Ethnographic Records
One Root, Five Hands: difference between revisions
12 October 2026 at 05:19 UTC → 12 October 2026 at 11:17 UTC
Lat. IIILong. IX
Revision 2 → 3: +32 −12
| 23 | 23 | | Halfling and gnome | Not set | Thaana-like, short hooks, vowel marks | Spine broken into hooks, ticks kept as marks | canon | | |
| 24 | 24 | | Human | Left to right (proposed) | Latinized Thaana, fewer accents | Small-folk marks promoted back to letters | canon | | |
| 25 | 25 | ||
| 26 | + | ## Figures | |
| 27 | + | ||
| 28 | + | ![[elf-hand.svg]] | |
| 29 | + | *The root hand, and the 90 degree rotation that yields the dwarven one.* | |
| 30 | + | ||
| 31 | + | ![[elf-scripts.svg]] | |
| 32 | + | *Three candidate elf hands.* | |
| 33 | + | ||
| 34 | + | ![[dwarven-script-draft3.svg]] | |
| 35 | + | *Dwarven script, draft 3: the chosen hand. 20 letters, including the dz ligature and the dotted s.* | |
| 36 | + | ||
| 37 | + | ![[inscription.svg]] | |
| 38 | + | *A Rainbow-beard inscription.* | |
| 39 | + | ||
| 26 | 40 | ## Who writes with which hand | |
| 27 | 41 | ||
| 28 | 42 | Five hands, more than five peoples. A people can borrow a hand without being |
| 66 | 80 | - **[proposed]** Halflings write loose and casual. Gnomes over-annotate, adding extra marks. | |
| 67 | 81 | - **[proposed]** Real-world analogy: Syriac led to Sogdian, then Uyghur, which was turned on its side to become vertical Mongolian. This is a fact about real scripts, offered as precedent, not as canon. | |
| 68 | 82 | ||
| 69 | − | ## The dwarven alphabet, in draft | |
| 83 | + | ## The dwarven alphabet | |
| 70 | 84 | ||
| 71 | − | Two drafts exist, both of the same alphabet. Only the letterforms differ: draft 1 | |
| 72 | − | is Cyrillic-leaning and blocky, draft 2 leans Farsi and flows. Draft 2 is the one | |
| 73 | − | that matches the canon line above. | |
| 85 | + | Three drafts were made of the same alphabet. Draft 1 was Cyrillic-leaning and | |
| 86 | + | blocky, draft 2 leaned Farsi, and draft 3 keeps the Farsi lean and adds the two | |
| 87 | + | letters the earlier drafts were missing. **Rook chose the Farsi-leaning hand, and | |
| 88 | + | draft 3 is the one in use.** | |
| 74 | 89 | ||
| 75 | − | - **[canon]** 18 consonants, written right to left, joined along a baseline. Consonants only; the vowels are carried by the refugee helper marks. | |
| 76 | − | - **[proposed]** The inventory as drafted: b, p, t, n, y, h, kh, r, z, d, g, s, ts, k, l, m, w, and a glottal stop. | |
| 77 | − | - **[proposed]** The arch carries b, p, t, n, y by dot count and position. The hook carries h and kh. The tail carries r and z. The bar and hook carry d and g. Teeth carry s and ts. | |
| 78 | − | - **[proposed]** Helper marks for vowels sit above the line for the deep class and below for the forward class: a is one stroke above, o a ring above, u two strokes above, e one stroke below, i two strokes below. Tense takes its own sign at the start of the word. | |
| 79 | − | - **[open]** **The drafted alphabet cannot spell dwarven.** There is no letter for `dz` and none for `š`, but `dza` appears in every Kord name and is explicitly the Latvian affricate, and the Onyx Kord is canon as Šohdzakoda, where the hacek exists to keep it apart from s. See [[Dwarves and Duergar]]. The sheet already distinguishes shared shapes by dot count, so a dotted s and a joined d-z ligature would be idiomatic. Needs a draft 3. | |
| 80 | − | - **[open]** Which draft is canon, 1 or 2. | |
| 90 | + | - **[canon]** 20 letters, written right to left, joined along a baseline. Consonants only; the vowels are carried by the refugee helper marks. | |
| 91 | + | - **[canon]** The inventory: b, p, t, n, y, h, kh, r, z, d, g, s, sh, ts, k, l, m, w, dz, and a glottal stop. | |
| 92 | + | - **[canon]** `dz` is a ligature: a d stem rising from the baseline, with the z tail and its dot beside it. It is the letter every Kord seat leans on, since the blood marker `dza` appears in all of them. | |
| 93 | + | - **[canon]** `sh` is the hacek letter, drawn as a dotted s. Three teeth carry s, sh and ts, and a dot above the teeth makes the hacek, keeping sh apart from s. | |
| 94 | + | - **[canon]** The tooth carries b, p, t, n, y by dot count and position. The hanging bowl carries h and kh. The tail carries r and z. The hooked stroke carries d and g. | |
| 95 | + | - **[canon]** Helper marks for vowels sit above the line for the deep class and below for the forward class: a is one stroke above, o a ring above, u two strokes above, e one stroke below, i two strokes below. Tense takes its own sign at the start of the word. | |
| 96 | + | - **[canon]** Both Kord names that the earlier drafts could not write are now spellable, and draft 3 renders them: **Sahdzakoda** (Gold, from zahav, sa-h-dza-ko-da) and **Šohdzakoda** (Onyx, with the dotted s). See [[Dwarves and Duergar]]. | |
| 81 | 97 | ||
| 82 | 98 | ## Open questions | |
| 83 | 99 | ||
| 100 | + | - **[open]** Does anyone in the world know the dwarf hand descends from the elf script? The dwarves would deny it. | |
| 101 | + | - **[open]** What script do the duergar use, and does it break a rule the surface dwarves keep? | |
| 102 | + | - **[open]** Are the refugee helper marks new symbols, or extensions of the Kord marks? | |
| 103 | + | - **[open]** Which direction do the small folk write, and do goblinoids read in rows or columns? | |
| 84 | 104 | - **[open]** Reading direction for the goblinoid and the halfling-gnome hands is unset. | |
| 85 | − | - **[open]** The elf script redraw with corrected ticks, and the five-hand family tree drawing, have not been produced. | |
| 105 | + | - **[open]** The five-hand family tree drawing has not been produced. The elf hand redraw has arrived, as `elf-hand.svg`, with three candidates in `elf-scripts.svg`. | |
| 86 | 106 | - **[open]** Whether the vowel shaping that separates dwarven, halfling and gnome speech shows up in their hands as well, or only in the sound. | |
| 87 | 107 | ||
| 88 | 108 | ## Source provenance | |
| 89 | 109 | ||
| 90 | 110 | > **Source:** the "One root, five hands" section of the Areshnaat Dwarves artifact, read 2026-10-12. | |
| 91 | − | > The dwarven alphabet material is read from two drawn script sheets of the same date, held outside the vault. | |
| 111 | + | > The alphabet and the figures come from the script handoff delivered 2026-10-11, filed into `_images/`. |