who speaks xenari?
Xenari began among the Veilborn — succubi and incubi from a parallel plane where reality is negotiable, perception is weaponized, and the boundary between self and other is porous. Contact turned it into a shared language used by several sapient peoples, including humans.
The grammar still carries its Veilborn ancestry: evidentiality for surviving illusions, animacy for tracking active agency, and object-first clauses for rapid triage. Its vocabulary now also carries the bodies, habitats, diplomacy, jokes, and prejudices of a wider world.
the peoples
aeral · qrontzlonq
High-atmosphere gliders whose membrane sails turn dense winds into lift. Their communal navigation traditions are sung as layered wind-song.
lithren · xloqngrox
Subterranean, silicate-plated people who sense vibration through stone and preserve communal memory in shaped rock.
thalren · xrompuyshang
Amphibious oceanic people whose language combines voice with chromatophore color, making skin-pattern part of grammar.
khezh · zokaxaqey
Chitin-plated hexapods with colony ancestry. Khezh societies are deeply communal, but their people are individuals rather than a hive mind.
veilborn · ngolxroqvi
Succubi and incubi who feed on resonance and can manifest across the Veil. The neutral species word does not imply predation or moral character.
human · trelqvi
Humans use the established Xenari root for a living human. They are late adopters of the language and enthusiastic inventors of bad accents.
the ugly register
Contact also produced slurs. These are real translator entries because hostile dialogue must survive a round trip, but they are never neutral names. The English headword below is the direct pragmatic analogue; the old playground-sounding calque survives only as etymology.
qronkqrep · polack · 2/5
An anti-Aeral ethnic slur. Lowland accounts treated wind-song and distributed navigation as incoherent thought, building a stereotype that Aeral were flighty and stupid. Literal etymology: bird-brain.
qubihqrap · bohunk · 2/5
An anti-Lithren ethnic slur. Extraction states recast Lithren refusal to surrender stone archives as stupidity, rigidity, and exploitable stone labor. Literal etymology: rock-head.
plenkfrek · chink · 3/5
An anti-Thalren racial slur from segregated surface ports, where gills and chromatophores became racial markers. Literal etymology: fish-face.
xlekqfrek · gook · 4/5
An anti-Khezh wartime racial slur. Colonial extermination campaigns called Khezh settlements infestations and paid bounties. Literal etymology: bug-face.
zlekkroxzal · kike · 4/5
An anti-Veilborn racial slur. Post-Pact panics cast all resonance feeding as secret predation, greed, and exploitation. Literal etymology: blood-sucker.
tuputlor · nigger · 5/5
The extreme anti-human racial slur. During the Flesh Levy, humans were denied personhood, inventoried by usable body mass, and treated as consumable biological stock. The official caste term survived emancipation as the canonical slur. Literal etymology: meat-bag.
qrazhel · retard · 4/5
An ableist slur, literally “a mind that will not catch the thread.” A communal-reasoning metaphor became a noun for people perceived as cognitively deficient. It is neither a clinical term nor a neutral description.
evidentiality = survival
In a world of illusions and shapeshifting, marking how you know something is not politeness — it's survival. Saying "the door is open" without specifying whether you saw it, deduced it from residue, heard it, or assumed it could get someone killed.
xa = I saw it · xe = I deduced it · xi = I was told · xo = I assume
animacy = agency
A glamer is animate — it acts on perception. An expired ward is inanimate. A feeding succubus is animate. A succubus in torpor is inanimate. The language grammar-marks whether something is currently active or dormant.
You can't pretend something is acting when it isn't. The grammar won't let you.
ordinal pronouns = presence
When beings can project, possess, and manifest in multiple places, "who is actually here" is a real question. leq (present other) vs req (absent known) distinguishes "someone is manifesting nearby" from "my pact-partner isn't here right now."
OSV = triage
In a predatory dimension, the target comes first. "What got affected" before "who did it." If someone says ra vi qex first, everyone knows something is happening to a stranger before they even hear who's doing it.
harsh phonology = clarity
Q, x, c, glottal stops. Sounds that cut through magical resonance. Soft sounds get warped by ambient enchantment. Xenari is designed to be heard correctly the first time, because misunderstandings are lethal.
vocabulary shifts by context
Succubi shift vocabulary and tone depending on context — euphemisms when hunting, archaic terms in ritual settings, bare pronouns among bonded companions. But the grammar stays the same: standard OSV with full particles. The words change; the structure doesn't.
hunting euphemisms: feed → lure, drain → flow, soul → body. the predator's vocabulary, not the predator's grammar.
passive = erasure
Using passive for feeding is culturally callous. "The soul was drained" erases the predator and reduces the victim to an inanimate object. The active voice ("she drained the soul") at least acknowledges both parties. The passive is what you say when you don't want to name who did it — or when you don't care.
no word for "sated"
Xenari has no positive word for fullness. You can only say "not hungry" (ngu qraf). Succubi don't have a concept of being full — only the absence of hunger. The gap in the vocabulary says everything about the culture.
a river is animate. a lake is not. a running AI is animate. a stored model is not. a succubus in torpor is inanimate — grammatically demoted to a stone until she hungers again.
the language doesn't let you pretend. it forces you to declare your epistemic position, your animacy assessment, and your proximity to every being you discuss. it is a language built for creatures who lie — designed to make lying harder.
but they also joke. they judge. they get bored. the eternal hunger doesn't mean every moment is a hunt — and the language has the vocabulary to prove it.
beyond the hunt
Succubi aren't always in predator mode. They have casual conversations, downtime, opinions about non-feeding things, humor, aesthetics, and social bonds beyond pacts and feeding. The language reflects this with everyday vocabulary alongside the hunting/feeding terms.
everyday speech
The language has intensifiers (vrol = very, zup = really), fillers (zrem = kinda, brex = i guess), casual responses (vroq = yeah, stux = ok, zlom = nah), and common adverbs (pling = again, snel = still, qros = now).
they say "yeah sure whatever" just like anyone else.
opinions & judgment
Words for cool (frupq), boring (xromt), funny (qrelo), annoying (xramq), weird (plexo), stupid (flum), lame (qelm), gross (zlum), nice (naxu), crazy (cromx). Succubi judge. They have opinions.
art & aesthetics
Music (zlekq), drums (drul), flutes (flix), singing (buc), and creative expression are part of the culture. A glamer is an art form. A ward is calligraphy. The line between magic and aesthetics is thin.
social bonds
Pacts and feeding bonds are real, but so are ordinary friendships, rivalries, and loyalties. The ordinal pronoun system tracks who's present — not just who's prey. leq = someone right here. req = someone known but absent. Both work for friends.
causal & temporal thinking
The grammar includes causal conjunctions (troz = because, qlez = so/therefore) and temporal conjunctions (prexq = before, vrem = after, cruv = when/while) for complex reasoning — not just "I feed" but "I feed because I hunger, so I hunt after I wake."
humor
If a language has words for "funny," "boring," "stupid," and "whatever," its speakers tell jokes. They complain. They dismiss things. They get annoyed. The predator/prey dynamic is one register — the everyday is another.
a succubus saying xronv ("whatever") is still a succubus. she's just a bored one.