By Scott Moore

Welcome to my first contribution to Leylines. My intent for this and future pieces is to provide standalone articles introducing new fey-themed plot hooks, creatures, and/or items that can be incorporated into an ongoing fantasy game. Use the information contained herein as a building block, adding or removing any details as needed to make the content fit within the framework of your own campaign. Hopefully, you will find within these virtual pages some useful seeds for expanding your own game's plots and mythology.

The following text is excerpted from a collection of papers recently unearthed in the inventory of a curio shop in the village of Glendower. It is believed to be a fragment of the "Compleat Codex of Fey Folk" by Stephen the Sage, but as the few existent copies of that text are all held in private collections, its authenticity has not yet been verified.

"Those familiar with the written forms of the Aquan, Elven, Sylvan, and Undercommon languages are likely to recognize the similarity between the characters used to compose words in the written form of these four languages. Although this similarity is not had to miss, few appreciate the history represented by these varied languages and what they can tell us about the relationship and diversity of the fey culture, including that of the elves.

It is worth noting here that some taxonomy systems used to classify living creatures place elves in the humanoid category along with dwarves and humans, while other tend to group them with fey. The main conflict between these two systems arises from the disagreement between those who favor the classification of elves as fey (including this author) due to their affinity to the natural world as well as their inherent magical nature and those who classify them as humanoid due to their obvious ability to crossbreed with humans. For those interested in this topic, a full analysis of the subject can be found in chapter 17 of this work.

For simplicity in the remainder of this work, we shall refer to the shared character set used to transcribe the Aquan, Elven, Sylvan, and Undercommon languages as the Elven Alphabet, regardless of which language it is being used to represent. This designation was chosen due to the fact that elves were the first race among the speakers of these languages to represent it in an abstract written form as opposed to simple pictographs.

The written form of a language does not spontaneously come into existence. It is the result of a firmly established and relatively stable spoken tongue. It should be obvious, then, that these four languages share the Elven Alphabet because they all derived from the same, early proto-language. As a corollary, one can also safely state that these individual languages did not diverge from each other until after a written form of a common proto-language had been produced and received widespread adoption by the affected races and cultures.

For the sake of discussion, we shall refer to the earliest form of this spoken language as Proto-Elven. As our earliest examples of written records from any of the fey races are legal documents and commerce records elven societies (see chapter 4, Early Social Structure) believed to predate the emergence of several elven subspecies, as well as the civilization of many of the fey races, Elven is considered the most ancient of these related languages and the first one to employ the Elven Alphabet in its written form.

Aquan, spoken by most of the intelligent, water-based races except, surprisingly, sea or aquatic elves, is the earliest language, or rather dialect, to diverge from the original Elven tongue. When sea elves first began to establish underwater communities and build relationships with the other races of the deep, the Elven language was already firmly established. Sea races that had no concept of "written talk" were eventually coaxed into learning the Elven tongue in order to conduct trade and communicate with their elven neighbors. Eventually, the Aquan dialect began to grow as other races added words specific to their own cultures and belief systems that the elven races had no need or understanding of. Eventually evolving into a language of its own, the origins of Aquan can still be seen not only in its use of the Elven Alphabet, but in the frequent appearance of simple Elven terms as root words for many of the compound expressions unique to Aquan.

Sylvan is the language spoken by most of the fey races and has a strong structural similarity to spoken Elven, particularly the high elven dialect, which also has an abundance of terms for describing and identifying natural events and effects. Surprisingly, for the number of fey races that speak Sylvan, the language has not altered much through its history. In a conversation between a brownie and a grig, for example, rarely, if ever, do any racial specific dialect traits emerge. One of the main reasons for the relatively static nature of this language is its use by races other than the fey. Adopted by many druid sects as a language second only to their secret tongue, the commonality of Sylvan has allowed many diverse nature folk, regardless of race, to communicate easily for many generations. The only notable exception to the stability of the Sylvan language is the dialect spoken by pixies. The Pixie dialect has incorporated so many new words (there are over 20 specific words alone differentiating in great detail what in the Common tongue is known simply as a "stamen") that it is entirely likely to splinter into a separate language on its own. Another possibility is that these terms will eventually come into use by speakers of standard Sylvan, essentially merging the Pixie dialect back into the original Sylvan language over time.

Undercommon, the language of drow and mind flayers, has a similar origin to that of Aquan, but developed at a much later point. When the subrace of drow was forced underground, they quickly found themselves one of the most advanced races in their domain, similar to the experience of the sea elves. Unlike the sea elves, however, the drow sought to dominate their new environment. Other underground races eventually learned this derivative of Elven not in an effort to better relations and establish trade, but to learn as much as possible about their new enemy. Eventually, the Undercommon tongue would become one of the most prolific languages of the underworld, second only to Dwarven.

Old-Orc is a dead language. No original native textual samples of it are known to exist, but there are scholarly documents that make reference to its existence (see Appendix D). Sometime before the sundering of the drow, orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins shared a single language based on the Elven tongue. At some point in their history, they altogether abandoned the language and switched over to a new one based on the Dwarven Alphabet. There are a few remnants of the Elven language that have managed to survive the transition, generally in the form of antiquated expressions that convert clumsily over to Dwarven in written form, but share a similar meaning to the original Elven. Whatever event caused the orcs and goblinoids to entirely abandon their original language and adopt a new one can only be guessed at, but some believe the great battle in which Gruumsh, the gods of orcs, lost an eye to Corellon Larethian, the Creator of the Elves, may have served as the trigger. Had the sundering of the drow already occurred by this point, it is possible that orcs or goblins would have selected Undercommon as a preferred language, but that is purely conjecture.

Summary of the Evolution of the Fey Languages
Proto-Elven, the earliest spoken fey tongue and antecessor of all current fey languages, was the original source for Elven, which was the first written language in the history of the fey. Four separate dialects of the Elven language eventually developed into separate languages in their own right, these being the modern languages of Aquan, Sylvan, and Undercommon, as well as the now dead Old-Orc.

Old-Orc was eventually discarded in favor of a language based more closely on Dwarven, which then further evolved along two separate lines, resulting in the modern tongues of Goblin and Orc.

Sylvan, the modern language of most fey, has remained relatively unchanged over the past several centuries. New additions to the language by the pixie race, however, will likely either force a modernization of the Sylvan tongue, or cause Pixie to eventually evolve into a separate language in its own right."

Compleat Codex of Fey Folk: This four inch thick leather-bound volume contains a fully detailed study of the various fey races, a history of the elven people, and an analysis of the relationships between them. The entire work is written in the Common language. A Bardic Knowledge or Knowledge (history) check (DC 25) is required to be familiar with the background (given below) of this item.
Value: About 200,000 gp in the proper markets.
Weight: About 5 lbs.
Background: This ancient volume, researched and compiled by Stephen the Sage, is considered the most comprehensive work on the history and customs of the elven and fey races ever assembled. It is believed that fewer than twenty copies were produced and only three are now known to exist, all of which are held in private collections. The alleged discovery of a number of pages from an incomplete fourth copy in Glendower has renewed interest in this work in the intellectual community.

For every two rounds spent consulting the codex on a specific topic related to elven or fey culture, the reader may add a +1 bonus to their Knowledge (history) or Knowledge (religion) skill check on that specific topic, up to a maximum bonus of +15. Due to the codex's great age, these bonuses do not apply to any topic or event that has occurred within the past 200 years.

*Corellon Larethian and Gruumsh are trademarks and copyright Wizards of the Coast, Inc.