To follow up with recent D&D character posts, I would like to take a moment to go over the second most recent character of mine, with whom I've yet to begin any adventures (I have, on the other hand, played at least 1-2 levels' worth with Xino/Akiharu Shinomori and Covalius Darkwater, both of whom will be posted about soon. Altia/Altea is my next adventurer though).
The character I made before Altia was named Godann Wei'duk. I have yet to flesh him out a whole lot, though I remember my original inspirations. First of all, I wanted him to be kind of desert-y, almost Gerudo-y even, and I thought of these guys from Magi as a starting point for concept art:
Sphintus (lol I'm sorry but his name sounds like sphincter xD)
and Sharrkan:
But I also wanted some Gilgamesh in his personality and overall qualities, which I thought creates a pretty consistent yet diverse blend.
This, for now, makes up most of the visual concept I have in mind for Godann.
Let's move onto the naming! Well, he was originally going to be a Warlord, but eventually I settled on Blood Elf Sorcerer. He has Draconian lineage (blue dragon).
When I remember more of his back-story and greatly build upon it, I will post just as much about him as I did so far about Altia.
Since I originally conceptualized him as kind of an armoured warlord guy, I was thinking of military strategy. That reminded me of Go, which gave me a few additional words to work with including Go and dan (dan being a rank counter in Go; 30 kyu is the weakest rating and 1 kyu is the strongest kyu rating. Next comes 1 dan, aka 1st dan, which continues up to the highest possible amateur level of 7th dan). I ended up trying a few things but going with something like Godan or Godin (Din is the goddess of fire in Zelda, and her incarnation has a fiery personality and appearance resembling a Gerudo girl such as Nabooru, the Sage of Spirit from the Ocarina of Time game's final temple). In the end, I thought Godan, although slightly odd, sounded the best and was acceptable (I love unique, original names. I really love building everything from scratch!). Plus, it went well the the even odder srname I'd come up with: Wei'duk (duk gets a horizontal accent line on the u, but I'm too lazy to open up character map ;p).
Wei'duk ("way-duke"): I continued on the Go theme and used "wei" from Weichi ( 圍棋), the Chinese word for Go (also romantized as Weiqi, which I presume to be the Cantonese spelling), and the "duk" from Baduk (바둑), which is the Korean word for the game (Go is more popular in those countries than in anywhere else in the world. Although Go was brought to the west by the Japanese (who call it Go), it was invented in China thousands of years ago, and contemporary Go is completely dominated by Korea and China.
The overall sound of Godann Wei'duk's name, along with the apostrophe in his last name, gave me the feeling that his name would be suitable ethnic or foreign-flavoured, and hopefully suitable for this "desert guy."
I added an 'n' to Godan (making it Godann) just to make it less basic, though I've also been considering a solent 'h' or something like that instead (ex: Godahn or Gohdann).
That's about the best explanation for his name I can provide. In the end, I think most names just originate from nothing or from basic words anyways.
I may alter or completely redo his stats, so I'll wait before posting those.
This is actually it for now! Unlike Xino (Akiharu Shinomori) and Covalius, both of whom I'll be posting a lot about pretty soon, and Altia, Godann has yet to be fleshed out very far. More on him coming soon!
~Yukigami
