Ok, so where do I put the Mimic? There are several settings: A jungle-esque area at the edge of the island, interior to a cave/mineshaft, and the "king's hoard"
I'm thinking if I put it in the first area, it's a banana tree
@Draconic I have the Campaign Setting book for Pathfinder 1e pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Campaign_Setting which includes a pronunciation guide on various words and describes Mwangi to a certain extent
"Polyglot: The countless dialects of Garund’s Mwangi tribesfolk share enough remnants of a mysterious root language that members of different tribes from vastly divergent regions of the Expanse can generally understand one another even though they appear to be speaking completely different languages."
"Zenj names are usually short and clipped, with hard consonants and many glottal stops and clicks that cannot be easily transcribed in written languages (! equals a velaric clicking noise in the back of the throat or velum and ‘ is used to denote a glottal stop).…
The "pronunciation guide" is... less than perfect though. With such wonderful entries as "Styx - STIKS" "Shax - SHAX" "djinn - JIHN"
I don't know if that would be especially helpful to someone who didn't already know how clicks worked, but I don't know if I could come up with a better explanation in text either
It will take me a while to figure out what words in the pronunciation guide are actually in Mwangi/Polyglot , but there's at least these ones: "jukamis - joo KAH mihs" "Mwangi - MWAN gi" "Sargava - sahr GAH vah"
Random facts about my speech: I apparently never learned the dark/velar L in English properly and my brain decided it made sense to instead use the uvular nasal. My brain also decided to pronounce cat's and cats' differently and generalizes the -en of soften, harden, darken, etc... to regularly produce words like colden and warmen
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Random worldbuilding idea that came to me in the shower: There are two neighbouring countries (names undecided), whose capital cities face each other across a river - Queenstown & Kingston. They were originally one country, but split as a result of a nasty break-up between the rulers. (Or for an optimistic alternative, reverse the story - they used to be 2 countries but were united by marriage)
Jonaya Kemper wrote a twitter thread about a problem with "ttrpg mechanics that try to make your abilities 'realistic'"
Kazumi Chin wrote on twitter about how "safety isn’t like an addendum to your social spaces but is the fundamental ground work upon which being together in a fulfilling way is possible."
But if you're looking for a name disconnected from the language's relationship to the people who introduced the object, then [thing we already know] [but different like this] is a good formula.
I'm deliberating ignoring the idea that somehow "tribal people" automatically have recognizably shared naming conventions different from non-tribal people, whoever that would be. The big difference tends to be that Europeans more often transliterate names of colonized demographics but learn the original-language names for cultures they consider more equal.
Banana being a nice example of an exception to the rule.
In English we call our motor-powered vehicles "moves-on-its-owns."
So, if you're going with physical rather than situational names (like "elffruit" or "Eastfruit") what's a food that the banana fruit would remind lizardpeople of, or a plant that the palm would make them think of? And what's a key difference between them?
Put those together and you've got a very likely etymology for a new name, assuming they aren't just going to use whatever name was told them when they were first shown the fruit.
There's several yellow coral mushrooms they might invoke, too.
@AncientSwordRage Maybe the texture is similar to something they eat, like the eggfruit doesn't look like an egg on the outside, or taste like one, but its flesh has the texture and color of a hard-boiled egg's yolk.
@BESW the french for tomato is "love apple"? I don't know of any other words to designate tomatoes other than "tomate". The only thing that reminds me of is "pomme d'amour" which translates to "love apple", and which designates candied apples (the carnival/fair food thing)
or I missed an obvious joke x)
(good to note that while the correct name is indeed "ground apple" (pomme de terre), we also use the term "patate" more commonly, which is literally potato)
When running the "Strength of Thousands" adventure path, or just using content from the Mwangi Expanse generally, I've found myself stumped by the pronunciation of many proper names and other terms. I know they're based on real-life languages, just like "Ignaci Canterells" is Latin-ish, but despi...
Patate is more like an informal, slightly more familiar term. I'm pretty sure it's a proper word in the dictionnary and just about everyone uses it, but "pomme de terre" is still the "proper" way of calling it.
At least that's how it is in the south/southwest of France, can't say for other places since pretty much each place has its own accent and ways of saying things (never start the "chocolatine" vs "pain au chocolat" argument, you're in for a bad time)
In any case, you're good to go with either patate or pomme de terre just about anywhere
the "pomme d'amour" thing could make for a pretty decent conversation starter with some french people I know, now that I think about it...
@Someone_Evil true! I haven't figured out exactly my (eventual) plan for combat is, but it's something like jump over the front lines onto an enemy, grapple, stab etc. Jump to the next, rinse repeat until I'm out of movement and/or attacks
So I don't think I need to use all the movement in one go
@AncientSwordRage Is this a thing in all countries, or limited to a few? I always took the phenomenon as a granted thing in any country but it could be more specific than I thought.
I know the accent of people in the US can vary quite alot, dunno about the word usage habits though.
@AncientSwordRage Well that's a pretty good way to sumarize it, since Paris is so different from the rest.
There are a bunch of places known for their regional variations. The first ones that come to mind, outside of Paris, would be Bretagne (the branch-like section that's right below the UK), the northern part (which we usually just call "the north"), the area near Germany, the part on the mediteranean coast in the southeast, the southwest and finally, the middle area. Each with very strong stereotypes and generally some strong attachment to the regional stuff.
It's not to the point of considering other regions as foreign, but it can definitely start a few fights over "you call this drink like this, not like that", or how to pronounce certain months of the year.
And it's not just regional. There's an ethnic divide to soft drinks as well, because it's America so of course there is. During the 20th century Pepsi consistently targeted non-white demographics while Coke did not.
There's a lot of region/demographic language stuff, from what you call the wheeled cart you put your groceries in while shopping, to enough linguistic shift in working-class urban Black communities that African-American Vernacular English is considered a unique dialect across the country with additional regional variations.
I'm from a USA territory where the local speech patterns have distinct Midwest elements because a lot of teachers from that part of the continent worked in elementary schools here in the mid 50s to 70s so the kids picked up linguistic traits from their teachers.
My time spent consuming health and nutrition content has me using the phrases "sugar sweetened beverage" and "non-nutritive sweetener sweetened beverage". Helps to reinforce in my mind that soft drinks are inconsistent with my health goals.
French, and Norwegian for that matter, has prescriptive language authorities unlike English, which probably accounts for an amount of the word homogeneity
@Someone_Evil not too well-versed into this aspect of our history, but it would make sense. At the very least, nowadays, specific region dialects and other hard variations on language are nothing more than local historical activities, not actually used in everyday life.
And then there's Quebec
Their french is very similar, but the strong accent can make it a bit difficult to understand. Oh, and the fact they use certain words with very different meanings.
Unironically, I tend to understand someone from Quebec better when they speak english than french, because of the accent.
@ThomasMarkov since we use the word "soda" itself very commonly here (now that I think about it, we use quite a lot of english words in everyday life nowadays) it's the most common one here. I know there's at least one or two other, less common ways of calling those but I can't remember them.
@ThomasMarkov I'm certain they don't have longer arms because the high jump rules say you can reach over you head some portion of your height, not arm length
So I'm guessing it's because they're the combat goblins™ they have a wider reach
@Matthieu to the bafflement of everyone my wife and I just call it fluids or fizzy drink unless we name the drink itself
(inspired by this answer)
Dangerous Sorcery:
When you Cast a Spell from your spell slots, if the spell deals damage and doesn’t have a duration, you gain a status bonus to that spell’s damage equal to the spell’s level.
Enervation for example seems to satisfy both criteria. It does not have a d...
Inspired by this question about a homebrew spell, I was wondering if there are any official spells or abilities which cause either a target creature or creatures within an area to involuntarily make noise, which would help detecting them if they are hidden or invisible. Something like Faerie Fire...
(inspired by this answer)
Dangerous Sorcery:
When you Cast a Spell from your spell slots, if the spell deals damage and doesn’t have a duration, you gain a status bonus to that spell’s damage equal to the spell’s level.
Enervation for example seems to satisfy both criteria. It does not have a d...
