Istvanistani language

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The Istvanistani language, also referred to as Common Tongue, is one of the most widely spoken languages on Micras and its general lingua franca.

Where then does the Common Tongue, widely known as Istvanistani, derive if it is not the ancestral tongue of the Istvanistani race themselves? We know it is not for even when it was first encountered by the fabled Benacian empire of Khaz Modan, its usage was limited to the caste of pestilential merchants who had landed on the tropical shores of Yardistan. These merchants themselves relied upon what is today the Common Tongue as a sort of easily interchangeable argot for haggling with barbarians of all manner of races across the known world of that era. The question is an interesting one and the answer seems to point towards the dismal, ancient, and now long forgotten land of South Mondesia.

The Mondesians were an accursed people, the prey of every nation, but especially of Babkha, the western Apollonian empires that would eventually become Kildare, and of Shireroth. Of Arminian stock, hailing from the dismal frozen wastes of far north-eastern Apollonia, the Mondesians split off from the ancestral population in prehistoric times and began a long and woe-filled folk-migration across the length and breadth of the continent, finally settling in lands not too far removed from where Floria exists today. Something encountered during those long migration, perhaps encounters with the ancestors of the Jing or of the Silver Yak Horde had sapped the vital spirit of these Mondesians and by the time they had settled into their new tropical climes they had become the habitual victims of slavers, snatched up by raiding parties ranging along the coasts and sold into almost every port attainable along the equatorial currents, their language becoming a common place in the slavers markets and thereafter amongst the merchants themselves. In this manner the Common Tongue dispersed out into the world like a virus, corrupting the language and identity of every nation. This accounts for how the Common Tongue spread westwards to Benacia, via the islands of Yardistan, Amity, Mirioth, and So-Sara, and eastwards into the Skerry Isles, and the Captive Sea, and thence onto the shores of southern Keltia.

How then are we to account for the populations of Common Tongue speakers to be found in the far north-east of that continent, as well as the related yet heavily distinct languages of Britannic and East Moorland.