important message:
i just got done playing avowed (as of april 2^nd, 2026) and i have a few thoughts concerning ekidan. Ill go back to writing small. So, it seems that i had overestimated the extent to which ekidan had been developped in game. Actually, i decided to start studying ekidan at around the start of the game when i came across the clay tablet in the temple of eothas in Dawshore. Since this tablet contains 2 full sentences of ekian, i assumed that the game would continue providing me with material at a similar rate. I was very wrong: this tablet is the fist and last occurence of fully written out ekidan. for the rest of the game, the only ekidan we get falls into one of three cattegories: 1) Idionyms, 2) Theonyms, and 3) toponyms. Of these three, only a few seem to have a translatable meaning (Tebara Sanakis, Naku Kubel and Naku Tebek) and only one of them has been litteraly translated. Every other piece of ekidan that appears for the rest of the game is proper nouns that dont seem to mean anything or have an unsoudable meaning.
I was especially excited to reach Naku Kubel, hoping to find longer instances of ekidan but my hopes were dashed, as they were every single time I explored an ekidan ruin. The worst was when I reached the Garden and its library where not a single word of ekidan is readable anywhere, despite being choke full of ekidan tablets. At least, these tablets confirmed that the tablet from the temple of Eotha is, indeed, ekidan since the ekidan script is described as flowy and vertical, and the texture on the tablets in the library are written in somewhat flowy and definitally vertical.
Obvsiously, i understand that we dont get that much ekidan since Woedica made sure to destroy their history as much as possible but im still sad that, every single time i get to read an ekidan document, i just get flavor text telling me that the text is written in ekidan and that i should probably ask yatlzi for a translation.
Anyways, now that im done with my first playthrough, ill try to go through everything i can to make sure i have all the ekidan words that are available in the game.

The pillars of eternity world is known of its many conlangs and the latest entry in the setting, Avowed, is no exception. And while the wiki seems pretty extensive about most of the languages featured in the games, the language of the Ekida (Ekidan from now on), the "godless people", seems to be an exception. Maybe it is because Avowed was a critical failure, maybe it is because the game does not make a great point of presenting it. Either way, someone needs to do something about it, and I propose that that someone be me.
This page will be dedicated to my research of this language as I play through the game. I will also be compiling a corpus of all the Ekidan I come across.
Once I consider my work done, I'll share my findings on the wiki, but as it is, I feel like keeping my drafts to myself. I'll try to keep my work here as tidy as possible, but it might degenerate into a blog style/chronological exposé if I become lazy.

Ekidan Corpus:

Entry	Meaning	Metadata	Notes	ID
Yul hesiza Yezuha lu yedez rageda me gali hed sayapayi Enwitan. K'gid yul gapa pubi.	Not given an in-game translation.	Found in the temple of Eothas. Engraved on clay tablet in an unknown writing system. Still readable by the player.	Might not be Ekida, further testing might be needed. confirmed to be ekidan as of 02/04/26	DE01
yiz	Possibly "god"	Found in History of the living lands, vol. IV, censored	Unreliable source, might not be Ekidan.
Naku Tedek	"Ancient Soil"	Toponym	Translation given by Giatta
Ekida	Ethnonym
Sapadal	God of the living lands and the Ekida	Theonym	Came to the player in a spiritual communication with a god, under the influence of concentrated essence, during an animancy experiment led by Giatta.
Naku Kubel		Toponym
Enhekala		Idionym	Legendary figure
Nekkad		Idionym	Legendary figure
Tebaru Sanakis (sg. Tebaru Sanakis)	Name given by the Ekidan to godlikes	Theonym	No literal translation given (yet), probably not purely idiosyncratic.
Nimmana		Idionym
Numena		Idionym
Kishamal		Idionym
Tenusas		Idionym
Kuteras		Idionym

Analysis of recurring pattern in toponyms:
So far, I've encountered two Ekidan toponyms: Naku Tedek and Naku Kubel. Only one of them as been translated: Naku Tedek, "Ancient Soil".
It is relatively safe to assume, for now, that there is a 1:1 correspondance for the english and Ekidan name. While it is yet impossible to determine the exact meaning of Naku Kubel, the pressence in both toponyms of Naku is a nice start.
Once I know what Naku Kubel means, we will have a minimal pair, granting us the meaning of three words.

On "Yul hesiza Yezuha lu yedez rageda me gali hed sayapayi Enwitan. K'gid yul gapa pubi.".
While I do not know for sure if this is Ekidan, and don't have any translation, it is still possible to do some preparatory analysis.
First, let's look at the capitalized words, probably proper nouns:
Yezuha: according to the Pillars of Eternity wiki, Yezuha is a "mysterious region or nation to the east of the Deadfire, beyond the storms of Ondra's Mortar.". They speak a language called Seki. I don't know if this inscription is Seki or if it was written contemporary to the existance of the Yezuha nation.
Enwitan: seems to be this language's version of "Engwithan". This informs us as to the subject of the text: it is probably an historical account or a quote regarding the Yezuha et Engwithan. Linguistically speaking, this informs us that the language of the inscription doesn't have the sound corresponding to "th" in Engwithan or that the this sound is unstable in this position. Since I have yet to find this sound in any Ekida writing, I surmise it just doesnt exist and has been related to /t/ in the loaning process.
The loss of the "g" in Enwitan is more problematic since "g" seems common in Ekidan, even in this very inscription. However, this inscription does not contain any consonnantic cluster inside words (except for K'g, which we think represents of velarized /g/? or a specific realization of /g/ or /k/). This leads me to believe that, while /g/ is possible in Ekidan, its position in Engwithan: C_G, which is not attested in Ekidan, led to its disparition. EDIT: I have found a CC consonant cluster in "Enhekala", it's still not a CCG or CCC consonant cluster but it does provide us with more phonology context.

Only one word is repeated in this inscription: "yul". Both times it is placed at the beginning of the sentence and it is the only word present in both sentences. These simple facts alone cannot inform us as to the meaning of "yul", but is tells us to stay on the look out for it in other texts. It could indicated that is be a grammatical word rather than a lexical word, but I should be careful with this kind of assumption.

erratum
Ive just stumbled upon Seki, the language spoken in Yezuha which is allegedly based on Akkadian. Some people on reddit have identified that DE01 is written in Seki, which I find very improbable since Seki is based on Akkadian and that the text in DE01 doesnt ressemble Akkdian in any way or the only written seki we have: "Lap kun imak'ihe?". Anyways, the quest for the irl language ekidan is based on continues.

I've finally reached the point of the game where Yatzi is in my party and i can talk to her about her research. Honestly, it's been quite lackluster on the linguistic front so far but she did teach me something about the history of the Ekidan that could give us some information, depending on the work the writers put into making their languages coherent.
So, what exactly did I learn?
It seems, as I had gleaned from inscription DE01, the ekidan are linked both to Yezuha and the Engwithan, more precisely, it seems the Ekida fled/left Yezuha, one of the major hubs of the Engwithan empire. As such, it is a possibility that Engwithan and Ekidan are linked : either they were already separated in Yezuha and drifted further apart once the Ekida left or they all spoke some variation of Engwithan that developped independently from each other after the Ekida left. It is also a possibility that, though they lived on the same continent, they spoke entirely unrelated languages. If that is the case, it would still be probable to see loanwords or event shared structures depending on the level at which the two people were connected.
Either way, to truly know wheter these languages are related or not, we're going to have to take a look at both. Thankfully, Engwithan (and the related Glanfanthan) are somewhat documented on the Avowed wiki, so we'll just have to do the comparison work. There's still only a very few words.

Lets look a the few words of ekidan we know: yiz: god, naku: soil and kubel: old.

Ekidan	Galeic Irish	Galeic Scottish	Breton	Welsh	Translation
Yiz	Dia	Dia	Doue	Duw	God
Kubel	Sean	Sean	Kozh	Hen	Old

Soil is a bit harder since it's a very rich term and therefore has many translations.
Now, let's leave the realm of Eora and look at the real world info we have about these three languages. According to the wiki, Engwithan and Glanfanthan are inspired by Celtic languages: Engwithan is based on cornish (or Gaulish) and Glanfanthan is based on Irish. If we are to assume (which is unlikely considering the previous analysis) that these two languages are related to Ekidan, Ekidan would be based upon another celtic languages. Though it requires more research, there arent many celtic languages yet alive to chose from today. Among them are Scottish Gaelic, Breton and, to a much lesser extent, Manx. If we opperate under the assumption, these three are the most likely targets for inspirations for Ekidan.
It seems, however, unlikely that that Engwithan and Ekidan are in any way related, as an cursory analysis of their morphology reveals very little similarity. It would, however, be foolish to completely discredit this theory as we do not know how long these languages have been separated. We do know that their culture is nothing like that of the Rauataian and the Ixamitl, their art being unique as well as their atheism. This geographic, temporal and cultural distance could be an argument in favor of both thoeries, though so, again, more research is needed.

Concerning Ekidan and Seki
I've realized, after seeing this Seki text, especially the description of the writing system as a "flowing vertical script", the same as in DE01, that Ekidan probably is related to Seki.
So, let's look at the Seki text. Since it's given a translation, it's probably possible to give it a proper analysis and gain a lot of knowledge that might be useful to us for Ekida.
Also, better to keep in mind that, since Seki is inspired by Akkadian, Ekidan is probably inspired by a language related to Akkadian.

The Seki text
"Kalaki ba Elissha, sukiw yi segu Nimmin su kalaki ba Sakkuki, sukiw yi segu Salassew.
Me yekay mapan mide yi Tissew, sukiw yi Shuddez, sagakun ga Litt'u, sukiw yi Seddizew, kut' kipidez yaw katiki yi ni:
Yi te suheki, yi paher yuki ragen (kuw seyiyi lu), sada s'ged, suhetu Elissha yi Nimmin ga susa ka madez kek, suhetu Sakkuki yi Salassew.
Ga kuw sak'uy ma s'bu, Litt'u yi Seddizew, s'pii:
'Hada yi gez Ratigug hug kuguzi kadeh hehab le yukushi yi Lipasalis. Mas hunazi managa muri su sakish lu kek tenaga shibesa le kadap lagahak kugua hus ekilugik lukiha. Mas hun sugawazi biw hus luzu yeku suheki yi she ne egageg sidew. Su med mas shun pakih, mas hun pul hus she paher rasube hun hakus lala mez limeku.'"
The translation
"Prince of the Heavens shall be fed only young grasses grown on the hills of Lipasalis. He shall be curried morning and night with a brush made of the bristles of boars fed on golden root..."
"He shall be given to only the handsomest of mares of the most feisty temperament, for he grows bored unless challenged. And when he is sad, he shall have in his ear whispered only the sweetest praise."

1. note that the translation is only comprised of 4 sentences whereas the original contains much more. Moreover, the translation starts with the mention of a proper noun: "Lipasalis", which only appear within the last parapgrah of the original. This last parapgrah is only made up of four sentences in the original and the fist one also contains Lipasalis. Also, this last paragraph is entirely between quotes in the original, meaning it is a cohesive text. -> The english text is only the translation of the last few sentences of the text.
2. The initial part of the Seki text, while not translated, contains many proper nouns, keeping them in mind will likely help us.

But enough talking, let's look at this first Seki sentence. (i assume that the translation and the original match sentence to sentence and that each proper noun in the original matches a proper noun in the translation, since, at the end of the day, all of this was written by english native speakers, for english speakers)

Prince of the Heavens shall be fed only young grasses grown on the hills of Lipasalis

Hada yi gez Ratigug hug kuguzi kadeh hehab le yukushi yi Lipasalis

Ok, let's start with the noun phrases that contain proper nouns:
the hills of Lipasalis
Prince of the Heavens
Since Lipasalis matches one-to-one, we can assume that Heavens is the tranlsation of "Ratigug".
Both of these phrases are of the form N of (det) N in english, so we can assume the same for Seki if Seki expresses the genitive using prepositions and has a determiner system akin to that of English.
It seems to me that "yi" functions, at least here, more or less in the same way as "of":

N	"of"	(det)	N
Prince	of	the	Heavens
Hada	yi	gez	Ratigug
hills	of		Lipasalis
yukushi	yi		Lipasalis

While this analysis seems plausible, let's look at the rest of the sentence if it makes sense with that hypothesis.
The sentence in english is written in the passive voice, with

Let's take a break from the complexity of the first sentence and take a look at the second sentence

State of the art phonology of Ekidan
Preamble:
I work under the assumption that every letter represents a phoneme.

Consonnants:

Nominal morphology.
distinction between Very little is known of Ekidan nominal morphology. We do not even know whether the ekidan POS system distinguishes nouns from other nominal forms like adjectives or pronouns. However, we do have a minimal pair of noun-like words that allows us to say that these noun-like words have morphological indicators for number. Tebara Sanakis are what the other people of Eora call a Godlike, that is, a person that has been marked by a god. In an early cutscene where Sapadal and the Envoy live through the memories of an ekidan godlike, the name is mentionned in the form Tebara Sanakis. Later, when exploring Naku Kubel, an ekidan ghost introduces themself a Tebaru Sanakis. It seems, then, that a -a ending indicates plural while an -u ending indicates singular. We do not know if the number system extends beyond this distinction or how this system is expressed in noun-like words that do not end with a vowel like Sapadal. Though, most of the noun-like words that end with a consonant appear to be proper nouns, most of which probably do not need a singular/plural distinction.
This discovery gives us a little more insight into two things: the singular/plural forms of words we have previously discovered and the structure of the ekidan noun-phrase.
Let's first look at the unnatested forms we can deduce. There are a lot of words ending in -a or -u in DE01 but, given our inability to know whether they are nouns of verbs, we prefere to wait until we understand more about ekidan verbs to analyse it. However, we can safely deduce that "Naku" in Naku Tedek and Naku Kubel is a plural form. We also can deduce that the name Ekida is a plural form. *Ekidu would might mean an ekidan person, though we cant be certain.
Now, about the noun-phrase structure. This part is very speculative, so take everything that follows with a grain of salt. Looking a Tebara/u sanakis we see two words, one we know/think is a noun, whose vowel ending changes depending on number, and we have sanakis. Sanakis is probably not a noun though it could be part of a compound noun in an NN strcture. When comparing tebara sanakis with naku kubel and naku tedek we can see variations on the same pattern: N X, where X is a word ending in a consonnant and therefore probably not a noun. Naku Tedek is the only word we have a translation for, namely, "Ancient soil" (if we are to believe Giatta/Yatzli) a noun phrase made up of only a head noun and an adjective. Since we know that the Naku in Naku tedek is a noun, we can safely assume that naku means soil. Furthermore, we can deduce that Naku Kubel means ADJ soil and that Tebaru Sanakis is a noun phrase of the same structure, where tebaru is a noun and sanakis is an adjective.
Until evidence to the contrary, we can safely assume that, at least in the context of proper nouns, the adjective follows the noun it qualifies and that it does not agree with it in number, at least.