High Language

The high language differs from English in several regards, although for game purposes you're welcome to skate over this. For the curious, it's an agglutinating language somewhat like Japanese or Korean in structure, with SOV (subject-object-verb) order and postpositions/particles. (Obviously its phonology is quite different from either of those languages.) It rarely inflects for number; the "we" that Kel hexarchs use is an archaic form from an earlier version of the language that did have plurals. It does not have articles. It also does not have a separate future tense, but a present/future tense with the use of circumlocutions if greater precision is needed.

The high language's personal pronouns do not have gendered forms based on sex; "he/him," "she/her," and "they/their" were used in the books mainly because the author had to write in English. In the high language, there are two "genders" (or noun classes, the less confusing term), for pronouns, animate and inanimate. Animates are used for living creatures and the occasional abstract principle or religious vestige ("fire" takes the animate for reasons having to do with the history of Kel religion). Inanimates are used for objects and servitors, reflecting their subservient status in the hexarchate. General Shuos Jedao is often referred to as an inanimate, reflecting his status as a weapon in the Kel Arsenal.