Whenever you play a fantasy or medieval scn, the words used in there will be different in the modern world.

I - Introduction to medieval language

Modern computer gamers like us, play games such as AoK rather than reading Shakespeare's books. If you try to find an antique equivalent for each word you want in your dialogues, you will end up with languages that might be difficult for the player to understand. So medieval languages ain't as difficult to duplicate as you might think.

To simplify it, please read these following three dialogues of greetings from a peasant to a knight.

"Hail, fair sir knight! And what bringeth thee to these perilous woods this fine eventide? Be it the tales of a dragon hereabouts?"

"Good day, sir knight! What brings you to these dangerous woods this evening? Have you heard the rumors of a dragon nearby?"

"Hey, knight! Whatcha doin' in the woods after dark? You looking for that dragon they say lives around here?"

The first one, is over duplicated, and sounds corny. The third one is way to modern, if the peasant is saying that, he must be wearing a baseball cap backwards and is on a skateboard. The second is reasonable, mix between modern and medieval style, a great way to duplicate dialogues.

II - how to use thee, thou, thy and etc.

In many European countries, like germany and france, have two forms of you. in French, the singular form is tu, and the plural form is vous.

Old england medieval languages, use thou for "you" singular, and ye for "you" plural.

Changing the "you"'s in your sentenses to thou and ye will immediately give you a sense of antiquity.

thou is a much more special form of subject, and has it'z own verb forms such as:

to be - thou art - example - Where art thou? : where are you?
to do - thou dost
to plot - thou plottest

Thee is to thou as him is to he. thee can never be the subject of the sentense, only a object. Example: Thank thee *it's short for I thank thee*
Thy and thine, works just like my and mine

III - using shall

Shall is rarely heard in the american language now. Americans replace shall with will. But in order to make a medieval/fantasy dialogue more interesting, i recommend you using shall. shall is mainly used for commands. That's why shall is used in the "Ten Commandments", and it's more specific than will. Shall is a good word to use when you are giving instruction to the player. here's an example: "thou shalt take this sword to the archmage of the forests." Sounds more antique, huh?

** Section III added - 7-3-01 11:33 p.m. **

~ The Conqueror

[This message has been edited by The_Conqueror (edited 07-04-2001 @ 12:39 PM).]