Inspired by Rients's post on monster lists, my own fascination with Latin, and with classifying things, I went through the ol' Monster Manual cranking out scientific names for all the critters that I want on my list; an exercise I found to be rather addicting.
The cool thing about coming up with scientific names is that there's more to it than just coming up with clever names in Latin--which, thanks to online translators, is a lot more fun than you might think--but you have to take it one step further because scientific names include not just the species but also the genus, so you have to start thinking about which critters are related to each other. Then you're thinking about families and orders and... and... Being a monster taxonomist has turned out to be the highlight of my weekend.
Anyway, humanoids are, arguably, a pretty convenient genus, so I started with them.
Bugbears are obviously missing from this list; for my game, I'm thinking they're of a different genus. Trolls and giants too.
Delightful. More please!
ReplyDeleteFear not, Unguis calator , there is much more to come.
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