Creative Director
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So I answered a question that had been niggling at me today, or at least I think I did. Why is horacalcum called horacalcum? I thought it was a corruption of orachalcum/orichalcum, the mythical metal from Atlantis. I was reminded of the word horology today, however, which is the study of time and timekeeping, and realized horacalcum is a portmanteau of orachalcum and horology.
I was wondering if anyone had figured out any of the other etymologies for the other sky metals. Adamantine is a word for incredible hardness and an old reference to diamond, for example.
I'd love to learn the thought processes that went into naming the metals, and which are puns or cool-sounding made up words.
I always assumed that when James Sutter named horacalcum that he was riffing off the word orachalcum, but he said he'd never heard of orachalcum, so I suspect he'd read the word and forgot and it lodged in his subconscious until it came time for him to name it in the article where he invented it and several other skymetals.
In 2nd edition, we switched the spelling officially to orachalchum, in any event.
The others, as far as I know, are things he made up out of the blue, with the exception of "noqual" which is a special material I made up for my homebrew setting back in 1989 or thereabouts, where it was the name of an anti-magical material that you could mix into the mortar of brickwork or stonework to render an area impenetrable to teleportation. Noqual itself simply couldn't be enhanced or enchanted by magic in its raw ore form, hence the name "noqual" derives from "no quality," as in no quality of magic can affect it.
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So I answered a question that had been niggling at me today, or at least I think I did. Why is horacalcum called horacalcum? I thought it was a corruption of orachalcum/orichalcum, the mythical metal from Atlantis. I was reminded of the word horology today, however, which is the study of time and timekeeping, and realized horacalcum is a portmanteau of orachalcum and horology.
I was wondering if anyone had figured out any of the other etymologies for the other sky metals. Adamantine is a word for incredible hardness and an old reference to diamond, for example.
I'd love to learn the thought processes that went into naming the metals, and which are puns or cool-sounding made up words.
I always assumed that when James Sutter named horacalcum that he was riffing off the word orachalcum, but he said he'd never heard of orachalcum, so I suspect he'd read the word and forgot and it lodged in his subconscious until it came time for him to name it in the article where he invented it and several other skymetals.
In 2nd edition, we switched the spelling officially to orachalchum, in any event.
The others, as far as I know, are things he made up out of the blue, with the exception of "noqual" which is a special material I made up for my homebrew setting back in 1989 or thereabouts, where it was the name of an anti-magical material that you could mix into the mortar of brickwork or stonework to render an area impenetrable to teleportation. Noqual itself simply couldn't be enhanced or enchanted by magic in its raw ore form, hence the name "noqual" derives from "no quality," as in no quality of magic can affect it.
Oh that's interesting about Noqual, I always thought it was a riff on naquadah from Stargate (it's the metal Stargates are made of, and they use for energy too I think).
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"Horacalcum" appears to be made from the Latin words for "time" and "stone".