Treskri - help needed

[wordwalker]

Deities and colors affiliated with them...

Nicely thought out. Still, when you have fifteen deities, giving them simply a color may not be enough because it's hard to resolve that many fine variations in color. (Or it just sounds awkward describing so many. I tend to stop at the three primary and three secondary colors plus black, white, and gray.)

You might adjust this by giving each one not precisely a color but an icon, some object that represented them. If that object included a particular shade of color (eg a bloody claw) that color would still be used on most of the deity's things, but the icon makes it all easier to describe.

(Or there's the Amber approach that everyone uses a combination of at least two colors. But that evokes human heraldry more than divine focus.)

 

[kilost]

What are the chances, I was helping you out with the demographics for this over on Alternate History Forums.

I'm very interested to see how it develops, as I said before, a very interesting take on Elves and fantasy in general.

 

[Zireael]

Hi, kilost, thanks for the nice words.

I wouldn't want to use icons for deities, as there are already coats of arms for noble houses, and every noble house is going to be made of several branches, every one having a variant of the house's coat of arms... I think I'll stick to colors, I might just need to add shades of a particular color - ie. blood red War Queen, light red Red Prince...

 

[Zireael]

One of the houses is giving me a lot of trouble (remember, every house has two colors). Currently, one of the two colors is black. The patron is the Outcast. I am planning to do a new coat of arms for them, this time with bend sinister, with the connotations of outcast/illegitimate.

First, I wanted the house to have silver, but silver is already taken (in coat of arms of the Uasal Lan [no. 2 on my DA account] and as a hair color of the Mian Lan, whose coat of arms is no. 3).
Then I wanted the color to be brown (or tenny), but I ran into the fact that I have a deity called the Brown Prince (who is not the patron deity of the house which has this coat of arms)... and I really can't rename the Brown Prince since he has to do with earth element. Green is already taken by the Lord of Trees.
And black is already taken by a deity of death and his house...

How do I explain two deities having brown as their color? Unless you can think of another color related to earth, the Brown Prince has to stay.

 

[wordwalker]

One of the houses is giving me a lot of trouble (remember, every house has two colors). Currently, one of the two colors is black. The patron is the Outcast. I am planning to do a new coat of arms for them, this time with bend sinister, with the connotations of outcast/illegitimate.

First, I wanted the house to have silver, but silver is already taken (in coat of arms of the Uasal Lan [no. 2 on my DA account] and as a hair color of the Mian Lan, whose coat of arms is no. 3).
Then I wanted the color to be brown (or tenny), but I ran into the fact that I have a deity called the Brown Prince (who is not the patron deity of the house which has this coat of arms)... and I really can't rename the Brown Prince since he has to do with earth element. Green is already taken by the Lord of Trees.
And black is already taken by a deity of death and his house...

How do I explain two deities having brown as their color? Unless you can think of another color related to earth, the Brown Prince has to stay.

(Erases "witty" ways to sound smug...)

I'm not sure it's mathematically possible, not when you have this many houses and gods and all, and then get into cross-connections.

But looking at this, I think I was wrong on my theory that colors can't be that finely distinguished-- for a culture that grew partly around this, they would see the difference between Light Brown, Dark Brown, and as many other shades as needed for politics, and be shocked by any outsider who didn't. (I mean, our artists really did come up with all those variations of blue.)

The tricky part is finding words for it; you'd need to give a house some cool term that's better than Light Brown to make the distinctions, and also near the start of the story plant a prominent description of that house's colors that tells the reader it really means light brown.

 

[Zireael]

Dark Brown for Brown Prince and light brown for Outcast would work... Or should I make it grey for the Outcast?

 

[kilost]

You seem to be going into a very high level of detail on Elven society. Are you also exploring other aspects of the world?

 

[Zireael]

You seem to be going into a very high level of detail on Elven society. Are you also exploring other aspects of the world?

I will, once I update my notes - and I'll probably update them after Dec 18, as I'm handing in an essay at that date and I'm insanely busy finishing it now.

 

[Zireael]

Do you think something akin to hemolytic disease could happen in this world?

(I'll update the notes this afternoon, after I hand in the essay)

P.S. What did you think of my notes? Did anyone try to read the GT-translated version?

 

[Zireael]

I need a good source on color meanings. Tips? Links?

 

[Gurkhal]

I need a good source on color meanings. Tips? Links?

I'm kind of assuming you are talking about heraldry in which case the word is probably tincture.

I'm no way an expert but this may give a hint about how it works.

Heraldry - Meaning

 

[Zireael]

A sketch of one of the parts of the world - I forgot which one, I think it's the Lower World.

Some more general thoughts:
1) do you think that there could be seasons in an underground world?
2) What do you think of an 8-day week and 8-week month and 8-months long year?
3) Am I allowed to post links now? I'd post a link to my notes and to my DA page, since I have a lot of Treskri-related stuff on it...

 

[Zireael]

Google-translated notes - They are originally from Polish, but this way you'll know what I'm thinking about

List of names I'm using - isn't the list too small/too short? Would I be better off using Latin names?

My profile on DA - with some concept art for Treskri

 

[Zireael]

Once again, on the topic of names. I thought of using Native American style names, i.e. Cunning Snake, Swift Horse, Red Fox, Many Horses... What do you think of it?

 

[Phietadix]

Hmm. That would require snakes, horses, and foxes to name them after. Also it doesn't seem right for elves, maybe if you have a more tribal people you could name them that.

 

[Zireael]

Hmm. That would require snakes, horses, and foxes to name them after. Also it doesn't seem right for elves, maybe if you have a more tribal people you could name them that.

Well, maybe not exactly horses, but foxes and snakes do exist in the world.
I simply mean names which are immediately meaningful and which are translated across languages (Many Horses = Wiele Koni = Muchos Caballos). That's what I meant by "Native American-style".

I know it doesn't seem "right", but part of my idea is to play with conventions.

 

[Zireael]

One more thing: I loved the idea of exchanging cloaks in G.R.R. Martin's ASOIAF. Did he come up with this himself, or is it based on some ancient tradition I don't know about? Google isn't helping much.

 

[Zireael]

Any ideas regarding the world as such? Do you think there would be continents? Climate changes? Seasons?

 

[Zireael]

Any ideas? Comments?

 

[DTowne]

I doubt that there would be seasons or much in the way of weather. Temperature is supposedly relatively static underground only getting hotter closer to the core or near volcanoes (I'd guess). I can see there being continents and depending on how shallow the seas and oceans are, if any, you could possibly have a limited number of remote or hard to navigate tunnels beneath.