Races and Languages

Elves & Half-Elves
As a particular oddity of this campaign setting, elves (and gnomes) “aren’t real” – or at least aren’t real anymore. There are stories about Faeries: tiny flying and fierce sprites and pixies, mysterious Sidhe, and fey creatures of all sorts: but within the boundaries of civilized realms, it is not something that people really think about as something you would encounter. There are some historians, archeologists, or students of the esoteric who may know more (or suspect more), but most people are more concerned with the here and now.

Half-Elves are generally seen as a variant of humanity, and any pairing between half-elves and humans invariably results in a half-elf child. Insofar as elves are stories of the Wild and of the forest and uninhabited places, half-elves are seen as ‘savage’ or tribal or ‘less-than civilized/cultured’ by more status-conscious humans. Popular stories and ballads about the half-elven courtesan or the illegitimate noble half-elf child of a noble human abound. It’s rare, but some half-elves use magic or other modes of disguise to ‘pass’ as human.

Half-elves, where they exist in older communities, share a cultural story about elves as a powerful and magical race from thousands of years ago who ruled over humans until the ungrateful human population, which was more numerous, overthrew the Elves – with the assistance of their half-elven sons and daughters. There is bitterness that over time enmity has grown between the humans and half-elven peoples.

Languages: “Half-Elven” is a language shared between half-elves who grow up in community, and it is not particularly a ‘secret’ – traders, priests who minister to half-elf communities, citizens who live in mixed communities all learn half-elven or at least how to speak a little. It draws as much from Common dialect as it does Elvish.

“Elvish” within the game is an ancient (largely dead) language and is only spoken or studied by those practicing particular esoteric traditions or deep historians.

Dwarves and Halflings
While not precisely common in smaller human settlements, dwarves and halflings are familiar to most humans and live within communities with the sort of social stigma that is attached to half-elves (sociologists have written about how this stems in part from the reality that dwarf/human or halfling/human sexual pairings do not create offspring).

Languages
Languages are fundamentally similar to how they are described on p. 123 of the Player's Handbook. In this setting, Elvish and Gnomish are "Exotic" languages, and Undercommon uses Dwarven script.

Arcane knowledge and spells (Wizards, Sorcerers, Bards) generally use Draconic as its base and fundament, the exception is for Warlocks: depending on Patron, a warlock's lore and spells could possibly use Infernal, Abyssal, Celestial, Draconic, Primordial, Sylvan -- the specifics are determined when the Pact is created.

Divine knowledge and spells (Clerics, Druids, Paladins, Rangers) are transferred primarily through Celestial language and script (for Clerics and Paladins), Primordial (for Druids and Rangers), and to a lesser degree, Sylvan (some Druids, Paladins of the Ancient).