G’lin

G’lin is the living tongue of the goblin-kin, spoken by hobgoblins, bugbears and goblins alike and by anyone else with strong roots to the fallen Mól Empire. It descends not from the imperial Taal of the courts but from the dialect the Empire’s lower classes spoke, which leaves it nearer the goblin-kin’s original speech than the imperial tongue is. Those who read both set it beside Taal’s flowing hand and call it debased and simplified.

The survey of the tongues of Erôth holds that G’lin is not written. It turns up written all the same. A tarnished Mól ring out of a mountain cache carries G’lin etched around its inner face, and a wooden ring banded with iron carries two letters cut in it. What script it has is plain to the point of being mistaken for random scratches, and looks almost hieroglyphic to anyone who cannot read it.

It is a working language and not a relic. A hobgoblin sentry’s warning carried across a night camp in the western mountains. A hobgoblin knelt at a stacked-stone grave and prayed in G’lin to Drozom, pouring water so the winter freeze would strengthen the soul. And in the Valley of Doom Mikhail Kethrel spoke it to Al-Sāmiyah, to prove to the herders who had taken her eggs that she could listen and reason. She answered him.