The Language of the Srians
Srilyuho
[ʂi.lɯɤ̯.ɣɑ]
Block Script
Traditional Script
Cursive Script
“Fading chimes spin webs of silk
as the wheel of Sorrow turns in darkness:
Without memory we turn to stone and wear away.
As the boundary of life and death fades,
how shall we prove we are alive?”
The Srianese language is the language of the Srians, a race descended from beomins who were cursed with immortality. It is distantly related to the Mharic and Luanese languages sharing many cognates. Modern Srianese is typologically agglutinating with primarily verb-final word order with modifiers following what they modify. It also has a system of speech levels reflecting social hierarchy and a two-way tonal system differentiating between low and high tones. Due to Srians lacking lips, srianese is entirely devoid of labial articulations. It is written with the Srianese script, an syllabic alphabet written from top-to-bottom in lines going right-to-left. The script mimics the bodies of spiders and features three different calligraphic script types: traditional, block, and cursive.
The Srians are a race of immortals and the descendants of a group of beomin who were banished to the caves of tears, the largest cave system in all of Ruina, carved out of the earth from the tears of the weaving goddess of sorrow. Legend tells that they unknowingly drank the quicksilver dew of eternal suffering from the stalactites where hung the bells of Sorrow. The males grew violent, killing each other and themselves, leaving a race of only females, cursed with immortality and insatiable desires. The dew burned their lips away and left them impotent, but the goddess blesses them with virgin births always in the form of identical twins. The srians highly value external beauty and appearance, yet they also follow a philosophy of “masochistic hedonism” in which they believe that by maximizing misery their pleasure or capacity for pleasure can simultaneously be increased, and they thus have a complex series of rituals and customs around self-harm while preserving appearance. They worship spiders as the messengers of their goddess, and they are known for their pure white complexions, ruby and violet eyes, and black hair. They are one of the races most feared by beomin and non-mortals, thought by many cultures to be a myth, and their silk is known as one of the most sought after items in all of Ruina. While they are technically immortal, most accumulate enough bodily harm to essentially die or lose their mind. Srians are also commonly known as “weaving maidens” 織女 and “cursed immortals” 禍仙 in other languages via Luanese.