---

No cultures can coexist if they cannot communicate. Even in extreme cases where there is no shared language or values, neighboring cultures will learn about and communicate through actions or observation. Eventually, if everyone survives long enough, some level of equilibrium and understanding (not necessarily agreement) will be reached.

Let's talk about it.

In the most obvious cases, that communication is in language. We most often think of language as something spoken or sometime written. But a language can be any system of symbolism that has meaning. Hand signals, musical notes, pictures, stacked stones - any of these and more can compose a language.

In Ahtarra, we join the Marilith Zone a time after common spoken communication has been achieved, but there are still remnants of the earlier connections that have faded into smaller parts of local traditions and cultures. Some of that is in language artifacts that still persist, such as family secrets or community traditions making use of old languages. A few cultural groups hold onto their knowledge of their old languages as a point of pride.

The primary language of the area is referred to as 'Agrarian.' It began as a trade language for common exchanges and simply became dominant over other regional and racial languages since everyone needed to trade to survive. This adoption took place long before the Marilith Zone was populated and was carried in with settlers. In our stories, the language is most often represented as English. It's what we the writers speak, after all.

Susariel is a language that was originally crafted by the Coronis nobility as an attempt to separate themselves from the 'lesser class' of their workers. It's most often used to force a barrier between those seen as elite and those left wanting - almost purely as discrimination rather than any actual practical need. As such, even being able to speak the language can be seen as a symbol of status... Though for good or ill depends entirely on who else is in the room.

Daedolun is the native language of the Emphani. Unlike the other two examples, Daedolun - when used formally - includes a combination of spoken word and minor gestures. Some of the symbology used in the written forms of Daedolun are similar to the sigils used by spellwrights as well. This helped bridge some of the language barrier during first contact. The language has spread beyond the Emphani over time, but overall adoption is extremely small.

It's all a bit of magic.

Talking and waving hands works wonders when you're in proximity, but for distance it doesn't offer much. Shouting only goes so far and sound doesn't carry in the vacuum of space at all. Even the most powerful of sending spells couldn't cover a fraction of the distance between worlds. So over time spellwrights came up with a combination of spell and enchantment solutions to deal with various situations.

For basic communication in ship-to-ship situations, the augury suite can be equipped with a general and basic sending enchantment if someone in the crew isn't already capable. This type of casting is extremely limited. Range is the largest factor, encouraging ships to get within some influence of each other to make use of the ability - and that range is most often shorter than weapons range, making the attempt sometimes risky. This spell use allows for primarily verbal communication.

The same concept can be applied to pre-paired enchantments, trading the ability to communicate with only a set of recipients for a significant increase in distance. The downside is that these kinds of sending stones are made in groups - no communication stone can be added to a group once made. This is referred to as 'twining', with the stones/recipients referred to as being 'twined'. The connection between the stones is often referred to as a 'web'. This can lead to the combination of references such as "Is he twined into this web?"

For even greater distance, there are spells that work on the sharing of thought rather than specific spoken language. These spells are more difficult to cast or enchant, but offer significant advantages: these spells are easier to transmit information and maintain a connection and can be used to circumvent language barriers. However, thoughts are nebulous and foreign, making it more difficult to convey or understand specifics without extreme training.

The method for all of these approaches is the same, however. They are spells, thus something a spellwright must cast on the people or items that will be making use of them. This means that none of these options are viable as an in-the-moment solution. Communication potential is something that has to be thought out in advance and prepared for anyone who might need its benefit.

That needs an interstellar network.

Because all of the types of communication require premeditation, the frontier makes a strong attempt to map out and lay down communication hubs in the Marilith Zone. Great effort is made to create connections between populated systems, their planets, and large cities on them. This often takes the form of a large 'relay' hub within a system, a moderate central relay for a given world, and then a city might have a monitored 'post'.

These relays are created and expanded the hard way. A spellwright, often specialized on hire for the group maintaining the relay, crafts a pair of sending or telepathic stones. One is installed into the network at the origin relay while the other is carried manually to the intended new relay to be installed among their own array of stones. This can make it take a significant amount of time before any new posts are added to a relay.

Once connected, however, this network between relay points can make getting a message from one point to another close to instantaneous... But that's only to the endpoint. From there, that message still has to get the to the individual recipient manually. Couriers are most often used for this leg of the journey.

Couriers are often moving from one post to another among relays due to the fact that relays can only transmit semi-public messages. Any packages have to make the trip the long way. Any message that might be secret or sensitive might not use the relay system at all. Delivering messages for the local post is often simply a way for a courier to make extra pay for a job they were already doing anyway.

It all has an impact.

This obviously gives rise to business surrounding communication - running a relay, manning a post, couriers and shipping - and there is some cultural development to go along with them. Couriers are expected to protect their 'sources' and the information or items they carry. Postmen are seen as essential workers of their communities and given deferential respect on a similar level as military service.

This also leads to other lines of division as well, with relay use sometimes being prohibitively expensive for layman use or altogether impractical in a given area. Information changing as many hands as it does through a relay might be passed along to another interested party if someone in the chain has been compromised. Not everyone likes knowing how to be found by a postman and may not have given any kind of address to be located. Trade disputes might disrupt messages changing hands between relays.

Some small groups refuse to make use of the system at all. Some of these groups refrain for religious reasons, such as those that follow the Totem Gods, condemning the ability to reach into other's minds as something magic should never be used for. Others hold more tribal approaches, maintaining that a message not delivered from mortal lips is not a message worth delivering. Some of these groups hold their views strongly enough to clash with the duties of those participating in the system in disastrous ways. Attacks on posts and relays might be rare, but they are not unheard of, and a courier delivering a message to these groups might be challenged on how that message was transferred.

It's perfectly imperfect.

The system of long distance communication contrasts the fully developed Coronis core worlds by still being a constantly fluctuating organism. The frontier has both been partially defined by and has come to rely on this unrefined nature in some capacity. Its symbiotic relationship with the rest of the activity in the Marilith Zone make it almost alive on its own. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

---