The Language of Magic

[sircaren]

Sorry if this question has been posted in the past, I was unable to find any threads about this. If you know of any, please post links here.

At any rate, I was thinking of trying to add some oomph to the spell casting in my game. What I'd like to do is get some 'mystic' or 'magical' words or some such. What I've been doing is using some Latin when I cast spells ie: rather than saying ' I cast Banishment'; I might say 'I sepono is ea id malum!'. Does anyone know of some online sites or some accessories that have some good material on this kind of thing? The latin isn't quite 'mystical' enough for me, as it is quite easy to understand many words...

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[RangerWickett]

I know someone posted a full list of D&D spell names in Latin, a few months back. Sadly I don't have the link.

For one thing, if the character himself is going to say anything, it'd be cooler for him to just shout, "Banishment!" or "Fireball!" instead of "I cast . . ."

Have you ever seen the anime series The Slayers? The main character was a sorceress who used black magic drawn from evil extraplanar entities. The best one she had was "Dragon Slave" (it's name was corrupted from "Dragon Slay," but that's another matter). There were a couple of versions of the chant used to cast it, but I best recall:

"Darkness beyond twilight
Crimson beyond blood that flows
Buried in the stream of time
is where your power grows.
I pledge to myself to conquer
all the foes who stand
before the mighty gift bestowed
in my unworthy hand.
Let the fools who stand before me
be destroyed by the power you and I possess.
DRAGON SLAVE!"

And then pyrotechnics follow dramatically, destroying miles worth of real estate.

 

[sircaren]

Actually we did that for a while (the shouting out)...I just wanted to try something a step further. The latin is working ok, just wondered if anyone had done any work on some documents on possible languages for it. Thanks for the rhyme, would be neat for a bard I think.

 

[Sarevok]

I know someone posted a full list of D&D spell names in Latin, a few months back. Sadly I don't have the link.

http://www.gamewyrd.com/archives/latin.php

 

[sircaren]

Anyone happen to have some ideas / links that aren't related to Latin?

 

[shadow]

Anyone happen to have some ideas / links that aren't related to Latin?

Well, you could use Greek. Or Just use some Latin sounding names for spells.

By the way, I once seriously thought about translating all the spell names into Japanese for my OA campaign. Unfortunately I really didn't have time, and the OA campaign was rather sort lived.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It would be hard to do, but try some Incan/Aztec/etc. sounds...

The "language of magic" in D&D is Draconic...I always imagine Draconic having a lot of Itls and X's and Atls and such, like the native languages of those regions...

Otherwise, I guess just think of something Draconic sounds like, and try to use that...I imagine spells are cast in Draconic, and not in Common, myself.

 

[Ulrick]

The language of magic is German.

Period.

 

[Nifft]

The language of magic is German.

The language of Transumtation and Necromancy, perhaps

The language of exalted Enchantment and Illusion is French.

The language of Evocation and Conjuration is Latin.

The language of Divination and Abjuration is Greek.

And the language of Universal spells is of course English

-- Nifft

 

[psychognome]

The language for arcane spells is Dragonic.
The language for good divine spells is Celestial.
The language for evil divine spells is either Abyssal or Infernal.
The language for druidic spells is Druidic.
The language for ranger spells is Sylvan.
The language for bardic spells is any whichever they want, but they have to "sing" their spells.

The spellcaster doesn't have to speak the language. You just have to study a smattering of words to cast the spell, but if you are able to understand the proper language you might understand the meaning of the words.