Trollish

Trollish is one of Vareth’s oldest mortal languages and shares ancient ancestry with Orcish and Ogrish.

It is slower, rasping, and more drawn out than Orcish. Trollish speech often carries a controlled, threatening quality: less like a blow and more like something dragged slowly across stone.

Sound and Form

Trollish favors deep vowels, sustained consonants, and rough transitions between sounds.

Common vowels are a, o, u, e. i occurs, but is less common in older native roots.

Characteristic consonants include g, gh, k, kh, r, rh, s, sh, t, th, v, z, zh, m, n. Frequent combinations include gr, thr, kr, vr, shr, rth, rgh, zh, kh.

gh is a voiced throat sound. kh is its harder unvoiced counterpart. rh represents a rough, breath-heavy r. zh is a low voiced hushing sound. th is common in both roots and endings.

Common endings include -th, -r, -gh, -sh, -zh, -n, -ar, -ur. Two- and three-syllable forms are common, and consonants are often allowed to linger rather than being released sharply.

Apostrophes are rare and never decorative. Where they occur, they mark a real retained throat closure or an unusually strong boundary between elements that have not fully fused. Most modern compounds and titles are written without them, as in Gorthar.

Roots

Root	Meaning
gorth	stone; mountain; hard ground
ghar	earth; heavy soil
marr	open lowland; broad ground
ruun	great river; enduring flow
ogh	open ocean; outer sea
suurh	water held deep or still
vash	marsh; wet ground
ghur	deep; below; underneath
shaal	high open place; exposed sky
veth	border; division
durh	hold; enclosed place; fortified keeping
khran	blood; descent; bloodline
morr	mother; maternal ancestor
darr	father; paternal ancestor
nahr	child; descendant
orzh	ancestor; one remembered after death
mokhar	leader; one who commands others
zhar	claim; asserted possession
shur	preserve; keep from decay or loss
vrash	bind; restrain; compel
gresh	watch; observe without revealing oneself
nagh	hidden; concealed
vorr	wait; endure patiently
thresh	deceive; misdirect
skarh	enemy; hostile rival
ragh	war; prolonged armed struggle
krash	wound; tear; violent injury
varg	dangerous; formidable
muth	corpse; physical remains
zhor	memory; remembered knowledge
osh	old; ancient
vel	dead state; severed from living continuity
khar	ritual command; force imposed through magic

Several roots remain recognizably related to Orcish and Ogrish through their shared ancestry, especially older words for land, kinship, conflict, and possession. Draconic influence is more selective. shaal is an old borrowing from Draconic shaal, retained unusually close to its source. Trollish funerary and formal vocabulary also contains later Draconic influence around uth, death or ending, but most everyday death vocabulary remains native.

Signature Terms

Trollish preserves several culturally important titles and magical words whose histories are older than their modern surface forms.

• zhoruk — the old trollish shamanic tradition. It is a descendant of the same ancestral ritual word reconstructed approximately as *zharuk that produced orcish zharak and ogrish zarug.
• zhorukar — a practitioner of zhoruk; Common usually translates the word as shaman.
• velkhar — necromancy; a later trollish magical formation associated with the dead state (vel) and magically imposed command (khar).
• velkharar — a necromancer, explicitly distinct from a zhorukar.
• gornar — a local chief or established settlement ruler.
• varogh — an appointed war leader or campaign commander. The title does not imply permanent rulership.
• gorthak — a great troll; the term is associated with gorth, hard stone or mountain ground, and an old altered-state ending -ak.

Trollish does not normally insert apostrophes into these forms. An apostrophe is used only when pronunciation actually preserves a throat closure or boundary.

Naming

Trollish names usually derive from one or two roots, with old compounds often preserving sounds lost from everyday speech.

Personal names favor ancestry, endurance, cunning, danger, memory, physical qualities, or significant events. Lineage names favor ancestors, bloodlines, old territory, remembered deeds, and inherited obligations. Place names commonly describe terrain, water, age, concealment, boundaries, or historical possession.

Apostrophes may remain where two elements preserve a strong grammatical or ancestral boundary. Fully naturalized compounds usually lose them.

Gorthar preserves gorth together with an old territorial element, giving the name the sense of mountain country held or recognized as a domain.

Structure

Trollish permits longer layered clauses than Orcish, particularly when describing cause, memory, obligation, or events whose effects continue.

The language distinguishes between something merely remembered and something formally preserved through lineage or testimony.

Possession distinguishes temporary control, inherited possession, and acknowledged territorial claim. Trollish also has precise forms for obligations created by oath, ancestry, debt, defeat, or submission.

Writing

Native Trollish uses a flowing but angular script combining long descending strokes with hooked and branching marks. Older inscriptions are commonly carved into stone, wood, bone, or preserved funerary materials. Later written forms retain the long strokes but become more connected when written with ink.

Normal writing proceeds from left to right.

History and Influence

Trollish developed from the same ancestral language as Orcish and Ogrish. It preserves some older consonants and longer forms that Orcish later shortened or hardened and Ogrish often simplified.

Draconic borrowing occurred at several different periods rather than as a single shared layer. Some forms were inherited from the common ancestral language, while others entered Trollish through later contact and developed independently.