The Gaming Den

I'm working on a Kitchen Sink D&D setting and one of the main conceits is that a group of Fiend Lords conquered most of the planet and held onto it for hundreds of years. Thus, most every civilization is influenced culturally and genetically by having been under the thumb of various fiend factions. The Halfling Shires are post-scouring industrial places because they were occupied by the minions of Dispater and it is completely normal for some of the people in Halfling towns to be Wisplings - descended in some small fashion from the fiendish conquerors in addition to the native Halfling population.

One of the consequences of this is that the noble families who acquired and held onto significant power and wealth during and after the occupation are mostly half fiends. You know someone is a pureblood noble because he has horns and wings.

For various reasons, I want to make as many of these great houses and such be references to old D&D stuff. Mostly because I'm a giant D&D history nerd. So the great houses of the Humans are Alu, Cambion, and Manes; while the great houses of the Dwarves are Derro, Durzagon, and Maeluth.


A portrait of a human noble by the artist Diterlizzi

There also need to be names for Tieflings of various races and also names for the various members of the races who still follow Orcus and the other fiend lords. So Humans who are still members of the Fiend Pact are called Vashar, Halflings are called Jerren, and Dwarves are called Duergar.

Things I'm running into problems with:

• Names for half-fiend Halflings and Gnomes.
• Names for the Drow other than Draegloth and Yochlol.

It seems like the Drow should be super easy because there are an actual ass tonne of Drow Houses. But as far as I can tell, none of those houses ever actually stuck. Every book seems to just make up its own house names and then not bother to flesh any of them out. Looking through this list just makes me frustrated and sad.

-Username17

I don't now how historical it is, but the 3.5 Monsters of Faerun book had the Fey'ri as elf specific tieflings and tanuruk as orc specific tieflings.

Half-fiend halfings? Kennobite.

Prak wrote:I don't now how historical it is, but the 3.5 Monsters of Faerun book had the Fey'ri as elf specific tieflings and tanuruk as orc specific tieflings.

Those are indeed some of the part-fiend specific groups I'm using. Also Avariel for the Elves and Orog for the Orcs.

The Orcs seem to be lacking a Vashar/Duergar version. Seemingly no one has ever bothered to write a DnD faction that was specifically evil Orcs. Despite that fact that we live in a post-Warcraft world and obviously need exactly that.

I like the term Kennobite, but I don't get the reference. Is that a portmanteau of Kender and Cennobite? In general I am trying to avoid Dragon Lance terminology because it's lame as fuck.

-Username17

Yep, I was thinking what was the most horrible version of halflings and then I tried to pair it with a pop-culture demonic faction in a portmanteau.

Now we have little demon people who want to share the bliss of pain with strangers and don't get why this is a bad thing. I was initially joking, but the imagery and flavor of punk leather outfits with a dash of body modification seems pretty strong.

Typical half-fiend halfling adventuring party.


[edit: and an aside, fuck google's change to their image search, making me jump through extra links just to grab an image. Time to experiment with other search engines I guess]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... iew-image/

I believe there's a Chrome one too, if that's your jam.

fiendish halflings and gnome names is kinda hard to pick because bad faeries already have stats in D&D.

Pygmaeus is the latin word for pygmy that apparently Paracelsus was thinking of when he came up with gnomes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

So what are the lightskin good elves now?

Halfling: Desva?
Gnome: Svirfneblin?
Drow: Vulkoor, Myrlochar, or Araushnee?

I suppose Lamia/Lahmia is overused as a name nowdays?

Marilolth? Yeah, probably not.

I think at least one of the Jerren houses should be Rhul-thaun, after that tribe of the Dark Sun cannibal halflings.


For the gnome houses, maybe something to do with the old-school gnomish god of evil? Urdlen or Urdling? Or get all Paracelsus and use evil earth elemental names for them? House Chaggrin for the MM2 reference?

OgreBattle wrote:So what are the lightskin good elves now?

Cattle?

Jermlaine maybe for the fiending halflings? If you're not already using them as a race as previously described. They don't seem to have much traction as they exist today, so making them half-fiendish halflings might be the way to go.

For gnomes...there's already mention of the svirfneblin & jermlaine. There's the Uldra, who first appeared in 1987, though they're just arctic gnomes rather than any hints of evil. There's the spriggans, who def' have traction, and I recall them as unfriendly at best. There's also the sneaksy whisper gnomes.

You could name the half-fiend gnomes after some of the sinister/evil gnome gods, like Nebelun or Urdlen.

For the Drow, there's Lolth's old name, Araushnee. There's also their old tribe names in Forgotten Realms, from before they were banished, Ilythiir and Miyeritar. Ooh, or the scorrow, the scorpion analogue to the drider.

The 2nd edition Gremlins are a pretty good spot for fiend blooded Gnomes. If a Gnome Tiefling is a Jermlaine, fiendish houses could be Galtrit and Snyad. And the Svirfneblin slot in perfect as the Gnome traitor legions.

Rhul-Thaun is a real good name for a Halfling fiend house.

Races of Destiny has the Sharakim orcs - which are some sort of noble hunter shadow orcs. I don't think that really counts as anything that has DnD traction or tradition, though. House Sharakim sounds pretty good, at least.

(Purely as an aside, a bunch of orcs/half-orcs who worship Gruumsh as a localized rebellion/guerilla faction against the Fiend Lords is my jam, and I might use that myself someday.)

And I'd be tempted to use House Nycaloth for the Drow.

FrankTrollman wrote:The Orcs seem to be lacking a Vashar/Duergar version. Seemingly no one has ever bothered to write a DnD faction that was specifically evil Orcs. Despite that fact that we live in a post-Warcraft world and obviously need exactly that.

Hm, well...
• The Faerun version of the Orog is not an orc-ogre hybrid, but the underdark version of the orc, and as might qualify as the 'evil underground' variant for orcs.
• There's also the Jor, a culture of swamp assassin orcs.
• Tanarukk are bad-touched orcs.
• The Kenzer D&D comic had a particularly evil orcish subrace called Ogh.

House Sharakim does sound pretty cool. Technically the Sharakim were Humans who had been sin tainted and didn't look like Orcs at all, but there's a rant in Races of Destiny that they dress funny in order to distinguish themselves from Orcs. I don't know why. But it is a pretty decent name and could be used for Orcs or Humans as needed.

The Jor are indeed something that time has completely forgotten, but yeah that's just about perfect.

Anyway, here's the chart at the moment:

• Human
  
  Great Houses:
  Alu
  Cambion
  Manes
  
  Fiend Marked:
  Tiefling
  Vashar
  
  Dwarf
  
  Great Houses:
  Derro
  Durzagon
  Maeluth
  
  Fiend Marked:
  Duergar
  Mul
  
  
  Elf
  
  Great Houses:
  Fey'ri
  Avariel
  Reggelid
  
  Fiend Marked:
  Eladrin
  
  Drow
  
  Great Houses:
  Draegloth
  Yochlol
  
  Fiend Marked:
  
  Gnome
  
  Great Houses:
  Galltrit
  Snyad
  
  Fiend Marked:
  Svirfneblin
  Jermlaine
  
  Halfling
  
  Great Houses:
  Rhul-Thaun
  Meenlock
  
  Fiend Marked:
  Jerren
  Wispling
  
  
  Kobold
  
  Great Houses:
  Urd
  
  Fiend Marked:
  
  
  Orc
  
  Great Houses:
  Orog
  Ogrillon
  Tannaruk
  Sharakim
  
  Fiend Marked:
  Jor

One could use the Hordlings for orcs.

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=387338#387338

For Fiendish Drow, you might use: svartálfar. Since drow and duergar both derive from the same root, going back to the source for 'dark elf' makes sense to me.

In general, I wouldn't want to use a name that sounds generically descriptive. So no one would have a "House Hordling" just as no one would have a "House Chaos Gnome." If no one was confident enough in their idea for a D&D race to even give it a proper name, I don't think it's worth stealing - you might as well make your own.

So like the Goblinoids are vastly numerous in numbers.

• Amitok
  Bakemono
  Bhuka
  Bugbear
  Hobgoblin
  Koalinth
  Norker
  Varag
  Vril

Those are all legit Goblin names. But there's lots of other Goblinoids like "Forest Kith Goblins" and "Air Goblins" that are just Madlibs races and I don't care. Although while I admit that the name "Snow Goblins" is not compelling, the race is actually interesting enough and it might be sufficient to use the Age of Wonders term "Frostling."

In any case, there are so many Goblin types that I think they are best handled as being just a series of disunited tribes that are having a growth of nationalistic sentiment. The template would be 19th century Germans or something, where right now the Bhuka and the Amitok are treated as different peoples, but there is a growing concept within both that they share a common thread of Goblinness.

Although it's possible to have a number of specifically Fiendish Goblin-offshoots such as the Thouls and the Dekanters. I don't think the Goblins had a manor system in place for there to be identifiable noble families who could have kept their lands by joining the Coalition.

-Username17

Thri-Kreen

Great Houses:
Gelugon
P'kk

Fiend-Marked:
Phraint
Vodyanoi

https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Canon:P%27kk

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/P%27kk#Religion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umber_hulk#Vodyanoi
But could just as easily be half-Thri-Kreen half-Vodyanoi instead?

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthre ... alf-Breeds
suggests a Gnome/Umber-Hulk crossbreed, but I don't know how that would work.

I think it might be important to have slurs for non-fiend tainted versions of a race, either ethnic or classist in nature.

If half-fiends are on top, then they're going to look down on people who don't have fiendish ancestors and call them bad names. That's just normal.

Now that i think about it, hordling might work for a race/class slur. Another point. For orcs you could use Obyrith.

Likewise, if your using ogres, Oni or Kishin could easily work for both orcs and/or ogres.

DrPraetor wrote: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthre ... alf-Breeds
suggests a Gnome/Umber-Hulk crossbreed, but I don't know how that would work.

I talk about that in my Bastards and Bloodlines review

You could probably get away with using the names of a few obscure patron deities as houses, particularly if you don't think you'd be using those deities otherwise or don't mind them simply being explicitly named after their gods. I was thinking it would work especially well with kobolds, since they would give you the options of Kurtulmak, Gaknulak, Kuraulyek and Dakarnok for great houses and still leave you with Urd for Fiend-Marked. Thanks to their status as a bullshit low CR minion race it's easy to imagine a scenario where they managed to keep their culture mostly in place by being such fervent li'l bootlickers that no arch fiends ever bothered to take their shabby shrines and tiny wicker effigies away.