Writing the Mourner's Tongue

The procession does not speak plainly. It speaks in rites. Building that meant inventing a small grammar of mourning: seven verbs for carrying, four for burying, none at all for forgetting.

Constraint as characterisation

A language with no word for forgetting produces people who cannot let go. That single omission did more characterisation work than a hundred lines of exposition ever could.

Players will never see a glossary. They will feel the shape of the absence, and that is the point.