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Vōdenus, god stridenes, vekədh myk.
"Wodan, god of war, watch over me"; inscription on a votive sword found in the Venedo swamplands.

My travels took me past Etruscan lands, over the borders of our Empire, and into the land of of the Atermallei(1), who call themselves Duediscus(2).
While their borders contain fertile farmlands, the central place of this people consists of west swamps, as far as the eyes can see.
Our company rode over the narrow paths, wary of the dark pools above which strange lights, which are call Elbis(3), fly.
We soon reached the coast, if one call call it that, as there is no clear border between swamp and sea. The sea was calm, but covered in thick clouds. I paid for transit at the docks to the main city. The boat we were in was very wide and shallow; it could carry all of our fellowship at once. Soon, the clouds opened and a great wall appeared before us. It seemed our boat was going to crash into it, and I, your writer, was going to drown, but the sailors steered the bow away, while laughing cruelly.

"Now you can admire our stonework", they said, and verily, we were close enough to touch the great stone walls.
While not as magnificent as those surrounding our city, they looked sturdy enough to withstand the tides and the storms.
Eventually, our boat reached a great opening in the wall, were large piers straddled a human-built bay .
The sailors moored and we went off the boat. A man with a great grey beard walked toward us and greeted us.
"Helid(4), stranger. I salute you here in this city of Venetoborcus(5)." And we went with him into the city.

-from the travelling log of Lucius Balbus Viator, translated literally from Latin.

1. Black Hammers, based on their old tribal name. Whether or not 'Black Hammers' is a folky etymology of *Swarthamarōz is lost to history.
2. Actually Dhödiskus, cognate with 'Deutsch' and 'Dutch'.
3. Actually Elwis, 'elves'. What a Germanic tribe thinks will-o'-the-wisps are when they've been stuck in a swamp for six generations.
4. Actually Həliedh, cognate with 'hail'.
5. Actually Venedoborkus, the latter part being cognate with 'burg'.




I got a bit bored with researching WW2 so I decided to make a tiny con-lang and a city to go with it. Basically, around 500 BC a Germanic tribe of my invention called the *Swarthamarōz travels from Scandinavia into Europe, over the alps and builds a city in the Venetian Lagoon, absorbing the local Venetic population. Yes, it'd be more realistic if they were themselves absorbed by the locals, but I'm getting tired by all the instances of Normanism in Indo-European history. Besides, this is more interesting.

As a result, their language develops isolated from the other Germanic languages and forms its own Southern Germanic branch, undergoing some influence from their neighboring Celtic and Etrusking languages (and culture!). Balbus Viator's travel log takes place in about 250 BC, when the Romans have conquered Etruria and contact and trade with between the Atermallei and the Romans has already been established. However, the Punic Wars are still raging, and the Romans want to secure the lands to the north of the Po river. So, 500 BC is the actua PoD, but 250 BC is when written history changes.
I'm not sure when I'll be able to actually start working on the TL in detail; considering this is a secondary project, I'll just update whenever I feel like it.
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