The Grand Reconstruction!

[Lady Kara]

Really like those cosmetic changes. Niiiiice. And as for naming geographic locales, I've got one cool idea ---

For the water where the Kalinaw Islands, Drakon'vyaz, and Todoroki Isles are located, why not call it the "Ramuranbu Sea"?*

It could be considered the Archipelago's version of the Caribbean, since there's so many islands (and both Todoroki and Drakon'vyaz have semi-tropical weather).

((* = Unless you think it'd be better to refer to that region of water as an ocean, despite parts of it being broken up by islands))

[ch00beh]

butts river

[addison]

Are there currently any towns or islands with a heavy pirate theme? I'd love to make some flavor the Kalinaw Islands region.

The current idea I've been playing around with is that each of the three major islands and cities is ruled by a different Pirate lord, each with other pirates working under them that patrol the small bundle of islands. Many of the smaller islands are inhabited by small communities that have inhabited the islands looking for religious/social/etc. freedom that they couldn't find elsewhere. So there are all sorts of little cult towns and other weird places. All they have to do is pay protection and other fees to the Pirate lords and they can exist mostly undisturbed to practice their lives however they want.

[Tout-Perd]

There is actually some precedent for this, going all the way back to 2007! I Ketut Topan ("Tut" for short) is an Indonesian pirate, though more of a modern-day AK-47 and rocket launcher type, and he was established as having ties in the region. Not sure if he'd work as a high-ranking individual, but he's got ties to the Fascere Order (a group that provides mystical artifacts to grant powers), and last time he was seen on screen, he was stocking up on mystical weaponry designed for killing Powers.

[Tout-Perd]

Since it was so long ago, I don't recall how much foreshadowing I put into this, but I'm pretty sure on several occasions, people were like "Where'd you get this gorgeous boat?" and he was all like *cough cough* *shifty eyes* *changes the subject*

[Tout-Perd]

Also, Hopewell or whatever the heck I called it, the Azalea analogue with the genetic engineering and super-crops and all, is now Greffant Village. (Figured it was fitting to have another town with a French name, considering the Archipelago was largely settled by allies in the wake of WWII. I'm kinda liking the idea that due to the high French presence, there's actually a large number of immigrants from a variety of French speaking countries, like Haiti, portions of Africa, etc.)(See: Renard, Thyra, possibly Channery, so forth)

[addison]

I can and would love to work with all of that. If you linked me to the story of portions of Orps that you use or talk about Tut, I'd read up and try incorporating him into the islands current power structure. He sounds awesome for one of the pirate lords, or even like a lieutenant or something for one of the other lords.

Addition: I want the larger islands and towns to function like rowdy/bustling sea ports each with a distinct flavor depending on which Pirate lord rules which port, but still have lots of small islands and out of the way places that very greatly in flavor because they've been settled by so many societal outcasts. There could be a demon summoning/worshipping cult on an island, and a bunch of weed growing hippies right next door on another island. Lots of them pay up to the pirate lords, but some of the islands go completely unnoticed. 

[Tout-Perd]

I think this is one of the big advantages our setting has over OP, in that we've got room for all sorts of pirates (modern, classic, fantastic,sci fi) and it makes a lot of sense they'd be out in force, since the archipelago has been established as the shipping hub of the entire hemisphere.
There's probably some sort of deal with the devil involved somewhere there, keeping the authorities and buccaneers in balance. like maybe the pirates are given free reign to pick off smugglers and summoner and criminals, and exchange for that service, the authorities allow them to hit a certain quota of legit businesses as well.

[addison]

Exactly! Oh Yes. Each 'faction' of Pirates will have very distinct feels. Perhaps a powers only pirate lord and faction, a magic tools/modern day pirate lord and faction, and legit business merchant with a lot of weight and money (high tech pirates?) that is a Pirate lord just to keep some balance. I don't understand enough about summoners and powers to incorporate them, but I'm starting to get there. I hate locking anything down in my head because I'm just so uncertain of existing canon and pervious story lines.

[Tout-Perd]

Greffant Village
Pronounced: Gref-FAHNT (French)
A farming town that uses a multitude of cutting edge agricultural techniques to guarantee them the greatest crop yields in the entire world. However, these untested techniques have been proving to have some unforseen consequences.

SPOILER: Click to show

Population: 12,000
Terrain: Surrounded by the immense Dents de Peigne Forest on all sides, Greffant is largely isolated from the hustle and bustle of the Archipelago as a whole. The village itself is mostly well-sized farming homes with a small main drag for shopping, with rolling fields and complexes of greenhouses out to edge of the towering woods. There are a few squat cinderblock buildings hidden in the quieter corners of the village, where scientists busily work away on their next innovations.
Society:
Important Locations:
+Dents de Peigne Forest: A massive forest of gigantic trees (easily the size of redwoods, with some even larger than that), it encircles Greffant. There are only two roads through it, one going from Paymarble to Greffant, and the other from Greffant to Brightmeadow. It's frequently avoided by travelers, are there are many reports of mysterious phenomenas and sightings of non-human entities. Scientific testing has found that the forest actually predates the Archipelago (which current theories say emerged from the ocean in the 1940's) by hundreds of years.
Farmers who live near the edge of the forest frequently leave offerings by their crops, claiming that it appeases some unseen society of elves/fey that dwells in the depths of the primordial wood.
+
Important People:
+Maude: The Summoner expatriate Maude makes her home in the trees of Dents de Peigne, constructing lean-tos and hammocks hundreds of feet above the forest floor, and living off of what she can glean from the harvests and "elf offerings" from the local farmers. She's occasionally seen by villagers when they're passing through. They've dubbed this pale figure they see flitting through the canopy "The Maiden's Ghost", always attaching some story of a gristly happening to explain why she haunts the deep woods.
Unique Species:
Due to genetic engineering, Greffant Village boasts a host of species found nowhere else in the world.
*La Porteurs de Miel/Honeyhawks: These immense honeybees (roughly the side of a man's fist) are a common sight throughout town. Though alarming at first, these insects are actually quite tame and even affectionate, and will gladly eat offered sweets. Though commonly referred to as "stingless", they actually do have proportionate stingers, but have been engineered to lack the muscles to extend said stingers. They live in building sized hives, kept on trailers and moved around the village to help pollinate the crops.
*The Greffant Imperial: A butterfly engineered to have striping on their wings resembling the French flag. Their larva subsist entirely on weeds and other unwanted plants, and the adults have been engineered to be attracted only to a specific scent present in the flowers of Greffant's crop. They're viewed as the emblem for Greffant, and deliberately harming one actually counts as a misdemeanor under local law. Almost every year, there's a moral panic when a few misguided Imperials are spotted in Garden's Well, with the populace there claiming this'll be the year where they settle down there and become an invasive species.
*The Giant Ichneumons: These are much more a figure of urban legend than any confirmed reality, but almost every resident has claimed to see one at some point. These cat-sized parasitic wasps are believed to paralyze large mammalian pests (groundhogs, raccoons, rats, etc.) and use their still living bodies to incubate their flesh eating larvae. Despite the certainty of the town that they exist, there's been no confirmed scientific evidence of them.
Location:
Relevant RPs:
Trivia:
+People from Greffant Village are referred to as "Greffantien" or "Les Greffantiens" as a group. Brightfeldians infamously have collectively nicknamed people from Greffant Village "Frenchy", however.
+Greffant Village typically doesn't deal much with other cities in the Archipelago, except for shipping ridiculously large produce to them. The only cities they regularly deal with are Brightmeadow, which frequently exchanges their meat and egg products for feed for their livestock, and Garden's Well, that views their bioengineering of plants to be borderline blasphemous. As such, Brightfeldians have an affectionate relationship with Greffant, seeing it as the only other city of "real farmers" in the Archipelago. On the other hand, Garden's Well, where traditional horticulture is viewed as artform, will have nothing to do whatsoever with Greffant Village. There is no quicker way to get slapped in Garden's Well than asking "Oh, did you get that from Greffant?"

Will finish on my lunch break.

[Tout-Perd]

Guys, would anybody know if there's a French suffix used for people from a location to make a word for them? I want to say people from Greffant would be called Greffantois, but I'm pretty sure that'd be the dialect, not the people.

[Beelzebibble]

Apr 24, 2016 10:33:20 GMT -5 Tout-Perd said:

Guys, would anybody know if there's a French suffix used for people from a location to make a word for them? I want to say people from Greffant would be called Greffantois, but I'm pretty sure that'd be the dialect, not the people.

I'm looking for place names ending in T and their french demonyms. People from montserrat are montserratiens. Greffantiens?

[ch00beh]

iirc, -ois/-ais is for soft consonants and -iens is for hard ones, so Greffantiens might be appropro

[Tout-Perd]

Merci beaucoup, mon amis. <3

[Lady Kara]

As I've mentioned for a while now, I've written down interesting details and cultural things about my two countries and their inhabitants.

And in the grand scheme of things of "reconstructing" our old stuff, I have done the same (besides fleshing out certain details that I just never got around to writing down and/or caring about over the years). Especially when it comes to the Spirikin/spirithyst stones of the Todoroku Islands (and yeah, it's a "u" on the end of that, not a stupid "i" like I was using for a long while; part of reconstructing stuff involves not being a damn weeaboo like I used to be, and having a better grasp of Japanese now than I did then is a big help in transforming it all. "Todoroku" means "Roaring", btw - not only symbolic of the Spirikin who call the islands home, but also of the warrior-like heart and heritage of its people). Also putting more thought towards making the Drakyan people and their land of Drakon'vyaz be far more unique than just simply being an island continent of "long-lived elves who can telepathicly talk to dragons" (including discovering bits and pieces of their language more through the naming of some of their cities/towns/geographic locales, though don't know if I can ever turn their language into a fully useable form).

And as Addison asked way back when on the matter of pirates (though don't know if Addison is around anymore to see this), but just wanted to mention that the great port city of Ilnath, Drakon'vyaz (and the former home of my OC, Nagisa Ethra'fel Davarrin) is a bustling major hub of pirate and sea adventurer activity on a regular basis. Also best place in Drakon'vyaz to buy fish. LOL.

Currently toying with the idea of making an old proboard of mine be a separate Wiki sort of page for my creations, so that I can constantly update and modify the information on there whenever I get better ideas or the whim to make something better, etc. without getting in the way of/mucking up things over here. A little iffy on the idea, though, since I don't have a place to host images anymore and need one to change the sprites and icons on the board (unless no one cares about it having a blue/forest-y background and Naruto character & shuriken sprites everywhere?).

[Loogs]

HEY CHUMPLORDS THE DAY HAS COME IT'S FINALLY TIME TO

name the fucking main island

cause I kinda wanna finish the map but there's still so much that was left unnamed

at the very least I'd like it if we came to a consensus on a name for the big island. to spare you the thinking I've got a few really good candidates right here that I would like to use:

1. Mahoshima (魔法島): Japanese for 'magic island'. A little on the nose, idk, but I thought I'd put it up in case people liked the sound of it

2. Chikarashima (力島): Japanese for 'power island'. Again, it's not too subtle, and I think this one may or may not be correctly formatted in a syntax sense, but there it is (don't pick this one I just wanted three options because it's a better number than 2)

3. Tengaishima (天涯島): This one is by far my favorite. It's Japanese for 'horizon island', but the first two kanji for 'horizon' can also mean 'distant land', or 'heavenly shores'. please pick this one

One more note: the Japanese word for 'island' 島 has been romanized as 'jima' as well as 'shima'. So if you prefer, we can romanize these as Mahojima, Chikarajima, or Tengaijima.

Okay there we go please let's pick a name please pick Tengaishima

[Lady Kara]

So deeply sorry it took me so long to get around to seeing this, and hope you'll check in here soon-ish =

My vote for the island's name is to called it "Tengaijima". Just has a great symbolic feel to it, imho.

(and LOL on having "Chikara" in there; a reminder that the homeland of the Nintaku race is known as "Chikarakuni", which despite meaning "Power Land" in English, it actually means "Strong-hearted Land" since the Nintaku language only resembles Japanese and often certain words don't quite mean the same as the real thing or is loosely different from the original)