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Another word for a

Taniwha

Scribe
Hi Folks,
I have a stone which has been magic spelled to react when it is touched in a certain manner. After time it can be used for communication with a lord of darkness type of character. That character is just explaining how his servant found the stone but I don't want the Lord to call it a stone. It's a magic communication stone that enthralls the user. Any suggestion for a name / description for it?
 

Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
Relatedwords. Com and the various synonym sites should help if you don't like the ones mentoned above
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
The obsidian orb

the whispering ball

An eye of (insert baddies name here)

A seeing orb

A mindeye...
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Sure. But it's like saying you want dogs in the story but you don't want to call them dogs. Never mind me. Other folks have given suggestions, so you'll likely take inspiration from them.
 

Foah

Troubadour
It very much reminds me of the palantir balls from Tolkien's universe, the idea in the original post (palantir in Elvish means far-seeing). If you don't want a name that simply says what the object is/looks like, then go for a completely unconnected name maybe?

If the origin of your object is unknown, then you won't need an official sounding name for it anyways. A whimsical nickname for it seems to enchant you a bit, so why not :) Perhaps later in the story the reader will learn where the object actually came from, and in doing so, learn its actual name.
 
You could do what geologists do and use "lith" as a root for your name, which is taken from the Greek "lithos", which means rock. For instance, a "megalith" is a "large rock", "regolith" is "rock debris", and so on. So, maybe something like "seer-lith" for "seeing rock". Yes, I realize we're introducing a Greek word into a fantasy setting that probably doesn't include Greek as a language. However, you're using English words (I assume you're writing this in English, anyway) to describe your world, and English is itself full of words with roots and origins in other languages, so that's not really much of an issue (IMHO, at least).

A thought, anyway.
 

Miles Lacey

Archmage
The reason I asked the OP to tell me what colour the stone is may help them with working out what to call it. For example the stone could be named after the colour of the stone. For example if the colour of the stone is green it could be called the Pounamu Cube (pounamu is the Maori word for greenstone).
 
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