocabulary, and phonology are entirely those of standard Grakh'tor. What distinguishes it is a layer of specialised theological vocabulary unavailable in the general tongue, an evidentiality marking system that does not exist in standard Grakh'tor grammar, and a restricted notation script used for the order's most significant internal records.

Plinius's knowledge of this dialect is, by a wide margin, the thinnest and most speculative of any language documentation in his collected notes. He has never been taught it. He has no informant within the order. What he knows, he has assembled from a small number of terms that Uzrul Ironteeth has used in conversation -- always, Plinius has come to believe, deliberately, and never carelessly -- and from inference based on what the dialect would logically need to contain given what he has learned about the Vor'keth's actual function.

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There is a register within Vor'keth Sshen restricted even further, to the inner council alone, used for the notation script that records the fifth movement of the Grak'thun Vor'shen and the Grakh'shen Dal's most sensitive entries. This innermost register is not addressed in this article because Plinius has no access to it whatsoever, not even the incidental exposure that produced his limited knowledge of the broader dialect. Aethon Deepmeadow has partial access to this innermost register, taught to him directly by the inner council for reasons neither party has explained to any outside party.

Writing System

Vor'keth Sshen uses standard Grak'vel script for any of its vocabulary that needs to be recorded in ordinary transactional contexts, which is rare, since the dialect's specialised vocabulary mostly concerns matters the order does not record in ordinary contexts at all.

For its most significant records, the order uses a restricted notation system that Plinius has inferred exists but has never seen and cannot describe with any confidence. He understands, through the Vor'keth organisation and profession articles he has compiled, that this notation is derived from the Vor'thek clan symbol tradition rather than from the low-prestige Grak'vel transactional script, which would be consistent with everything else he has learned about how the Vor'keth regard their own restricted knowledge: they treat it with the dignity of identity, not the indignity of a trade ledger.

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The inner council's notation system combines elements of the Vor'thek clan symbol logography with a set of supplementary marks the inner council has developed for theological concepts that have no equivalent in the clan symbol tradition -- concepts like the four evidentiality categories below, ley-system terminology, and references to specific historical events the public tradition does not acknowledge. The script is taught only to inner council members and, in at least one documented exception, to Aethon Deepmeadow. No written specimen of this script has ever left Vor'keth custody.

Geographical Distribution

Spoken wherever Vor'keth are stationed: primarily at the Caldera of Grakh'vol and at Keth'voral, with a thinner distribution among the shamanic advisory postings throughout the confederacy's clan territories. The dialect is not geographically distinct in the way regional accents of standard Grakh'tor are; it is restricted by membership rather than by location, and a Vor'keth posted to a remote frontier advisory station speaks the same Vor'keth Sshen as one stationed permanently at the Caldera.

Phonology

Identical to standard Grakh'tor. Vor'keth Sshen introduces no new sounds and no phonological rules distinct from the parent language. Plinius notes this as mildly surprising given how distinct the dialect is in other respects, but it is consistent with a restricted-vocabulary dialect rather than a genuinely divergent language: the Vor'keth have not needed new sounds, only new words and a new grammatical category.

Morphology

Vor'keth Sshen follows standard Grakh'tor compounding morphology, with one significant addition: a set of four grammatical particles that function as evidentiality markers, attached to or following a statement to indicate the speaker's epistemic relationship to its content. This system does not exist in standard Grakh'tor and, as far as Plinius is aware, exists nowhere else in Grakh'tor's documented linguistic family.

Plinius has noted the structural similarity between this evidentiality system and the one he has documented for Vhessen, the language of the vanished Vhaasenn people whose ruins lie near Locus Incertorum. He considers this similarity too significant to be coincidental and has not yet been able to determine its source. He has raised the question directly with Uzrul Ironteeth, who did not answer it, which Plinius has come to interpret as a confirmation he is not permitted to have stated to him directly.

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The Vor'keth developed their evidentiality markers through documented historical contact with the Vhaasenn ruins at Locus Incertorum, predating the Roman excavation by many centuries. The Vor'keth have maintained a relationship with the site, and by extension with whatever remains of Vhaasenn knowledge accessible to those who know how to look, that they have never disclosed to Roman scholarship. The evidentiality system in Vor'keth Sshen is not parallel evolution. It is borrowed, adapted from a structural feature of Vhessen grammar that the Vor'keth encountered long before Plinius did, and reapplied to their own theological needs. This is among the most significant facts Plinius does not know that this collection has established.

Dictionary

3 Words.

Status

Living, restricted. Spoken and read only by initiated and full Vor'keth practitioners. Not taught outside the order.

Spoken By

The Vor'keth (Warlord-Priests of the Grakh'tor Clan Confederacy) exclusively. Approximately two hundred living speakers as of 1200 A.P.

Root Languages

• GRAKH'TOR

Common Phrases

• Vor'thek krul'vel sshen (the acknowledged do not cease to witness) - the order's unofficial motto.
• Sshen'ral (senior witness) - inner council title.
• Rhaa'sshen (witness beyond witnessing / the unknowable acknowledged) - a term Plinius has heard once, from Uzrul Ironteeth, who would not explain it further.