Voice and Hearing
Speech in Elshore is an artifact of origin. The Iru People Iru The progenitors, and the only naturally evolved people of Elshore. evolved Arram Language Old Arram Old Arram is the first naturally evolved language in the history of Elshore, arising from the continuous cultural development of the Iru., a harmonic and near-musical tongue, and the peoples they engineered (Maan People Maan The most numerous people of Elshore and the baseline cultural reference of the age., Bar People Bar Towering, massively built, and engineered for high-load work and vertical terrain, the Bar are the strength line., Erg, Annil People Annil Small, scaled, and easy to overlook, the Annil were the earliest of the engineered lines, made as household aides and keepers of the systems that kept the world running.) were imprinted with its phonetic scaffolding, producing the shared New-Arram Language New Arram New Arram is the living lingua franca of Elshore, spoken by every sapient people on the planet.. Each people hears and speaks differently, shaped by the body its makers gave it, so that every voice quietly reveals what it was made to be.
Key traits
- The Iru hear roughly 10 to 40,000 Hz and speak with microtonal, overtone-rich precision; their native Arram is often sung in ritual and kin-speech.
- The Meir People Meir The only people of Elshore not born of it. carry meaning in subsonic vibration and harmonic resonance, perceived through bone conduction and cranial pressure rather than external ears.
- The Bar speak in deep, booming, deliberate tones, their shoulder horns serving an acoustic function; their casual speech can sound ceremonial.
- The Erg speak in sharp, clipped, consonant-driven syllables, heard by others as terse, staccato, and intense.
- The Maan are the linguistic anchor, even-toned and neutral, and serve as the default phonetic profile for New-Arram.
- The Annil speak high, breathy, and sibilant, but their resonant scaled skin makes them uniquely attuned listeners, able to interpret Meir and Iru subharmonics others miss.
- All peoples share New-Arram, a simplified, biologically inclusive tongue that keeps the tonal and rhythmic logic of Arram while remaining modular enough for every vocal system.
The Iru are the sole people who evolved on Elshore, and from them comes Arram, the linguistic rootstock of every later tongue. Arram is harmonic and nuanced, structured for layered meaning and refined over uncounted centuries, a language as much sung as spoken. When the Iru corporations engineered the Maan, Bar, Erg, and Annil in the late Inarin period, they imprinted each people, genetically and culturally, with the phonetic scaffolding of Arram, so that speech itself became an inheritance.
Out of that shared inheritance grew New-Arram, a simplified and biologically inclusive language common to all the peoples. It preserves the tonal and rhythmic logic of its progenitor but is built to be modular, bending to vocal systems as different as Iru glottal precision, Annil sibilance, and Meir harmonic resonance. New-Arram is the compromise tongue of a world of made voices, the place where every people can meet.
Yet each people hears the others through the body it was given. The Iru perceive speech as melody against distortion, recognising harmonic fidelity and emotional strain almost at once. The Meir feel language in bone and breath, reading intent through vibrational purity more than through words. The Bar trust depth of tone over intricacy, and the Erg prize speed and clarity, finding complex inflection inefficient. The Maan, designed as the anchor, hear most voices without bias, while the Annil, despite their compressed and sibilant speech, prove the most naturally attuned listeners of all.
The Waihy Language Waihy Waihy is the living language of the Meir, brought to Elshore with the Vaparium and maintained without compromise or borrowing from any planetborn tongue. of the Meir stands apart from this whole family, an isolate that planetborn anatomy cannot fully speak, with the Annil as its only partial bridge. Across everything else, though, the same truth holds: voice is a symbol of purpose and a living thread between origins. Though born of different makers, or of none at all, all the peoples speak New-Arram, and in speaking it each reveals its past, its form, and the resonant truth of who it is.
Open the Old Arram translator - gloss between Old Arram and your site language, with a grammar reference and the full lexicon.