Anurien Slang

[Ramble]

Hey all,

Our group is breaking out the old BR setting for the first time this millennia and we came to your wonderful website and all the awesome work you have collectively put together is spectacular, (just having a forum with a working word search engine is orgasmic).

Anyway, in making characters, a classically elitist noble was made, and the question of slang terms for castes came up. It sounds terribly HP but this started with a ‘Mudblood’ label for those without any divine blood trace, but is there any traditional such slang in the setting? For Blood or for Regents, Nobles, etc.

Ramble.

[geeman]

At 09:38 PM 12/9/2007, Ramble wrote:

>Our group is breaking out the old BR setting for the first time this
>millennia and we came to your wonderful website and all the awesome
>work you have collectively put together is spectacular, (just having
>a forum with a working word search engine is orgasmic).

Welcome!

>Anyway, in making characters, a classically elitist noble was made,
>and the question of slang terms for castes came up. It sounds
>terribly HP but this started with a `Mudblood` label for those
>without any divine blood trace, but is there any traditional such
>slang in the setting? For Blood or for Regents, Nobles, etc.

Well, if you need something other than the standard BR nomenclature
that differentiates between blooded scions and unblooded commoners
I`d be careful with using something like "serf" to describe BR
commoners. Though often described as feudal or chivalric, Anuirean
commoners aren`t typically bound to the earth in the same way that a
serf would be. I don`t know if you`d find terms that are quite
"caste-like" in BR.... However, because Anuire is still modeled on a
traditional feudal/chivalric culture, you could easily adopt/adapt
some of the terms that are often used to refer to the lower and upper classes.

Villain (also villein and villain) is a peasant, generally regarded
as brutish, dirty, lower-class and dishonest--and is obviously were
we derive the term to refer to an evil or wicked person.

Cottier or cotter is a medieval English term for villein.

A churl or ceorl is another medieval English peasant, and more
generally used to refer to a rude, boorish person.

Thralls are also typically considered enslaved or lower-class.

Varlet is quite a good, in-character kind of term to use, and though
it could refer to a person of noble birth at some point in his youth
when he might be serving as a knight`s page or otherwise attending a
higher ranking noble, the word also describes a rascal or a
knave. (Either of which are also perfectly good terms to use.)

A scalawag or scalywag is also a rascal, but in later uses implies a
sort of authoritarian dishonesty (at least, in the post-Civil War
South of the U.S....)

Peasant, of course, implies a lot of social order issues....

Gary