Enochian

Enochian is the language created by God in Heaven for His Heralds to use in speaking with mortals. It is not a natural language, but a constructed one - crafted solely for this purpose: that divine speech might be heard and comprehended by the mortal mind. Even so, to hear Enochian spoken by a Herald is a traumatic experience, one that only a rare few can endure with their sanity intact.

When the Heralds chose and approached the Prophets, the first words they spoke were "Have Courage." These words alone were sufficient to drive the language into the Prophets' souls and to impose the command to stand firm in the face of the unimaginable. While the Prophets were able to speak Enochian to their followers, their words never carried the same weight as when uttered by a Herald of God in Heaven - yet they were still enough to provoke visions, awe, seizures, and episodes of glossolalia.

Today, only a select few are permitted to study the language, and only after extensive preparation. Most are content to work with the Pallaman translations compiled in the first century - pale imitations of God's message, but safe for the mind. Those who do undertake the study of Enochian must proceed with great caution and are closely monitored by their superiors. More than one student of the High Speech has developed a fanatical fixation on some fragment of theology, pursuing it with suicidal - and at times homicidal - conviction.

Written Enochian

Writing in Enochian presents several unique and hazardous challenges. The Prophets received full knowledge of the sacred glyphs when the language was branded upon their souls, but few of those who came after have been able to absorb the complete symbol set. Moreover, the glyphs themselves are not static. As they are inscribed, they shift and change, leaking strange power into the surrounding environment.

Most materials cannot withstand these effects. Enochian cannot be written on parchment, paper, vellum, cloth, or any organic substance - except living flesh. Enochian tattoos, however, are a topic for another day.

Glyphs may be inscribed in stone, but the stone typically erodes within days, reducing even the hardest slab to rubble. The most suitable materials are metals, and of these, gold has proven the most durable. When the Prophets first recorded the scriptures revealed to them by the Heralds of God in Heaven, they did so upon tablets of gold. These tablets were capable of containing the glyphs, but they remained dangerously potent for years. Prolonged exposure caused mental trauma, seizures, and episodes of religious mania in any who approached.

Only after four years had passed did the tablets cease to radiate such overwhelming divine energy, at which point members of the faithful could begin to handle them - carefully, with covered eyes and thick gloves.

The Scriptures

During the first century ID, the Scriptures were carefully translated into Pallaman, which became the ecclesiastical language of The Church for the next seventeen centuries. This allowed the dissemination of the word of God in Heaven throughout Elbid and had a profound influence on the cultures that adopted the faith. Dozens of idioms were introduced from Enochian into mortal languages via the medium of Pallaman and remain in common use to this day. The influence of the Scriptures also led to the adoption of hundreds of Pallaman words into the tongues of the faithful, and the intelligentsia even attempted to adjust their grammar and spelling to align with the Pallaman of the sacred texts.

Of course, the version of Pallaman found in the holy texts was not the same as that spoken by the citizens of the Pallaman Empire. It was an attempt to render the celestial language of God's Heralds into something mortals could comprehend, carried out by a series of monks who were slowly going mad from exposure to Enochian glyphs. The vocabulary they employed and the sentence structures they adopted were convoluted and strained compared to the classical Pallaman they began with. While they succeeded in capturing something of the original essence, the resulting text has a long history of inspiring irrational fanaticism in those who study it too deeply. Even filtered through the process of translation, too much of the holy word of God in Heaven can be damaging to the mortal psyche. Some of these structures are now embedded in many of the languages of Elbid, and with them, a measure of the original's power has been transmitted.

Enochian Endures

Despite never having been spoken by more than a hundred mortal beings, Enochian is one of the most influential languages in the history of the world. The scriptures originally delivered by the Heralds have been translated into every language in Elbid, as well as most others across the world. Its structures have infiltrated the tongues of the faithful, and vestiges of its power have become entrenched in the minds and souls of all who speak them.

The Church maintains a small cadre of clerics trained to read and speak the holy tongue, for the power of the original words remains undiminished. Commands given in Enochian are difficult to resist, and even the inanimate can be twisted into compliance by a forceful phrase. But The Church has always known the dangers: those who learn the language of God in Heaven must be watched closely, lest the madness it engenders turn them against the Hierarchs - and The Church itself.

Enochian is a dangerous and potent language, one that has shaped the world in countless ways, both obvious and unseen. It shapes it still. It will endure until the last mind is extinguished, the last glyph erased, and all the souls that can be saved have joined the Divine Choir of God in Heaven.