Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Dungeon Ecosystem: Sprites

Waitomo Glowworm Caves

Ecosystems need producers. On the surface this niche is mainly occupied by plants, which take in energy from the sun. Herbivores eat plants, and are eaten in turn by omnivores and carnivore. Some smaller carnivores are eaten by larger carnivores. Eventually things die and become food for decomposers. It typically takes a lot of plants to sustain one herbivore, and a lot of herbivores to sustain one carnivore.

Down in the dungeon there is little to no sunlight, but there are lots of monsters, many of which are carnivorous. What's happening down there? What are they all eating? The answer is sprites.

Sprites


Castle in the Sky (1991)

Sprites form the bottom rung of the dungeon food web. Near-microscopic elemental spirits that feed on ambient mana, sprites are everywhere, including the surface. However, they are particularly drawn to the large concentrations of mana found in the deep earth, as well as certain mineral deposits and subterranean waterways. Sprite colonies in very old dungeons can grow large enough to be seen with the naked eye, resembling scatters of tiny glittering lights in the rock or water. Dead sprites enrich the soil as well, allowing dungeon plants to take up greater quantities of mana than their surface counterparts.
Castle in the Sky (1991)

Experienced delvers can learn to commune with the sprites. If you douse all of your lights and listen intently in the darkness for a time you can begin to see the faint pinprick lights of the sprite colony, and with patience come to hear their tiny voices. A sprite colony's thoughts often appear childlike and simple, for their individual lives are very brief. Sprites are keenly attuned to moods, magic, and minerals, however, and the colonies that make up a dungeon's system are in constant communication with each other. Sprites can describe the general layout of nearby rooms in terms of airflow, water, light, heat, concentrations of mana, and from those signs they can deduce the presence or absence of living creatures.

Castle in the Sky (1991)

Wisps

Howl's Moving Castle (2005)

Where large sprite colonies form, arcanovores follow. Most arcanovores are miniscule elementals, but also include dungeon molds, lesser slimes, insects, and tiny cave fish. The most common and colorful arcanovore, the wisp, is the size of a small insect. Wisps are a key food source for a wide variety of dungeon-dwellers, including filter feeders such as phosphorescent fungi or dungeon mollusks, as well as predators like bats, lizards, and winged snakes. These miniature predators, along with salamanders, crayfish, and the greater slimes, become food in turn for many of the larger monsters that trouble prospective dungeon delvers.

Tony DiTerlizzi


Two-Column Name Generators: Top 100 American Names

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paald Revere

In the previous post on Slavic names I mentioned that many naming conventions break down in this format, which is to say that when broken apart and recombined they tend to produce results that either sound too stupid to use, not enough like the parent names, or both. This tends to happen when there aren't a lot of shared components in the names (making it difficult to split them up), or when the target audience is very familiar with the real versions and is subsequently more apt to notice that your store brand versions just don't taste quite the same. In situations like that, the two-column format is likely to be the wrong tool for the job.

As a demonstration, it's only fair that after I made such a hash of the fair Italian and the noble Slav I turn the lens of my two-column name format on the good old US of A. Putting a generator together from the SSA's Top American Names of the Past 100 Years is basically that effect distilled into a table.

d00 Roll

Prefix

d00 Roll

Prefix

1-2

Aman

51-52

Kath

3-4

Anth

53-54

Kev

5-6

Ash

55-56

Kim

7-8

Bri

57-58

Lis

9-10

Charl

59-60

Mar

11-12

Christ

61-62

Matt

13-14

Dan

63-64

Mel

15-16

Dav

65-66

Mich

17-18

Deb

67-68

Nanc

19-20

Don

69-70

No

21-22

Dor

71-72

Pa

23-24

Edw

73-74

Patr

25-26

Eliz

75-76

Rich

27-28

Em

77-78

Rob

29-30

Er

79-80

Ron

31-32

Hel

81-82

Ry

33-34

Hunt

83-84

Sam

35-36

Jam

85-86

Sar

37-38

Jas

87-88

Shar

39-40

Jeff

89-90

Steph

41-42

Jenn

91-92

Stev

43-44

Jess

93-94

Sus

45-46

Jon

95-96

Tim

47-48

Josh

97-98

Tom

49-50

Kar

99-00

Will


d20 Roll

Masculine Suffix

Feminine Suffix

1

-ael

-a

2

-ah

-abeth

3

-ald

-ah

4

-an

-anda

5

-ard

-anie

6

-as

-antha

7

-athan

-elle

8

-eph

-en

9

-er

-erly

10

-ert

-ica

11

-es

-icia

12

-hew

-ie

13

-iam

-ifer

14

-ic

-ily

15

-id

-issa

16

-on

-leen

17

-opher

-ley

18

-rey

-ony

19

-ua

-orah

20

-ul

-othy


Masculine Examples: Marard, Joshert, Robeph, Huntid, Jaman, Jonathan, Ronopher, Mattald

Feminine Examples: Jonleen, Michothy, Doricia, Sarily, Susantha, Kimorah, Paily, Briony

"Elizard you bastard, I demand satisfaction!"
"Come then Kathhew, try my steel"

As you can see, it mostly produces nonsense with the occasional real name perfectly reproduced (it also has a chance of getting "Anthony" as a female name). It would take a great deal more curation and adjustments to get this table working properly - for a start it probably needs separate prefixes for masculine and feminine names. If for some reason you wanted to run a fantasy game with a contemporary American aesthetic, this table is likely to give you worse results than if you had just asked your players to make something up themselves. I do think it's funny that you can generate "Paid" as a boy's name off of here though (that's the first half of "Paul" and the back half of "David," if you were wondering).

Young Tomathan and Karabeth on an adventure