Thursday, January 27, 2011

"GNARTH"

THE WORD "GNARTH"
So I started working on this campaign world, and needed to name it. I wanted something simple, no more than one or two syllables, which would be easy to pronounce and would somehow evoke the spirit of a pulp sci fi world, possibly based on the word "Mars". An examination of "Cthulhu mythos celestial bodies" led me to Kynarth, "A mysterious celestial body located past Yuggoth (or Pluto?) on the edge of the solar system," which sounded kinda cool, but I wanted a more original name, without a Wikipedia listing, so I toyed with K'narth, which incl the sci-fi/fantasy vocab cliche of an apostrophe instead of a vowel, which in turn suggested Knarth (with another cliche, the silent consonant!), and I thought of a dungeon I created years ago, the "Maze of Gnar", and I said, yeah... Gnarth! Sounds like a Gnarly version of Mars+Earth, cool! My natives would be called "Gnartians"! To be sure it wasn't already a bargain-bin novel or B-movie, I Wikied "Gnarth", and was asked "Are you sure you didn't mean Garth?" I had my own original name! Or so it seemed...
Halfway through designing Gnarth I was on the Urban Dictionary, and just for giggles I entered the name of my new world, and that's when I realized there really isn't anything new under the sun. Any sun.

GNARTH (buy gnarth mugs, tshirts and magnets) Can mean pretty much anything depending on the context it's used in. "oh man I totally gnarthed that test today."

and there was more... much more...

I'm planning to use all of these in the campaign! The puns will be merciless. Party on, Kane. Party on... Gnarth.

Oh, there's this thing, too. I like it. Needs OSR stats.

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