Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/26/22: Hogwarts Houses

Now that Halloween is coming around, let’s talk about a perennial costume: Harry Potter. Either Harry himself, in a black robe (a polyester one used for graduations is available at most thrift stores), scarf, round eyeglasses, and eye-penciled scarf, or one of the other characters such as Snape, Hermione, or a Death Eater. All have the same advantage of the cheap graduation robe as the basic set piece. And of course, Harry Potter characters cropping up again brings all sorts of hoopla about teaching kids Satanism and whatnot.

Hogwart’s Sorting Hat separated the kids into four different Houses, but I’ve often thought there was room for more. Here’s some, randomgenned, that might have been.

 

Hogwarts Houses no one talks about

Draffinwaft: This house has a curious bent. Foolhardy and easily irritated, they cannot be trusted with important matters of research, governance, or defense. Yet they also evince great amounts of empathy. The few that take on the mantle of Draffinwaft serve as counselors, floor monitors, and teachers of non-essential classes like acting and arts and crafts. Their symbol is a satyr.

Keshrak: Wisdom is the asset of this house. Keshraks can always be trusted to make the right decision, no matter what. They serve on the ruling board as judges, mediators, and diplomats. On the downside, they are completely unsentimental and humorless, which can make others uncomfortable. Their symbol is a lamprey.

Griscloud: This house has the basilisk as its symbol, and legend says all who are chosen for it have the power to turn others to stone with a direct glare. But rather, their stony silence and deadpan gaze cause such discomfiture in others no one dares cross them, or well, even interact with them. Those in the Griscloud House do best working alone, traditionally fulfilling the roles of night watchmen, watch repairers, and night auditors.

Imilscraw: Those of this House are known as the Executioners, because they do the unpleasant tasks that no one else at Hogwarts will do. Their symbol is the cockatrice. Because they perform a vital service the school would be lost without, members tend to be haughty and self-assured.

Lytharpy: Lytharpys are taught to be magical mercenaries, hiring themselves out to the highest bidder. In this way they bring much-needed income to the school. This is the only House where the students don’t socialize with all the others. Those chosen often have a cruel or passionate nature. Its symbol is a hawk.

Schaffindor: Those of this House specialize in divination, choosing a method such as cards, tea leaves, astrology, crystal gazing, pyromancy, or runestones. That is all they do. The four main Houses always consult them before making important decisions. Schaffindors are supposed to serve impartially, but as they rose out of a branch of the Slytherin, they tend to advocate for their ancestral House. Their symbol is a parrot. In manner they are diplomatic, cautious, and extremely intelligent. Some say they don’t need divination at all, they manipulate others through the sheer force of their intellects.

Zythless: Those of this House take care of the school’s horses. They are trustworthy and proud, but desperate to be accepted as equals by the others. Their symbol is a bat because bats are encouraged to live in the stables where they eat the noxious insects that bother the horses.

 

She Came from Planet Five

She came from Planet Five
I knew it all the time
She wore a metal miniskirt
As she stood knee-deep in dirt

Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/12/22: Those Damned Ds

The letter D is dandy, dignified, dauntless, darling. Though it looks pregnant, I’d say its gender is masculine.  It has a Medieval vibe; J. R. R. Tolkien was fond of using it in the dh combination, meant to be pronounced as a hard th as is found in the word clothing. Dragon starts with D, as does dwarf. Germanic languages made heavy use of it: Sturm und Drang, Dusseldorf, Deutschland.

If you’re writing fantasy, here are dome D names for a character or two.

 

Character names beginning with D

Male

Dandelf

Dangalph

Dass Bala

Delian

Delvain

Dracnor

Dranfar

Draut

Drozan

Duchard

 Female

Dalina

Dalra

Daphiriel

Darlapra

Darvashia

Demisa

Desi

Dezra

Dhirani

Dulurusha

 Surnames

Damberlyres

De Faun

Delgagari

Dipcruller

Distharp

Dockbloom

Domlauden

Dragonheath

Dryglaive

Dustliege

Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/5/22: Haircuts (Silly)

Korean Boy haircut (this was generated in AI from the description below)

An AI can generate recipes, stories, Halloween costumes… but how about haircuts?

A silly list for you to laugh at, though some of these may be plausible in some future setting.

 

Haircuts that don’t, and shouldn’t, exist

Aseptic: The haircut is done by cutting short, curly ends of the hair. When the hair is cut back toward the natural middle line, it is cut out. The shorter ends are shaved.

Aunt Marie: A haircut that shows off the shaved head. It comes as a surprising reminder of the fact that baldness can often cause health problems.

L. Short (B.L.) hair: A stylized form of hair loss based on its shape and texture. Also known as short-stiff hair or curly hair.

Barbarian: A style of hair that gets longer after getting chopped off.

Bluebeard: A haircut that does little more than take off your shirt or pants.

Boatboy: A modern-style cut involves a cut-over head.

Bubblehair: A hairstyle that makes it look bigger on the head, with a black back.

Curdling-frost cut: A haircut that’s a natural, not-so-distant leap from the manly look or the womanly look of someone that’s grown up and has tried to conform to some of the traditional ways and needs.

Fashionista: Women’s hair with a heavy side that has an elastic back.

Korean Boy cut: A cut with a short hair that is much smaller than a straight man’s that seems to stretch into a big, round head, usually between the three to four inches. In an interview with Playboy, Mr. Joon-ho, the cut’s creator, admitted his real-life relationship with his haircut. “There’s a reason I cut my hair once in a while. I was afraid that it would sound like a joke,” he said. (I went to Japan and saw a few “boy cut”-types over there — they weren’t hard to come by, at least at a decent price)

Mohai: This is a very popular cut to give a “flip” appearance to hair in your style. It can be very hard to match a girl’s hair style and to work in their hair rather than the side of their head.

Odesza Black: A hairstyle that gets shorter because a haircut makes you look bigger.

Poodle Pot: A man that has a bald face after wearing a full beard every day for 10 months.

Poppins: As the name suggests, this cut is an American icon of the 20th century, part of the United States Army, and part of a group called the New Americans of North Dakota.

Primavera: Also known as short steeples or wort short.

Puma cut: Women’s hair with a short side that has a thin end.

Red line cut: The style originally known as a straight-line or halyard.

Ripped cut: This cut consists of a short, pointed cut and a rounded cut, usually with two lines.

Worldbuilding Wednesday 9/28/22: Nautical Slang

Let’s sail away

The world of boating has its own set of slang: starboard, port, bow, stern, limey, crow’s nest. But there’s always room for more. In some other world, it might be these terms.

 

Newfangled Nautical Slang

Ammunition-in: It’s time for a drink because it’s 5 o’clock somewhere

Allee: A nearby room or place where one can change from dry clothes to wet

Bread and Beer: Life expectancy after a two-day ship’s tour

Buddy: A signalman

Bugler: An operator on the bridge of a ship, who blows the order “Watch the water!”

Buggerhead: The head of the bridge

Bollard: Someone taking his turn standing on a conveyor belt to watch the ship’s ballast tanks

Brawling: Greasing an enemy’s hatch to try to prevent its locking

Bouffanting: When a young man reaches manhood and goes into the navy

Boos: The genteel way of swearing or shouting, as opposed to any of the more vulgar uses of profanity

Bulldoggin’: Gossiping, passing notes, cussin’ and hustlin’

Cookies: A simple solution to maritime traffic problems by encouraging caution and keeping the customer informed about frequent changes of equipment settings

Crabbin’: Bulldoggin’ (see above)

Dumb, Dummie: Cussing

Emory: To hump in a bunk

Emergency-A: To carry out a direct order

Cretian of Citesquis-Martín: A fictional sailor who appeared frequently in popular magazines or plays in the late 1800s, such as “Telling the Story of Duma.” To be called a Cretian is to be a real seaman.

Crew Perfume: To open the hatch more than five times in a row

Diamantal: An ocean wind.

Ding: The surface of an ocean

Fairweathers: The bridge-keepers, sailors or officers aboard whose careers were spent at sea and who would talk to the natives

Fairweather lamps: The green lancing lights at the mastheads of some ships, which were used to help find the fairweathers who were missing

Falling off a pier: The equivalent of “breaking the water” or “kicking the bucket” for the ship

Fall ’em all: Retreat; abandon ship

Foggia Lamanta: The waters from a great bay that bears the ship

Heatshock: Rapid descent of the ship’s bow below the water line, due to a collision or collision with another ship

Kittynapping: To crawl out from under a plexiglass box on deck

Large Dish: A brass or copper bottomed bronze glass plate, on which a portrait or figure of the Captain is painted

Lurge: Fuel from a ship’s engines

Lurgey: A sailor who is in jail

Lionette: A dog treasured by the crew as a mascot. The most famous example is probably La Stella from Dutch Ampirico, a well-liked bull terrier that was attacked as it crossed the river from a neighboring city.

Moisture: A puddle that is a mess caused by weathering or getting into trouble in a sailing ship’s cargo hold.

Orange: Archaic Canadian term for sinusoidal wave, like when the ship moves across the water with the sea going out and coming in

Pusher: Crewman who pulls on ropes to maintain the speed of a vessel

Punty: The water closet or (sometimes called only “the pen”)

Punty-boat: A narrow-beamed wooden boat or rowboat used to convey a body, as well as the land crew, from shore to the mortuary

Punto (seaman): One-half of a seaman

Reading Room: Officers’ cabins located just below the bridge, above the ordinary seaman’s

Rocking Horse: When a ship is rolling so the edge of the main (top) mast touches the water

Round-Heeled Ship: A type of ship that was built with two decks, each approximately three times as high as the original two decks. These were largely a curiosity and did not last in large numbers.

Roundback: A ship that is side-on to the wind or a beam to which the ship is steered

Rugby ball: Archaic term used by Royal Canadian Navy sailors for the seamen’s mess

Shot from close quarters: To mark the beginning of each ship’s training phase by leaving all of its components out in the open.

Smooth sailing boat: A large boat with two legs, a vessel capable of steering or even stopping, for which, therefore, it needs legs

Wreck Barrier: A system of floating obstructions that lines the entrance to the construction or maintenance area and prevents waste from being thrown into the water

Whisper: The noise of a submarine breathing underwater

Wigwag (also Wiggie): Fitted with one or more telescopic poles to serve as navigation aids

Working the Clock: To watch for ships during a sea watch

Worlds Apart: When the lead ship of a line or division is in close proximity to a second ship, so that the end of the second ship is the forward end of the lead ship’s bow

Winkle: The most difficult navigational hazard to avoid

Ponygirl Accident

Trouble at the track. Can they ever be extricated?

Worldbuilding Wednesday 9/21/22: Complicated Magic

Many mages consider it impossible to create a winged hippopotamus. Or is it?

Sometimes I randomgen a spell or magic item that is so complicated to describe I know it won’t fit on a twitter post. So I’ve saved them for here.

 

Complicated Magic

Book of Dragon Coloring:  Contrary to popular belief, most dragons lead dull existences. When they’ve gotten to an age where there are few creatures left they can’t defeat, and their treasure piles full to overflowing, they can often fall into ennui. This giant-sized book of intricate drawings is the solution to that problem. It comes with sapling-sized pigment sticks of different hues the beast can use to color in these drawings, bringing them some happiness and sense of accomplishment.

Calligraphy of the White Kraken:  These special characters for writing magic spells were created by the enigmatic mage of the same name. They can only be used in spells involving the sea and increase their efficacy by 25%.

Card of Easy Gestures: Enchants a plain white card with a list of gestures, and their meanings, of any different race or culture the caster encounters. That way the caster can always refer to the card if they don’t understand what the other being is communicating to them.

Cauldron of The Drunken Warlord: This plain black kettle was owned by a mighty general of a nomadic people who was prone to drunken rages. Therefore, he had it magicked to always sit on its fire and keep bubbling, no matter what physical force hits it.

Create Winged Hippopotamus: Not a real spell, but a lesson teachers of magic often apply to their students. They assign them this spell and see how well they create a solution. But the solution is never the right one, because there is no way even with magic that a hippopotamus can fly.

Gerdyar, Ring of the Scarlet Necromancer: A ring that can summon a ghostly red-cloaked necromancer who can animate corpses. This being can cast spells, speak, and can be commanded. The wearer of the ring is not able to see the necromancer, but can see the effect of its work. It is never hostile to the wearer.

Larka’s Apple: Creates a huge apple-like fruit with leathery brown skin. This fruit is roughly the size of a watermelon. When the skin is sliced into, one hundred smaller, heart-shaped fruits come spilling out, each containing a nectar that satisfies a human’s food and water requirement for one day. The heart fruits must be eaten within 24 hours or they will all wither.

Law Controllers of Ossoth The Humble: A set of legal rules written on indestructible paper to govern how people interact in a guild. For example, one rule is that only people who are a member of the guild can use the guild shop to sell their goods. The rules are magic in that they compel all who enter the guild’s headquarters to obey them.

Lungs of The World Tree: This spell makes the caster’s lungs so powerful they can survive any attempt at suffocation, any poison gas, any lack of breathable air. They are also able to blow out a gale force wind, or inhale at the same speed. Lastly, it amplifies their singing, speaking, or shouting power so they can be heard up to a mile away.

Ophayaë-Balso, also known as The Box of the Dragonfly: This mysterious artifact is made of a mixture of gold and copper and resembles a small oval box with the image of a dragonfly stamped on the lid. It contains six different kinds of health potions that never go empty. The potions are as follows: throat-soothing medicine; bile infusion for healthy digestion of food, blood-clotting solution; universal poison remedy; mollusk or pus remedy; and a tonic for an athlete’s rubdown.

Pastilles of Agility Reduction: This clay bottle of large, multicolored pills radiates magic, but instead of being helpful they reduce a being’s dexterity, 1 point for each pill, for 24 hours. Usually takes a character a while to figure out the correlation because they also act as an analgesic.

Prismatic Trumpet: A shimmering, multicolored trumpet that can summon a number of jesters to play a merry tune that can be heard at least 500 yards away. They play for 1d4 rounds before vanishing. The trumpet is indestructible and can summon an unlimited number of jesters.

Scorpion Abacus: Looks like an ordinary wooden abacus, but when a user moves the beads around each one begins to secrete an oily, deadly poison through small grooves in its surface. The greater the calculations made by the user, the more chance there is of the poison entering through a fingertip and then into their bloodstream. The poison acts just like that from a giant scorpion.

Teapot of The Lord’s Peerage: This ornate silver teapot is sure to enhance the reputation of any mage. Not only can it pour any kind of tea in the world, whoever drinks that tea will treat the mage with utmost respect, seeing them as a peer no matter how highborn they are or how humble the mage.

Terrarium of Desire: This spell is used to make someone fall in love with the caster. It entails setting up a small glass bowl with dirt, rocks, seedlings, etc. and taking care of it until the terrarium is thriving. At the point one of the seedlings flowers, the spell is complete and the lovelorn one comes knocking on the caster’s door. However, if the terrarium is destroyed, or allowed to wither, that love is gone, never to return.

Zifrost’s Venomous Yellow Dye: This yellow powder seems to be only a pigment that dyes fibers or fabrics the color of saffron. But in the hands of a chaotic evil mage it can be used to endow clothing with a horrible curse — the first time the owner of the garment tries it on, it melts their skin off as if by a powerful acid. See the tale of Nessus the Centaur.

The True Face of Sauron

Say the name Sauron and most people will think of this armored character from The Lord of the Rings movies, or a giant burning eye. But in the books Tolkien never spoke of Sauron’s Third Age physical form except in abstracts, saying only that he was  “not fair” which could mean anything.

So, inspired by the recent The Rings of Power series, I took my curiosity into the world of AI generated images to see what the hive mind consensus was. This is what I got from the prompt “The true face of Sauron.”

Sauron is a good boi and wants his snackies.

Obviously, I needed to refine my approach. So I went with the prompt “Sauron in a bathrobe” and the artist Alan Lee, who worked on the pictorial concepts for the Jackson movies. My line of thought was Sauron in a more intimate moment would surely show us his face, right?

Well, not really, but we’re close.  There are hints of horror here especially in the one on left where he looks like he has five dark, beady eyes and either a long beard or dewlaps of flaccid, flappy skin that descend to his chest from where his nose would be. Somewhere in that mass might be a mouth. On the right he looks more conventionally Voldemortish, with a pale, almost featureless face and a toothless maw.

Next I used the prompt “Sauron in the shower” thinking, we’ll surely see him naked, right?

These are all delicately horrific, but again, only hints at his hideous form. The bottom right one is the most distinctive, revealing a Christ-like face with a beard.

Using John Howe, another Tolkien illustrator who worked on the movies, wasn’t any better, yielding only armored Saurons. So, I went further afield. SFF illustrator Michael Whelan as the artist prompt came up with this image of Sauron from the rear, his butt covered by his long dark hair. God knows what that golden sickle-thing is.

Changing the artist to Peter Paul Rubens, who was well known for his nude figures, wasn’t any better, so it was time to bring out the big guns. “Sauron in the shower” using as the artist Tom of Finland.

The bodies are more coherent (and good-looking) but again Sauron either kept his helmeted head, or is making some hideous face at us like the fellow to the right.

Perhaps the problem was with the media. Going with the last artist, and adding “colored pencil” got me this.

Hmm, not bad, Interestingly, all the drawings seem to show the same person. Could this be it?

Worldbuilding Wednesday 9/14/22: Deep Sky Objects

Nebulas created with AI imaging software

From left to right: the imaginary Cupcake Nebula; the Apus Star Cluster; and the Nu Pavonis Cloud Complex.

Like imaginary galaxies, imaginary nebulas are also simple to create. These three were done in Wombo, which is designed specifically to make trading card NFTs. But it’s also fine for other stuff.

These randomgens were tweaked in Write With Transformer, so if some of them don’t make sense, that’s why. WWT is part of the Hugging Face family of AI text and image generators, and there are many, many, fine free ones at the base site to fool around with.

 

Deep Sky Objects

Antlia Sextet, located 3,848 million light years away. Three elliptical galaxies, a supergiant spiral, and two large irregular galaxies locked in a death dance which will end in an eventual merger.

Apus Star Cluster, 13 million light years away. Star-forming cloud that has been orbiting the Milky Way for millions of years. Contains an exo-rythritoid subcluster with three million stars, including a million triple star systems. It is the largest object of its type in the known universe and one of the most massive ever observed.

Aquila Nebulosity, a glowing red cloud from which extrasolar comets have come, is another important part of the Big Closet that lies beyond the Oort Cloud.

Columba Star Cluster, discovered by Italian astronaut Giuseppe Pinchot in 1999 (the year that the European Space Agency launched its Spritzel Space Telescope.)

Delta Mensae Object, an open star cluster arrayed around a neutron star.

La Bretonian Star Cluster, is the closest one of its kind to to Earth. It is so dense that it would be a good candidate for the Large-Scale Meteor Event (LSME).

Lacerta Star Cluster, 14 million light years away. Contains the Gold Nugget Nebula and several stellar nurseries.

Lanerva Star Cluster, a small star cluster that was once the home of star formation, but is now a cold fusion furnace. The cluster is an ellipsoid.

Leaping Nacho Nebula, located in the constellation Libra.

Lepus Galaxy Supercluster, 4843 million light years away.

Little Hoop Nebula in Crux, a diffuse planetary nebula, is another massive object not far from our Solar System. The Chandra X-ray Observatory and its instruments have helped researchers estimate its size and composition.

Musca Void, 4546 million light years away. A nearly empty part of space with no galaxies or molecular clouds.

Nu Pavonis Cloud Complex, contains two powerful radio jets that may be coming from a pulsar buried within the dust clouds.

Pisces 5, also known as the Cupcake Nebula, a large nebula with several dust clouds one of which looks like the silhouette of a cream-filled cupcake. It lies in the center of a massive star forming cloud cluster that has a black hole. The HMM-2000 Chandra mission has been investigating this cluster for more than 35 years.

V-10, also known as the Vindication Point, is a mass of dense matter orbiting the Sun beyond the Kuiper Belt.

Hot and Bothered

The very first story I had published professionally (which means, by my definition, I got paid for, and I could hold the book in my hot little hands) was about a woman who turns, or is turned into, an espresso machine, and all the various sensations she experiences as coffee and creamer emerge from her orifices. This sculpture by artist Karl Claydon invokes some of those same impressions for me. This machine is a little more steampunk, and perhaps more in charge, than mine was; but there’s still a nifty parallel between them.