Once they use up all of their magic, they fade away into nothingness. The more magic they cast to protect or amuse themselves in their exile, the closer they come to using up all of the magical energies that make up their core essence. This means that they no longer have access to the magic in either the city or the real world, which means they can no longer replenish their magical essence. If a magin is deemed too dangerous, either to themselves or others (such as those with violet magic), or if they’ve committed heinous crimes against another, they’re banished from the safety of the city. ‘Nish – short for ‘banished’ or ‘banishment,’ it is used instead of ‘hell’ because being banished is effectively being sent to what humans would identify as hell. In the Unseen Realm, every so often there is a magin whose Unique ability is to dampen the magic of those around them, like an aura, which tends to make them quite unpopular (hence it being a curse word). This kind of spell is usually used to reduce the damage the other side can do to you with magic, or reduce the amount of healing they can do to their allies (which helps you). No, if you dampen the magic of others, you’re reducing the effectiveness of their magic. Like paying $10 for a Chipotle bowl and then dropping it all over the floor on your way to a table.ĭampen – first and foremost, this has nothing to do with the word ‘moist’ ( eew).
More on this on the Fun Stuff! Page!įizzle – this isn’t from a game, but the idea is similar to ‘crit,’ just on a lesser scale. Think of it as a fumble–someone tried to cast something, but instead of a huge blow-back that you have to deal with (a critical failure), the spell merely fizzles out and you’ve wasted the magic and energy for nothing. This is when you roll a 1 on a 20-sided dice for an action, and end up stabbing yourself in the foot rather than your enemy (or much, much worse). I ended up with the following words, most of which start with the first letter of the cuss word they (try to) replace (or rhyme):Ĭrit – short for critical while it’s usually meant as a good thing in video games (a critical hit does much higher than normal damage to enemies), it can be an equally bad thing in Dungeons & Dragons, such as a critical failure. From there I tried to also find words that had the same ‘oomph’ that cuss words tend to have (also not easy). Since I play Dungeons & Dragons and a lot of other games, I figured that the phrases for failure or consequences related to magic would be a good starting point. GENIUS.īack to my story: my book’s character culture (for magins) is magic and fantasy. Well hello there, made-up cuss words! This book, more than any other, made me realize that I could (relatively) easily have my characters cussing up a storm without being offensive, so long as I used stand-in words that jived with their culture. I mean, they used the word ‘klunker’ for S*** H****. Although I eventually accepted it as a quirk of the show, and wasn’t bothered by the other words they made up, I vowed that any fake word I came up with wouldn’t give me that same feeling. Don’t get me wrong, I love (present tense) the show, but that one word never felt natural. show Firefly, but the show had a slang word that just…bothered me. Obviously I’ve had to take them all out, but that meant they had to be replaced with something I could tolerate. When I wrote the first couple of drafts, Mira & the Magins was intended for a slightly older reader (14-16) and I had a whole slew of swear words in there. Creating Slang & Swear Words for the Unseen Realm
The reason is because those topics are typically surrounded by negative emotions such as disgust, dread, revulsion, etc. Weird, right? But, looking at the English language’s selection of swear words, he’s definitely not wrong. I wish I’d thought of it in terms like when I was first developing Mira and the Magins, but I think what I ended up with more or less fit the bill. Well, those and the taboos or reverence associated with those things. He found that most swear words pretty much revolve around poop, sex, and/or religion. Not to sound too research-y, but Stephen Fry (actor/comedian/English guy) did an episode on cursing several years ago, and his findings are pretty insightful in coming up with a new system of slang and swearing.