On The Origins of Pre-Modern Fleshspeaking Rituals / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page On The Origins of Pre-Modern Fleshspeaking Rituals.

Author Post

Riemann 14 Oct 2020 22:27

Oh lord where to begin.

This is part of our entry for Renaissance Canon 2020, for Only Game in Town.

This all came about after bothering someone about the forgotten Sarkic icon, "Legs McGee", whose legs are endless and infinite but was excised from Sarkic canon because, well, that's embarrassing as hell. From there it became a more serious exploration of the evolution of a religion as it passed through different societies.

It really started to shine after I asked Gaffsey for his help, who did an amazing job filling this in with an astonishing depth and texture. All of the terrific Aztec imagery came from him, I just provided him with a frame to hang off of. And of course, a cheeky reference to Amanda Brian's fabulous The Fake History of the Villages, Florida buried in with all the lore.

Licensing information:
Picture is a modified version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itztlacoliuhqui#/media/File:Itztlacoliuhqui.jpg released under Wikipedia's CCSA license.

Last edited on 14 Oct 2020 23:02 by Riemann Show more

Author Post, pt 2

Gaffsey 14 Oct 2020 22:27

This was my first time writing a collaboration, and I couldn't ask for a better partner than Riemann. Despite not being all that familiar with Sarkic lore, we both had a lot of fun with this, and I hope it shows.

Some random observations:

• The Nahuatl is, to the best of my very limited ability, accurate (insofar as I smashed together Nahuatl words, rather than just guessing at phonemes that made it sound "more mesoamerican"). I used the Nahuatl Dictionary, which seems to be biased in favor of early-contact era Nahuatl, which is what I wanted, rather than the contemporary language. If anyone who knows Nahautl happens to read this, send me a PM if you're willing to help get the language not be a complete grammatical trainwreck.

• Also, Nahuatl is a living language with over 1.7 million speakers, just like many pre-Colombian languages in Mesoamerica! That's really cool, and gets forgotten in favor of glossing it as "they speak Spanish." Not particularly relevant to the story as such, but I think it's neat.

• Turns out that "Alegadda" is actually really hard to transliterate into a language that lacks both d's and g's.

• All the cults have spooky names like "burning book" and "rotting king."

• In making Sarkicism a small, largely despised, part of the Mesoamerican religious complex, and Fleshspeaking a small, largely despised part of Sarkicism, we tried our best to avoid the "Aztecs worshipped Cthulhu" trope, because it's lame and played out and kind of racist.

• The stuff about the rise of Sarkicism in Mesoamerica was left intentionally vague.

• I wanted to include a line about Esmerian being "only the second most productive Armenian active in Berlin in 1921," but it was awkwardm even for me.

• I do have a few images I want to mash together for the itlacoani, but ran out of time. I might upload one after the contest.

• Everything always returns to The Villages. Everything.

Last edited on 15 Oct 2020 14:56 by Gaffsey Show more

LTVA 20 Oct 2020 14:25

As my friend says (and as is written at hub page), proto-Sarkites call Yaldabaoth «Važjuma», so they can't call them «Yatheppataotl».

P.S. «Sarkic» isn't used in Foundation articles, it's slang and rude word. Foundation writes «sarkite».

Last edited on 20 Oct 2020 14:31 by LTVA Show more

Gaffsey 15 Dec 2020 15:08

so they can't call them «Yatheppataotl».

Yes, they can. It is quite clearly stated in the article.