Beejazz's Science fiction theater: you remember the titans, you've forgotten earth, and you still can't figure out why that sky gives you the willies.
Well, I've just about completed the first stage of this project. I'll be tying off loose ends and finishing this and that over the next few weeks. I need to get new names for things. Alot of the naming conventions were just stand ins. Also, I'm looking for feedback. What parts need more. What parts need covering. I could really use some ideas for the nitty-gritty details, demographics, religion, cities, people, day-to-day life. All the stuff that isn't so... cosmic. When I get enough feedback, I'm going to make a single consolidated thread. Hopefully, I'll be ready to run my first play by post before summer ends.
I'm hoping to publish, so hopefully I'll have enough material by the time I've done all this.
Anyway, on my first question... naming conventions...
goblins It should probably be something based on a Mandarin or Cantonese word. Something for "goblin" or an equivalent folklorish monster, or simply the word in those languages closest to meaning "astronaut" "cosmonaut" or "aeronaut"...
titans Anything appropriate. It should probably be something archaic and ominous. It might be "Behemoth" "Leviathan" or "Ziz" but I'd prefer if there were some catch-all term for sacred beasts. Anything having to do with demiurges might also be nice. Maybe the Biblical term for giants that wasn't Nephillim, like the giants of Caanan. Raim, was it?
host I don't even know. The upper echelon might be called the "Elect." Alternately, there's a concept in kabalah that the earth only exists for the sake of some number of holy men... 16 or somesuch. Though that might be better suited to some kind of third echelon. The "ground-level" followers I don't know what to call, or the religion on the whole.
horde No one goes to terraform a planet and names their work after the denizens of Hell. I need a name that's ominous, but starts out with connotations a little closer to Eden as it were.
mecha I didn't get into naming conventions at all yet. I have no idea where to start. The biomechs need an appropriately religious name or set of naming conventions. Everything else needs good technical jargon.
moons The moons need names. The pool of names is: Chadaho, Kinunka, Honishi, Nataka, Mikawa, Kemotte.
I'm thinking the gas giant is Chadaho. The fourth moon is Mikawa. The cold moon is Kemotte. The others are all up for grabs. I'm open to other ideas for naming conventions.
I choose you Titan-naming-chu!
For other somewhat Biblical terms for the titans you might like one of the following; The Adamic, The Gibborim, The Rephaim, The Zuzim, The Emim, The Horim, The Avvim or The Anakim. Alternatly there are the Greek Gegenes or the Australian Yowie or even the Hindu Daityas. The Hrimthursar Eldjotnar, Bergrisar might provide naming springboards. If you're aiming for levity you could use the Brobdingnagi of Swift's writings. Or simply some corruption of the Greek words for sacred and beast (hieros and therion respectively). Call them perhaps Sophians (refrencing both the Demiurge and wisdom) or Logos. Finally you could knock off 40K and call them Demiurg.
Woah... overload of info. First things first, the biblical names all look promising. Adamic I think I can figure out. Gibborim is entirely new to me, as are Zuzim,Emim, and everything after... Rephaim might've been those "alternate giants" I was talking about? I'm going to have to do some wiki-fu to figure out just which of these fits best.
Thanks!
Quote from: beejazzWoah... overload of info. First things first, the biblical names all look promising. Adamic I think I can figure out. Gibborim is entirely new to me, as are Zuzim,Emim, and everything after... Rephaim might've been those "alternate giants" I was talking about? I'm going to have to do some wiki-fu to figure out just which of these fits best.
Thanks!
Sure. I was just using my Encyclopedia Mithral Tornado Attack. :)
From my limited resources as a student of Japanese, and not Chinese, I came up with some things for the goblin names.
I couldn't find any analogous creature to goblins in Chinese mythology, though I didn't look hard. Hu li jing (Mandarin) or wu lei jing (Cantonese), fox spirits, are somewhat similar to goblins.
There are several words for astronaut in Chinese. Yu hang yuan (Mandarin) or yu hong yun (Cantonese) seems to be the traditional word for astronaut. Hang tian yuan (Mandarin) or hong tin yun (Cantonese) is becoming more commonly used in government reports, according to Wikipedia. Taikong ren (Mandarin) or Taaihung yan (Cantonese) is a neologism for astronaut. Just for good measure, astronaut in Japanese is uchu-hikoshi.
Personally, I like wu lei jing, but the final decision, of course, is up to you.
EDIT: After a look through Wiktionary, I found a translation of goblin into Chinese: ban shou ren (Mandarin) or bun sau yan Cantonese.
Thanks! This'll be useful. The fox spirit thing might also be useful. I've gotta think how I'm going to bastardize all this with a Russian spelling... "Taikong" ren I kinda like for that. Or "Yonyun" from yu hong yun... I know it's a stretch.
Anyway, thanks.
re: mecha. In Hebrew tradition "-el" means of god. What if for the mechans you had each of them have a suffix that was a number, relating to their superiors? For instance
Rapha9843, Amiti36.4, Galgali2100.
It's a thought. I was thinking more along the lines of what to call them as a whole than of names for individual mechs. Still, definitely good to know.
My original thought was "omega armor" but it's misleading on the count of it's not being armor. That and the whole bit seems generic.
Now, a suffix superior is a great idea, but I have to ask: why numbers?
Easy technical jargon.
Well, I've got some of my names down.
An as yet unmentioned concept shall be named Babilim. Titans may be called Ettins or the Ettim (the former a name for Norse giants, the latter a bastardization of that for the sake of that ever-present "im"). The "Omega Armor" might instead be called Valkyries... though this is subject to change.
I'm still deciding on the goblins.
On an unrelated note, who would be interested in a play by post starting this fall?
I'll state my tentative interest, which is subject to change based on what encounter RL decides to throw at me and whether they are above my CR or not.
Cool. Poseidon (at least, I think it was Poseidon) also expressed a maybe.
If its okay, I'd like to play.
Cool. Anyone interested should PM me. And tell me a bit about what kind of character you want to play. I'll maybe update the player options thread some soon.
Since for whatever reason I can't PM you, yo'gurt, here are my questions for you:
Quote from: QuestionsCyborg? Prostheses? Neural interface?
Mutant? Genetic disorder?
Psychic special-ops?
Gear? Giant robot? Ship? Weapons? Armor? Gadgets?
Skillset? Stealth? Combat? Hacker? Medic?
Whose army was it?
Do you still work with them?
How do they feel about your contribution?
If you left, are you still on good terms?
Also if you left, what do you do now?
Who do you know? Friends? Family? Enemies? Allies?
What do you want to accomplish?
What means will you use to accomplish it?
What are you afraid to lose?
And for you, the player: What's your style, adventure-wise?
I finally got the new name for the omega armor!
They are Nod!
Individually, they are named after the descendants of Cain!
*sigh of relief* thought I'd never get them quite right...