3.09: Shadowspawn
Posted on October 20th, 2010 by Jennifer Liang
- Draghkar: Dracula, both for the name and for the physical description and proclivities (bat-like, drains the life from its victims, etc.).
- Gholam: Golem from Jewish folklore. According to Gershon Scholem in "The Idea of the Golem," the Golem (pronounced goy-lehm), dates back to the Kabbalah, the ancient book of Jewish mysticism. The most famous legend dates back to 16th century Prague, to a famous rabbi, Rabbi Loew, but it is a bastardization of an earlier, far more appropriate (from a TWOT perspective) story of a Rabbi Elias in Poland, who shaped clay into a man-shape (very biblical), and then inscribed, in Hebrew, EMETH, which means TRUTH, on its forehead, granting it life. The Golem did menial tasks and the like for Elias, but the longer it lived, it grew in size and consequently in strength. When the Golem grew to an awesome size, Elias felt threatened by it, and attempted to destroy it by erasing the first letter (aleph) in EMETH, changing it to METH, Hebrew for DEATH. Elias succeeded, but was subsequently killed by the collapse of the creature into a big pile of clay. There are dozens of variants of the golem legend. In the Loew story, the golem collapsed, but did not kill Loew. Loew buried the remains in the attic of his ancient synagogue, where they remain to this day, and make for an unusual tourist attraction. Additional stories tell of the golem growing in both strength and lustiness, which added a whole new dimension of trouble to be caused.[Stewart S. Bushman]
- Jumara: Arabian Nights' "Tale of the Three Sharpers" makes mention of a creature called a "jamusah", the mythical offspring of a bull and a mare, or an ass and a cow. In French, this is called variously a "jumart", "gimere", or "jumarre", depending on the region, and is derived from the Latin "Chimaera". [Fred Van Keuls, Leigh Butler]
- Myrddraal: Merlin's original Welsh name, "Myrddin", + draug (Norse undead)?
- Trolloc: troll + orc. The Trolloc tribes seem to have been named after various mythological creatures:
- Ahf'frait = Afrit
- Al'ghol = Ghoul
- Bhan'sheen = Banshee
- Dha'vol = Devil
- Dhai'mon = Demon
- Dhjin'nen = Djin
- Ghar'gael = Gargoyle
- Ghob'hlin = Goblin
- Gho'hlem = Golem
- Ghraem'lan = Gremlin
- Ko'bal = Kobold
- Kno'mon = Gnome
