Taal

Taal is the language of the fallen Mól Empire, whose masters were ancient hobgoblins, and it is the eldest tongue of the Mól family. It is written, and written beautifully: a flowing right-to-left hand, the imperial script in which the Empire set down everything it meant to keep.

Most of what survives of the Empire survives in Taal, cut into stone and metal. A plaque in a keep in the western mountains reads by their hands chains were lifted, by their loyalty they earned passage. Inside an electrum ring in Torgun Kurvroc’s house in Loshev is engraved the Muharib house motto: By thy service and by thy loyalty, all paths open to thy sovereignty. The finest horses ever bred in Erôth were Mól-bred in Idir, and their breed-names are Taal still, as is the name of Al-Sāmiyah, which translates as the exalted matriarch.

A Taal name marks an old family and an educated one. Daric, meaning “striker”, is such a name; a bare G’lin nickname is the opposite signal. Nor is the tongue entirely dead. A woman of the Empire’s own household, woken seven centuries after it fell, spoke Taal when she came to.