#ninjaxenomorph

Big questions and very fun ones! Thank you for asking. :D

1. What do you think about the idea in some works (primarily RPGs) that werewolves/other lycanthropes have three forms, human, hybrid, and animal? 

I think that’s a fun idea in general. I’m a big supporter of werewolves not being restricted to just man and man-wolf or man and wolf. However, I do think that some systems make it too rigid and give the different forms silly names that sound... out of place and frankly too almost scientific for my tastes. It really takes away from the mystery and spookiness and makes it feel more categorical and defined. I think a lot is taken away from werewolves, and any monster or magic for that matter, when it becomes too rigid and easily definable.

That being said, I do like the idea that a werewolf can assume the form of a man, a wolf-man, a larger man-wolf hybrid form, and a large wolf. As I said, I don’t like the idea that there are rigid restrictions on this kind of thing - and I, of course, also enjoy werewolves that take a wide variety of forms, so if there are some that can take any or all of those forms, that makes them all the more fun and scary!

My own werewolves in Wulfgard, they are quite mysterious and some of the most powerful of all monsters - they take a wide variety of forms, but the most feared form they assume is the very large hybrid of wolf and man... more wolf than man, with the head of a beast.

You’ll be finding out a lot more about my werewolves soon, as well as Wulfgard in general - here’s a preemptive link to the new and improved Wulfgard tumblr; be sure to start following there now for lots of exciting updates in 2021! I’ve got a lot cooking and I can’t wait to share. :D

2. And second, some vampire media (again, mostly RPGs that I am aware of) give vampires the ability to summon packs of wolves or even turn into wolves themselves (the netflix Castlevania series comes to mind). How do you think that fits in with werewolves in media?

In folklore, it fits pretty well, especially in terms of the blurred line between werewolves and vampires in certain Eastern European countries and, to some extent, even Greece, which I’ve covered in a few werewolf facts, like this one.

In media? I think it can be fine, too, but overall I prefer that modern media draw a finer line between werewolves and vampires. Why? Well, because I like both, and I like both to be their own unique thing. When werewolves and vampires get mixed up at all, werewolves tend to play second fiddle (for some reason...).

Straight-up werewolf-vampire hybrids can, IMO, get out, though. I really don’t like those, I’m afraid. Both werewolves and vampires are far, far cooler on their own and absolutely do not need to be combined to create something “cooler” or “more powerful,” because that’s just silly and also demeaning to both of the other monsters. Introduce something like that into a setting, and no one will ever find the others scary again, because now there’s a “bigger and badder” “version” of both.

Magical Albinism

Yes, the moon references, coloring, abnormality still reads as albinism related. 

Indian Surname to Reflect a Biologist/Engineer 

So you’d like to give this Indian character a surname that reflects her work as a biologist/engineer, but you would also like to be accurate to Hindu naming convention?

It’s not really as simple as just giving you a few suitable names to choose from, because Hindu naming conventions are hugely variable based on time period, region, family history, religious sub-group identification, etc.  Plus, the 1950s in particular were a period of huge flux in naming conventions, for various reasons, and you had different groups adopting different conventions, and sometimes ever different members of the same family adopting different conventions.

Traditionally there are a few options for a full name.  They all revolve around a + formula, and over time what I’m terming the “group identifier” usually morphed into something resembling a surname.  This usually started similarly to some last names in the west, as a marker of occupation (Patel, Deshmukh, etc.), religious sect or caste identification (Iyengar, Shastri, Acharya, Menon, etc.), place of origin (Mehwala, Kanchi, etc.), or other semi-random identifiers (Thampi, for instance, just means “little brother” and referred to the younger brother of a king, and later, his descendants).  Sometimes some ancestor’s given name ends up as a descendant’s family name (this is the case with mine, actually—my last name is so because it was my paternal grandfather’s given name).  Additionally, the core name formula can acquire various accoutrements, such as father’s given name, town of ancestral origin, etc.  Sometimes the group identifiers can fall before the given name.  Sometimes multiple group identifiers fall in various places in the name.  I had a great-grandfather called Sarukkai (ancestral village, even thought I don’t think he was born there) Gopal (father’s given name) Srinivasa (given name) Acharya (religious/scholarly marker).

Basically it’s a huge crapshoot.  You need to know your character’s regional background and religious and status ancestry to some extent, in order to come up with a realistic name.  This Wiki page is an okay place to start, but needs cleanup and won’t give you many name meanings.

To come up with a “meaningful” name (aren’t all names meaningful?—I guess you’re kind of going with a common conceit here, of having a character’s name just coincidentally reflective of their life choices; nothing wrong with that, I guess), the problem is that most Sanskrit words related to biology or engineering don’t make good family names.  Sanskrit for “biologist” is jīvaśāstri.  Shastri (< śāstri) is a good last name.  Jīvaśāstri is not, kind of like how “Smith” or even “Silversmith” or “Goldsmith” are fairly common English last names, but “blacksmith” is not.  The word for “engineer” is yantri but that is also not used as a last name.  In fact, if you look up Sanskrit terms for various sciences, you’ll find that Indians are naming their tech startups after these things, not their children.  Similar problems arise even with more generic terms.  “Malin” comes from mālī, which means “gardener” (sort of a biologist, I guess), but that’s not a common last name (“Mali” can be a caste surname but that’s a place-of-origin name and doesn’t come from the word for “gardener”).  I’m afraid you may be setting yourself up for a lot of extra work.

You could use the onomastic chaos of the 1950s to your advantage.  This is a time when parents’ given names were becoming children’s last names, especially among families moving to the west, and while it would be kind of weird, it wouldn’t be unheard of for a family to name their son Yantri or Jantar or something, and this could conceivably pass into use as a last name among that person’s children.  I guess.  Keep in mind, this relies on a plot device in which parents literally name their child “Engineer”.  Be prepared to explain yourself, which will be more research to do the explanation correctly.

If you search “Sanskrit word for X” you’re very likely to end up at a site called spokensanskrit.de.  This is a decent source, but do not trust the romanization.  It is meant for people who already know how to read Devanagari script, so learn to read Devanagari first, and that will tell you how to pronounce the results you get, and thus how to transliterate them into something readable for English speakers.

“Bhawani” is a good name.  It means “creator.”  What does this character create to warrant that meaningful name?  (Something biotech-y, I’m assuming.  I don’t expect you to message back and answer this; it’s just something you should be thinking about if this character is going to have this name.)

So, 12.7mm is a real round (well, several different rounds), and it makes this entire question a little strange. We talked about the idiosyncrasies of firearms a couple weeks ago, and I had to check, but 12.7mm did come up as an example. 12.7mm is half an inch, so .50. Occasionally, you’ll see .50 BMG listed as 12.7x99mm instead of the imperial caliber.

I’ve seen 12.7 come up as a distinct round in, basically, two places. There’s a 12.7x108mm Chinese AM round, which is their answer to the .50 BMG, and, Fallout: New Vegas.

Ironically, the reason New Vegas calls it a 12.7mm is actually in the above paragraph. The game includes an Anti Materiel rifle patterned off the Barret which fires .50 BMG rounds. Because of how New Vegas formats ammunition names, this creates an immediate problem. There’s two different .50 rounds. The BMG and the AE. The AE is a handgun round (12.7x33mm), the BMG rifle round (again, 12.7x99mm). So, if you include a .50 pistol, and a .50 rifle, people who aren’t very firearms savvy are going to wonder why they don’t share ammunition. “I mean, it’s all .50, right?”

What Obsidian (I think this was specifically J.E. Sawyer’s call, but I’m not completely certain) chose to do was label one as 12.7mm, and the other one .50. Since the Barret has slightly more name recognition it got to keep the imperial name, and the pistol got the metric.

The other thing weighing on giving the pistol the metric name was, it’s a returning design from the first two Fallout games. They had something called a 14mm pistol (externally based on a SIG sporting pistol, if I’m remembering correctly), which was an upgrade from the .44 Desert Eagle, in game terms.

All of that said? .50AE isn’t a great round, and, while I could be wrong, I don’t see it having a real future. It fits with Fallout because it’s chromed steel excess meshes well with 1950s consumer design.

Hell, the Desert Eagle is an excellent example of that era’s design aesthetics. Big, heavy, more steel and chrome than is practical. It’s a four pound pistol. Even though it’s Israeli and didn’t actually enter production until the 1980s, it’s an excellent flash card for that era of Americana.

So, here’s the hard part. For someone who’s not wearing a powered exosuit, a .50 is an annoying round to control. In an exosuit, and against the kind of targets where you’d really need that kind of firepower, I’m inclined to think it would be kind of anemic. Why use a .50 round, when you could simply have a standardized 19mm or 25.4mm high explosive round? With varying payloads depending on what you’re shooting. Sure, no normal human could use it, but if you’re in powered armor, that’s not an issue.

A sabot round is, basically, a dart loaded into a shotgun shell. Now, that’s not completely accurate, but if you’re dead set on using one. I’d recommend just using solid darts, rather than having a distinct tip. For serious AP capability in a high power rifle, I’d actually be more inclined to point at man portable gauss weapons, rather than wasting space on a sabot.

All of this is going to be predicated on the technology your characters have access to. So, it’s possible your setting just doesn’t have portable gauss weapons. Also, feel free to ignore the bolter calibers I listed back up there. That is a Warhammer 40k reference. But, for ways to load out a suit of powered armor, 40k is a fantastic thing to look at.

Some quick primers for powered armor:

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein is probably the patient zero of SciFi space marines in powered armor. I deeply dislike the politics that Heinlein was advocating, but the book is worth reading. I’m much more partial to the film, but that’s a brutal takedown of the military jingoism that Heinlein was celebrating.

Armor by John Steakley is written as a rebuttal to Starship Troopers. I’m inclined to say it’s actually a better book, but that’s my bias seeping in. Either way, Steakley does some good worldbuilding.

If you haven’t, Warhammer 40k’s Space Marines are something you really should be looking at. You can check the Lexicanum to get a quick overview, and some basic statistical data; it will also work as a good quick litmus test to tell if the setting’s zealotry dialed to 11 and played for laughs is something you can actually get into and enjoy. For specific recommendations, first impulse here is to actually point at the THQ games. The generically titled Space Marine is a surprisingly good third person action title. Dawn of War was my first real introduction to the setting, and Dawn of War 2 specifically isn’t a bad starting point.

Generally speaking, when you’re looking at characters in powered armor, it can trace it’s lineage back through one of these sources. So it’s probably worth looking at them, if you’re working with this sub-genre.

ninjaxenomorph said: What is your advice towards writing a culture that is in and of itself a hybrid? I have a (obviously fantasy) race that is a mix of Norse and Babylonian. Their primary racial features they have tan-to-dark skin, dark red hair, and a tendency towards a variant of giantism. The natural red hair and the giantism are the things that set them apart from other humans in the setting; they are likely the result of ancient genetic tampering by the (definitely Babylonian) dragons. Any advice?

I am an ignorant heathen about the Babylonians in regards to how much of that culture is resonated with today, but since it is ancient/medieval Iraq, I would recommend looking through our tags about Arab stereotypes and tropes, and then I would recommend looking up "Babylon in popular culture." Norse mythology has a lot of media representation in popular culture, you can go to:

Wikipedia's helpful index of Norse-Inspired works

 so you can review critiques of these works.  Lastly I recommend

Creating Fantasy And Science Fiction Worlds by Michael James Liljenberg

which touches on the various nuances of creating a culture.  

Steel comes to mind. I mean, if we’re going off the whole “cold iron” thing, that would have technically just been a poor quality steel. Really though, this is fantasy, more than folklore, and what you want to do is going to be more important to answering the question than simply trying to work through it logically.

As a quick aside, I seriously hope by “the barbarian culture” you mean the Fey, since there weren’t really any barbarians left in Europe by the Renaissance. And, for that matter, the term “barbarian” is a little loaded, but… anyway, moving on.

If your story is about the Fey dying out or moving on, and the story is something of a dirge, I’d stick with the steel. European culture was rapidly expanding and connecting, and the world the Fey knew is getting stomped out. Incidentally, if this is the intent, just going off the idea that artificial technology is the threat, in any form, could push this idea further. It’s not just steel, but any processed metal, so even cities are becoming inherently hostile to the fey.

If the story is about the Fey as an actual threat, then it might be worth looking at steel being effective only when it’s part of something that’s been properly enchanted or is suitably ornate. A steel sword is fine, but only if it has a blade filigreed with gold or silver, for example. This is an especially good choice if there’s actually a variety of solutions in different regions, filigreed, runed, and Damascus steel blades, for further examples. Whatever the solutions, they need to be common enough to obtain, while difficult to mass produce.

In a similar vein, White Wolf’s Changeling: The Dreaming had an interesting take. The Fey thrived on creativity, imagination and whimsy, while the setting itself was (basically) modern day, the Fey lived fantastical fantasy lives of storybook style adventure. Cold iron worked on them, but, the really dangerous thing was banality. That is to say, losing their ability to believe in the fantasy they were living. This often manifested as things like well meaning social workers, trying to drag them back to reality, police interfering with their fantasy because they were bouncing around in traffic, or generally, the mundane nature of modern life seeping into them.

White Wolf’s other two Fairy focused games were Changeling: The Lost, which was a much darker setting focused on children who were stolen and tortured by the Fey, and Exalted: The Fair Folk, where the Fey are really extra-dimensional abominations intent on tearing the universe apart because it freaks them out. (And, if you do want to go digging for Dreaming books, it’s worth knowing the other two will probably pop up and have nothing to do with each other.)

If it’s more of a horror story, where the Fey are overrunning the known world, then something rare like meteoric iron might be appropriate. Or an idea where only the most cutting edge technology works, and in an almost Borg like fashion, the Fey adapt and become resistant when something more advanced comes along. This could have some interesting millage if you cross thread it with the rise of Inquisitions. That would put you in the 1480s at the earliest, but it would be an interesting tension, with the advancement of technology actually being a direct threat to human survival.