Ostot

Ostot is a fictional language family and cultural framework created for speculative fiction and worldbuilding. It appears across various media and is often presented as the ancient speech of a regional homeland in the Ostot Valley on the planet Nyr, though later authors reframe it for different settings. The term Ostot is also used to describe the associated cultural sphere, including customary practices, oral literature, and ceremonial traditions.

Linguistically, Ostot is described as an agglutinative language with a base subject–object–verb order. It employs vowel harmony and a systematic set of inflections to indicate tense, aspect, mood, and evidential source. The language uses postpositions rather than prepositions, and its noun phrases are marked for case according to grammatical function. A distinctive feature is an evidential mood that marks whether information is firsthand, reported, or inferred, a device commonly used in epic storytelling within Ostot texts.

Writing and script: Ostot has a traditional runic-inspired script used in monumental inscriptions and temple manuscripts within its lore. In contemporary fiction, many texts are rendered with a Latin-based transcription to aid readability, while fan communities sometimes reconstruct the original glyph forms for stylistic or immersive purposes.

Cultural and historical context: Ostot is tied to a mythic homeland, with many stories focusing on genealogies, chieftains, and sacred places. In-universe histories describe language revival movements and regional dialects, such as High Ostot and Urban Ostot, which vary in pronunciation and formality.

Contemporary usage: Beyond in-universe lore, Ostot features in worldbuilding guides, role-playing games, and novels, where authors cite it as the ceremonial language of priests, scholars, and poets.