CountVanBadger
Inventor of the you-know-what
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2025
- Messages
- 492
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- 93
The project I'm working on in the background is going to be a cultivation fantasy. This will be the first of those I've written (that isn't a straight up litrpg) and I'm trying to make a system for it that's unique but similar enough to other cultivation stories that anyone familiar with the genre will be able to pick up on it fairly easily.
The idea revolves around the panentheistic language that uses the true names of all things. Those true names take everything that something is, was, and ever will be, and condenses it all into a single world. True names have an inherently lyrical quality that makes the people who speak them sound like they're singing, so the language is known as the Hymn, the words are Lyrics, and people who speak it are Choristers (collectively called the Choir). Choristers carry books that contain all of the Lyrics they have memorized called Hymnals. Are you starting to see the theme here?
Because of the connection between a Lyric and the thing it represents (in an abstract way, the Lyric is the thing it represents) saying it out loud gives you power over it. But since the mere existence of the Hymn extends beyond the realm of mortal comprehension, you can't just learn Lyrics the way you would words in other languages. Some people describe Lyrics as the instinctive feeling you get when you think about something, translated into audible sound. To learn a Lyric, you have to meditate on a word until you come to a deeper understanding of it, as well as develop some sort of connection to it. Like, if you wanted to learn the Lyric for water, you would have to meditate until you understood not just what water is, but what it means to be water, and then how you, yourself, also fit that description. "Water is both powerless and overpowering. It can only move at gravity's whims, and it must conform to the shape of whatever is containing it. It has no will of its own, and yet when there is enough of it, it can flatten mountains and demolish entire cities. I am also shaped by my surroundings and able to accomplish only what the environment I exist in allows me to. But when I am able to build up the proper momentum, the destruction I can wreak is devastating. I am water, and water is Hashalurek."
But even then, you've only learned part of a Lyric. Hashalurek might give you the power to propel water forward in a wave or rapid current, but not to freeze, boil, or purify it. Those words are similar, but also different. Making water freeze might be Hashurak, and boiling it is Hashitee'a. And then, some Lyrics can be combined together to further influence what you can do to it. The word for "sharp" is Klen, so HashalureKlen essentially means "propel needles of water forward."
There are also limits to what you can use the Hymn to do. Hashalurek roughly means water quickly flowing forward, but you can't just say "Hashalurek" and spawn a wave out of nothing. There actually needs to be water there for you to use. Some Lyrics are harder to learn than others. Sometimes that's because they're more complicated than other words, other times the words themselves almost feel like they're actively resisting being found. Maybe there's a Lyric for "create" out there that would let you spawn things out of nothing, but nobody has been able to find it.
What do you guys think?
The idea revolves around the panentheistic language that uses the true names of all things. Those true names take everything that something is, was, and ever will be, and condenses it all into a single world. True names have an inherently lyrical quality that makes the people who speak them sound like they're singing, so the language is known as the Hymn, the words are Lyrics, and people who speak it are Choristers (collectively called the Choir). Choristers carry books that contain all of the Lyrics they have memorized called Hymnals. Are you starting to see the theme here?
Because of the connection between a Lyric and the thing it represents (in an abstract way, the Lyric is the thing it represents) saying it out loud gives you power over it. But since the mere existence of the Hymn extends beyond the realm of mortal comprehension, you can't just learn Lyrics the way you would words in other languages. Some people describe Lyrics as the instinctive feeling you get when you think about something, translated into audible sound. To learn a Lyric, you have to meditate on a word until you come to a deeper understanding of it, as well as develop some sort of connection to it. Like, if you wanted to learn the Lyric for water, you would have to meditate until you understood not just what water is, but what it means to be water, and then how you, yourself, also fit that description. "Water is both powerless and overpowering. It can only move at gravity's whims, and it must conform to the shape of whatever is containing it. It has no will of its own, and yet when there is enough of it, it can flatten mountains and demolish entire cities. I am also shaped by my surroundings and able to accomplish only what the environment I exist in allows me to. But when I am able to build up the proper momentum, the destruction I can wreak is devastating. I am water, and water is Hashalurek."
But even then, you've only learned part of a Lyric. Hashalurek might give you the power to propel water forward in a wave or rapid current, but not to freeze, boil, or purify it. Those words are similar, but also different. Making water freeze might be Hashurak, and boiling it is Hashitee'a. And then, some Lyrics can be combined together to further influence what you can do to it. The word for "sharp" is Klen, so HashalureKlen essentially means "propel needles of water forward."
There are also limits to what you can use the Hymn to do. Hashalurek roughly means water quickly flowing forward, but you can't just say "Hashalurek" and spawn a wave out of nothing. There actually needs to be water there for you to use. Some Lyrics are harder to learn than others. Sometimes that's because they're more complicated than other words, other times the words themselves almost feel like they're actively resisting being found. Maybe there's a Lyric for "create" out there that would let you spawn things out of nothing, but nobody has been able to find it.
What do you guys think?
