User:GeigerCounter/NoteDump

So I was like "Yeah, this makes sense that they'd be gamblers" [5:40 PM] Since there's not really many ways for them to make money since they are considered a "monster race" in-setting and for a whole bunch of other reasons.

See, they're not native to the continent that the players are in. They were taken from a country over the sea by an empire a long time ago and were selectively bred to be expendable soldiers. So the Empire rolled up and spent a few decades trying to establish a foothold in Kalom ( the continent the players are in ) and made use of these guys, but when things were looking like they were going to work out for colonizing, they just pulled out and left them behind. So since they were there as soldiers of the enemy, spoke a different language, and were decently freaky looking they obviously weren't going to be accepted into society and so they've been living a nomadic outcast life since then. The land they're from is based on Japan because at this point "medieval Japan" is as much part of the standard fantasy setting as "medieval Europe." But the empire that brought them there was completely different culturally. And so like... I'm using existing languages mostly as-is for all the languages except for Common. The Kingdom that the players are currently in speaks Polish because I hate myself. But these guys speak a language that is mostly Japanese with a substrate of German and some words picked up from the Polish surroundings. Common is just translated into English because that's the language we the players speak. A lot of the other languages are based on fantasy culture stereotypes ( i.e. Elves speak Welsh and Gaelic ) or in-jokes in my friend group ( ratfolk speak French and Undercommon is a hybrid of Scots and Aussie slang ) with a handful of references to other fantasy franchises and myths ( Dwarvish borrowing from Dwarf Fortress Dwarvish, Norse, and Yiddish ) and two of my own conlangs. ( Eltish and Taeta. )

But other cultural elements are imported matching the language and that brings us back to the subject. Playing cards. They were taught how to play cards by the German speaking empire and kept their style of playing card which are based on irl German playing cards which have different suits, to wit: Bells, Acorns, Leaves and Hearts. The latter is substituted for apples though because the heart symbol was never developed by the Empire. The cards are numbered 1-9 for a total of 36 cards, but there are also five sets of four cards based on the five major classifications of their species ( Snow, Gold, Iron, Rust, and Wood, based on pelt colour ), so that brings the total up to 56 cards, which by coincidence is very similar to the number of standard playing cards in our culture. ( We use the French style of playing card because we made the wrong choice when the German style are objectively better and until recently were the style used in Eastern Europe. ) This set of cards is collectively called "Morifuda" ( Japanese for "forest cards". ) But they also developed their own set of cards which I am loosely basing on irl Hanafuda ( Japanese for "flower cards" ) which are used in Japan, Korea, and Hawaii. The name is the same and the style is similar, but I'm not sure yet how closely they will model their real world equivalent. Irl Hanafuda are divided into four cards for each month of the year, each represented by a different flower for a total of 48.

GeigerCounter — Today at 6:49 AM Thoughts?

Eel — Today at 6:53 AM Huh [6:53 AM] That's really, really interesting [6:53 AM] I like the name [6:53 AM] "Morifuda"

GeigerCounter — Today at 6:53 AM Thanks

Eel — Today at 6:53 AM So like [6:53 AM] The cards [6:53 AM] How do they make them?

GeigerCounter — Today at 6:55 AM Oh yeah, I did get into that a bit somewhere later in the server, I think. The cheaper ones are made from tree bark, usually birch bark because it's already somewhat paper-like, but sturdy. ( It's used for making baskets, for example. ) The finer ones are just made from thin cuts of wood. They also make tiles from bone fragments for games more like mahjong or dominoes [6:56 AM] They're hand-drawn/painted/carved depending on quality and material. [6:59 AM] Much like smiths, scribes are a highly specialized class of artisan which get really big respect. Most Sygoly are mostly illiterate. Not completely as they'll be able to read about 30 memorized signs and are usually able to read and sign their name. Gamblers tend to also have the signs used in cards memorized. But more complex writing and high artistic quality calligraphy is handled by scribes and one of the things they do to make money is paint/write cards. [7:00 AM] And the scribe is one of the four "people" cards of the morifuda [7:00 AM] I've figured out three of four [7:01 AM] Chieftan, Scribe, Sieger ( which is basically their heroes or famous people ) [7:01 AM] The fourth will probably just end up being "Gambler" tbh [7:02 AM] Chieftan and Sieger are no brainers and Scribes obviously like to advertise their work in their product and the appropriate Scribe card will usually be a self-portrait of the deck-maker.

GeigerCounter — Today at 7:03 AM And I imagine Gambler being the fourth rank of person card makes sense since that's their main customers. Probably the Gambler portraits are usually the commissioner of the deck and his/her friends. [7:04 AM] And really the Chief and Sieger cards are probably also people recognizeable to the artist and/or the commissioner. [7:04 AM] So that'd be an interesting little lore bit with being able to use the cards to hypothetically identify who's who

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The Dwarven language is SOV for statements, VOS for commands.