Peren

Peren is a language of the Mól family, and it is the common speech of Erôth. Peredhel’s far reach and the constant threat of war carried it everywhere: merchants and commoners across the continent fall back on Peren when they share nothing else, and it is about as universally embraced as a language can be. It is written as well as spoken.

It is a child of Taal, the tongue of the fallen Mól Empire, and the descent is plain enough. The Peren were bred as slaves inside that empire and learned to speak in their masters’ house before they pulled it down. People and language carry the one name, which is a standing source of confusion; the language has long since outrun the people, and most who speak Peren are not Peren.

It does ordinary work everywhere. Darkwood, the timber near as hard as steel and as light as pine, is Ki laati in Peren. An Amultan soldier drafting descriptions of two missing men wrote them out first in her own tongue, scratched that through, and set them down again in Peren so that the party could read them. And Telvanius, the enslaved scholar who compiled thirty volumes on the Empire while the Empire watched him do it, wrote the whole compendium in Peren.