It has been long understood that all our modern languages derive from three languages; Ancient Human Speech, Ancient Dwarvish, and Ancient Elvish. It is thought that any language older than those three would be nigh impossible to discover, due to the likely lack of source material. I too thought that, until I made a remarkable discovery. A recent earthquake in Rock Ridge County unveiled a cave system, and so I decided to explore it excited for the geological discoveries to be found. It was to my extreme surprise that I found something much, much more than a bunch of old rocks.
Linguistics has been a love in my life for as long as I can remember, that is no secret. It was then to my delight that I stumbled across tablets with an unknown script carved into them. My original thoughts was that it was some unknown dialect of ancient elvish, a cultural variation in writing. Looking at references of all known elvish scripts however I deduced that this was far from the case. It seems that I have discovered an entirely new language unrelated to any discovered ones within the world.
The most remarkable thing to me is the age of the tablets. Based on erosion of the characters, and the geological makeup of the cave, I have come to the conclusion that these tablets predate even the Cycle of the Moon. My most conservative estimates place them at around 2,500 to 3,000 years old, a truly remarkable age for any language. The script itself is oddly circular in nature, seemingly impossible for any primitive tools dating to this era. Thus it is unknown how the letters were written.
Examinations of the tablets show several repeating characters which have now been mapped by myself. It is my full intentions to map out this language as much as possible and try and translate it. I am currently requesting access to ancient texts dating from the Cycle of the Moon in order to find any mentions of the people who left behind these tablets. It should be noted that there are several recurring depictions of squid-like animals. It is unsure whether the society that left behind these tablets worshipped squids as their gods, or worshipped gods with squid-like properties. Either way, it has been decided that they were shamanistic in religion. Based on the time frame and lack of any permanent structural ruins, other than these tablets (though it should be stated that further discoveries are a possibility under the correct circumstances) it is safe to say that they were a very rudimentary society, most likely similar to early human hunter-gatherer societies.
Though it is decidedly difficult to easily mark down the characters in the dim torch light, basic sketches can be found below. I still cannot grasp the circular script, it is seemingly impossible for the tools at the time to be so precise so surely they must have some other way of inscribing the letters onto the stone tablets.
Note: The three characters in red appear very frequently, so it is likely that they are forms of punctuation.
Because of the nature of the discovery, initial findings will be slow. I hope however that I will make swift progress with enough study of the ancient archives. This to me is by far one of the most exciting finds of my lifetime, and the implications of a culture unconnected to the elves, dwarves, and the humans are phenomenal.