Fantasist's Scroll

Well, I’ve been a busy bee this week. I have a couple of updates, both on and off Fantasist.net.

On this site, I’ve updated the Cartography page. I added in a neat map that illustrates an idea I had for a world creation myth. I imagined a god stamping out evil, in a way, by smashing the chief evil spirit into the world-covering ocean. Where the god’s hand pressed into the ocean floor, mud stuck to his hand and was pulled up through the ocean to form continents and islands. Then, the evil spirit tried to force his way back into the world, forming a volcano. So, to keep the source of all evil in check, the god creates human kind to guard over the breach in the world. In response to that, the source of evil creates his own race to fight the humans. Viola! A creation myth for a fantasy world!
In any case, to illustrate that, I did up a map. It’s free of any labels, but the basic idea is pretty well displayed. The map and idea, incidentally, were inspired by the cover of a game called Kahuna, which is a strategy card-game set in a fictional Hawaii.

Off this site, I have posted two constructed language templates. They’re geared toward creating phrasebooks for a conlang. The first, which I actually did some time ago, is a sort of “phrasebook for tourists”. It covers all the basics like simple greetings, small-talk, how to order in a restaurant, and getting directions. All the kinds of things one might find in a tourist guidebook.
The second phrasebook is meant to jumpstart some ideas about slang in a conlang. Of course, slang is very culturally specific, but I threw out some fun ideas. I hit things like street “jive”, cool vs. uncool, gambling and crime, and sex. Believe it or not, most conlangs don’t actually seem to include stuff like that. I guess because most of us take an acedemic approach. So, I laid out some basic topics, suggested a meaning, added in a literal translation and left a blank for a conlang translation. We’ll see what the reaction is, if there is any reaction at all.
The files have been posted to the Yahoo!Groups LangMaker2 list, which is available here. Unfortunately, you will have to sign up for Yahoo!Groups, and the LangMaker2 Group itself, to get the files. Eventually, I’ll put up conlang page here on Fantasist.net and post them for download there.

Until next time, keep creating new stuff!