Language: Arcane

Arcane
Region(s): Faerun Race(s): None specifically

The Arcane language is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Its exact origins are lost to time but it seems to be peculiar to Faerun. What little records exist of Planar travel tell of wildly different sorts of magic among different worlds in the Spheres. The doctrinal position is that the language is somehow tied to the Weave, and that it is perhaps a dialect of a universal language of magic.

To the uninformed Arcane is the language of the runes and doodles that are contained in spellbook, a script. This is not accurate however, as a mage may develop his own methods to store the information that is the spell. The most common form for storing spells is the Draconic alphabet.

The actual arcane language resides in that information, or rather: its enunciation. It is thus laboreous but posible to converse in the language of magic, though any serious wizards avoids so for fear of accidentally uttering an incantation resulting in untimely death. For spells without a verbal component Arcane is still used, as the caster 'says' the relevant incantation in his mind. The internal / external context requirement is one that wizardly literature has as yet been unable to explain, though some wizards such as the sage of Shadowdale have reportedly surpassed it.

A peculiar effect of 'speaking' spells in Arcane is that the words erase themselves from the speakers mind if they are the product of a studied spell.

It is more commonly known that sorcerers do not speak arcane, nor need to. Unlike wizards these individuals interact with the weave innately through force of will. As a result, they usually also do not possess the amount of control and conceptual definition that a language imparts.