orichalcum

[Captain Obvious]

Re: orichalcum

 

For "drow", I've only heard it rhyme with cow. The connection to the historical roots of "trow" and "troll" are interesting, but a) this is D&D we're talking about, and if I want to get historical, I'll be calling them "svartaelfr", or whatever the correct spelling of that is.

 

Which means "dark elves".

 

Zeropoint

 

Well, if you really wanted to get historical, then you'd call the svartaelfr svartaelfr, and the drow drow. The fact that they've been mashed into one thing by Gary Gygax notwithstanding.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: orichalcum

 

Drow are inherently silly. My Dark Elves are Dark Elves. Besides Drow is no doubt copyrighted to T$R and Wi$ards of the Coast.

 

No doubt. For what it's worth, I don't use "drow" (rhymes with "Dachau"), either. I did have shadow elves in one game, which had blue-grey skin and black or silver hair, but they weren't drow-like in anything but appearance. Drow have always struck me as this munchkin thing, and they annoy me. Probably an unreasonable bias on my part, but there you go.

[Guest HeroPink!]

Re: orichalcum

 

How do you pronouce it? or however you spell the damn silver/gold/magic metal stuffs

 

According to my FHD (Freakishly Huge Dictionary), the short o of odd, the short i of ill, the short a of add, the short u of circus. The ch and c pronounced like the k in keep. Accent on the third syllable.

 

From Latin orichalcum, from Greek oreichalkos, from oros mountain + chalkos brass.

 

"Orig., some yellow metallic substance, considered precious by the ancient Greeks; later, brass alloyed with zinc."

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: orichalcum

 

According to my FHD (Freakishly Huge Dictionary)' date=' the short o of [b']o[/b]dd, the short i of ill, the short a of add, the short u of circus. The ch and c pronounced like the k in keep. Accent on the third syllable.

 

What do you know -- I had the accents inverted. You learn something new every day.

[Zeropoint]

Re: orichalcum

 

My dark elves are exactly like my pale elves, except in appearance and in that the dark elves have Life Support: Immune to Sunburn (1 pt.) on account of their dark skins.

[Black Rose]

Re: orichalcum

 

As far as I have known it - and this is all my own memory, which is not all that trustworthy - drow was originally pronounced, in Ye Olde T$R Stuffe with a long o. Later they changed it, but then again, they thinkdemon and devil are pronounced Ba'atezu and Tanar'ri, so whatcha gonna do, right?

 

Personally, I prefer calling them Dark Elves; occasionally I use Drow, and I even use Dakuelufu (Japanese transliteration from Record of Lodoss Wars) if I want to be cutesy. I've liked them for a very long time, and, until 3e, I never really thought of them as munchkin in any way. Then again, I also never thought of them as being a suitable one-on-one match for Jeb Plowboy, either. These guys are the boojums of the night, just as nasty as trolls and humanoids because, while they may not be as big or as numerous, they are smarter and much more... creative. Dark Elves are suitable for campaigns that can handle the power level; in HERO terms, at least 125+100, if not more. They are powerful on their own, and exponentially worse in groups. Once you're dealing with their nightmarish cities deep in the earth, you should be dealing more with politics than outright violence... but you should be able to bring the violence, too.

 

Edit - BTW, thanks for reminding me about orichacum. I had been trying to think of a good name for the "standard" metal for this culture which has serious problems with iron.

[Greg]

Re: orichalcum

 

You use Dakuelufu? I'm trying to wrap my head around using the Japanese approximation of an English phrase in English.

 

I don't get the problems with Baatezu and Tanari though since demon/devil are kind of generic terms for 'bad stuff' demons and devils need something to call themselves.

 

It's been stated so many times that Drow rhymes with cow I really don't know where people find anything to argue about. Gary posts all the the time on ENWorld and has stated and restated it.

 

I was looking up orichalcum a little bit. When we played Exalted I remembered it as being basically pure gold+magic and looking around online it apparently has some grounding in actual myth. As far as pronunciation the official is Ori-kal-kum. I have a feeling things sound "better" because that's the way you thought they were originally.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: orichalcum

 

I have a feeling things sound "better" because that's the way you thought they were originally.

 

Well, there's no arguing that. That's why people almost almost (almost always) prefer the version of the song they hear first, regardless of which was actually recorded first.

 

There are exceptions, naturally: I prefer Kim Wilde's rendition of "You keep me hanging on", for example (I have never cared for Diaia Ross' voice).

 

I don't know if you guys will find this next part amusing or not. I wrote a couple of game books in the early 1990s. One of these was set in the modern world, and the characters were primarily wizards. In retrospect, a lot of it is silly, but it seemed pretty nifty to me at the time. It goes without saying that I'd do it much differently were I writing it today.

 

Anyway, I used ancient tales of orichalcum, combined them with Plato's stories of Atlantis, the Mesopotamian myth of the Deluge, the destruction of the Minoan civilization by the Santorinas explosion, and various other mythological loose ends, and came up with this. Maybe someone can get something useful out of it. If so, you have my blessing.

 

Over ten thousand years before the founding of Rome, a great empire ruled most of the world. From their paradisiacal island continent, the power of Atlantis swept over the primitive people of Europe, Asia, and Africa, bringing wealth to the Atlanteans from across the known world. Not unlike the mercantile empires of Britain and Europe, the military power of the Atlanteans allowed them to roam across the globe, subjugating the weak and reaping the rewards of their superiority.

 

The Metal of the Moon

 

This power that the Atlanteans held, a power other cultures lacked, stemmed from two sources. The first was an intimate and extensive knowledge of Magick, rivaled by no other human kingdom. The second was a plentiful supply of the precious metal orichalcum. Orichalcum, called the "metal of the moon," was mined from deep beneath the surface of Atlantis: it was found nowhere else on earth. This brilliant blue-white metal was more beautiful than gold and harder than the bronze from which lesser peoples crafted their weapons, and it had the unique property of facilitating the use of Magick. Thus, with their superior weapons and superior Magick, both due in part to orichalcum, Atlantean explorers were able to travel the globe and subdue every culture they found.

 

The supply of orichalcum beneath Atlantis was not endless, however. The ore came from the remains of a meteor which had fallen to earth long before the rise of humankind. For over 10,000 years the Atlanteans had been mining the precious metal, and the supply was dwindling. The Atlanteans crafted everything from the Magickal mineral. They made weapons from it, they covered their homes and temples with it, and they made fantastic flying ships from it. As their empire grew, the need for more of the fabulous metal grew as well, until the entire continent was riddled with mines delving ever deeper into the crust of the world. The wizard-priests of Atlantis had two choices before them. They could curtail their use of orichalcum, which would bring an end to their glorious empire, or they could call forth a new supply of orichalcum from the heavens.

 

The Great Debate

 

The debate was held in Lyonnesse, the Atlantean capital, in the Great Temple of the God of the Sea. The Temple was in the center of the city, a magnificent structure 200 meters long and 100 meters wide. Its walls were covered with silver and its peaks were layered with gold and orichalcum. Inside, the ceiling was carved ivory; silver, gold, and orichalcum covered everything. Gold statues of the Ten Satraps and their spouses were in the temple. The grandest statue was of the sea god itself, of solid orichalcum. It drove a chariot pulled by six winged beasts, and its majestic squid-like head nearly reached the ceiling.

 

For weeks the Ten Satraps heard the arguments and predictions of the wizard-priests. The strongest of those who argued for curtailing their use of orichalcum was the wizard-priest Lucifer, who pleaded with the Satraps to use the remaining stores of orichalcum sparingly. Above all, he argued against the scheme proposed by those who wanted to summon more orichalcum from the sky. Such a course, he reasoned, could only result in disaster. He implored the Satraps not to consider such a dangerous plan.

 

In the end, the Satraps decided to draw more orichalcum to earth from the void beyond the sky. After all, reasoned the wizard-priests who proposed the mad plan, the current stores of orichalcum came from the heavens eons ago, had they not? How could summoning more possibly cause harm to Atlantis? In despair, Lucifer gathered his followers and any others who would listen, and they fled Atlantis to find shelter in the lands across the sea.

 

The Deluge

 

The refugees escaping from doomed Atlantis fled in all directions. They carried with them their Magickal, mathematic, and astrological knowledge, thus carrying the seeds of civilization with them. Their descendants mixed with the native people of South America and Mesopotamia, Asia and Antarctica. Centuries passed, and it seemed that the cataclysm that Lucifer had feared would not come to pass. Eventually, they put their past behind them, and the island continent of Atlantis became the stuff of legend.

 

But the disaster had not been averted, merely postponed. The wizard-priests searched the heavens for decades looking for a new source of orichalcum, until they finally found a distant "dark star" made of the fabulous metal. They studied all the arcane knowledge they had at their command, and discovered that they could, indeed, summon the dark star from the sky, but it would require centuries to perform the necessary rituals, and the energy required would consume all of their remaining stores of orichalcum. The Ten Satraps decreed that all the orichalcum that had been used to build houses, temples, and flying ships be stripped away and stored for the Great Ritual. Seemingly overnight, Atlantis disappeared from among the peoples of the world.

 

Fifteen generations of Atlantean Warlocks performed the Great Ritual, day after day, year after year. Finally, in 8498 bc, the ritual was complete. With a final word of power, the distant descendants of the original Atlantean wizard-priests commanded the dark star to come to them. The tremendous forces thus unleashed consumed the wizard-priests’ stores of orichalcum, as they had expected, and they awaited the arrival of the what they had worked toward for the past five centuries.

 

Their success far surpassed their expectations, and Lucifer’s direst predictions came true. Like a falling god, the meteor plummeted to earth. Its impact upon Atlantis cracked the thin shell of the planet, and Atlantis was utterly destroyed: no living thing on the island continent survived. Clouds of dust covered the earth, plunging the world into darkness. Great waves circled the earth’s oceans, wiping away entire towns and changing coastlines around the world. Every culture was affected by the cataclysm, spawning the Mesopotamian legend of the Deluge, the Hopi tale of the destruction of the "third world," and countless others. Atlantis, its people, and their wizard-priests were destroyed, but the legend of Atlantis’ destruction would live forever.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: orichalcum

 

It's been stated so many times that Drow rhymes with cow I really don't know where people find anything to argue about. Gary posts all the the time on ENWorld and has stated and restated it.

 

Gary could say that a windmill was a giant, a barber's basin was a helmet, and a whore was a princess, but that wouldn't make it so.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: orichalcum

 

Gary could say that a windmill was a giant' date=' a barber's basin was a helmet, and a whore was a princess, but that wouldn't make it so.[/quote']

 

Now you're just being silly. If I create something and name it, and tell you how it's pronounced, that's how it's pronounced. It isn't up for discussion.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: orichalcum

 

Gary Gygax did not create the word "drow". I read it in a Poul Anderson story years before Gygax was a big among geeks. Poul Anderson got it from older folklore.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: orichalcum

 

Gary Gygax did not create the word "drow". I read it in a Poul Anderson story years before Gygax was a big among geeks. Poul Anderson got it from older folklore.

 

Is anyone talking about a Poul Anderson story? I assumed we were talking about the D&D creature. If I'm mistaken, then pretty much nothing I've said on the subject in this thread is relevant.

 

But I'm pretty sure I'm not mistaken.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: orichalcum

 

I was talking about the word's pronunciation, and the origin of it. The D&D creature, IMO, is not worth talking about for any length of time.

 

EDIT: Actually, some poking around on the internet reveals that both pronunciations may be correct. One school of thought is that the word is derived from the Scandinavian draugr, a walking corpse. Another says that it comes from trow, which comes from troll. In the first case, it would be pronounced like cow; in the second, like crow. Looks like there's egg enough for everyone's face. And especially for the guy who created a troll-like creature and gave it an undead name.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: orichalcum

 

It is a mistake to confuse the origin of a word for how that word is used. Etymology is helpful when trying to figure out how to pronounce an unknown word. Once you know how to pronounce it (and we do), the pronunciation of its literary forebears is of academic interest: it's interesting (and let me be clear: I do find it interesting), but it doesn't change anything.

 

"Orichalcum" and "drow" have been covered: we all know how to pronounce them now. Positive rep is owed all around to the people who went to the trouble of digging out their dictionaries.

[Curufea]

Re: orichalcum

 

Speaking of stolen words for D&D, we have Lewis Carroll's "Vorpal"

[Barwickian]

Re: orichalcum

 

The D&D creature' date=' IMO, is not worth talking about for any length of time.[/quote']

 

I got me a lot of happy memories say you're wrong on that score. G1, G2, G3, D1-2, D3 and, of course, Q1. Months of infuriating, enjoyable gaming.

 

Nope, speaking as an arachnophobic player (see this post for my arachnophobia) who worked through all those classic AD&D adventures, the spider-loving Drow remain my favourite, love-to-hate baddies.

 

And I pronounce them to rhyme with 'cow'.

[Nevenall]

Re: orichalcum

 

Never occurred to me drow wouldn't rhyme with cow.

 

There are dark elves in my campaign but it's a historical designation. The dark elves are the ones that decided to make war on the humans in revenge for a human attempt to conquer the elven lands.

[Dale A. Ward]

Re: orichalcum

 

Okay... for the record, I pronounce Drow as rhyming with crow. I think it sounds better, and conjures a more evil image in my mind than rhyming it with cow.

 

As for orichalcum, my pronunciation USED to be "OR uh KAL sum". However, I have revised that to "OR uh KAL kum" based on this discussion topic. The second pronunciation seems to fit better.

 

Now, just to throw another cat on the fire... what is the correct pronunciation of LICH (or, is it spelled LICHE)?

 

I have heard it pronounced as...

 

"rhymes with itch"

 

"has a long i (like eye) and a soft ch (like church)"

 

"lick"

 

"like"

 

"leechee... like the nut"

 

This should be an interesting debate!

[Guest HeroPink!]

Re: orichalcum

 

Okay... for the record, I pronounce Drow as rhyming with crow. I think it sounds better, and conjures a more evil image in my mind than rhyming it with cow.

 

As for orichalcum, my pronunciation USED to be "OR uh KAL sum". However, I have revised that to "OR uh KAL kum" based on this discussion topic. The second pronunciation seems to fit better.

 

Now, just to throw another cat on the fire... what is the correct pronunciation of LICH (or, is it spelled LICHE)?

 

I have heard it pronounced as...

 

"rhymes with itch"

 

"has a long i (like eye) and a soft ch (like church)"

 

"lick"

 

"like"

 

"leechee... like the nut"

 

This should be an interesting debate!

 

 

 

According to my FHD (Freakishly Huge Dictionary), the short i of ill, and the ch of chair.

 

Or, "rhymes with itch."

[Markdoc]

Re: orichalcum

 

Yep, Lich comes from the scandinavian Lig (meaning corpse). the scandanavian aspirates the g at the end so it sounds more like LI-uh (witha slight hint of a g in there).

 

English doesn't do aspirates anymore so the i is hort and the word rhymes with itch.

 

Same with drow, actually. If it really is related to trow, the scandanavian pronunciation would be partway between Crow and Cow.

 

Still "Cow" seems to be the consensus - if you think "sounds like crow" is better, well, whatever - just say that's how it's pronounced in your game.

 

cheers, Mark

[Fitz]

Re: orichalcum

 

I had always assumed it was derived from derrow, which is just an archaic word for dwarf (from a Germanic base, I think, and would have originally been pronounced something like "derov" with a trilled "r"). From that we got "dwarrow" in Old English, which is sounded "dwarov", and it's only a short step from there to "dwarf". If I recall correctly (not guaranteed by any means) the dwarf Alberich in the Rheingold sequence is described as an earth-drow.

 

Mr Gygax is no stranger to playing fast and loose with critters from actual mythology, so it's no surprise to see it applied to a tall, slender, black-skinned humanoid instead of a runty muscly beardy humanoid.

[Markdoc]

Re: orichalcum

 

Hmm. Good point - could be.

 

Derrow turned up in one of the compendiums as Derro - which to me always sounded like some guy sleeping in an alley with a bottle of Mother Winslow's Soothing Syrup for Babies sticking out of one pocket. It didn't help that the picture looked like a crazy street person with a pick.

 

Deriving things from scandanavian roots always struck me as pretty pointless - Trow/Trold/Hekse all basically mean "magic being" anyway. The idea that there were elves and dwraves and trolls and they were all different distinct beings is a very, very recent thing. In our recent game a tall, muscled, hairy guy was described as a "hekse" (witch) which led me to comment "Nå, han ser nok ud som han væger mere end en and" (Well, he certainly looks like he weighs more than a duck) - which cracked half the table up and made the rest look at me like I was nuts....

 

cheers, Mark

[L. Marcus]

Re: orichalcum

 

Yep' date=' Lich comes from the scandinavian Lig (meaning corpse). the scandanavian aspirates the g at the end so it sounds more like LI-uh (witha slight hint of a g in there).[/quote']

That's the Danish wersion. We swedes like our consonants with a bit of edge! Corpse in swedish is lik, pronounced LEEK.

 

Yes, leek, as the vegetable. You gotta problem with that?!

[Old Man]

Re: orichalcum

 

It's funny, but we always used to mispronounce "lich" as "leek".

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: orichalcum

 

I thought the D&D "lich" (aka "liche") came from the Old English word for "corpse", "lic". (And yes, the concept of an undead magician being called a "lich" is definitely a D&D-ism, although the idea of an undead magician itself obviously predates D&D.)

 

I have always pronounced "lich" as rhyming with "itch", because in English "-ch" and "-che" are almost never hard consonants. They are usually pronounced like the "tch" in "itch", and single vowels preceding such a construction are almost always short. That doesn't make "the lich has an itch" correct, of course, but unless someone points me to a D&D pronunciation guide, I'll stick with it for the time being.