#fae meta

Hey, thanks for asking about The God of New Things! It was fun to write but gave me a lot of nerves as it’s a sort of thing I haven’t done before on a couple of levels and yesterday turned out to be a really bad Impostor Syndrome/Anxiety day, so I really appreciate this more than you know.

(language stuff in this universe is very much informed by discussions with @wildfaewhump on their take on the fae and how the fae language reads/speaks!)

Buachaill del = pretty boy, he calls Killan that a lot and it’s essentially his ‘name’ while he is with Calon Nie

Mo ragnaithe = My chosen/chosen one

Mo bhuí-ocha, chwaeri, as do rodd = Thank you, sister, for your gift. 

Eitilt i measc réaltaí anois  = Fly among the stars now.

Is feidir liome = I can

Beidh mé = I will (note how this echoes how the fae speak the ‘human’ tongue - will, me)

oh boy I'm a dabbler in many things at best 😆😅

in most bird species, the male is more colorful than the female! this is because it's primarily females who incubate the nests, so they have a greater need of camouflage since they won't simply fly away when a predator is near. males are colorful because they are the combative sex (in most species), and females often use color as one of their selection tools when looking for a mate. this isn't always true, however - in species like palanthropes and button quail, females are the combative sex, while males tend the nest and are the more camouflaged sex. on the left is a female palanthrope, and on the right there's a female and male button quail - the female is the blue one.

eclectus parrots, on the other hand, are both brightly colored! in their case, the male is actually more camouflaged, due to his green coloring. though we can't see it, male eclectus parrots also have coloring on their plumage that only shows up in the ultraviolet range, which most birds can see naturally as they have four cones in their eyes instead of the human three (bonus fact, horses only have two vision cones).

if you're looking for birds that have similar plumage to peacocks I'd recommend peacock pheasants! there are several different breeds, all with gorgeous plumage. they do follow the male-coloful female-camouflaged pattern, but don't let that stop you! your fae can follow (or abandon) any rules for sexual dichromatism that you like in nature or create for yourself!

owl fae with extremely good hearing, and also clack their teeth(?) when they’re scared

raven fae that like scaring people with their reputation

stellar sea eagle fae that is just. an actual giant. take what you’re picturing and go bigger. they have an 8 ft wingspan. they also all have mullets. this was unplanned but if you ask any of them they all just like mullets

trying to think of unconventional birds and how they would behave as fae because this is the most fascinating version of fae i’ve come across

would some fae have more bird features than others? or is it all about the same (maybe some have talons as hands? or beaks?)

listen crabs will rule the world someday its carcinization

swan fae. is there a swan fae

also can you imagine a chicken faerie

yeah! iesin specifically is based on a peregrine falcon, who are known as one of the fastest birds of prey in the world (over 200mph while diving!).

for my worldbuilding, i decided that fae can look like/take characteristics from any bird, so there are absolutely chicken and swan and owl fae out there. serys, for instance, looks a bit like a dark morph broadwing hawk:

someday i'll have time/skill to really go wild with fae designs based on some more extravagant birds like hummingbirds, songbirds, parrots etc, like these ones!

Tell me about how you started making conlang! 💜

oh gosh it started, like many things do for me, with lord of the rings. by the time i was nine or so i was copying down the elvish and dwarvish script along the top and bottom of the front pages of our copies of the trilogy, and poring over the maps in the back for hours. at some point i found a website that taught the tengwar alphabet and then boy oh boy i was so very normal about it 😂 i wrote my school notes in tengwar, i wrote little stories in notebooks in tengwar, i took a sharpie to my bunkbed and transcribed portions of the Lay of Lethian on my bedframe.

when i was 12-13ish i started creating an alphabet for one of my own stories. i might even have some of it somewhere still, even though i've long since moved on from that story. i drifted away from writing systems and into mapmaking through late highschool and college, and i didn't really start working on a conlang proper until i started iesin and talvos' story here on tumblr.

for iesin's language, i've loved thinking about how the fae would think about things and how it would shape their language. for instance, they have two words for death: edhaer, the death that is a return to the stars, and crych, stardeath, which is also their word for iron and for the concept of the final utter end of something. another concept they tie together is mountain and bridge through the syllable eul: catheul, mountain (literally, earth-bridge, from cathyr/earth and eul/bridge), and llyeul, a rope bridge, are two words that make use of it.

i also like thinking about the sound of their language and how their anatomy shapes it. they use a lot of vowels and soft/gliding consonants such as l, y, th, s, and r for the world around them. hard consonants such as c, ch, and d are more often seen in words associated with death, pain, loss, lack, grief, etc.

yeah.... it's time. iesin has heel spurs and his feet bones can bend like knuckles so he can grab prey more like birds of prey do

-nell

oh no no, you've activated The Lore, you will get an answer >:)

Talvos' favorite holiday is near the end of fall. people gather to build huge bonfires and tell stories around them from dusk until dawn. taleweavers are honored guests, and these are the times new talewalkers receive their beads. the fires carry light through the dark, short days of winter until spring comes again, and the stories that are told dance on the sparks to the stars. stories told on this night are carried by any travelers back to their homes, thus increasing the chances of each story to be memorialized by the stars.