Sometimes a dungeon master, or an author or game writer, wants to toy with their characters. Not in a life-ending way, but just to vex them a little. The following items do just that. Cursed Magic Items Spoon of Canine Mucous: Any food this item touches turns into dog drool. Iol-Del’s Unlucky Siphon: This …
The great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! It was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older …
The Council of Elrond, Lego style J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy has been a major influence for many, many, fantasy writers, myself included. (Or course, many fantasy writers detest it also.) And also like me, probably, at some point, budding young fantasy writers made up people, places, and things that sounded very much …
Astranci, by Caelicorn It’s pretty easy to name a new species of bird. Their beaks and tails adhere to certain shapes, and body parts such as eyes, breasts, and wings share certain features also. Their habitats name them, as well as their food, calls, and mating behavior. So if you want some fictional avian or …
Guinevere’s getting ideas Sometimes, when writing fantasy SF, or some mixture of both skewed sideways and viewed through a mirror, a writer likes to be clever and insert some obviously intentional fictional replacement for a real-world person, place, or thing. For example, Poppy Z. Brite’s novella Plastic Jesus was about a 1960s rock band called …
Elizabeth the I: Powerful and regal. Elizabeth remains one of the more popular girls’ name in the USA. The name originated from the Hebrew Elisheva or Elisheba, translated into Greek as Elisabet. In its classic English form, Elizabeth, is classic, stately, and elegant. Derivations include the popular Isabel, Elise, and Bella; there are also many …
A climate-controlled ski resort for global warming. From Central Europe we move to winter sports, specifically, ski resorts. (Of course, snowboarding, ice skating, and cross-country skiiing are offered as well.) These, in Canada and the U.S. at least, tend towards a certain blandness when not named after local mountains or Native American tribes. By mixing …
Returning to Ruritania, Germanic names, and fictional European countries again… There are really a lot of them, evidenced by this list on Wikipedia. I was blown away, actually. Some highlights: Animation has its share, evidenced by the fictional country of Cagliostro, in which Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, Hayao Miyazaki’s debut anime movie is …
Put a dollar in my coffee jar for all
the hard work I do at Ko-fi. com!