rone | e&tg: afterword (Reply)

First off, the story has been collected into one page and has a title: Axe, Beak and Claw. As dr_strych9 once put it, "Yes, I chose a more permanent title... No, I don't care if you think it sucks. I like it. That's all there is to it." While that's a little more vehement a sentiment than i feel, it'll do.

The final word count is either 22265 or 22253 (depending on whether you believe lynx -dump axe-beak-claw.html | wc -w or copying and pasting the story from my browser into wc -w), which puts it in the 'novella' size category. When i first started writing it, i thought it was a short story. It took fourteen months and one day to complete. The seed idea for this story was the notion of an airborne delivery service run by a gryphon rider.

It's been a fun exercise. I don't think it sucks, but i'm quite aware that it has warts. If i were interested in publishing this, i'd want to plane out the D&D stuff; i'd probably combine halflings, dwarves and gnomes into a shortish race of my own manufacture. Some of the clichés would have to be reworked. And the more obviously ~~stolen~~ ~~lifted~~ borrowed bits would need to spackled. As ever, any and all criticism, editing, suggestions and advice are welcome and encouraged.

Part 2: "dreamgrass" is borrowed from Steven Brust. I doubt i need to explain what it refers to. "Mwaele" came from my idea that the protagonist is racially African (or its analogue in this world), and Mwaele is what my brain produced for an African-sounding name. At the time, there was a single Google hit for Mwaele (some high-school basketball player), so i tried "mwele" (a spelling i considered for the name) and found out that it means "cripple" in Swahili via Yale's Kamusi Project. Needless to say, i felt that was excellent serendipity.

Part 3: The Western Biome Union of Druids and Rangers is what would happen if you crossed Greenpeace, PETA, and a Montana militia. The name Kromalir is a sort of mash of Adrilankha and Ankh-Morpork, and the city echoes to some degree both of those, as well, and perhaps a small amount of The City from Transmetropolitan (although i suspect that many things could be extrapolated by analyzing any large city and how it functions).

Part 6: The salutation "Ser" is borrowed from Frank Herbert's Jorj X. McKie stories.

Part 8: Nallim popped out of my head as an expansion for N'Jeet (ez, of course, is the Spanish patronymic suffix). Upon revising my D&D material, i found its source: one of my brother's characters is named Nallim. I know, i know, apostrophes in fantasy names are a goddam cliché.

Part 12: The Ashen Tongue came to me as a good name for a bar. It was inspired, yet again, by Steven Brust: "Verra, may thy tongue be turned to ash, that should have been the end of it." (Teckla)

Part 13: Rolling with the Swahili thing, the gryphon's name comes from the Swahili words for lion (asadi, which i preferred over the more popular simba, even though i don't know the difference between them) and eagle (koho, which seems to apply to the eagle type [also falcon and osprey] instead of a particular eagle). As for the currency system, ten copper stars to a silver lene, ten lene to a palladium anu, ten anu to a gold sun, and ten suns to a platinum comet. Lene and Anu are the two moons. Copper coins are called stars because a) they're plentiful and b) in this world, the stars are all red. Whether they're all red giants or merely severely red-shifted is a question their astronomers might not settle for millennia.

Part 14: jumu == luck, wadi == son. "dying goose": i know i got this from a Steven Brust book where he describes a character's voice sounding like a swan in heat, or something like that.

Part 15: OK, so calling it the Halfling Mafia is funny in a cheesy sort of way. It's effectively descriptive yet ham-handed.

Part 16: Tinita is inspired in part by Nina from Office Space.

Part 17: I just noticed now that, while i picked Ssthith as a decently sibilant name, i now have a coworker named Sthitha, although it's pronounced Steetta.

Part 19: Gialarçi is a thinly disguised respelling of Jallarzi. I thought i'd picked the name myself, but i idly decided to Google for it and i remembered i got it from Wizards of the Coast's character generator demo software. I've never read any D&D books, i swear it.

Part 21: "Southern brown bean infusion with a dash of spicy red pepper." A shiny nickel if you can figure out what this is.

Part 22: Nahhas is named after Alex Nahas.

Part 23: does a stereotypical character in an out-of-type setting count as a cliché? Anyway, the Stinker is easily identifiable as an agent.

Part 28: Hello. My name is Mwaele, and i have issues.

Part 34: Dakel Yeniri is an anagram of Ariel dinkey04, minus the digits, of course.

Part 35: Awww, he's like a puppy. A puppy that's emo and can kill large game.

Part 45: I chose Ĥ to represent the voiceless velar fricative, like 'ch' in 'loch' or 'achtung'. It turns out that Esperanto uses it in exactly that capacity.

Part 46: Súa is a small city in the southern Amazonian region of Ecuador.

Part 51: I'm pretty sure the "Shall we dance?" bit is another direct theft from Brust.