Codex Ilythar

An incomplete, heavily weathered treatise preserved in Candlekeep’s restricted stacks, believed to be one of the few surviving works concerning the Ar-Garalyn.

Provenance

The Codex was compiled around 290 DR by Ilythar of Ormath, an itinerant sage who studied the psionic enclaves of the Ar-Garalyn people. Only 34 fragments survive, many partially damaged. The original author or authors of these fragments--and Ilythar believed they were separate people, based on the differences in writing style and calligraphy--were unknown to him. For that reason, he named each fragment by the character he ascribed to the author of it.

Surviving Fragments

Fragment 9 — The Skeptic

Some hold that the Ar-Garalyn’s powers lay beyond the Weave, but I caution against the worship of mystery. What is magic but a language? And if theirs was strange to Netheril, does that prove it came from some higher source?

Fragment 17 — The Historian

Of the Ar-Garalyn we know little, save that they were peers to Netheril yet walked a road apart. They spoke not the language of spells but of thought...{illegible}...as psychology, reasoning, or the feeling of falling before waking! When Karsus drew down Mystryl's power and the Weave was broken, it is said their works did not falter. Dreams were still sent, minds were still touched, and the few who kept their company found no silence in that Hollow Year, as my friends have called it. Some scholars call this power "Resonance", though its nature is debated, and I know not where this term originated. What vibrations, precisely, are resonating with each other? Regardless, whether that power be the echo of divinity in mortal flesh or some unmediated wrinkling of reality from the font of creation, I leave to wiser minds. I do know this: the magical feats of the Ar-Garalyn psionicists were never undone by Karsus’ grand mistake — and that fact should give us pause. {illegible}...and no other. Perhaps we have a way forward yet.

Fragment 22 — The Reverent

In my study of their glyphs I have felt, at times, as though they were watching me. Not with eyes, but with the weight of presence — a mind brushing against my own...{illegible} If this be madness, it is a sweet and holy one. For in those moments, I have known what the Ar-Garalyn knew: that thought is the first fire, and will the first hammer, and that to think truly is to create. When the Weave was torn, their thought-fire burned on. That is no mere craft. That is the birthright of mortals.

Fragment 31 — The Cryptic

Beware the Vault that Dreams. It does not sleep as men do. It waits, and it remembers. Three keys open its gates: a quiet mind, an honest wound, and the question that no book can answer. Those who wake it will find more than memory — they will find the unfinished work of these fey orc Ar-Garalyn. Whether that is a gift or a curse is left to those who dare to open it. I have now done so myself, and I cannot {illegible}