A review of the history behind Adnen

Once upon a time, there was a roleplaying group, gamemastered by yours truly, and set in Middle Earth (using ICE's MERP). I never liked rpg modules (in general), so since the beginning I wrote every adventure from scratch, creating scenarios, peoples, plots, regional politics, etc..

In time, I had enough material to move it from Middle Earth to its own world. It was basically a clone of MERP's Middle Earth, with the same combat resolution, magic system and treatment of non-combat abilities.

Around the same time I discovered GEM, by Neale Davidson, a generic set of rules adaptable to almost any kind of setting, and fell in love. I immediately started porting all my material from MERP to GEM, something my players hated, since we had to give up roleplaying for several months, and when we finally resumed playing, they felt their characters were not as powerfull as before (A side effect of switching from a fantasy RPG to a more 'realistic' set of rules.); However, in the meantime I drew the first maps of what would be Staliope, Nêke (back then Neike-Mih) and the whole continent of Adnen. Also around that same time, The king of Kail was transfomed from your regular tiranical ruler to a Sauron-like Necromancer (A curse in my conwolrd I'm still fighting to eradicate... figuratively speaking), adapting the Abominations suplement for GEM.

And then the group broke. I wasn't particularly sad, not because I didn't like roleplaying with them, but because I had found a new love: Conworlding.


To be continued...

Substratum ad nauseam

A recent discussion over at the ZBB about substratum influences made me revisit the influence past interactions between different tribes would have in the various branches of the PPA language family. When I first thought about it, there were few languages to work with (following the silly rpg idea of 1 race = 1 language), kaleando for the Kala, stalio for Staliope, pekemí for the Pekemí, varzo for the varzum and kail for the, um, Kail; and the influences were very simple: Kaleando (my 'elves tongue', back in the day) would influence Stalio and that was it.

The situation nowadays is so different; Stalio and Pekemí have divided into many dialect part of the PPA family (a new culture, that of the Aescal, was created). Kaleando is now actually a set of 4 languages, part of a dialect continuum. Varzo is still undeveloped and Kail is part of the huge PN language family.

So, how did languages interact? How did all the various dialects became dominant languages? Where there languages that became extinct?

This last question is obvious and important, although hard for a conlanger. Of course there should be extinct languages, but which ones? Arggh!!!!!! I can't kill one of my babies!!!! Can you!? Huh?

Hmm. I have some conlang sketches that are awful enough to be discarded... I might borrow some lexicon into my main conlangs first...

One thing that became clear early on while working on PPA's daughters is that they got separated rather abruptly (few developments in common), so they should not interact for some time. Proto Aescal interacts with Sadori early on (in fact, some PA tribes are conquered by the Sadori), maybe with the Varzum later on. Some other language [Ntaske'ak?] later, and then the fun begins. The Arcian tribes (part of PA) meet the Nimik (PP tribes) and the Pekemí. It will be interesting to see how the various cognates merge, coexist, antagonize.

Of course, first I have to finish the sound changes from PPA to PA....