Minor addendum. There is the agrurhun as well, which is a pseudo pictographic script developed pre klinkarhun.
Aldrhun is the older, pictographic script of the Dwarfs.
Both Aldrhun and Klinkarhun are written Khazalid, the former's character and symbol-based while the latter is an alphabet.
I imagine Aldrhun and Agrurhun are the same thing.
It takes months of digging and frantic research, done in the dead of night when you ought to be asleep had your mind not deemed it less important, but you find out that your gut feeling has proven true. There are a startling number of similarities between Anoqeyån, Khazalid and the Aldrhun, more numerous and specific than simple happenstance can explain. At a cursory glance, no one would notice, but you've gotten good at following odd paths to reach even queerer conclusions, and once you find one the rest seem to fall into your lap. Sometimes the words are phonetically similar, the most archaic Khazalid term for something being only a few vowels and consonants different from the Anoqeyån, and other times it is in the structure of the script itself where both the Elven and Aldrhun rune share similarities in how they were written and the resulting character.
Canonically, Valaya is supposed to have invented the Dwarven script. But here Dwarven civilization is clearly older than the Ancestor Gods, and they likely had a script before Valaya. So here She invented the Klinkarhun specifically, with the older script being Aldhrun. And these older runes show similarity with Elven scripts, similarities which are unexplainable unless you assume both are derived from the same source.
"The records before the Coming of the Ancestors were not prone to say anything on the matter. Too busy detailing who wronged who and struck out for some other reason or another. Maybe they did, and that knowledge was lost to us because some King wanted the knowledge of whichever Clan knew the truth burned and buried. Given the peculiarities I've found, however, I'm now fairly certain they did, and we simply have no record of it," you answer, Yorri nodding along with your explanation.
"I see. Would you like my assistance on the matter? If only for the purposes of cross-referencing."
You shake your head, "I already have enough on my plate. I won't toss out the idea completely of course, but as intriguing as the knowledge is, pursuing it'll only be something I do after I'm done with what's in front of me right now."
Can you smell the sweet scent of a a fresh research project in the morning?
That last line makes it clear that we don't have enough to go on right now - I assume we will at least need to be fluent in Anoqeyan before exploring this further - but the possibilities... I mean, this is definitely an angle we can use to crack Durin's Consternation. Here we have Anoqeyan, the mystical language that can shape magic just by being uttered, and now we learn than runes have a clear connection to it? And in the end, our runes
are a mystical script that can shape magic somehow.
If we can understand how Anoqeyan shape magic, we can understand how our runes do the same. And that's exactly what Durin's Consternation is all about.
(Note: this is essentially what we were hoping for back when the opportunity to learn Eltharin popped up, but now those hopes are validated).
EDIT:
And beyond potentially solving Runesmithing's most profound problem, this could also allow us to learn more about early Dwarven history, before the Ancestor Gods, and how the Old Ones tie to it. I am
stoked for deep Dwarven lore. Soulcake, you sure know how to please your nerdy readers.
