This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

Quipu can both be a knot and a knot-based recording system from the Andean South America, most famous for the Inca. It was not just the Inca who used it though, other cultures did as well. Meaning is conveyed through a combination of colour, type of knot and amount of knots.

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• Use quipu instead of paper or parchment scrolls for magic spells.
• Hide information in plain sight by disguising a quipu as braided curtain.
• Have a quipu as riddle akin to the Machine of Lum the Mad, where tying and untying knots cause bizarre effects.

This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

A Pyxis can be many different things, originally, a shape of vessel – usually a beautifully adorned cylindrical box with a separate lid. It usually contained valuable small goods like medicine or (in Christian times) sanctified items. In astronomy, it can describe a modern constelllation or antique Chinese constellation, both connected to compasses. In zoology, it describes the genus of the spider tortoises. It botany, it can describe a lid capsule that contains the seeds.

So it is mostly connected to finding a direction and keeping things safe.

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• It could be a vessel that protects spell ingredients and formulas.
• It could be a transporter that transports your from one star constellation to another star constellation, where the angles of the constellation have to align with the ground identically in both cases.
• Having spider tortoises be … well your typical web spinning spiders but also tortoises followes the good old owlbear formula of monster creation.
• It could turn into a compass that leads you to a specific source of material if you put a sample of that material in.

This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

In ancient Rome, the Ostiarius was doorman, porter or gatekeeper – usually a slave who was sometimes even chained to the door to prevent flight. Their main obligation was to keep unwanted persons out and regulate the entry and passage of wanted persons.

In early Christianity, they became the gatekeeper for churches and graveyards. Their duties grew over time into general keepers of the church, even becoming the lowest clerical rank in the Roman-Catholic church during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Their „blue collar duties“ were often transfered to laypeople, and they began to turn into „white collar workers“ in a bishop’s entourage until the position was abolished in 1972.

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• A supernatural being that is bound to the entrance of sacred places.
• Evil beings could chain slaves to their doors which plead with rescuers not to enter and, if necessary even fight them – as any damage caused by those who enter without invitation of their evil masters will be transfered to them.
• It could be a class specialized in fighting the undead, having grown out of a guild of graveyard protectors.

This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

A nadir is a low or downward point of reference, the opposite of a zenith. It can also mean a real or figurative low-point, the lowest measurement or lowest geographic location (for example the Nadir Crater at the bottom of the ocean). It also exists as acronym for Network Anomaly Detection and Intrusion Reporter, and intrusion detection system. Sometimes it is (wrongly) translated as „Vanishing point at Infinity“ in German. There was also a tribe called Banu Nadir, but the name only sounds the same in English, it has nothing to do with the word otherwise.

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• A nadir could be a riddle in a dungeon, a place with a treasure that can only be indirectly observed, and only entered indirectly – to walk in, you have not to walk in.
• A nadir could also be the core of the dungeon – the place most distant from the natural world.
• It could be a cursed tribe that, despite its wealth, require indirect means to interact with. They cannot be seen (except in reflections), they cannot be heard (except as echo, or perhaps only when referring to the approached in third-person), and they cannot give or take (unless „leaving“ something and not checking again, or by sliding it away at an angle).
• It could be the name of a castle of a God of the Depths.

This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

Mead is an alcoholic beverage based on fermented honey. Nowadays it is mostly associated with vikings, but used to be a rather common drink all over Europe up to the Middle Ages, as well as in India and Ethiopia. It might have even been known in China.

It was often considered something connected to the sacral world of the gods, as producing mead is more expensive than producing wine or beer. It thus was used in festivities that celebrated peace treaties or alliances. Mythologically, the Mead of poetry was said to turn any drinker into a sage and a poet (and, of course, Odin drank it).

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• A Mead of Tongues, a mead brewed by two brewers who speak different languages. Anyone who drinks from this mead is able to speak and understand both of the brewer’s languages.
• A cursed Mead of Bees. Anyone who drinks it will forthwith be considered an enemy by all honey-producing insects.
• Mead could be an important ingredient in certain rituals, and gods of merrymaking, invention or the like need adventurers to gain this special mead from a faraway place.

This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

I was very tempted to take laminal as entry for L, but a Lychgate already is a fantasy element available in the real world, so I went with that instead.

A Lychgate is basically just a covered gateway to a graveyard. It was used to store the recently deceased between death and burial, plus a place for relatives that guard the corpse from bodysnatchers. But oh my, was that place loaded with superstition! I do not even need to come up with own ideas, the existing ones are already more than sufficient for any campaign.

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• The ghost of the last corpse has to guard the gateway until the next corpse arrives. This resulted in fisticuffs among their living relatives who gets to be buried first.
• As a portal between consecrated and unconsecrated space, „the veil between worlds was thin there“ and allowed easy conjurations.
• They were used for social gathering and peddling, as they offered shelter from both weather (the roof) and evil spirits (just take one step to get to consecrated ground).

This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

A Kraal can be a lot of things, as the word was coined by foreigners to describe somewhat similar looking concepts in Southern Africa first and had its meaning change later on top of it. This probably causes ethnographers and historians headaches, but makes the concept more easily creatively abused.

In the most specific definition, a kraal is simply an animal pound in the middle of a settlement. It can also describe the whole settlement, as well as the society within. It could also mean a royal residence. In any case, it consisted of a palisade of thorny bushes on a hill, similar to how hamlets were defended in the North European Plain (The Hague, capital of the Netherlands, got its name from this tradition). Placement within a Kraal was usually strictly determined according to social status, the nearer to the entrance, the lower your status.

To confuse matters completely, a Kraal can also be a kind of fish trap, where fish can easily enter, but not leave (quite the opposite for what the other Kraals do).

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• Thorny hedges would fit well as defenses for gnomish or elvish settlements, as they can be easily blended in with the environment.
• It could be a one way tunnel in a dungeon, that can be easily passed in, but is really difficult to get out of – perhaps a drow or duergar uses it to trap adventurers in his arena.
• The concept of social stratification translates well to typical dungeons, where the most powerful inhabitants also live the furthest from any entrance, while the weakest inhabitants live closer to the entrance.
• To turn the idea of an animal compound on its head, it could very well be a place which an animal spirit built to defend its kin from humans.

This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

Juniper is a tree family, best known for its berries which are one of the base ingredients of gin. Almost all parts of the tree are useful: the berries can be used as spice or turned into oil, the young leaves brewed as teas, the wood for bows, juniper ash as calcium additive. Some cultures use junipers to turn evil.

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• Have your priests use holy gin instead of holy water for the added oomph against evil beings.
• Use juniper as paraphernalia in rituals or protection spells.
• Doppelginger, Flumph and similar malleable beings could be allergic against juniper due to its bone strengthening effect.

This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

The Iambus is an archaic Greek poetry genre strongly connected with the goddess Demeter and features vitriol and abuse. According to myth, it was invented by Iambe who wanted to cheer up a Demeter and told her utterly profane poems.

This kind of behaviour exists in other cults to, it is an deliberate attempt to reinforce normalcy by stressing absurdity. It usually uses blame to draw attention to dangerous or unsuitable behaviour. There were basically two schools of Iambe: one that focusses on vitriol and crassness, and one that focusses on carefully crafted poems which are a little less vulgar, but just as biting. Still, both are considered some kind of lower class poetry for the masses by distinguished poets.

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• Have your super civilized toga wearers sing epic rap battles! I mean, fancy Iambic verse battles, of course.
• Or have your typical warrior cultures like orcs or barbarians be strong in impromptu poetry, with carefully crafted insults to mock others.
• Rituals need not necessarily be spoken in solemn voices, but might include profanity.
• Use it as an compass that shouts profanities if you go wrong, but becomes nicer when walking where it wants you to walk.

This post belongs to the #AtoZchallenge 2024, where I attempt to turn a word a day into something that can be used in Role Playing Games.

Today, we consider Heath an idyllic, quaint Shrubland, overgrown by Heath (that is, the rather beautifully blooming plant species Erica and Calluna). That mostly owes to a checkered history though: Heath was a poor place, where the poorest parts of society eked out an existence. It had little to offer, as soils were poor and unsuited for many crops. It was depletion, which only left shepherding and beekeeping as economic activities, that created our quaint heaths. Otherwise, it would have turned into pine forests.

Thus, heath was considered one of the archetypical places of wilderness, where one needed to beware of evil and the inhabitants were less civilized humans lived (hence the word heathens used for unbelievers in English).

The Calluna species of plants is very hardy and long lasting, thus making for good building materials.

How to integrate it into your typical fantasy RPG?

• The Broom Gnomes: After a long war against their dwarven neighbours, the gnomes lost and their woods were cut down for mining and tooling. Now, they live a destitute life in their former woods, hiding behind their illusions to keep from enemies. They are mostly known for their broom exports, but also create shields and other material from the local heath to pay their tribute to their dwarven overlords, against whom they still hold a grudge.
• Elves could be interested in heath, which is a durable wood, but know fully well that only depletion causes their large-scale growth. This causes quite a black market for heath smuggled in from human lands.
• A sheep demon could be interested in keeping the heath, counteracting druidic attempts at renaturalization.