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desertleviathan · 7 years

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Brainstorming help: Wizard Family Names

Let’s say I’m hunting for names for some “Great Houses” of Wizards, derived from a common ancestor originally, but now also applying to anyone who is affiliated with those Houses through marriage, adoption, or formal apprenticeship. Several of the Houses I’ve developed so far have strongly European inspirations, and I’m looking to diversify a little more. But obviously as a White American with heavily Scotch-Irish ancestry, I don’t have a super good fix on what feels culturally appropriate for Magic Users with ties to other places.

Does this make sense? I hope so. I’m hunting for ideas for names for three families, but the write-ups on them are pretty long, so I’ll post them one at a time. First:

The House of the Sun: Mages of Light

Broad outline for Light Mage cultural influences: The main influence on the House of the Sun is Ancient Egypt, particularly the Old Kingdom. I definitely want to downplay the Ptolemaic period and the Greco-Roman influence, at least on language. However, the other major influence applied to the House is the baroque decadence of the court of King Louis the XIV of France, the infamous Sun King, where ostentatious display of wealth was also an explicit claim of divine favor. Imagine the art, architecture, and clothing style of the people of Vigrid in the Bayonetta games, if it were shifted to an Egyptian religious base instead of a pseudo-Catholic one. This all refers to their aesthetic trappings - ethnically, I’d like the main family line to resemble North African and Middle Eastern peoples, which is admittedly a pretty broad spectrum of possibilities, and one of the reasons why I’ve been having trouble drilling down to one core idea for the family name.

The House of the Sun in Mage Society: Although they are wealthy and influential, the House of the Sun has never sought leadership of the Malstronic Houses. They were content to serve as seers and advisors to the first rulers, Caradoc: the House of Storms, until a corruption scandal shattered their influence. They work much more closely with the successors, Donovan: the House of Seeds, but also keep a lot more secrets from them, having learned caution from the Caradoc’s betrayal. Among many of the other Houses who are dissatisfied with the Donovan’s eccentricities, the House of the Sun seem like ideal candidates to guide the Order into a new era of prosperity, but the members of the House itself do everything they can to suppress this sentiment, as they don’t want the militaristic Donovans to see them as rivals.

The House of the Sun in Non-Mage Society: Despite the strong positive association, Light has no moral component - it is as good or as evil as the uses people put it towards. Still, Light Mages have an easier time cultivating positive reputations than many other Mages, simply due to people having good feelings about their style of magic, which they are unusually generous about teaching to non-initiates in small doses. They tend to be scrupulously honest, but vain at the same time, which can make them burdensome to endure socially. The House of the Sun is the wealthiest of the eight Malstronic Houses, which is unsurprising given their ability to manipulate fate and fortune, and to see into the future. They try to use this wealth benevolently in their communities, but have a history of personal excess that they have not entirely divested themselves of, and their benevolent acts often hide a streak of pragmatism. The movement within the house to adopt a more humble individual status, to free up more resources for charitable works, refer to themselves as the House of Stars instead of the House of the Sun. Where they serve non-mage institutions outside of their extended family, members are often oracles, advisers, financiers, auditors, accountants, and investigators. When they work in a military capacity, they have a talent as watchmen, scouts, and snipers.

Light Magic in the Cycle of Reincarnation: Light governs the Astral Heights, the World of Destiny, where souls that are ready to be reborn await the machinations of Fate to tie them to a new life. Because it is the last step “back” from the familiar Material Realm, and because the Cycle is built to be traveled only one way, the Astral Heights are a great mystery to most living mortals, and the House of the Sun’s knowledge thereof greatly enhances their mystique.

People of Light - The Elves: One can only practice Malstronic Magic if one has at least some Human ancestry, but the Elves who are native to the Astral Heights have their own methods of shaping the Light Element, which they use to care for the unbound souls who await rebirth in thier realm. Diplomatic ties between the Elves and the House of the Sun are very strong, and many members have some Elvish ancestry. Likewise, many Elves have some House of the Sun ancestry, meaning individuals from both groups often have some facility for each other’s brand of Light Magic.

Season of Light: Every Element governs a period of six weeks every year. The Light element governs the calendar period beginning with the second week of the third month (3/9), through the third week of the fourth month (4/24), encompassing the last three weeks of Spring and the first three weeks of Summer. The 24th and 25th Days of the Season of Light (32nd day of the 3rd month and the 1st day of the 4th month) share the festival celebrating the beginning of Summer, which are partially under the mystic governing of the Element of Fire, much as the Summer Solstice in the middle of the Season of Fire falls under the Element of Light (the 16th and 17th days of the 5th month). Each elemental pair “swaps” a couple calendar days like this, for reasons that surely made great sense to the Ancients when they built all this. Aclodoc has 8 day weeks, 4 week lunar months, and 12 month years, with no “leap” time needed. Its celestial events are very orderly.

Domain of Light: On a compass, the direction associated with the Light Element is South. If one travels exactly 5,000 KM south from the fortress city of Mojatar Elas, one will reach the Equator, and the Temple of the Eternal Eye, which serves as the primary juncture of Light Magic in the world. The line going from the Temple of the Eternal Eye up to Mojatar Elas, and eventually the Labyrinth of Endless Night (the counterpart physical juncture of the opposed Element of Darkness) serves as the Prime Meridian for worldwide timekeeping. The Temple of the Eternal Eye is a sprawling complex of Pyramids and Monoliths forming a complicated glyph in a golden desert, with numerous mirrors and focusing lenses throughout that can direct beams of light to alter the properties of this glyph. There are no actual dead entombed in these pyramids - though the House of the Sun draws aesthetic inspiration from Ancient Egypt, their funeral customs are very different.

Calamitous Beast of Light - The Unicorn: When raw Magic of a single concentrated Element is left to flow without guidance, it tends to congeal into Elemental Spirits. Such beings will grow larger and more sophisticated the more energy they absorb, until the largest such manifestations known are Calamitous Beasts, vast manifestations of a very pure form of that Element. The Beast of Light is The Unicorn, who is just as dangerous as any other, despite its deceptively benevolent appearance. Manifestations of The Unicorn tend to be short-lived novas that inspire clarity and insight in the minds of any witnesses (who survive being seared to death). Summoning it is a reliable way to dispel illusions, if a bit overkill.

Light among other Elements: In the cycle of Elements, Light follows Wood, and is followed by Fire. It stands opposed to Dark, unfriendly to Metal and Water, and neutral to Earth and Air. It has a neutral association with the meta-element of Identity, and a simultaneously positive and negative association with the meta-element of Void, but these traits are nigh-impossible for ordinary Mages to harness, and are mainly interesting in carefully managed laboratory experiments.

Physical Associations of Light: Include light, sight, visual illusions, purification, the Future, radiant energy as not included explicitly under another element, and the “substance” of souls. By quirks of the Old Malstronic Language, physical manifestations of Light are Feminine.

Psychological Associations of Light: Include hope, harmony, nobility, mercy, vanity and faith. By the quirks of Old Malstronic, mental associations of Light are Masculine.

Metamagical Aspect of Light: The Aspect-Pattern most strongly associated with Light is that of The Seer. Light Mages are more skilled on average with perceptual magic than their fellows, and are comfortable casting spells at a far greater range in both space and time.

Light in the Old Malstronic Language: The characters associated with the Light Element are those that make the sounds V (considered Masculine, and tied to Light’s Psychological associations), S (considered Feminine, and tied to Light’s Physical associations), and a long E (considered Neutral, and linked to the Metamagic Properties of Light). Whole volumes have been written about the headache the Old Malstronians made for themselves and future generations by encoding rigid and frankly arbitrary gender definitions so deeply into their language and magical framework, which has been almost as catastrophic as the similarly unnecessary Mental/Physical division.

#Aclodoc #Wall of Text #Tabletop Roleplaying #Worldbuilding #New Malstronic Order

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