Cavitian is the Flan dialect spoken in Castle Cavitius, a fantasy/horror enclave detailed in the 2000 D&D module Die Vecna Die, by Bruce Cordell and Steve Miller. In my opinion this module was a fine piece of work. This project will, I hope, add even more depth to that module by explicating the language it mentions in pp. 49-50.
Cavitian, or cawitença as its speakers call it, is the last remnant of the language the arch-lich Vecna spoke.
Classic Cavitian was a Flan language, otherwise unrelated to and younger than Sulmish. It held sway in ancient Cawitaess, realm of the lich-king Wêcença ("Vecenha" in eastern Flan). The base of Cawitaess was the upper Sheldomar Valley, now Bissel and the northern Gran March. (Living Greyhawk Gazetteer p. 32, 50).
When "Vecna" and his "Castle Cavitius" shifted into the Domains of Dread, his scattered remnant subjects were overwhelmed in short order by Oeridians from what is now Ket, and then in even shorter order by the Bakluni. Those Oeridians who did not migrate further west assimilated themselves into the new Keoish society - founded by Suel - and particularly the Knights of the March. The Oeridian language in turn proved so successful it became the common tongue of Keoland itself. Further north, the now-Keolandish-speaking Knights stemmed the Bakluni to Bissel, and in 302 CY finally conquered the latter (although their language did not take root there).
The language of the Gran March is officially "Keolandish" now, but in rural areas particularly its vocabulary is far less influenced by Suel and far more by Flan than is the standard tongue. The Bakluni spoken in Bissel is likewise heavily peppered with Flan (as well as Oeridian). But besides the loan-words in bumpkin dialects of the upper Sheldomar, Cavitian is dead in the Flanaess.
Cavitian has however preserved itself outside the Flanaess, in those domains to which Cavitius was exiled. There, it has had next to no contact with the Flanaess - nor the rest of the multiverse - for millennia.
Cavitius has neither the contacts nor the culture to produce a cant like, say, Sigil's. Cavitian Flan is therefore - in its basics - a language even more conservative than Tenha.
For a start, Cavitian lacks whatever new words have entered other Flanha vocabularies. Nor did it pick up anything from Ancient Oeridian. (Oeridian was a contrary, Basque-ish hinterland language of Bakluni territory in Vecna's day; first Ull, then Ket. It had no literature even when it bordered Vecna's realm.) Finally, it has resisted foreign influence to the present day. When a novelty appears in Cavitius, its Flannae generally try to ignore it until the city's ghoulish authorities dispose of it.
On the other hand, Vecna and his elite undead managed to salvage some Suloise, Olve, and Bakluni books, and an extra word or two (particularly Suloise terms to do with magic and enbalming) may have trickled into Cavitian. And there are known occurrences of foreign elements trickling into the realm, and resisting removal. Particularly diseases.
The main development in Cavitian has been in the vocabulary. The sparse Cavitian literature looks, on paper, like simplified Vecna-era western Flan - but with strange addenda to certain of the glyphs.
The language only appears to be simple. Those who purport to know "ancient Flan", like modern Latin majors, may be experts on the general structure of the Flan language family, but do not (cannot!) truly understand the details of every Flan language located in every historical time and place. That is why DVD insists that the average PC will understand a base 75% of Cavitian words if spoken or written. If the reader or listener makes a successful Intelligence check on a "particular communication", the percentage goes up to 95%. This represents a feat of intuition concerning known words that have different meanings in this dialect. Loan-words are so few that knowing any other language does not help. (DVD pp. 49-50) I would however rule that specialists in Vecna-era western Flan can understand up to 85% of base Cavitian.
Cavitian tends to preserve a select group of nouns, that refer to the dangers of the region. Where thinking up the right synonym can be fatal, this keeps the language to a utilitarian level.
The 15% of the language with which Classic Cavitian speakers are not familiar represent the additional marks to the standard Flan script. In this warped, evil plane, the language has become a pitch-based language. The pitch of a word, or word-base, represents the horror of its meaning. For instance, Cavitian swiyenc (swee-yenk) means "small mouse" (compare Tenha svizenh), and swîyenc means "giant rat".
Likewise, Cavitian's adjectives are generally taken from an attribute of one of the base nouns. So where "infected" in Tenha is nelanha, corresponding with the known ancient Flan tongues, Cavitian uses swîyença (swe-EE-ee-yen-tsa).
Pitches are also modulated for respect. Crippling injuries, wècence (T. vecennae), take a low pitch for pathos. To use a low pitch for Lord Wêcença would be nothing short of madness.
It pays to be careful here.
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zimriel@sbcglobal.netThe first draft of this article was posted to rec.games.frp.dnd in 4 Jan 2001, along with a promise to produce a full-length version for the website. This version first came out in 10 September 2002. Er, better late than never?
Thanks go out, firstly to Steve Miller and Bruce Cordell, for creating Die Vecna Die; and secondly to Denis Tetreault, for pointing me to Living Greyhawk information.
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