True Names
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So how divergent are the different races affected by another being knowing their true name? Are some races more sensitive to this than others?
Maybe you can’t get their true names in the first place? There has to be a special and specific situation so that you will be able to get it?
Well…humans do have true names, but may not know it…
It seems to me that the more magical a race is, the more it is concerned with True Names. Is this because they realize the overall import, or is it because True Names have more affect on someone, the more magical they are?
Don’t know. Never tried binding and elf. But then I can’t bind anyone or things so it’s sort of moot.
Huh! True names is pretty much nonsense to me. Maybe because I’m human? Hmmm. I’m ranked demon here now.
Well, just imagine the pronunciation. Add to the mix, the spelling.
If you just glance at it, it seems ok. But further scrutiny, it makes so much nonsense.
I think on this world, at least in more organized countries, the true names are numbers. At least, if certain people get a hold of those, they can do some pretty nasty stuff to your life…
By this world you mean your Earth.
yes, identity theft is like stealing a person’s true name and using it for ones own purposes and the detriment of the victim.
I suspect this is, in fact, the reason wizards never seem to summon dragons.
Pretty sure those can’t be pronounced by humans.
Now of course, there is physically unable to pronounce and there is mispronounce.
Mispronunciation can be dangerous because if it’s a powerful demon (like Tom) they might hear you calling it, but not be bound, and decide to show up anyway.
And then, maybe silly wizard will help pull it through and then try to bind it, fail and die a gloriously horrible bloody nauseating dismemberment and death over a very long and involved period of time. The demon is then in Astlan and able to run around and wreak havoc.
That’s what one hope would happen at least.
I’ve been discussing this issue a long time ago. In reality it is quite very common to mispronounce foriegn names.
We can make hundreds of sounds for our language (also known as phonemes) but in a spoken language we limit the number of phonemes we use (the phoneme set). Spoken languages have from a dozen to more than a hundred of phonemes in thier phoneme set.
Added some natural complexity of the language, the problem here is that it requires practice to be able to pronounce a phoneme properly. This is especially troublesome when a person has to produce a phoneme that is not part of that person’s native language’s phoneme set. What often happens is that they replace it with a similar sounding phoneme. Japanese speakers for example has trouble creating the /l/ phoneme as it is not present in the japanese language phoneme set and often replace it with the /r/ phoneme. Of course saying ‘rock’ instead of ‘lock’ (unrock it!) results to confusion.
In Tom’s case, his name must be Astlanian enough so that natives there can pronounce it properly.
Of course if there are aliens, as Tizzy implied, then they might just have names that humans physically can’t pronounce. Say what if the alien speaks in supersonic? What if the aliens are birdlike and uses birdlike tweets and calls in their language? Humans can’t speak that!
Well, while we are also speaking about languages, how many languages are there in Astlan? Also are there French speaking demons, Cantonese speaking demons, and Latin speaking demons? Do Ramses still remember how to speak Ancient Egyptian? What is Exador’s native language? I should have ask about Tizzy’s original native tongue, but I seem to be uninterested about it somehow.
Or does the magic of the summoning superimposes the language of Astlan upon the summoned including their name? It certainly seems to be a common theme in the stories I read about travel between universes. Than again, the occassional language confusion is fun, it gets boring really quickly, so I suspect any mage worth his or her salt will very quickly design translation spells 😉
My experience is…bingo…Madfoxx…
Any demon conjured by his true name will know the tongue of his master, sort of automatically. Built into the spells/magic/I have no idea, just is.
Now different masters can summon in different tongues…
So, those of us who’ve been around the Astlanian block a few times have picked up multiple languages, in many cases.
Plus there is a common tongue for merchants and academics, and pretty much any region that was part of the Vargosite Empire speaks it, although maybe not exclusively. The various Etonian religions have also exported it to other continents that weren’t part of the Vargosite Empire. So if the Etonians are there, someone will speak it.
It’s what they speak in the Council States, it’s what Tom speaks.
You might call it Vargosian, except that it’s derived from Anna-An the language of the Anilords, which is in turn derived from ancient Anian (of the An empire) Not sure where it came from before then. Modern Vargosian isn’t actually that similar to Anian anymore, other than some root words, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone speak Anian (other then a few demons) in close to two thousand years.
When did demons first showing up?
Better yet why are their so many humans, and why did older more advanced species allow them to take their territory?
We’ve been here forever, we are eternal and undying…actually we just sort of cycle through big bangs…
There’s a lot of history…but humans are extremely fertile. However, there are other races in Astlan, this particular story just seems to center on humans.
The same with the map…it was made by humans, they don’t have good maps of non-human population settings…other than Jutungard…but it’s pretty hard to miss the cities and halls there…they sort of stick out…
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