Not really. I had a not particularly functional protype up and running, but real life intervened and I mostly dropped the project. Basically, there are a lot of software things I can do small things in, but there's only one immersive fantasy universe like this one that I can be a part of. With that, I have grown to appreciate Artimidor's patience in dealing with the nitty-gritty of the website instead of just being absorbed in the dream.

So, in short, no.

Thanks again for your feedback. I changed the bit about him in life, as it would rather odd if he was doing anything outside of it.

I also incorpororated a reference to the actual Mallefus Maleficarium by changing the name of Malleus's father to Kramer. It's a little less Avennorian, but I think that's a good trade for the reference to the real world.

I hope to see you more around here!

Thank you so much for your feedback on both entries, and I changed the entry at the points that you suggested.

Most of my knowledge of witchhunting comes from Miller's Crucible, so I can hardly claim to be an expert on the field, though I may be an expert in its Santharian equivalent soon enough.

It's good to see you back!

Overview.
Malleus Mallefiz (799 a.S. - 854) was a 9th century Manthrian witchfinder, writer and polemicist. The premier witchfinder of his generation, Mallefiz accused hundreds, and indirectly thousands of Manthrians for the crimes of witchcraft, particularly the curse of the Evil Ear. His actions, to his detractors, were tantamount to mass murder. His proponents, on the other hand, view him as a hero of epic proportions who liberated towns across the countryside from the curses that were crippling them. He was wracked by scandal during his life about his widespread campaign of witchfinding and is remembered as an iconoclastic figure for good or for ill.

Appearance.
Mallefiz was often portrayed by his opponents as a scarily thin man whose pretentiously coiffured greying hair and abnormally large hook nose was accompanied by a monotone array of clothes as black as his heart. To his supporters, he was the paragon of both masculinity and piousness towards the Twelvern, whose grace was matched only by his intelligence. The truth about his appearance, like most other facts about the man, probably lies somewhere in between.
 
He was almost certainly a tall man, standing at around two peds in height. He was also probably a lanky man, with his muscles trained almost solely by the gesticulations he makes during his speeches. Mallefiz's hair was also greying, and during the last years of his life, it was called by one reliable source, to be "as grey as a cloudy Lorehaven day".


Biography.
799 a.S. - Birth.
Mallefiz was born to a wealthy Chondran family, led by his father Kramer Mallefiz, in which he was the much anticipated firstborn son. Sadly, his mother died during childbirth, casting a shadow on Mallefiz from the earliest days.
 
799-812 - Childhood.
Mallefiz had a happy, if lonely, childhood in Chondra. His father was sufficiently wealthy that he wanted for practically nothing, but also important enough that he was often distant from the home. Mallefiz had the finest tutors that the town had to offer, and he excelled in the various academic disciplines that he was taught, particularly religion.
 
812 - Fall from Grace.
While in the running for a significant promotion to become an advisor to the methar of Chondra (leader of the Sanctuary of the Twelve in Chondra, one of the most powerful offices in Santharia), Hanvin Mallefiz fell prey to a bizarre malady. During a major event of the Santhran, a bout of madness hit Hanvin, rendering him incoherent. At the nadir of the incident, he screamed at the mother of the Santhran to open her mouth to stop her mumbling. Later in life, Mallefiz attributed the incident to a witch who had afflicted his father with the Evil Ear, perhaps a jilted lover who had been abandoned by Hanvin’s upward movement through the clerical orders.  Immediately, Hanvin lost his role in Chondra and was expelled from the city, losing his house and all of his substantial wealth. Malleus Mallefiz was only thirteen years old at the time.
 
814-820 - Father and Son in Lorehaven.
After exile from Chondra, Hanvin Mallefiz set up his household along with his son in Lorehaven. There, he found a job with a friend of one of his uncles as a bookkeeper for a trading company. It was a substantial demotion in status, and the humiliation that his father had suffered dealt a deep blow to the young Malleus's psyche. Yet the emotional scarring that the son had suffered was much less than that of the father. Going from an upwardly mobile clerical advisor to a lowly clerk, and living without a mother for his child was a bitter thing to swallow. Hanvin Mallefiz, proud Avennorian, fell into the drink hard, practically abandoning his son; Malleus had already had to grow up without a mother, after 814 for all intents and purposes he had to grow up without a father.
 
820-823 – Time at the Lorehold.
At the age of 21, Mallefiz enters the university at Lorehaven, the Lorehold.  Mallefiz spends several unhappy years there, unable to enjoy the benefits of being a scion of a wealthy family, unlike most of his fellow students. Academically however, Mallefiz was an excellent scholar and wrote extensively on folk-culture in Manthria and elsewhere. During his time at the Lorehold, he became more and more conscious of the stain that had been cast on his name as a result of his father’s exile, and he grew angry at the witch that he believed had ruined his life. From then on, he resolved to rid the world of their crimes. He let his anger build up for years, until the death of his father. With his last tie to Lorehaven gone, he left to fight against witchcraft. His colleagues thought he was mad, setting off into the unknown to do something that had not really been tried before. He had nothing with him but a handful of coins, the knowledge gained from several years at the Lorehold, and a deep and abiding hatred for witchcraft.
 
823-835 - Witch-Finding through Manthria.
After leaving the Lorehold with practically nothing in 823 by 835, Mallefiz was an influential local celebrity, who could boast the support of thousands of rural peasants. For that transformation, these years are some of the most interesting of his life. He conducted dozens of inquisitions by himself across Manthria, finding nearly one hundred “witches.” Naturally, the lands and possessions of the witches were split amongst the villagers, with a substantial cut for the successful witch hunter. From the proceeds, he became a wealthy man; yet the money came too late for his father who died during this period in squalor once his taste for drink became unsustainable.

Yet perhaps more important than the inquisitions that he conducted by himself were the hundreds of speeches that he made during this portion of his life. They ranged from “Of the nature of the concealment of witches” and “Of the murderous actions of the Seaside witch” and were the impetus for countless other witch inquisitions. These speeches transformed the perception of the Evil Ear and witchcraft more generally from a once quaint rural superstition into an emerging threat to civilized Santharian society. In his own words, he wrote later:
   “They [witches] desire thee to mistake them, to laugh at them, to think them harmless fools. If their magicke was plain to understand, their machinations would soon be discovered, and our inquisitions unnecessary.“
 
835 - Publication of "Of the Listeners, and of the Tribulations They Perpetrate, to the Warning of all Innocent and Twelve-Fearing Folk"
Mallefiz’s epic debut to the world of intellectual work, “Of the Listeners” became the indispensable work about the Evil Ear. Among its novel ideas was the introduction of the female-dominated witchcraft, a novel creation not found in early superstitions. It opened the eyes of the chattering classes in Marcogg and Port Cael to the growing rural movement of witch hunting for which Mallefiz had been the ultimate promoter. While the book did not ingratiate himself particularly with the scholarly, the lay people of Manthria and beyond enthusiastically adopted the ideas found in the work, conducting inquisitions greater in both intensity and frequency. Critics denounced the work as full of prejudice and incitements to violence.

838 - Hunt at Nathembly
Called in to assist with an ongoing inquisition about the fire that had destroyed most of the small village of Nathembly, Malleus Mallefiz began to realize the extent to which he himself was playing with fire. The inquisition started like most of the others with a local woman being accused and lynched for committing the crime of witchcraft. The web of accusations grew rapidly, and eventually one of the accused “witchlings” accused Mallefiz himself of witchcraft. He was confident of his anti-witch record, but the accuser mentioned how of course, a secret witch supporter would claim to be a witch hunter as it would be the perfect disguise. Despite his protests, a lynch-mob was formed, but Mallefiz managed to escape on a boat along the Mashdai before he could be caught. This was the first time that Mallefiz realized the extent to which the tool of mob justice could be used against him, as much as it could be used by the “righteous.” From then on, Mallefiz was less personally involved in the work of conducting inquisitions, preferring to write letters and speeches to encourage others to do the “good work” of witchfinding.
 
840 - Publication of "A Concise Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Rumours, and Slanders against Witches and other Honest Folk"
Hildula Hauntwell published her magnum opus, a condemnation of the witchfinding phenomenon and a heartfelt defence of witches. This was well received among many intellectuals, but was despised as the ultimate attack by Mallefiz and his supporters. Mallefiz claimed that Hauntwell herself was a witch, and allegedly hired an assassin to murder her. Those claims have not been verified, but they are very much possible given the depth of his enmity towards her.

844 – “Death” of Hildula Hauntwell
Hildula Hauntwell, Mallefiz’s nemesis since the publication of her “Concise Encyclopaedia” was reported dead under suspicious circumstances. Unwisely, Mallefiz published a pamphlet, “Of the essential justice of Twelvern” which celebrated her death as an example of divine justice acting through a human to smite a sinner. Privately too Mallefiz celebrated with a reception at his home to “Honour the Lives of the Righteous and the Deaths of the Others.” Those celebrations only furthered the rumours that Mallefiz had had Hauntwell killed.
 
848 - Investigation of Assassination
In this year, Lorehaven authorities finally began an investigation of Mallefiz's rumoured role in the death of Hildula Hauntwell. As no body was found, the investigation ended promptly, but the experience gave Mallefiz a growing suspicion of a conspiracy against him among the Lorehaven authorities. He left shortly after, continuing to travel and write, never staying in one place for more than a few months.
 
853 - Publication of "Of the pervading mood of the towns, inasmuch as it differs from country-folk"
One of the last substantial works published by Mallefiz during his lifetime, the work examines the relative criticism that Mallefiz and his fellow witchfinders received as they pursued their mission. In Mallefiz's view, there was an alliance between rural witches and urban meddlers, as they both fought his inquisitions. He viewed the rural peasants as the victims of the witches, and that the urban rich, in their avarice, wanted to maintain the poverty of the rural peasants. That puts the rural in a direct class conflict with urban. “Of the pervading mood” was the first work of Mallefiz’s into the why of witchcraft, not just the what. That reflects his suspicions of a massive conspiracy against him by Santharian authorities, both spiritual and temporal.
 
854 - Death
According to official reports, Mallefiz was killed at the age of 56 by bandits while travelling to meet with a local witchhunter in Kneef in Eastern Manthria. He was probably killed in Shady Grove, known locally as Banditwoods, as he was last seen leaving town from Marcogg a few weeks prior. His supporters decried the murder as a conspiracy against him and responded by initiating massive witch finding inquisitions to search for those witches responsible.

Importance.
Witchcraft and attitudes towards it were never the same after the works of Malleus Mallefiz. He turned a dying rural distaste for witches into a full-blown moral panic that raged like a forest fire across the countryside. Many more fellow witchfinders jumped into the profession to finish the work that Mallefiz had started, acting as a multiplier factor to his work. Thousands were killed in the ensuing bloodshed, some of whom even his most die-hard supporters would admit were innocent. The proceeds gained from the inquisitions made Mallefiz one of the richest self-made men in Manthria, only possible through his seizure of witches’ supporters’ lands. Despite those facts, Mallefiz continues up to the current day to be seen as a protector of ordinary people from very bad people that want to do them harm.

Malleus Mallefiz was undoubtedly one of the most divisive figures of his time and place, and the intellectual conflict about his motives was and is intense. Some attributed his witchhunting as purely an act of greed, as the proceeds that he gained from the seizure of accused witches’ assets were extensive. Those critics, chiefly Hilda Hauntwell, pointed to the trail of blood that followed Mallefiz wherever he went, as the ultimate proof of his malfeasance and malevolence. They see him as an essentially evil character who left the world more brutal and violent than when he entered it. His fans saw Mallefiz as a pious crusader against evil wherever he saw it. They pointed to his success in ridding Manthria of hundreds of witches and of opening the people’s eyes to the threat lurking among their neighbours. They referred how he successfully fought governmental persecution and with the help of ordinary folk, protected them. Another position sees Mallefiz as an essentially tragic figure, one to be empathized with and not condemned. Those analyses emphasize the tragedies of his upbringing: the death of his mother, and the humiliation insanity and death of his father. That school of thought is promoted by authors like Shabakuk Zeborius Anfang, who condemn Mallefiz, while acknowledging the essential causes of his actions.

In all interpretations, Mallefiz is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the history of the persecution of witchcraft. Memories of his inquisitions endure in the folktales of rural Manthria, and for many child the Inquisitor Mallefiz is the one who will eat them if they do not go to bed on time. Regardless, he is remembered by some as a hero, by others as a villain, but for all he is never forgotten.

Skeptically opening this up for comments. I'm still tweaking around the edges, but I think the basic shape of Nathembly is here.
To make your lives easier, http://www.santharia.com/dev/index.php/topic,3780.msg44595.html#msg44595, there's a link to some info about Nathembly

Overview.
Nathembly is a small village of about 400 souls that can be found within the Santharian province of Manthria, Its business is agricultural, and it does that enormously successfully, with the help of its fertile red soil. The town therefore is a prosperous one, with trade links that extend throughout the province. The history of Nathembly has generally been one of peaceful prosperity, ocasionally interrupted by war, acts of the gods, and witch hunts.

Description.
Nathembly is a well-off town that derives its wealth from the distinctive red earth along with the water that surrounds the town. That prosperity is evident in the well-built cottages that Nathemblians prefer. Though not as elegant as those of the larger towns of Marcogg and Chondra, they are built robustly out of local plaster and timber from forests in the Kneeskinners.

By far, the sturdiest of all the buildings of the village is the Orc’s Head, the local pub. It is built of solid lumber, brought all the way from the Auturian Woods. The Orc’s Head is the hub of the social life of the village, and it is where the people of the town come together to drink an ale together. There, they may share the latest tips on cultivating and tilling the land but are more likely to spend their evenings gossiping and spreading superstitious stories amongst themselves.

Despite the bucolic appearance of the town, beneath the earth holds incomprehensible savagery. Hundreds of years ago, near Nathembly thousands of orcs met the allied armies of Man and Elf under the leadership Fhalsnir in combat. The elves and men in the anger sank to depravity in their pursuit of the Orcs, leading to immense bloodshed. It is said that the Mashdai ran red with the blood of the combatants for days after the events of that fateful battle. Even today, the bones of the deceased can still be found beneath the plows of Nathemblians. Darkly, some have suggested that the reason that the soil is so incredibly fertile in the region of Nathembly and Orcs' Head Point is because the battle; the decaying corpses of so many provide the nutrients needed to produce the grains that the people of Marcogg and elsewhere so desperately need. That story is by no means universally believed, with many attributing the soil’s fertility and its colour to river silt instead.

Location.
Nathembly sits on the edge of the Marshdai Reservoir of central Manthria, where the Marshdai spreads to form a lake. The two branches of the Marshdai meet at Nathembly, the Upper and the Lower. The two major ciites in the vicinity are Marcogg and Chondra, around 100 and 200 strals away respectively. Though of the two, Marcogg due to its greater size holds larger sway in the village. Politically the town is within the Duchy of Huiscen, though it is rare that any business of state pertains to this little village on the river.

Just north of the main body of buildings in the village lies Orcs' Head Point, the site of the battle of the same name in the Third Sarvonian War. The point juts out into the Upper Mashdai, making the Point the last viable place to cross the river south of Grensa Post. For that reason, during the Third Sarvonian War, the armies of the elves and humans attempted to attack the Orcs while they were crossing. They failed to do so, but they did manage to defeat a substantial group of Orcs that had been left on the western bank by their compatriots. The allied armies brutally killed the Orcs where they stood and according to legend stacked up many of the heads of their deceased foes onto a great heap on the tip of the point. The assembled heads were taller than even the tallest of the fair elf soldiers, and the pile stood like a sentinel over the point. The heads were left to rot until they were mere bone, as a testament to the victory that had been wrought on that day.

To the west of the town lies a range of hills, playfully but accurately called the Kneeskinnners, given the amount of injury they could cause if one fell off the top of one of the hills. They are low hills, nothing compared to Stormhaven Ridge, let alone the Mithral Mountains, but even so they look over the flat plains and town like a Torán eagle.


People.
The people of Nathembly are simple people of farmers, fishers and traders. They have generally prospered in recent years, providing ever more grain and goods to the hungry customers of Chondra and especially Marcogg. Ethnically, the inhabitants of the village are mostly of Avennorian stock, though these are not the seafaring Avennorians of eras past. Nathemblians have long since adopted the fertile soils and calm rivers of the areas surrounding the village; most of the fishermen would be utterly incapable of fishing on the open sea, despite their bravado in the pub.  In addition to tall tales of fishing prowess, Nathemblians also share superstitions, which are unusually popular, unlike their other Manthrian neighbors.

Despite their relative ethnic homogeneity, many travelers and traders pass through the village, lending a touch of the exotic to the town. Those touches are usually superficial, but even the smallest of changes are viciously mocked by the rural elements of the village. Ironically, the traders that pass through the village are frequently traveling through Nathembly to Marcogg or Chondra to purchase products that come originally from Nathembly itself.


Resources.
The most valuable resource of Nathembly is indubitably the rich soil of its surroundings. Produced in part out of the rich silt brought downstream along the branches of the Mashdai, the farmland is well-cultivated with fields of Bredden and other grains. Nearly as valuable as the soil that the water carries are the river and the reservoir themselves. Their fresh, clear water are full of minnows and pike that are brought in by the lines and nets of the fishermen of the village. The fish and grain are indispensable in both the feeding of the townspeople themselves but also for trade with Marcogg and Chondra.


Climate.
The climate of Nathembly is similar to that of the rest of Manthria, inasmuch as the weather is very temperate. The seasons are clearly defined with warm summers and cool rainy winters being marked with the different elements of the agricultural calendar. The summers do get quite warm in Nathembly, due to the lack of cool mist as in Marcogg and farther east, and to beat the heat, Nathemblians love to take a dip in the Mashdai. Superstition has it however, that if a farmer steps into the cool waters of Mashdai before his crops are harvested, there will not be crops to harvest. Therefore, the only people that swim before the harvest are rebellious children, defying the norms of the village.

Myth/Lore.
Not all of the tragedies that have occurred in Nathembly are ancient battles. In the ninth century a.S., half of the town's mostly timber buildings burned down to ashes. That led to many townsfolk becoming destitute, with many moving to larger cities, like Marcogg or Chondra. Those who remained brought in a noted Manthrian witch hunter Malleus Mallefiz, better known for his work on the Evil Ear, was brought in to investigate the fire. Through his methods, a local woman by the name of Saltha was found to be guilty of promoting the arts of witchcraft, which had led to the fire. While being lynched by her neighbors, the accused woman admitted that she was indeed the leader of a local witch coven, but that she was not the only witch in town. She then alleged that three other women were witchlings under her tutelage, and that they had also learned the "dark arts." Interestingly enough, one of the accused was the daughter of the man that had originally brought in Malleus Mallefiz, Arnolv Eir.

Eir attempted to spirit away his daughter to Marcogg but was caught trying to leave the village in the middle of the night. Eir and his daughter were both put to death for their crimes against both the people of Nathembly and the law of the land. The death toll continued to mount as more and more villagers were accused, until Mallefiz himself fell under suspicion of witchcraft. Mallefiz then fled the village on a boat to Marcogg, ending the witch hunt.


History.

~1500 b.S.	Founding of Nathembly	The area is settled by colonists and farmers where the Upper and Lower Mashdai met. The village was probably built on the site of an early Darian site, but that knowledge has been lost to the fog of time.
212 b.S.	Battle of Orcs' Head Point	The invading armies of the Orcs attempting to cross the Upper Mashdai are attacked by a combined Avennorian-Tethinrhim army under the leadership of the Avennorian king Fhalsnir. Because of a delay on the part of the Human armies in the Kneeskinners, the bulk of the Orcs manage to cross before the the allied armies arrive. Once they arrive, they fall upon the Orcs, forcing them to fight along the shores of the river. There, surprised and divided, thousands of Orcs are butchered. That victory proved to be fairly unimportant, as the Avennorians' delay permitted the Orcs to escape.
838 a.S.-839 a.S.	Nathembly's Fire and Witch Hunt	A fire spreads to destroy most of the village, leaving many villagers destitute. The village was partially rebuilt by locals, although many Nathemblians moved to larger towns after their households were destroyed. Physical indications pointed to a runaway kitchen fire as the cause, though not all believed that. A noted Manthrian witch hunter Malleus Mallefiz, better known for his work on the Evil Ear, was brought in to investigate, and a local woman was found to be guilty of promoting the arts of witchcraft, which led to the fire. She was lynched by her fellow Nathemblians shortly after, but the witch hunt did not end there. During her execution, the accused witch charged several other women in the town, ultimately leading to a witch hunt that led to the deaths of 11 Nathemblians. The village took several years to recover, but the fertile land and the cool waters of the Mashdai attracted back new farmers and fishers to replace the old. The town had returned to its former size within a few years.
1597 a.S.	Great Cold	In this particularly cold winter which impacted all of Santharia, Nathembly was particularly hard hit. The grain reserves that Nathemblians rely on during the winter were short that year already, and the inability to fish made the food supplies of the village come bare. Fores of thick snow covering the countryside made travel neigh impossible, to savage consequences to the people of Nathembly, making the Great Cold among the direst disasters that the village had ever experienced.

Yay. I'm glad you like it Azhira.

 

Hey!

I've been busy on both real life and my ongoing project to develop the language of the Rhom-Oc. That should be forthcoming.  Regardless, I think that the font stuff looks great, and as Mina says the bar for affricatives, or the "roof" as you called it, is totally cosmetic. However would be easier in your font is fine.

I am in no way a "real" member of the Dream, but I guess I can introduce myself regardless. I am Seagazer and I generally do language-y stuff, and I'm currently working on a bunch of new Orcish words. I would be happy to edit anything that you write, though I'm not the biggest expert in all the details.

Awesome!
 

I'm really glad that you are a fan of the language. I hope that this can go up on the site when/if you would be ready.

Thanks.

That's a cool idea. I mentioned in the entry, but I think that idea is sufficiently unique to be used for one of the dialects, not for the standard language.

Updated the entry with all of your suggestions Mina.

I also added /dʱ/ and /bʱ/.

Upon reading more details on the Principles page, http://santharia.com/languages/styrash/styrash.htm, it looks like it uses Terran words and ideas, like the comparison to Latin.

Perhaps IPA can slip in after all?

Okey Dokey!

I think I have this entry in a sort-of acceptable place. I was wondering what the process would be for getting this on the site.

Is the IPA Santharian enough, or what?

Hi.

I thought "y'oc" could mean "weak, young orcling", but if you disagree that could be changed.

In terms of the anatomy of Orcish mouths, I've been roughly assuming that they are identical to that of humans, but I think that that will need to be changed. There seems to be pretty dramatic variability among different orcish tribes, http://santharia.com/pictures/faugar/faugar_pics/rhom_oc.jpg
http://santharia.com/pictures/seeker/seeker_pics/orcristh_orc.jpg
http://santharia.com/pictures/faugar/faugar_pics/shakgrah_the_searer.jpg

Despite that, I think just dialectal variety could be taken into account, and it could be that just that the Rhom and the Losh speak with different sounds! The Volkek-oshra look pretty human-like, so I think that they wouldn't need too much modification. I think that it would interesting to have one main page for the shared dialect, but also have other Orcish language pages for the different flavors of Kh'omchr'om, as well as unrelated langauges.


On another note, I really like the idea of the gnomic, particularly in the context of already existing chants like this one. Each one of these lines could be in the gnomic, and I think that would really add some gravitas to the entire thing.

"The First Warrior is the best!
The First Warrior is the greatest!
The First Warrior is the strongest!
The First Warrior defeats all others!
The First Warrior pushes his enemy into the dust!
K’ahn’uck will rule the world!"

Unfortunately, this reminds me that I need to add comparatives and superlatives.

A delightfully creepy story!

I don't have much to add, but here's what I do have.

• The phrase "like a dark harbinger" doesn't sound quite right. I don't think harbingers engulf things.
• You need a comma in "Self-assured he finally stepped forward."
• And some minor spelling things. "Raeis, let's no reawaken your grief. ", "fataly", "noone". Maybe a spellcheck could be useful.