tacticslion
03-16-2014, 11:15 AM
... I'm in a game in another forum.
If you've heard of "Dawn of Worlds", it's basically that (and is so on purpose), only extended over more ages than just the three with slight variants on pricing.
Anyway...
The world in question is named Sekai; as you may be able to guess, it's sort-of-kind-of Japanese-themed (ish). Within that world are a race of Serpentfolk (akin to Lovecraftian serpentfolk rather than a yaun-ti or naga-style serpentfolk) with an off-shoot of feathered serpentfolk.
The question becomes, then, what to name them? It came up because the players most associated with them are wondering.
After doing some really, really basic "research" (i.e. google-ing "feathered" "serpent" and "folk" in Romanized Japanese), and refreshing myself by way of Wikipedia on feathered serpents of any kind, I created the following post:
What about "couatl" as a name? Or any of the Feathered Serpent names: Quetzacoatl, Kukulkan, Q'uq'umatz, Tohil, or the rest? Alternatively, take "hane" - feather, from what I can tell, in Japanese -, and "hebi" - from what I can tell, the Japanese word for serpent -, and "hitobito" - folk in Japanese.
The Japanese words would generate "Hanehebihitobito" or "Hanihebi" for short. That could be really weird - I don't speak Japanese. If we wanted it to sound "kind of like Japanese" could be something like "Hanebito" for the feathered folk and "Hebito" for the serpent-folk. That would actually make a lot of sense, I think. Of course, that probably looks horrid to native Japanese speakers, or even fluent speakers - my apologies, all, I'm just trying to make it short, "comprehensible", and, most importantly, easily usable to English speakers. But if anyone speaks Japanese, let us know!
... so, how far off am I, and how would you suggest changing it? What I'm ultimately looking for is something short, descriptive, and slightly different enough so that we can refer to the two races slightly differently, but related enough that it's clear they're, well, related.
On races, is there a word for:
1) humans
2) angler fish (or something similar)
- 2a) beholders [or something indicating many eyes, lots of magic, and light; alternately fire-swimmers or fish, mutated creatures, or an amalgamated race]
- 2b) what's a good name for "Mother of <the race just named>"
3) dwarves (Pathfinder/D&D-style; they're a now-extinct race)
4) fey (I'm honestly thinking of just having them named "kami" and be done)
5) yeti (they might just keep their own name, and that might be the "proper" one anyway)
On locations, what would be:
1) Well of Blood
2) Pool of Quiescence
(These are technically the same place, and it's more than likely that they will retain their names, as noted above, but Japanese-sounding titles might be great, too.)
So, if you speak, read, write, or otherwise have some mastery of Romanized Japanese (and it needs to be Romanized - sorry), please comment on it, and help us out!
The "demon faced" Angler Fish now live not only under the sea, but also under the crust of the planet, having developed a volcanoeculture that permits this. They've a singular "arm" like appendage with several branching "finger-like" appendages on top, to lure, grab, and help them eat stuff. They otherwise function similar to angler fish, but sentient (at least the females are sentient, the males are not).
demon-faced anglerfish
They develop elaborate, articulating lures and they start using their bioluminescence for communication, as a hand for manipulation, and to shepherd other lesser species of fish into abyssal abattoirs.
Anglers are located solely in the deepest ocean depths, under at least 2 km of water. They have an extreme sexual dimorphism; all active members of society are female fish, with gaping maws filled with needle-like teeth , and a robust arm growing out of their foreheads, between their eyes. The arm ends in a central pad with six long, dexterous fingers. Each fingertip is bioluminescent, and can be made to grow brighter or dimmer. Originally used to lure prey, these luminous ends are now mainly used for communication between females. Males of the species, on the other hand, are non-sentient, much simpler in body form, and are nearly a tenth the size of the female. They bite into and latch onto any female they find, and then fuse with them, losing all bodily form until it is subsumed into the female. She then uses the male to fertilize her eggs. A large portion of socio-economics in Angler culture revolves around the growth and trade of males, which are treated much like cattle or luxury items. High status members display and adorn the numerous males attached to them.
Advance Civilization(10): Vulcanoculture
The Anglers discover fire. Or, more precisely, the thermal vents and abyssal volcanoes of the deepest ocean trenches. They learn how the energy feeds the chemosynthetic world in the depths, how to tap into the power source, how to feed the tube worms, how to harvest hot stones from the glowing extrusions of the magma upwellings.
Advance Civilization: Magical Evolution
The Anglers start dabbling with transformative magics, delved from power sources deep underneath the ocean floor. It allows them to develop more and larger lure-hands, as well as being able to start seeing from their bioluminescent tips.
Advance Civilization: Telekinesis
This deep well of transformation also teaches the Anglers how to move things with their mind, and how to swim and maintain buoyancy in all manner of densities. They still prefer to remain in the deepest ocean trenches.
Advance Race: Magma Travel
With the recent advances in telekinesis and physical hardiness, in conjunction with vulcanoculture, the Anglers learn to survive the dangers of lava, and can now swim in the vast fiery ocean beneath the world.
Command Race x2: Fleeing the oncoming cold, the Anglers retreat into the submarine volcanoes, and begin to spread from there into new regions, underneath the world, on chthonic currents of magma. They move into regions 3 and 16, underneath the world.
That's the last update on what they're like.
They have recently interacted with a crashed inter-dimensional starship from another world (a player in this game played in another, and had an "other event" occur in which a space-faring race of kobolds from that world crashed and died through a portal into the non-space-faring this world). That interdimensional magical-alchemical ship was inhabited by "corrupted" colony sophonts. What's a colony sophont? Well, it's a bit difficult to describe, and their entry on the other game is huge, but the short version is that a large collection of independent boneless creatures gather to form individual units, use telepathy (and thus have no language, but perfectly retain racial-wide memory in a [set of] centralized "Will of All" avatar[s]), and successfully managed to utilize science and technology enter space and leave the planet. The individual creatures are both independent - no central nervous system - but dependent, requiring the actions of all together to survive as a unit. They can vary their components as a result and have a "composite individual" personality, based on the current constituent creatures.
So some of those things were corrupted on an exploratory mission to the site long ago, where they effectively mutated the ship and themselves into a living entity that will soon become my avatar - the "mother of <insert race here>" noted above.
That ship and the angler fish will eventually create a new beholder-like race on behalf of another player (someone who had created the angler fish with that end-goal in mind, but had to stop playing due to life circumstances) that I'm doing this for.
So, with that way-too-much info out of the way, I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!
If you've heard of "Dawn of Worlds", it's basically that (and is so on purpose), only extended over more ages than just the three with slight variants on pricing.
Anyway...
The world in question is named Sekai; as you may be able to guess, it's sort-of-kind-of Japanese-themed (ish). Within that world are a race of Serpentfolk (akin to Lovecraftian serpentfolk rather than a yaun-ti or naga-style serpentfolk) with an off-shoot of feathered serpentfolk.
The question becomes, then, what to name them? It came up because the players most associated with them are wondering.
After doing some really, really basic "research" (i.e. google-ing "feathered" "serpent" and "folk" in Romanized Japanese), and refreshing myself by way of Wikipedia on feathered serpents of any kind, I created the following post:
What about "couatl" as a name? Or any of the Feathered Serpent names: Quetzacoatl, Kukulkan, Q'uq'umatz, Tohil, or the rest? Alternatively, take "hane" - feather, from what I can tell, in Japanese -, and "hebi" - from what I can tell, the Japanese word for serpent -, and "hitobito" - folk in Japanese.
The Japanese words would generate "Hanehebihitobito" or "Hanihebi" for short. That could be really weird - I don't speak Japanese. If we wanted it to sound "kind of like Japanese" could be something like "Hanebito" for the feathered folk and "Hebito" for the serpent-folk. That would actually make a lot of sense, I think. Of course, that probably looks horrid to native Japanese speakers, or even fluent speakers - my apologies, all, I'm just trying to make it short, "comprehensible", and, most importantly, easily usable to English speakers. But if anyone speaks Japanese, let us know!
... so, how far off am I, and how would you suggest changing it? What I'm ultimately looking for is something short, descriptive, and slightly different enough so that we can refer to the two races slightly differently, but related enough that it's clear they're, well, related.
On races, is there a word for:
1) humans
2) angler fish (or something similar)
- 2a) beholders [or something indicating many eyes, lots of magic, and light; alternately fire-swimmers or fish, mutated creatures, or an amalgamated race]
- 2b) what's a good name for "Mother of <the race just named>"
3) dwarves (Pathfinder/D&D-style; they're a now-extinct race)
4) fey (I'm honestly thinking of just having them named "kami" and be done)
5) yeti (they might just keep their own name, and that might be the "proper" one anyway)
On locations, what would be:
1) Well of Blood
2) Pool of Quiescence
(These are technically the same place, and it's more than likely that they will retain their names, as noted above, but Japanese-sounding titles might be great, too.)
So, if you speak, read, write, or otherwise have some mastery of Romanized Japanese (and it needs to be Romanized - sorry), please comment on it, and help us out!
The "demon faced" Angler Fish now live not only under the sea, but also under the crust of the planet, having developed a volcanoeculture that permits this. They've a singular "arm" like appendage with several branching "finger-like" appendages on top, to lure, grab, and help them eat stuff. They otherwise function similar to angler fish, but sentient (at least the females are sentient, the males are not).
demon-faced anglerfish
They develop elaborate, articulating lures and they start using their bioluminescence for communication, as a hand for manipulation, and to shepherd other lesser species of fish into abyssal abattoirs.
Anglers are located solely in the deepest ocean depths, under at least 2 km of water. They have an extreme sexual dimorphism; all active members of society are female fish, with gaping maws filled with needle-like teeth , and a robust arm growing out of their foreheads, between their eyes. The arm ends in a central pad with six long, dexterous fingers. Each fingertip is bioluminescent, and can be made to grow brighter or dimmer. Originally used to lure prey, these luminous ends are now mainly used for communication between females. Males of the species, on the other hand, are non-sentient, much simpler in body form, and are nearly a tenth the size of the female. They bite into and latch onto any female they find, and then fuse with them, losing all bodily form until it is subsumed into the female. She then uses the male to fertilize her eggs. A large portion of socio-economics in Angler culture revolves around the growth and trade of males, which are treated much like cattle or luxury items. High status members display and adorn the numerous males attached to them.
Advance Civilization(10): Vulcanoculture
The Anglers discover fire. Or, more precisely, the thermal vents and abyssal volcanoes of the deepest ocean trenches. They learn how the energy feeds the chemosynthetic world in the depths, how to tap into the power source, how to feed the tube worms, how to harvest hot stones from the glowing extrusions of the magma upwellings.
Advance Civilization: Magical Evolution
The Anglers start dabbling with transformative magics, delved from power sources deep underneath the ocean floor. It allows them to develop more and larger lure-hands, as well as being able to start seeing from their bioluminescent tips.
Advance Civilization: Telekinesis
This deep well of transformation also teaches the Anglers how to move things with their mind, and how to swim and maintain buoyancy in all manner of densities. They still prefer to remain in the deepest ocean trenches.
Advance Race: Magma Travel
With the recent advances in telekinesis and physical hardiness, in conjunction with vulcanoculture, the Anglers learn to survive the dangers of lava, and can now swim in the vast fiery ocean beneath the world.
Command Race x2: Fleeing the oncoming cold, the Anglers retreat into the submarine volcanoes, and begin to spread from there into new regions, underneath the world, on chthonic currents of magma. They move into regions 3 and 16, underneath the world.
That's the last update on what they're like.
They have recently interacted with a crashed inter-dimensional starship from another world (a player in this game played in another, and had an "other event" occur in which a space-faring race of kobolds from that world crashed and died through a portal into the non-space-faring this world). That interdimensional magical-alchemical ship was inhabited by "corrupted" colony sophonts. What's a colony sophont? Well, it's a bit difficult to describe, and their entry on the other game is huge, but the short version is that a large collection of independent boneless creatures gather to form individual units, use telepathy (and thus have no language, but perfectly retain racial-wide memory in a [set of] centralized "Will of All" avatar[s]), and successfully managed to utilize science and technology enter space and leave the planet. The individual creatures are both independent - no central nervous system - but dependent, requiring the actions of all together to survive as a unit. They can vary their components as a result and have a "composite individual" personality, based on the current constituent creatures.
So some of those things were corrupted on an exploratory mission to the site long ago, where they effectively mutated the ship and themselves into a living entity that will soon become my avatar - the "mother of <insert race here>" noted above.
That ship and the angler fish will eventually create a new beholder-like race on behalf of another player (someone who had created the angler fish with that end-goal in mind, but had to stop playing due to life circumstances) that I'm doing this for.
So, with that way-too-much info out of the way, I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!