Friday, August 12, 2022

Races of Dark Fantasy X

I've been more and more unhappy with a few race names in Dark Fantasy X that I inherited from Dark•Heritage, that I will probably change as part of my update from 1.02 to 1.1 that I'm in the process of.  Skraeling is a name that the Vikings called the Injuns and Eskimo, and while I liked some aspects of using it, it never really fit very well. Cursed was a great name too, but it clashes too much with the adjective "cursed" so I want something more specific. 

I've often struggled with the name of the woses too. While a woodwose is an actual folkloric element that goes back centuries, and is even part of heraldry, few people know about that, and all that they know of the word is that Tolkien used it to describe Ghân-buri-Ghân and his people. That said, none of my other alternatives have been better, and while it will naturally draw readers to make unjustified comparisons to a Tolkien race, the same is probably true of orcs too. If people can accept that my orcs are a bit different than standard savage and evil orcs, and are instead just a little more primitive and no more likely to be evil than anyone else (and they aren't nearly as green, nor do they have such big teeth, jaws and ears and other exaggerated features) then they can probably get over how the woses in my setting are really more like shifters in Eberron than they are like Ghân-buri-Ghân. I could possibly improve that by calling them woodwoses, though.

So, the changes that I'm proposing, and I'm posting them here as a draft while I think about it, are the following:

Human → well, no change is required here, obviously.

Skraeling → Atlantean

Orc → no change

Goblin → no change

Cursed → Hyperborean

Jann → no change

Kemling → no change

Nephilim → seraph

Wose → woodwose

I also have been meaning to add languages, although I may keep them separate for a setting document, and leave the rules to stand alone as is. I'm still noodling around on what to do with languages, other than for names (i.e., Tarushans use Romanian name-lists, Timischers use German, Hillmen use Medieval English, etc.) I think for convenience, it makes sense that most people will all speak a common tongue, i.e., the Common made famous by Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons both. But some minority populations might have their own languages that they use among their own people, and there might be ancient languages that are useful to know, such as scholars today learning Latin, Ancient Greek or Biblical Hebrew.

I'm going to say that there is no separate Timischer language anymore; if there ever was, it's gone out of use and nobody speaks it anymore. Timischers just speak English with a pronounced German accent. The Tarushans have a minority language, but rarely use it in public, and the Timischer upper class frowns on it, mostly. The kemlings also have an ancient Infernal language that was popular during their age of empire, but now is mostly a scholarly language of old texts from that age, and is no longer a living language. Kurushat has its own language, Kurushan, although you'll only hear it in the very northernmost cities, and even there, Common is very (no pun intended) commonly spoken, and many people speak only common, especially if they belong to another ethnicity. Zobnese is the language  of Lomar (because it's a colony of Zobna) and a different dialect of it is spoken near Inganok in Timischburg. Woodwoses don't have their own language, although thurses do (not a playable race.) Dagonic is an ancient language often used in texts that contain bizarre occult knowledge, and may predate humanity altogether. And the Atlanteans have their own language, Wendak (the same as their own name for their people), but they're a reclusive people who interact as little as possible with others anyway. An ancient form of it, called Atlantean, was the language of their ancestors, and still survives in some old scripts and on stelae, etc.

How would I have people go about learning languages? I suppose that if you have a positive MND score, you can pick up a number of extra languages equal to your score. What languages would you want to learn? If you are someone who needs to know Thursan, because you live in an area where thurse attacks are possible, that would make sense. If you want to learn magic and the occult, you'll probably find most of your texts in Infernal, Atlantean or Dagonic. Sadly, you may need to pick up all of them, or find the services of some kind of linguistic scholar who can translate for you if you're really serious about learning spells. The others, I suppose, depend on who you think you'll talk to and where you'll go. If you don't learn any languages, and only speak Common, you'll do fine pretty much anywhere in the setting, and that's kind of the default assumption. The others will just let you occasionally play around with showing off your character's scholarly inclinations.

A final note that I'm changing for flavor is some coin names. I'm still using gold pieces, silver pieces and copper pieces, although in setting I'm going to refer to them as nobles, shillings and pennies, respectively. Although they will commonly be referred to as gold, silver and copper, respectively, as well. I just don't want the D&Dism of gp, sp and cp because it screams D&D.

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