#elvhen cipher

[bittergossamer]

cipher talk: vallaslin

In Dragon Age Origins, Vallaslin is introduced as the facial tattoos of Dalish elves and translated as "Blood writing". The question I have is which part of this word means "blood" and which part means "writing"? vallas or lin? 

Theory 1:

Before they settled on what was in the cipher, they used both parts of this word in both ways which muddled things. So you get lin → len in a kind of "blood/kinship" way and vallas in a kind of "blood/life" way.

Theory 2:

Vallaslin means "my blood", vallas means "blood" and lin means "my (possessive)".

We know that these were slave markings. There might have been blood magic. I think there's some cases of how the Evanuris saw slaves/people with their vallaslin as extensions of themselves. Here's some other words that led to this theory:

1] Elgara vallas refers to a setting sun, which turns bright red on the horizon. So maybe this phrase literally means "sun bleeds".

2] Vallasdahlen is literally translated as "life trees".

dahlen: "tree", but probably "woods/forest". (see: Vir Adahlen). vallas: logically, this probably means "life", which has a loose connection to "blood".

3] da'durgen'lin means "my little stones".

da: "little", often as a prefix (e.g. da'len: little child). durgen: "stone" lin: as the untranslated part of this phrase, "my".

Some additional parts to this is that da'durgen'len is translated as "little dwarves", (durgen'len is literally "children of the stone"). It's posited in that codex that lin became len which could also be possessive in the sense of "children belong to their parents".

The issue with the second theory is really that I just have more clear examples of vallas meaning "blood" than lin meaning anything. Here's a bunch of words that have lin as a syllable and I don't know if they're related:

Arulin'Holm - An ancient elvhen tool used for woodcutting that is an old as Arlathan. Used by Merrill to repair the eluvian.

amelin - From something Solas says to Abelas, "Malas amelin ne halam, Abelas." 

lethallin - "friend", but also "lin" in this word is the one gendered ending in the entire language. Maybe a kind of "my love (platonic)" sort of way.

Halin'sulahn - The golden halla. "Sulhan" means joy, I have no idea about "halin". 

sahlin - "come", but in the sense that death is here. 

There's a couple other words that might also be related to vallas, which are Dhal Vallasan (a unique bow wielded by the Emerald Knights) and vallem (from a line of dialogue said by a spirit in Trespasser) but these also don't have enough context for me to guess.

Last instance of this word is bana'vallaslin from Where Willows Wail. The bit that probably corresponds to that is "failing of our markings", so this is probably the cultural idea of vallaslin. In this text, vallaslin might not refer to the markings but instead the people who wore those markings.

#dragon age #dragon age elves #elvhen #elvhen cipher #dai spoilers #slavery mention #having a nightmare time formatting this as 'readable' #dai #da:i #da:i spoilers

[sangfielle]

no ones ever made a cipher key or hwatever its called for elvhen have they

#*head in hands* there are terms... that i need... that there would definitely be a word for in modern elvhen but have never come up in the #games... and since its not a proper conlang and i dont know how the cipher works i cant just make shit up #i mean i can. but my integrity wont allow for it. so im stuck. #personal

[thebookworm0001]

Once again wishing that elven was a proper conlang and not a cipher

#because a conlang has rules that I could figure out to make new sentences with #I wanna have solas talk in elvhen #bioware release your elven cipher 2023

[vhenadahls]

Elvhen Conlanging Project Thoughts

I haven't talked about it on tumblr much (if at all), but I am always vaguely poking at the idea of creating a more consistent and expansive actual conlang (constructed language) for the Elvhen/Elven/Dalish language from Dragon Age games.

The language from the games is a cipher, and it's very inconsistent in a lot of ways (spelling, meaning, grammar, word order, you name it). I'm mostly interested in investigating what we have and creating more, but some of that requires going back to the drawing board and picking apart the nuts and bolts.

So! Some things I've been poking at recently:

In the poem/song In Uthenera, one of the first pieces of multiple lines of Elvhen language we got, we have the line vhenan him dor'felas, which is translated as heart has become grey and slow. Vhenan, heart, him, become - these are words we see frequently. But dor'felas is not something we really see elsewhere - I think it does literally mean "grey-slow," but that this is likely a poetic or metaphorical way of saying "elderly," which fits both with the meaning of the poem and with the stated tendency of Elvhen to be more metaphoric. This also reminds us that we've known the word for slow for a long time - felas - and that means that Felassan (slow arrow) is likely felas + assan rather than fel + assan.

Mana - as in mana, ma halani! - likely means please (the adverb/interjection, not the verb). The first place we see this is in the Brecilian Ruins during Nature of the Beast in DAO. We know from other lines that ma halani is help me, so it's easy to assume that mana is please. However, we do also see it elsewhere - in a line in Trespasser, when the Elvhen guardian asks for Fen'Harel's secret greeting: Nuvenas mana helanin, dirth bellasa ma. We don't know what all the words in this mean (it's on my list of things to puzzle out), but nuvenas is very similar to nuvenin, which means say. This would make the first part of this unknown sentence say something like please say - which would make sense in context!

There are an amazing amount of ways to interpret most things we see in Elvhen, so if you've also spent time digging into Elvhen and made different translations - that's great! I'm just excited to do some of my own :)

(also let me know if you'd like to talk about this stuff!)

#dragon age #elvhen #dalish #conlanging #elven #elvhen conlanging project

[dalishious]

I'm fully convinced that the only reason Bioware claims "the elvhen language is mostly lost" is because they were too lazy to write one

Apparently they originally hired someone to make a fully functioning language for elves and dwarves, but then decided to scrap that and use a cipher instead.

#ask

[potatowitch]

Writer Tag Game

Thank you for the tag @pinkfadespirit!

Tagging @5lazarus @protect-him @lesetoilesfous @oxygenforthewicked

How many works do you have on AO3? 22

What's your total AO3 word count? 15,387

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

in which hawke asks all her friends to move in with her - 39

The Last Home - 38

My Boy of Blue - 30

soft, sleepy - 29

At The End of All Things - 25

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? Sometimes. If someone has left a long comment or something particularly insightful then I will bc I like talking about fics. If a comment is just "this was good" or something along those lines, I appreciate it, but I have no clue how to respond to it?? idk just saying "thanks" feels weird to me

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending? At The End of All Things, definitely. The whole thing is angst.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending? Most of my oneshots have relatively fluffy endings, but the other side is a particularly angsty fic with a happy ending.

Do you write crossovers? If so, What is the craziest one you’ve ever written? Nah, not really something I'm into.

Have you ever received hate on a fic? Luckily, no, but I haven't been sharing my writing for very long, so it's bound to happen eventually.

Do you write smut? If so what kind? No, but I'm sure I will someday. It's just a matter of me getting over how intimidating I find it. I have a lot of ideas sitting in the back of my horny little gremlin brain but no confidence in actually making them work.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of.

Have you ever had a fic translated? No. I wouldn't mind if someone wanted to translate one of my fics, though.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but I'd be open to doing so.

What’s your all-time favourite ship? Fenders has ruined me lmao. I don't know what I would count as my "all-time" favourite, but they're my current fave.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? Good lord, most of them? I intend to finish them, but knowing me I probably won't. I've got a lot of oneshots in my Google Docs that are sitting there that I'm not super inspired by at the moment, but who knows.

What are your writing strengths? Descriptive language, maybe? Angst? I'm not really sure lmao

What are your writing weaknesses? I'm very impatient. I struggle with buildup and exposition and the whole "show don't tell thing" sometimes. There's a reason I don't do long fics often.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? If Bioware ever released a proper cipher/translation for both Elvhen and Tevene I would, but at this point the most I'll do in other languages is cussing.

What was the first fandom you wrote for? I guarantee you it was H*rry P*tter. I think I moved on to Star Wars after that, but I've never posted anything but DA fic.

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written? I think either The Other Side or The Last Home? I'm very fond of My Boy of Blue, too.

#writer tag game

[thedreadgay]

fuck it, i’m making my own: a dragon age elvish dictionary

HELLO EVERYONE!!! presenting the fruit of my staring at my computer screen and muttering fake words to myself: a dictionary compiling my translations and expansions on dragon age elvish. i really love working with elvish; for fics, to come up with names for my protags, to understand canon elvish a little more, for whatever the fuck u want! but i found dragon age wiki incomplete, a lot of people (myself included) aren’t comfortable using project elvhen anymore cause of the guy behind it, and there are just some things i wanted to have elvish words for but there weren’t any. SO, i thought, fuck it! i’m making my own dictionary and guide to elvish!!!

a lot of these words are from canon, whether we know the definition of them or i deduced/guessed what the words meant myself. a couple words are from project elvhen b/c i had already used it long ago to make names for my elf protags, but im stealing these few root words and they're ours now. and a lot i also made up myself! whether by combining words from canon, taking a couple from tevene (since it seems a few tevene words come from elvish), basing them off real life languages like hebrew or yiddish (just as personal jewish experience lol), taking a bit from tolkien elvish, or just playing around with sounds until i figured out something i liked that sounded elvish.

consider this also layman’s elvish. i’m by no means a linguist, but i’m really interested in language and trying to learn a few more! i fucking SUCK at grammar tho and honestly, so does elvish. since it’s a cipher it’s kind of a mess but we love her that way. grammar? don’t know her! elvish doesn’t know her either!!!! that’s why im like, fuck it dude, do what u please!!!!!

if ur curious about how i came up with or translated certain things, check out my elvish tag or send me an ask/reply! and if ur looking for something specific in my posts, u can open the page and use ur browser’s ‘find in page’ search function. so without any further ado: elvish.

A-G || H-Q || R-Z

A

-aan: long, great

abelas: sorrow, to be sorry

abelath: apology

adahl: tree

adahlen: wood, forest

alas: ground, earth

all: life

ame: keeper

amelin: name, one’s essence, lit. ‘keeping blood’

-an: place

a’nansal-in: ‘one who is another blessing’ or ‘my child’s blessing’, granddaughter, grandchild (fem)

anar: year; pl. anaris

andar: weed, pl. andaris

ar: i, first person pronoun

aravas: travel

arela: parallel

arelin: cousin, lit. ‘parallel blood’

arla: trap, binding

as, -as: to act, an action

asha: woman, feminine gender

ashir: sleep

assan: arrow

athim: humility

athila: share, lit. ‘humble giving’

athillethal: a term for in-laws, one kin is shared with, lit. ‘shared kin’

athlan: call

atisha: peace

avare: oath, covenant, bond

avarellan: ‘one i have an oath of love with’, wife, spouse (fem)

avarellen: ‘one i have an oath of love with’, spouse (neutral)

avarellin: ‘one i have an oath of love with’, husband, spouse (masc)

B

bal: deep

balaur: griffon

ban: black

banal: never, nothing, void

banalethal: ‘not kin’, implies severing of ties

banal’ras: shadow, lit. ‘no light’

bell: many

bellanaris: eternity, a concept of time more than infinity, which would be u

bor: throw, toss

bora: loss, lost

bor’assan: bow, lit. ‘arrow thrower’

D

da-: small, little

da’enansallan: ‘little one who is a blessing’, the youngest daughter (fem)

da’enansallen: ‘little one who is a blessing’, the youngest child (neutral)

da’enansallin: ‘little one who is a blessing’, the youngest son (masc)

da’lan: girl, little girl (fem)

da’len: child, little one (neutral or unspecified)

da’lin: boy, little boy (masc)

dar: to be

daras: being, existing

dell: noise, noisy

delltash: ‘quiet your noise,’ essentially ‘shut up’

denn: out, away

desen: to hold

din: dead, the dead

din’an: death

dir: the self

dirth: knowledge, secrets, tell; speak in the sense of sharing knowledge or understanding, as opposed expressing something, which is nuven

dirthara: learn

dirthavaren: promise, lit. ‘spoken oath’

dirthera: to tell tales

dor: grey

dor’balauren: grey griffons, a name for the grey wardens

durgen: stone

durgen’len: dwarves, lit. ‘children of the stone’

E

ea: bird

elgahren: ancestor, lit. ‘spirit elder’

elgar: spirit

elgar’arla: a binding circle to hold a spirit or demon, lit. ‘spirit trap’

elgara: sun

elgaras: sunlight

eltia: a head covering meant to symbolize awareness of divine presence, the gaze of one’s ancestors watching over them, or to better connect with the spiritual; lit. ‘spirit veil’

eludinaras: moonlight

eludinas: the moons, luna and satina

elune: the larger moon, luna

eluneras: the light of luna

eluvas: to see, to look

eluvian: mirror, lit. ‘seeing glass’

elvhen: elves, the people

elvhenan: the elven empire, the place of the people

emma: within

en: short

ena: emerge, led

enansal: blessing

e’nansal-in: ‘one who is another blessing’ or ‘my child’s blessing’, grandchild (unspecified or neutral)

enansallan: ‘one who is a blessing’, daughter (fem)

enansallen: ‘one who is a blessing’, child (neutral)

enansallin: ‘one who is a blessing’, son (masc)

enasal: joy in triumph, joyous relief

enasalin: victory

enaste: favour

enfenim: to fear

eo: skill, skilled

era: tale, legend, history

eth: safe

evanura: prosperity

F

fan: precious

falon: friend

falon'fen: 'friend of the wolf,' as in the dread wolf, meaning someone who consorts with untrustworthy people

fantia: crown, tiara

fel: slow

fen: wolf

firida: green

G

gaera: walk

gaerasyl: run, lit. ‘walk like wind’

garas: come, move

ghilana: to guide

ghilas: to go

glandival: belief

#dragon age #elvhen #elvish #i will ofc be continuously updating this #IM SO EXCITED TO SHARE IT!!!!!

[5lazarus]

Fen’Harel’s Teeth,Ch. 8: The Red

The next chapter of my story Fen’Harel’s Teeth is up on AO3. Read it here!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22833073/chapters/63350827 Series summary:

First Lavellan, Imladris Ashallin, thought that her audience with the Divine against templars' harassment of Dalish mages would be a token protest, and that her people would use it to draw the city elves closer to the Vir Tanadahl. She didn't think her Keeper's calculations would catapult her to the top of the Chantry's leadership, manipulating the powers of Thedas to leave her people be.

Meanwhile, Briala foments revolution in Halamshiral, using the eluvian network to sabotage the armies of Orlais. A new movement erupts in the Dales, and elves across Thedas look at this so-called "Herald of Andraste" and see Mythal's vallaslin. Fiona breaks the chains of mages across Thedas, and Fenris starts whispers of a new age in Tevinter--one where the slaves throw down their masters. A new age is coming, and all of Thedas look to Lavellan to usher it in.

This is a universe where every possible Warden and every possible Inquisitor exist. Every Warden origin survives Ostagar, and it's that little band along with the canon companions that defeat the Blight. The woman who seals the archdemon into Morrigan's child, though, is a mage Mahariel who romances Leliana. Alistair falls hard for Warden Alidda Tabris, a rogue from the Denerim alienage who joins the Red Jennys before venturing with the other Origins Wardens to research a cure for the Taint. Zathrian runs off with the Lady of the Forest and no one's quite sure what became of him, but Keeper Hawen put his money on him just turning into a tree. Hawke is a purple nonbinary rogue who marries Merrill, manages to have high approval with everyone, even Sebastian (much to their dismay), and consciously aided and abetted Anders. Bethany does not become a warden. I'm putting forth that Solas was about a thousand years old: the fall of Arlathan happens a thousand years before the start of this story, the Golden City is corrupted about seven hundred years before the story starts, and Andraste starts her revolt two hundred years after that. The Dales fell a hundred and fifty years ago, and there are still a few elders who remember the Sack of Halamshiral. Yes, this is not canon, but if Bioware forgot a moon and lost their Elvhen cipher, I'm allowed to shape the timeline to make sense.

#dragon age #dragon age inquisition #fanfic #solas #lavellan #solasmance #solavellan #solavellan hell #slow burn #au #fanfiction #fen'harel's teeth #hes5thlazarus #5lazarus

[merrybandofmurderers]

Just a thought on your last self-rb, but from all the qunlat we've got in canon, and even if the language itself is not a conlang but a cipher, like elvhen, it doesn't seem to be a gendered language, like for example Spanish or Russian. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to work as English does either, pronoun-wise, as from what we've seen full-nouns seem to be needed as subject or object for sentences to work in qunlat (1/2)

Personally and from a linguistic perspective, I think it's bullshit that we haven't seen pronouns demonstrated yet, taking into account the high density of pronouns in any language during natural speech, but they'd probably be genderless to :D (2/2)

re: this post

omg yes!! listen i love language but i’m not a (idk the word) linguologist and i’m monolingual so i don’t really know enough to go in-depth, and we have so little qunlat that’s difficult to know how pronouns and gendered words would work. like in english, we have pronouns but words aren’t gendered, whereas, as you say, in languages like spanish, words are gendered (we know that elvish at least has some gender-specific words, but it stands to reason that elvish and qunlat are VERY different languages)

i think it could be interesting if, in qunlat, there were some words that /were/ gendered, but like, according to the three main pillars (military, priesthood, craftsmen/agriculture). like there were specific affixes or declensions that denoted which word related to which pillar. i definitely think pronouns could work like this under qun

the qunari are all about efficiency and not wasting anything. it’s possible their language is more sparse, straight-forward and direct (unlike french and japanese), with iron clad rules and few (if any) exceptions (unlike english which is a language of exceptions). tbh i don’t actually imagine they’d have an abundance of pronouns. possibly that have exactly one (1) pronoun that’s completely neutral, or their pronouns are job/pillar-related. considering the value of one’s role in the qun, to the point of superseding gender/sex, i think that’s the most likely

#ask #anonymous #qunari #da blabs #listen i love language and i love the qunari #if bioware doesnt give us more qunari/vashoth lore in da4 i will riot

[barbex]

Elvhen words, vocabulary. 

putting it here so that I find it again. What a great resource!

#elvhen #dragon age #dragon age language #dragon age resource #dragon age reference

[bittergossamer]

hey! I was wondering if you were still working on the Elvhen cipher? I was actually just thinking about doing something similar recently when I stumbled upon your work, so I wanted to ask :)

I had a couple days where I was really stressed this week so I rebuilt the whole thing but in the future, yeah, feel free to build whatever you want from the Elvhen Cipher/remake the project if I disappear again and it falls out of date, etc.

If you want to build something similar for a different media property and want to use my code, I ask that you link back to me/credit, but that's it.

#elvhen cipher

[maiden-of-wolves]

Naeleen Fluff

So... I did a thing... Because muses are fickle. And it told me to write Naeleen (Naema x Atheleen ( @quizzikemen ‘s child) fluff. So. Meeting. Hopefully it’s not completely out of character for Atheleen...

Naema had honestly never expected to hear from Leliana again. They had tried so hard to keep in contact when their respective positions prevented them from physically being together. Warden Commander wasn’t something that Naema could just put down to go prancing over to Orlais. Not to mention that she had little love for the chantry outside of her love for Leliana. It was a topic they avoided and had fought about before Leliana left the Keep to accept the newest Divine’s offer to become her Left Hand.

Letters were constantly exchanged between the two, many of ‘interesting’ content and eventually Leliana made Naema learn a cipher so that they could still send the naughty messages without people knowing about their relationship. Naema made it a point to tell Leliana that she took offence to the idea that she didn’t want their relationship known. She remembered the exact phrasing she used when Leliana had insisted she was just protecting her: Let them come. I’ll eagerly chop them down and you’ll have less problems. The Left Hand had not been pleased with her and communication went silent for a month.

When Leliana finally broke her silence, the letter arrived to the Keep after Naema had slept with at least two different Wardens out of either desperation for sexual contact or belief that they were suddenly over. Naema didn’t reply for over two months, partially out of pettiness and also because she couldn’t figure out what to tell her. A letter arrived from Leliana for her before she sent hers, asking if she was alright. Naema replied, but enclosed her simple gold engagement ring. She cried over the letter and agonized over sending it, but knew it was for the best. It only said: I’m perfectly healthy. But I can’t do this anymore.

Now, here she was, in a new Keep that was controlled by the Inquisition. The movement that Leliana worked for as Spymaster was an impressive force that had kept a great deal of people safe and calmed chaos that had been spreading through Ferelden. Naema had laughed until she cried when she read Leliana’s comment about it being led by a Dalish elf. Serves the shems right! She thought, First they had to give my cousin an Arlship so they couldn’t pretend that we were insects to be crushed whenever they saw fit… now the greatest savior in remembered history is a Dalish!

It was too much to hope that the general populace would start changing their tunes about elves, but at least within this “Skyhold” she’d yet to experience or hear shems calling her kin ‘knife ears’ or even watching her warily. It was a welcome change. Naema’s heart clenched as she looked up the first set of stairs to find Leliana leaning against the archway.

“Hero of Ferelden,” she greeted. Her voice was still as melodic as Naema remembered, but it had a sharp edge. This was business. It hurt. It hurt so much that she couldn’t just crush the beautiful redhead to her chest.

“Leliana,” Naema greeted back with a stiff nod. “Thanks for not dragging me into this shemlen mess when that Seeker was looking for a leader.”

Leliana hummed, a tiny smile flickering at her lips. “Cassandra would not appreciate knowing that I kept you from her,” she said. “So please keep that between us.”

“Just like everything else,” Naema replied, a pained laugh escaping her lips. “I am everyone’s hero, except yours. And you were the only one I wanted to worship me.”

Leliana laughed as well, the sound just as strained as Naema’s. “I seem to recall plenty of evenings where I worshipped you in great detail…”

“Oh, believe me, I survived on those memories for quite a long time.”

But not long enough. That was the expected attack, but Naema only saw Leliana gesture for her to follow. “Come, we should introduce you to the Inquisitor.”

Naema’s heart squeezed again. She was the petty one. Leliana had always been her better half, and now she was empty. “I do really want to meet this Dalish. What’s her clan?”

“Lavellan,” Leliana said simply as they climbed the stairs.

“You said in the letter her name was Atheleen?”

“Yes. But you should mind yourself for now,” Leliana warned. “Lady Lavellan would be a good title to use. Or simply Inquisitor.”

“What, have you Orlesian shems gotten to a Dalish about the need for titles and ‘propriety’?” Naema snorted.

Leliana stopped, rounding on Naema. “Says the elf that is only here because of her title,” she snapped.

Naema stiffened, but didn’t dare challenge her. They spent several uneasy moments staring at each other, each looking as pained by the exchange as the other. Leliana eventually broke eye contact and began leading Naema up to the great hall again.

Leliana swept her gaze across the hall, not finding who she sought at first. The Hero of Ferelden followed dutifully as she continued on.

“Is this the special guest you told the Seeker you’d be bringing to help?” a dwarf asked, putting down a quill he’d been fiddling with.

“Yes,” Leliana answered, pausing in her search to put on her polite smile for him and chat. Naema knew that smile, and it was not the one she’d pulled from her as she tickled her in bed. “Varric, meet the Hero of Ferelden. Naema Tabris.”

“An honor, serah,” Varric said, bowing his head low and offering a flourish with his arm. “Maybe while you’re here you could tell me about your adventures and I could have a full set of the best heroes of the Dragon Age.”

Naema looked to Leliana, clearly confused. The bard laughed. “Varric Tethras is an author. He wrote ‘The Tale of the Champion’. Surely you’ve heard of it?”

“In passing,” she said. “I… don’t read much.” Well this was awkward.

“It’s alright. Actually kinda nice that you’re not a fawning fan,” Varric replied with a chuckle. He wasn’t at all offended, which made Naema relax. “Still, the offer to write your story wasn’t a joke. Come find me while you’re here and we’ll have a fun chat about it.”

“Uh… sure?” Naema answered, nodding.

“Ah!” Leliana exhaled. The noise was familiar to Naema’s ears and she blushed for a brief moments as memories flooded her mind. “Atheleen!”

Naema looked to where the redhead was quickly approaching. The woman she’d called out to stopped and seemed a bit surprised. “Leliana? Did you need something?”

“Yes. I…” Leliana paused, turning to gesture for Naema to approach. The Warden did, though she wasn’t in any hurry. “This is the Hero of Ferelen, Naema Tabris. I thought we could use her knowledge of the Wardens to help us with this business at Adamant.”

Naema bowed her head low, closing her fist and firmly placing it across her chest. “Leliana’s told me much about you, Lady Lavellan. I’m just glad to not be the only elvhan to make the shems see us as people.”

“Half…” she muttered.

“What?”

“I’m only half. Not a pureblood.” She reached up as if out of reflex to touch her ears. Naema frowned. The action reminded her of her sister. Well, at least before she finally got Zev’s attention firmly attached to her. “So don’t get your hopes up too high. I doubt anyone with a sense for tales will place me as a hero to the elvhen.”

Naema reached out, patting Atheleen’s shoulder with a grin. “Blood don’t mean shit,” she said.

“Naema!” Leliana gasped.

The elf only flickered her gaze over to the spymaster for a moment before refocusing on Atheleen. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re less than. Don’t care what the reason is. Prove ‘em wrong.” She paused, gaze settling on her ears for a moment before she removed her hand and gestured to them. “My sister would’ve killed for cute little ears like yours, Atheleen. Wear them proud.”

#wrting #fic #fluff #random #elves #elf #half-elf #inquistior #oc: atheleen #Naema Tabris #Warden #Warden Tabris #Inquisition #DA:I #Leliana #Varric #Varric Tethras #naemaxatheleen #Naeleen #quizzikemen #writing for others

[lcgacyofages-a]

man I wish they’d actually constructed Elvhen as a language instead of a cipher

#Not a Legend { OOC } #{ languages I get. Ciphers I do not }

[fenxshiral]

I went through your blog relating to project Elvhen and you said that you had wished that Bioware had based the Elvish language on the Hebrew language. So is project elvhen based on the Hebrew language? So a name like Keziah which is a different spelling the name "Cassia" which means "cinnamon" (more of a substance like cinnamon) is elvish in project elvhen terms? I mean to say the literal translation of cinnamon (in a naming sense) elvish would be Keziah or is that just vastly different?

No, Project Elvhen is not based on Hebrew, although I stand by my opinion that I wish that Bioware had based Elvhen off of Hebrew, and that a basis of Hebrew (or just simply using Hebrew) would have made more sense with the lore (especially since almost every single city elf has a Hebrew name).

Project Elvhen is based upon the limited amount of Elvhen that is present within the games and books of Dragon Age. It is my goal to basically create a resource for fans to use that want to use the Elvhen language in their fan works, but don’t want to go through the trouble and sifting through all the language in the games and books, especially since the canon Elvhen is a cipher, and therefore has little to no sense to it from a language perspective.

So no, Keziah would not be an Elvhen name in Project Elvhen, especially since the Elvhen language does not have the phoneme /k/.

#bigbadanswers #project elvhen #thedas language project #dragon age #elvhen #bioware #conlang #Anonymous

[dalishious]

How does Bioware name Dalish clans? Do they just mash words together or does each clan name have an actual meaning in some real-life language? Are the names of the Dalish elves - Velanna, Merrill, Ellana - based on actual names or just made up?

A great many Dalish names--given and clan names--come from the fictional elven language (which is actually a cipher.) For example, Clan Virnehn in The Masked Empire means "way/path of Joy" in Elvhen; vir = way/path, nehn = joy. [Link]

The second-most common source of names is real life names originating from Anglo-Celtic and Semitic language groups. [Link]

[persephonesnow]

i sometimes forget that elvhen in DA is a badly done cipher instead of a proper fictional language. 

then i have to write in it

#fanfic woes #also known as elves bitching about solas #sort of