Thursday, December 30, 2010

Using Sumerian Command Words For Spells

I posted this on the LL forum the other day:

If you wanted to do something a bit different, you could give each spell a command word in some ancient dead language.

I've grown quite fond of Sumerian for naming things in RPG settings, and there is quite a large collection of Sumerian and Akkadian words found here:
http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/nepsd-frame.html

So for the Fireball spell, the command word might be:
Ganzer [FLAME] + Ellag [BALL] = "Ganzerellag!"

Sometimes the word you are looking for isn't found, so you have to try to think of alternate words to type in.

Magic Missile would be:
Emeĝar [MAGIC] (E-Meng-Gar) + Gagsisa [ARROW] (Missile wasn't in the lexicon) = "Emeĝargagsisa!"

Just a random thought.

You could even have moments like in Army of Darkness where they mispronounce the words...

>: ) mwha mwha mwha mwha!!!

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