Google+ user Ulek Xek joined C. for the Thursday night game via G+ Hangout on audio only. Sadly, Greg Backus was unable to join us due to computer issues. We'll have to sort those issues out for the next epi.
Here is Ulek Xek's LINK
Showing posts with label Vrun alphabetic language system. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vrun alphabetic language system. Show all posts
Friday, August 19, 2011
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
An old Tunnels and Trolls character of mine...-
This game was run by my dear friend, Brian Penn, using the Minarian setting of the old TSR boardgame, Divine Right, although using his heavily house-ruled Tunnels & Trolls setup.
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NAME: H'Yuz Almshare Ki Taanvaaq're
|>Subtlestly Wrought Power, I Proceed from Spirit, a Sylph, not of this earth, but of the Highest Ever-Wise Glory, and dispatched as [His] angel<|
6'8"; female; elf; ash-wood white skin; dark purple hair; grey-blue left eye, right eye: leather patch; thin, cold lips; somewhat disingenuous smile; Piercing gaze. Lean and wiry build.
Taanvaaq is an amazonian elven woman draped in a mottled green tunic with matching breeches. Wears mottled green leather armour; armed with a sword-breaker, and a battered scimitar. An outcast among Elves of Neuss for deviant behavior, Taanvaaq was unable to complete her Wiccan initiations, and now wanders the outlands. Prone to interest in Gunnes and Alchemy rather than vernal traipsings, Taanvaaq blew-up a powder keg she found off a frequently traveled road through the nearby glade. A child was injured, losing her hearing, and Taanvaaq was cast out. She then entered less isolated lands, and began to interact with other kindred. She has heard many snide remarks regarding Elves, and so she has become the opposite. Gregarious, not-overly witty, and has gone out of her way to befriend any willing Dwarf she has met. She has a great love of the outdoors, but is equally delighted with tools and chemicals. Her main goal [was] to become an accomplished Gunnes user, Gunnesmith, as well as an Alchemist. After a very costly trek through the Goblin Mountains, Taanvaaq pursued a warlock who had been supplying the goblins, hobgoblins, and other dark kin with weapons, armour, and bare supplies. As he had been the impetous for the killing in the mountains, Taanvaaq spared no effort in avenging the blood of her lovers and friends.
She pursued him into the Eastern Lands, from whence he hailed, and after slaying him in a filthy alley, discovered that he was an official to the Great King. Now with a bounty upon her head, and Immerian charges of dissertation, and possibly murder, she has made refuge in the province of Anatom.
Most recently, she founded the Order of the Blood Star, serving the king of Anatnom to search out the goblin hordes that are infiltrating the walled, mountain pass city.
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Taanvaaq finally overcame an anti-magical curse that had befallen Anatnom which would have prevented the mystical device, the Dawn Star, from shining over Anatnom and exposing her infiltrators and enemies, had she not succeeded in empowering it through her self-sacrifice.
I later had her appear as a minor divinity who helped those who love the land, but Taanvaaq always had a frightful wild side, and this manifested in a great likelihood of her slaying her petitioner if the cause was unjust or duplicitous.
She is a bitter-sweet character to Brian, due to her suicide through which her blood was used to cast a 'wish'/'prayer' to let the watery blood-red light shine in the darkness --a recurring theme as readers of this blog may have noted.
--To me, she was my only successful player character in nearly thirty years of gaming, insofar that she accomplished her goal.
Her name, and that of her created Magicked weapons, are derived from the Vrun language.
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NAME: H'Yuz Almshare Ki Taanvaaq're
6'8"; female; elf; ash-wood white skin; dark purple hair; grey-blue left eye, right eye: leather patch; thin, cold lips; somewhat disingenuous smile; Piercing gaze. Lean and wiry build.
Taanvaaq is an amazonian elven woman draped in a mottled green tunic with matching breeches. Wears mottled green leather armour; armed with a sword-breaker, and a battered scimitar. An outcast among Elves of Neuss for deviant behavior, Taanvaaq was unable to complete her Wiccan initiations, and now wanders the outlands. Prone to interest in Gunnes and Alchemy rather than vernal traipsings, Taanvaaq blew-up a powder keg she found off a frequently traveled road through the nearby glade. A child was injured, losing her hearing, and Taanvaaq was cast out. She then entered less isolated lands, and began to interact with other kindred. She has heard many snide remarks regarding Elves, and so she has become the opposite. Gregarious, not-overly witty, and has gone out of her way to befriend any willing Dwarf she has met. She has a great love of the outdoors, but is equally delighted with tools and chemicals. Her main goal [was] to become an accomplished Gunnes user, Gunnesmith, as well as an Alchemist. After a very costly trek through the Goblin Mountains, Taanvaaq pursued a warlock who had been supplying the goblins, hobgoblins, and other dark kin with weapons, armour, and bare supplies. As he had been the impetous for the killing in the mountains, Taanvaaq spared no effort in avenging the blood of her lovers and friends.
Taanvaaq launched herself off Djaks and scrambled for a few yards on all fours. By the time she had her footing, she leapt over a fallen tree and did not miss a step upon landing; leaves scattered behind her.
By raven wing I speed my flight; by wheeling hawk I learn to fight; by moon above to give me light; I pass unhindered through the night; to taste the blood of my foe's life; by fire, water, earth and sky lead me through in the Maker's might!
But to others her chant was a ravening howl that receeded into the darkness.
She pursued him into the Eastern Lands, from whence he hailed, and after slaying him in a filthy alley, discovered that he was an official to the Great King. Now with a bounty upon her head, and Immerian charges of dissertation, and possibly murder, she has made refuge in the province of Anatom.
Most recently, she founded the Order of the Blood Star, serving the king of Anatnom to search out the goblin hordes that are infiltrating the walled, mountain pass city.
---
Taanvaaq finally overcame an anti-magical curse that had befallen Anatnom which would have prevented the mystical device, the Dawn Star, from shining over Anatnom and exposing her infiltrators and enemies, had she not succeeded in empowering it through her self-sacrifice.
I later had her appear as a minor divinity who helped those who love the land, but Taanvaaq always had a frightful wild side, and this manifested in a great likelihood of her slaying her petitioner if the cause was unjust or duplicitous.
She is a bitter-sweet character to Brian, due to her suicide through which her blood was used to cast a 'wish'/'prayer' to let the watery blood-red light shine in the darkness --a recurring theme as readers of this blog may have noted.
--To me, she was my only successful player character in nearly thirty years of gaming, insofar that she accomplished her goal.
Her name, and that of her created Magicked weapons, are derived from the Vrun language.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
[Milieu] The Vrun Alphabetic System 1-
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If I might ask a quick question, have you constructed a language that you are using for naming purposes? Or are you creating the words as you need them?
Curious,
Flynn
Copyright (c) 1992, 1999, 2009 Kyrinn S. Eis, All Rights Reserved
Flynn: Yes, I have. It is the Vrun alphabetic language system and it forms the basis of virtually all of the languages upon Urutsk, as it was formed from the Empyrean Keys of the First Parents who fell to the planet in the 'War in the Heavens'.
--Only the Kaukara (now largely extinct) and the Durn have languages of significant variance from Vrun (and while the Western Isles Vrun language known as Majestic Vrun is understandable to a large degree by continental Vrun speakers, its written form is more pictographic, like ogham, and its grammar more like Durnish).
I have realised, in varying degrees of completeness: Vrun, Yirinn, Tuliri, Majestic Vrun, Durnish, and Yaesh, as well as the non-human, Dryvv (strongly related to Yirinn). Others are either one-offs or variants.
Most of the differences have to do with the character set limiting or expanding their thought-base, and the manner in which one inscribes and reads the characters.
--Durnish, for instance, is composed of arcs, spirals, circles, and lines layered in such a way as their mentality understands reality, and this is so significantly different from all other languages on Urutsk, save Majestic Vrun's 'ogham', as to appear more like artwork than even calligraphy.
In due time I will publish the core Vrun data, including its intrinsic numeric and 3D spatial aspects, but, as you can imagine, it is its own sort of undertaking, and requires me to draft the characters for use in a computer font creation programme.
As far as the difference between having created the language and creating words as needed, that is the nature of Vrun. Each character is an alphabetic particle, and each has a broad interpretive value, --a phoneme--, which allows for 'on-the-fly' construction of words/names to describe particulars.
--The ubiquity of the Vrun peoples has created easily as many 'dialects', and it necessitates actually thinking about what one is hearing or reading to gain accurate understanding of what is being said. While, to Westerners, that may seem a very subjective methodology, a parallel to the Chinese characters / Kanji being readable by many dialects/languages, but the spoken word being equally opaque to non-fluent individuals is perhaps the best analogy.
A friend of mine is an expert in Coptic, and a particular form, the name of which escapes me, and he, in discussing Vrun with me, stated that a language which is capable of constructing meaningful words via mono- or even duo-symbolic units is exceedingly rare on Earth, and that he has difficulty making heads or tails of Vrun's system. On the other hand, I have noted that coders and programmers seem to take to Vrun much more readily, which I find delightful, given the nature of the Empyrean Keys from which Vrun is derived were AI-Human interface characters.
I hope that helps a bit. :)
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Post-game, and Talk of a Beta .pdf-
Today's session had a later start than I would have liked, but it worked out well, given that the star and another player were making use of my absence to create a 3E character for the latter's Sat or Sunday game. Okay, no problem. We transitioned fairly quickly to my game with a recap of the previous few Prime character sessions to remind them.
The entire session consisted of having the events the 2ndaries witnessed at last session's close of play transpire from the Primaries' point of view.
In the process other commonalities were made plainer and a few of my players seemed to connect the dots well enough to understand that I run events that are independent of their actions, and that their having two sets of characters more than doubles the players' discovery of Urutsk as a result of the web of information formed.
As an aside, I was really gratified to read from one of you here at the Tapestry that the Vrun alphabetic language system was both 'very elegant' and possessed a 'marvellous consistency and depth'. When my mother, a trained Linguist, heard that, her smile said it all.
Regarding the playtest campaign, short of either having them create 'kit' characters just to 'test' them, I'm not certain if we are actually testing any longer at this stage, or if my alterations of the D&Dish kernel proved so minimal in uptake (Point-Design, restructured/renamed Saves, Defence/Armour, etc.) that when nothing catastrophic arose from them, we just went on with the game-playing (the end-user desired result, but often the downfall of a non-objectively 'tested' rules set).
While the term 'Beta Playtest' still brings up a taste of bile with my seemingly wasted months trying to playtest Pathfinder during the early beta stages (why play 3.x in an Old School manner that I never really abandoned when it is such a bad fit and confuses rules-junkies, and there are people still playing the stuff you grew up on, K?!) -comma- I do hope that you folks will kick it around and take the system for a spin around the block. Moreover, I most sincerely ask that you provide feedback when the beta-.pdf is released. Please.
Thanks,
The entire session consisted of having the events the 2ndaries witnessed at last session's close of play transpire from the Primaries' point of view.
In the process other commonalities were made plainer and a few of my players seemed to connect the dots well enough to understand that I run events that are independent of their actions, and that their having two sets of characters more than doubles the players' discovery of Urutsk as a result of the web of information formed.
As an aside, I was really gratified to read from one of you here at the Tapestry that the Vrun alphabetic language system was both 'very elegant' and possessed a 'marvellous consistency and depth'. When my mother, a trained Linguist, heard that, her smile said it all.
Regarding the playtest campaign, short of either having them create 'kit' characters just to 'test' them, I'm not certain if we are actually testing any longer at this stage, or if my alterations of the D&Dish kernel proved so minimal in uptake (Point-Design, restructured/renamed Saves, Defence/Armour, etc.) that when nothing catastrophic arose from them, we just went on with the game-playing (the end-user desired result, but often the downfall of a non-objectively 'tested' rules set).
While the term 'Beta Playtest' still brings up a taste of bile with my seemingly wasted months trying to playtest Pathfinder during the early beta stages (why play 3.x in an Old School manner that I never really abandoned when it is such a bad fit and confuses rules-junkies, and there are people still playing the stuff you grew up on, K?!) -comma- I do hope that you folks will kick it around and take the system for a spin around the block. Moreover, I most sincerely ask that you provide feedback when the beta-.pdf is released. Please.
Thanks,
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