Iruaric

Iruaric (pronounced "EE-roo-rick") is the language of an I.C.E. Age race called the Lords of Essaence. These were a highly advanced group of humanoids, with powers on the scale of demi-gods. They were a privileged augmented faction of the original humanoid race of Shadow World, with profound telepathic powers over great distances. They were almost entirely destroyed in the civil war between the Empress Kadaena and her cousin Utha at the end of the First Era. Iruaric was the language used for spellcraft with the Arcane sphere of power, and when properly spoken (by the few races capable of it) had psionic properties. However, it was the ancestor of most Shadow World languages, and was often preserved in its descendants such as the dragon language or the Elven tongues of Iylari and Erlini.

According to the archaic GemStone III specific lore, ancient Iruaric was a hieroglyphic language that often fails to translate exactly, even into more modern forms of the same language. The Dark Shrine is such an intra-language translation. There will often be a multiplicity of meanings in the same symbols, representing "many aspects of the same idea or word." More modern forms of Iruaric, such as the Second or Third Era, are phonetic but vary widely with culture. The "hieroglyphic" nature of the ancient form of the language is specially relevant due to the many subtle Nyarlathotep references.

Idiosyncracies of Language Lore

There are significant discrepancies between the Iruaric glossary that was released as background for The Broken Lands and the standard dictionary in the Master Atlas. These are important for interpreting the works of Uthex Kathiasas, the meaning of the Dark Shrine inscription, and subtle implications regarding the situation. Among the differences are the idea that early Iruaric was hieroglyphic, reversal of historical order for apostrophe forms of the language, some verb tense rules, the inexactness of intra-language transliteration, the idea that there will be missing letters from glottalization, that there are multiplicities of meaning in the same glyphs, and that the language syntax is not implied by the word-part ordering (e.g. "lyxatis kort" may mean "Master of Cruelty" rather than our "Cruel Master").

(A) Background Discrepancy

The italicized parts are the recycled material, while the bolded parts were specific to GemStone III. One particularly odd discrepancy is the explanation for Iylari, where "Iyla" is the Iruaric for "beauty" and the "ri" suffix is a racial pluralization. In the GemStone version the "y" is dropped as a missing, presumably glottalized vowel. The relational use of "ta" was used to explain the name Man'ta Pn'Tairken.

(1) Shadow World Master Atlas, 2nd Edition (1992)

"Following is a brief glossary of word-parts in the ancient language of the Lords of Essaence. As with nearly all languages, it is not always consistent and is a times contradictory.

Some forms utilize the apostrophetic syllable breaks, while later forms smoothed the words for human tongues.

Some leeway is necessary to interpret the Iruaric to common references. For instance, the names of the Elvish races are actually simplistic references to their stereotypical aptitudes or appearance. The High Elves are known as Iylari or literally 'beauties', because of their looks. Sometimes an 'r' is added before the pluralizing 'i'; this is believed to be an indication of increase; instead of more than one, it indicates many more - often applied to a race of beings."

(2) GemStone III (1993)

There is missing text in the last paragraph regarding the most ancient forms of Iruaric. Glottal stops serving as a replacement for the consonant "t", for example, would sound like "wa'er" for water and "bu'er" for butter. This is saying the inclusion of an apostrophe is indicative of later forms of the language, where presumably water would be transcribed as "waer" and butter as "buer". In the Shadow World version of Iruaric it is the later forms that are smoothed together and the early forms that use apostrophes. The hieroglyphs are used in the GemStone version for Lovecraftian effect.

A Glossary of Iruaric Terms

The following is a brief glossary of words and word-parts in the ancient language of the Lords of Essaence. As with nearly all languages, Iruaric is not entirely consistent and is at times contradictory.

Translation of ancient Iruaric to modern day languages is difficult at best. Even translations from ancient Iruaric to modern forms of that same language will, at time, fail to represent the original ideas accurately. This is due mainly to the glyphical, or hieroglyphical form that early written Iruaric took. Often, similar symbols would represent many aspects of the same idea or word, with only minor changes in the glyph that differentiated the meanings. Often, however, these similar written forms had widely varying pronunciations. The use of phonetic representations of Iruaric as a written form are a fairly recent development, historically, and again vary widely from one culture to the next.

The following list of terms is not meant to be a comprehensive dictionary of the Iruaric language. Indeed, such a work would fill many volumes of text. Instead, this list of terms represents many of the most commonly used Iruaric terms and word-parts that were employed in naming places, people and things. The representations of Iruaric terms are phonetic, and are not indicative of the language syntax.

The incorporation of "is," "er" or "aer" into a verb typically converts that verb to indicate "one who does" that action instead. For example, the verb sing is "lina," singer is formed by adding "aer" to the verb. The addition of these modifiers may be as a prefix or suffix, but in most cases they are added as a suffix.

Most plural forms are achieved by adding "i". In many cases, "ri" is added to make a term plural, but the form "ri" typically signifies a very large quantity or an increase, and most often signifies a total plurality such as when referring to a whole group of things. For example, the High Elves are known as "Ilyari," a pluralization of the term "Ilar." When referring to a particular chain of mountains, the term typically used would be "thosi," but when referring to all of the mountains of the world, or to mountains in general, the term typically used would be "thosri."

The term "ta" is used to indicate a relationship or correlation. For example, a place that is the home to a race of giants might be referred to as "man'ta hori," home of giants.

most ancient forms of the language, before the glottal stops employed in the early forms developed fully into vowels. In some later forms of the language, apostrophes are used to indicate two or more word-parts that have been incorporated into a single glyph.

(B) Vocabulary Discrepancy

The word for "maker" was changed to give "lug'shuk traglaakh" a double meaning. Likewise, while "trog" is the Iruaric word for cavern, the spelling "trag" can represent both an inconsistent phoneme and a subtle double meaning regarding Traag. The explication of the verb rule is important for translating "lyxatis" more closely as "one who does dread", where the "is" suffix also implies "place" or presence. It is worth considering that the odd "at" in the middle, with unknown syntax rules, may actually be a rendering of "ta" meaning "of": "lyxatis kort" reverses into the more meaningful "Master of Malice".

Another more subtle possibility is to regard the widely varied pronunciation, and missing vowels for ancient speakers of Iruaric, as allowing "atis" to be rooted in the same glyph symbol as "arulis" which means "seer." This would be relevant because the gogor lore has them darkening the skies with dread, acting as the eyes of Kadaena. In this case it literally means "master of the vruul", which in itself is suggestive, because the later term "vruul" might be a composite glyph of "vuul" and "arul" meaning something to the effect of "The Enchanter's Sight." There is also a subtle omniscience motif.

Master Atlas			GemStone III
Common	Iruaric		Common	Iruaric
(modifier 'to to'; er)	is			is, er, aer
(plural)	i
(of)	ta
fire, flame	shu		fire, flame
lost	laakh		lost	laakh
maker	lavan		maker	laakh

Examples of Iruaric

While there is nothing corresponding to the Lords of Essaence in Elanthian history, the language was never completely removed from the game, and can still be found in isolated instances or in the form of "easter eggs" in the modern history. The original names for the oceans were in Iruaric, though according to the Master Atlas, most races only knew the translated meanings in their own languages.

"Kadaena Throk Farok": "Empress, Guardian of the Forbidden"
"Marlu lyxatis kort. Thro dyar K'mur.": "Marlu, Cruel Master. Guard the Dark Queen."
"Fash'lo'nae": "Fash, Spirit of the Past"
"Phoen": "The Traveler"
"Lornon": "The Lonely"
"Fasthr K'Tafali": "Fasthr, Lord of the Half-Heads"
"Vruul": "The Enchanter's Sight" (loosely, composite of "vuul" and "arul", the Eyes of Kadaena)

See Also

• Iruaric Glossary (Tomes of Kulthea #1157)
• Magru
• Dark vortece
• Myklian
• Lesser vruul
• Maleskari