Old Vetr

"No one speaks Old Vetr in anything but hushed whispers and the rhythmic chant of a caster. A shame, really, but perhaps it is for the best that a language that can tear power from the very weave is no longer the common one."

-Tormyl the Scorched, Archon of Braggo's Consortium Arcanakke

Old Vetr is a dead language that never truly died. The only people who speak it in its true form anymore are mages, scholars, and Sevari priests (most shamans preferring to speak of the gods in the tongue of their community), but no one can say people ever stopped speaking it. The language simply evolved and diverged, its vowels twisting and consonants sharpening until the arcane power thrumming in its syllables tapered off and disappeared. Many a proud Vetr still insists that there is power in their tongue, but it is a well-established fact that modern Vetr is a challenging language to cast in, and produces far more volatile spells and magical anomalies when used in place of Old Vetr. Still, there have been successful hedge wizards who, never having received formal education on magic, have wrassled Vetr into a formidable casting tongue, so perhaps there is something to the claims of its lingering power.

Old Vetr spawned and influenced many subsequent languages, the most similar and notable of which are modern Vetr and, strangely, Isjeisk, the language of the far northern Isjeinr people, who are known to be fairly isolated and should, by no rights, speak a language so similar to Old Vetr that its speakers find the ancient tongue perfectly comprehensible. It also had a strong influence on Dwarven, Elvish and Celestial, though not enough to be mutually intelligible. Even languages that are unrelated, such as Orcish, Undercommon and Draconic, often feature Old Vetr loanwords, which tend to stick out rather jarringly.