ii. audio. after dark. both courts.

[vrykolakas]

[If anything, the Brucolac's voice sounds worse than ever, painfully scratchy and distinctly weary. The reception isn't perfect; he's sitting in the garden of the fortress at Redgate, where the lockets work, but the blood granite is still causing some interference.]

What languages do you speak? And what language would you say I'm speaking right now?

Comments

[ziggyzoggy]

[He laughs; he'd been serious, but so was Brucolac, apparently.] Worms ain't so bad. Ya ever see those ones that crawl on the bottom of the sea? We call 'em tube worms. Nothin' but jelly in those. Like eatin' sea water jelly.

Eels least got some meat on 'em. And eyes. [He licks his lips. Now he's made himself think about fish eyes. Might have to go raid the kitchen soon...]

[vrykolakas]

Turned my stomach long before I stopped eating solids. [Let him tell you about juice diets. (No).] We used to eat them when there was nothing else. To me, they taste like being hungry feels. Fucking awful.

Personally? Best thing I ever ate which came out of the sea was dolphin.

[ziggyzoggy]

[He nods, understanding now what the deal is with eels in particular.]

Not many dolphins come near the Isles--water be too shallow. We get sharks, though. And makrura. [A word which apparently has no equivalent in Salt...or, likely, any other language here.]

[vrykolakas]

They're vicious bastards. Only good on a plate. Makrura?

[ziggyzoggy]

Tear ya nets, too, if ya not careful.

[He looks surprised. Was that a translation hiccup? Have they found a flaw? 8D] Didn't translate?

[vrykolakas]

No. I've never heard of anything like it. [INTEREST.]

[ziggyzoggy]

[OH MAN, FASCINATING.]

They like huge crayfish. Armored shells. Speak Nerglish. They about [--he holds his hands about five or so feet apart--] that wide, at the shoulder.

Ya find 'em all over the coasts, any body of salt water. Fry 'em with pig fat and lemons. Or chiles.

[vrykolakas]

They speak?

[A THOUGHT.]

Do you have cray? Not crayfish, but cray, lobster-men.

[ziggyzoggy]

They gurgle and rasp. If ya speak Nerglish, it make sense--

No, but it sound a bit like makrura. Do cray speak?

[vrykolakas]

Hard to shut them up. From the waist up, they look human—or from the waist down, humans don't look cray.

[ziggyzoggy]

Ah. [An exaggerated nod.] Nah--makrura be crustacean all over. Just huge.

May be why that don't translate. [It's a thought.]

[vrykolakas]

Well, shit, we don't have trolls—

Though we have stories about trolls. So we have the words. [Aaaaah.]

[ziggyzoggy]

[La, curiouser and curiouser. He grunts. It's a difficult problem.] Like tangled vines. Pull one and ya make a knot.

I be Vol'jin.

[vrykolakas]

And you start questioning why you want to untangle them anyway.

I'm the Brucolac.

[ziggyzoggy]

The, anh? [It's asked with a grin and raised eyebrow.] As opposed to any other, a course.

[vrykolakas]

I like the clarity it provides.

[ :V ]

[ziggyzoggy]

It is a title?

[vrykolakas]

Somewhat. It just means the vampir.

[ziggyzoggy]

[A rumble, a nod.] And which langage is that in?

[vrykolakas]

Ah. Haha. It's based off a garbled kind of Quiesy. Archaic by now, too. It's a bastard, stubborn Dead language. [Literally. It's got dialects of silence and gesture so even liches with sewn-up mouths can speak it! ...hurray.] I was speaking it to the quivering Latin-Franconianist before.

[ziggyzoggy]

[Dead languages, eh? Fun times. Of course, it would make sense that a language could die, if no one was around to speak it anymore, but it's hard to have dead languages when the people who would speak in ancient tongues are still kicking around--literally, after multiple millenia.

He scratches his jaw.] For the dead, or it be dead itself?

[Latin Franconianist? Never heard of it.]

[vrykolakas]

Bit of both. The dead are its main speakers and the dead tend to stay in one place and last a long, long time. So the language stills, curdles, spoken by the same people for centuries. As slow-moving rivers are thick with filth, so Quiesy is sluggish with dead pomp.

[ziggyzoggy]

Heh, ya poet.

[He smiles.] We got a few like that. Mostly from the Elves, an' Draenei...[His head tilts, shrugging.] Anybody who lives for a long time, really.

[vrykolakas]

[—he's a little startled by that accusation, but alright. Wry pleasure is hot on the heels of his surprise.]

Forgive. Once an orator.

What are draenei? And elves, for that matter. I've heard the word in stories, but they're almost assuredly non-existent at home.

[It's bizarre to talk of the entirety of Bas-Lag as home, but that's what this place does to you. He doesn't like it; doesn't want to lose his varied loves and hates of his homeworld to the generalising force of distance.]

[ziggyzoggy]

[No trolls and no elves? What an odd world. He hums. How to describe Draenei...]

Tall, blue skin, human faces--'cept for the big horns an' tentacles. [And he wiggles a couple fingers near his jawline in illustration.] Cloven feet and tails. They came from another planet.

Elves mostly be pricks. [AGHKJHGKHAHAHAHAHA.] Long ears, long eyebrows, meddle in things they ain't go no business in, resultin' in catastrophic destruction, [-waves a hand; etc. etc., you know the type. A brief pause, then:] Think they know better than errybody.