A Skeleton By Any Other Name...

...would still skeleton. It would skeleton everywhere.

Because it's bones.

But seriously folks, today I'm talking names. This isn't only because we're in the midst of implementing stuff that's already been posted about, and don't have much else on the brain.

I don't... I can't actually think of any other reason.

Okay, but so recently we've had some talks about naming our monstergroups. Particularly, there were two that wanted some attention. The first was our group called "Cultists." These are basically people who worship bull/minotaur gods, and thrive in deep places, caverns etc. We wanted a name that reflected their aesthetic, as believers in a certain thing, and then an inkling of what that thing might be. The name we arrived at was Deepists, fanatics whose Deepism is so deepdown they doop and derp without doing any undeeply.

Deep double-deep-dop-doop.

That was a fairly easy name to decide on. It adds the necessary distance between judging their religion and describing it. It maintains some mystery while also being fairly on-the-nose. It can seem to thrill you, until it starts to feel awful and empty.

Um, and that's intentional, but.

And so then we get to our skeletons.

An early-on decision with our direction for foes was: let's not fall back on old tropey mobs, the expected and over-hashed regulars like green-skin-goblin, over-toothed-orc and friends, skeleton-soldier.

But I still like a skeleton. I mean, who doesn't?

The Morthagi, as we then called them, turned into something different. They've got the important necromantic heartbeat, the undeadness. Annie and Nate came up with this idea to make them part-clockwork, a marriage of magic and machinery to reanimate old bones.  

That's right, cocktail-shaker, I called you old.

This is a great start. Feels unique enough, strange enough, mystical enough. It leaves us with so many directions our lore could go...!

These directions, in our most recent discussion, came out while picking a permanent name that would carry these guys into alpha. Here's a primer:

Morthien - Implies an artistic, elegant creator, designing her Morthiens from a studio in her rain-draped mansion by moonlight, sipping wine and fiddling with the mechanizations and incantations that would compose this purposeful servant.

The Morth - A pervasive and bubbling threat, a hidden horde that might rise from beneath us at any moment. A thing we could begin to live beside, until we someday call it master. Sentience and racial identity, a species itself, even if it began as someone's science experiment.

Morthagi - A clattering word for a clattering crew. Morthagi reflects a league of grass-roots necromancers, secret bone-and-brass enthusiasts, who assemble these janky magicalia/machines, and celebrate each others' designs.

We ended up re-confirming our decision to go with Morthagi, for how they fit our world. The Wildermyth describes a wild universe, a collaboration of many strange and equal parts. Gray parts, I would say, rather than black ones or white ones. Morthagi feels right in that context. Their makers live in such a universe the same as anyone: full of wonder, curiosity, hope, joy, doom.

Why this all is notable, I suppose, is to illustrate how simple things like names can affect the lore and idea-group surrounding a game-component like a monster, a place, a character, even an ability, so substantially, that how the game is perceived is always affected. In almost any creative activity. Content points to title, title points to content. Being aware of that, and intending the result, is always a good idea.

And so I guess I'm saying...

A skeleton by any other name is sometimes a Morthagi. And that's just way different, okay?

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Nope nope nope don't care don't care.