# water-motif -- trying to find a name for something



## Wynnara (Apr 22, 2013)

Hey, I'm trying to create a bit of water-motif that underlies the magic system in my novel... eg. the source of the power is known as the "Wellspring". 

There is a location in the world where the magic leaves and returns to where it came from. Essentially it's the opposite of a wellspring but my brain is stuck trying to find the right word for it... something that implies leaving, going elsewhere but is fairly self-contained in the same sense that wellspring is. I thought of maybe Whirlpool or Vortex but it just doesn't feel right to me.


Any ideas?


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## Mindfire (Apr 22, 2013)

Drainpipe. 

But seriously the thing you're thinking of is actually called a sink.


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## Feo Takahari (Apr 22, 2013)

Would Waterfall work? (Or maybe just The Falls.)


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## Kit (Apr 23, 2013)

Tide.......


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## Wynnara (Apr 23, 2013)

Haha. Drainpipe is kinda awesome. 
"By the breath of the Creator, wizard! The plumbing of our world has become befouled!!"

but no... 


I find I keep coming back to the idea of perhaps just using "The Well" for both in and out. You can draw from a well, but there's also a sense of depth there--like you can fall down a well too. My only qualm is that it feels like it might be fantasy clichÃ©. I can't say I've read anything specific, although I'm not as well-read as I would like to be, but I know that "The Well of Eternity" is a thing in World of Warcraft.


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## Ireth (Apr 23, 2013)

Would fountain be a better term?


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## Nihal (Apr 23, 2013)

Yes, I would avoid well, for the Well of Eternity is... well know. =P

If you go for the not-so-pretty names side, like sink, you can come up with some new alternatives. Sink > Sinkhole > Chasm... 

Water rarely is a "standalone" occurrence, if you take a well for example, there is a whole groundwater under it, which may be linked to other systems, etc. It evokes me a different but similar concept, Ley lines, which I saw paired with magic and life a number of times. If your magic tends to for "rivers" flowing to this final place, you can also focus on this network when naming.


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## Wynnara (Apr 23, 2013)

The way I'm envisioning it is that magic exist outside the physical world and that a magic-user would draw from it in order to use it in greater or lesser degrees depending on their abilities. In using the magic they themselves are the portal between the physical world and that other more spiritual one. There is also this place in the physical world where a great deal of spilled-over magic is drawn independent of people who wield it and passes out of the physical world and back to the original source.


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## Velka (Apr 23, 2013)

Abyss or euripus

Some non-water specific words that may work: egress, hegira, helix

You can also look to other languages and see what your ideas are in one that works for your world.


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## Mindfire (Apr 24, 2013)

I told you. Your wellspring is roughly analogous to a source, so logically, it's opposite number should be called a sink. As in, this: Sources and Sinks


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## Rob P (Apr 24, 2013)

A sink also has certain connections with places of vice and corruption.

However the word sink can mean - a natural or artificial means of absorbing or removing a substance or a form of energy from a system.

I like the word sink which can then be used as a sinkhole but a soak could also imply the same meaning as in a soakaway or to seep.


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## Artemadoris (Apr 27, 2013)

How about The Cloaca, or The Culvert–both reference a liquid drainage system.


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## wordwalker (Apr 27, 2013)

I've run into this problem before; there really aren't many ways water goes _into_ the earth that people have heard of, and don't think sound a bit petty. You might do better simply calling it The Beyond.


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