Language of Magic: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''Although use of the Old Speech binds a man to truth, this is not so with dragons. It is their own language, and they can lie in it...'' }}

* The Divine Language in ''[[Fate/stay night]]'', spoken by Servant Caster, which allows her to summon plague winds or 'rains of light' (read: [[Beam Spam|lasers]]) with a single word. Represented by Ancient Greek, but supposedly, it's cannot be pronounced by modern humans (which was probably a problem when they were making the voiced edition). The Fairy Letters written on [[Wave Motion Gun|Excalibur ]] also count.

* In the [[Kate Daniels]] universe, once a word of power is acquired, the mage can command other people and objects just by saying the word, which translate to such things as "Release" and "Obey". However, words of power are acquired by having a contest of wills with the word, and most mages die rather than mastering its power. At the end of ''Magic Bites'', the [[Big Bad]] reveals himself to be fluent in the language from which all words of power were taken.

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "[[Iron Shadows in the Moon|Shadows in The Moonlight]]", [[Dreaming of Times Gone By|Olivia dreams]] that the incantation "Yagkoolan yok tha, xuthalla!" is used by a [[Physical God]] to [[Taken for Granite|transform his son's murderers to statues]]. (It appears harmless when recited by a parrot, though.)

* ''Mage: the Awakening'' has the High Speech. It's not ''necessary'' for magic, but it does give it a nice boost.

** ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'', similarly, had Enochian, but because [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|magic works the way you believe it does]], Latin or other ancient languages will work. For that matter, so will the jargon of contract law. However, some seem to be better than others; one sourcebook includes a young mage worrying about an older mage whose house he's broken into using Latin, but the older mage tells him it's Sumerian that should concern him.

* Syntactic Magic from ''[[GURPS]]: Thaumatology'' is an in depth version of this with several examples provided.