You write so good 'v'
FR Dragon PI... case closed?
FR Dragon PI... case closed?
Flight Rising Discussion
Discuss everything and anything Flight Rising.
TOPIC | Unused Deity Names
@acheronta
Writing up Part Two now.
I find it interesting that, in the end, I didn't really mess up so badly after all with that starchart.
What happened was that I failed to notice that the stars of the constellation Corvus all had the name "Ghurab" in them. But if I had noticed it, that would only imply that Ghurab was a deity name; it wouldn't reveal which deity Ghurab was! In the end, we still needed the wind map link to confirm Ghurab = Windsinger; but I could've used the starchart to say that Ghurab = [some deity]. Plus, Ghurab even said the crow part was a red herring, so...
Some other rambling thoughts, as I reflect on this thread.
It's kind of difficult to write "in this post" and "posted here" and things like that--by difficult, I mean it's difficult to integrate them into the natural flow of the sentence. But I feel obligated to, since I want people to see the post in question, where the thing was first said.
It's also kind of curious, really--I ended up so dedicated to this I wrote a teeny program to generate post permalinks. Post permalinks aren't complicated at all, but the program saves a long time since it automates the URL generation. Hehe. I wrote a program just for this unused deity name thread.
Writing up Part Two now.
I find it interesting that, in the end, I didn't really mess up so badly after all with that starchart.
What happened was that I failed to notice that the stars of the constellation Corvus all had the name "Ghurab" in them. But if I had noticed it, that would only imply that Ghurab was a deity name; it wouldn't reveal which deity Ghurab was! In the end, we still needed the wind map link to confirm Ghurab = Windsinger; but I could've used the starchart to say that Ghurab = [some deity]. Plus, Ghurab even said the crow part was a red herring, so...
Some other rambling thoughts, as I reflect on this thread.
It's kind of difficult to write "in this post" and "posted here" and things like that--by difficult, I mean it's difficult to integrate them into the natural flow of the sentence. But I feel obligated to, since I want people to see the post in question, where the thing was first said.
It's also kind of curious, really--I ended up so dedicated to this I wrote a teeny program to generate post permalinks. Post permalinks aren't complicated at all, but the program saves a long time since it automates the URL generation. Hehe. I wrote a program just for this unused deity name thread.
@acheronta
Writing up Part Two now.
I find it interesting that, in the end, I didn't really mess up so badly after all with that starchart.
What happened was that I failed to notice that the stars of the constellation Corvus all had the name "Ghurab" in them. But if I had noticed it, that would only imply that Ghurab was a deity name; it wouldn't reveal which deity Ghurab was! In the end, we still needed the wind map link to confirm Ghurab = Windsinger; but I could've used the starchart to say that Ghurab = [some deity]. Plus, Ghurab even said the crow part was a red herring, so...
Some other rambling thoughts, as I reflect on this thread.
It's kind of difficult to write "in this post" and "posted here" and things like that--by difficult, I mean it's difficult to integrate them into the natural flow of the sentence. But I feel obligated to, since I want people to see the post in question, where the thing was first said.
It's also kind of curious, really--I ended up so dedicated to this I wrote a teeny program to generate post permalinks. Post permalinks aren't complicated at all, but the program saves a long time since it automates the URL generation. Hehe. I wrote a program just for this unused deity name thread.
Writing up Part Two now.
I find it interesting that, in the end, I didn't really mess up so badly after all with that starchart.
What happened was that I failed to notice that the stars of the constellation Corvus all had the name "Ghurab" in them. But if I had noticed it, that would only imply that Ghurab was a deity name; it wouldn't reveal which deity Ghurab was! In the end, we still needed the wind map link to confirm Ghurab = Windsinger; but I could've used the starchart to say that Ghurab = [some deity]. Plus, Ghurab even said the crow part was a red herring, so...
Some other rambling thoughts, as I reflect on this thread.
It's kind of difficult to write "in this post" and "posted here" and things like that--by difficult, I mean it's difficult to integrate them into the natural flow of the sentence. But I feel obligated to, since I want people to see the post in question, where the thing was first said.
It's also kind of curious, really--I ended up so dedicated to this I wrote a teeny program to generate post permalinks. Post permalinks aren't complicated at all, but the program saves a long time since it automates the URL generation. Hehe. I wrote a program just for this unused deity name thread.
[size=4][b][u]Part Two[/u][/b][/size]
[columns]
[b]Pages:[/b]
[size=2][/size]
[b]Names:[/b]
[size=2][/size]
[b]Deities:[/b]
[size=2][/size]
[b]Speculation:[/b]
[size=2][/size]
[b]Name Sources:[/b]
[nextcol]
11-20
[size=2][/size]
Rhiow, Ghurab, Jhortanas, [size=2]Xhaztol, Amogayvhi[/size]
[size=2][/size]
Plaguebringer, Windsinger, [size=2]Arcanist, Gladekeeper[/size]
[size=2][/size]
Early Users/Potential WoW friends, Starchart of Corvus, “Resonance of Death” hint
[size=2][/size]
Early Users/Potential WoW friends, Rhiow and Ghurab’s hints, ShC Horde and RP Haven
[/columns]
Continuing from where part 1 left off…
This section started off slowly, with posts either expressing interest in the thread, or reconfirming what had previously been discovered. Of particular note is [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=view&id=73675&tab=userpage]Sildrael’s[/url] discovery, documented [url= http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=11&anchor=7616196#7616196]here[/url]: using Wayback Machine, they saw the site in a very early state, where the deity accounts indeed had names.
[img]http://puu.sh/dfUwP/d62e549bf4.png[/img]
[i]Arcanist Xhaztol, rather humorously depicted with Gladekeeper’s icon. (Doesn’t it make you think of that one Greenskeeper’s Gathering?)[/i]
You can actually see this yourself, if you want; just plug http://flightrising.com into the Wayback Machine and scroll back to around 2012ish, and you should be able to see it for yourself.
After a lull in progress, in [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=14&anchor=8815425#8815425]this post[/url], I [i]found the lost thread[/i] clockworkMoose had mentioned in the previous section—and by finding that thread, I found another deity name! In [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=help&id=1019466&page=1]the lost thread[/url], a user was asking why they couldn’t name a dragon a particular name, and Undel stepped in to explicitly say it was a deity name, and deity names used to be banned.
[quote name="Undel" date="2014-01-01 17:29:37"]For a while the gods all had name names (in honor of some of our friends online aliases) these names were banned so as not to confuse the from the god accounts. Since it's been retconned that they have names, we can probably unblock these names later![/quote]
This bolstered the legitimacy of the Banned Name Test. I imagine they [i]did [/i]unblock those names later, which is why Rhenik went through just fine, and why there was some doubt about the naming test. With this, I could formulate exact criterion for the name test:
1) If there's no discernable reason the name should be banned, then it is a deity name.
2) However, not all deity names are banned. So this only works if you enter a name and it's banned; in other words;
3) just because a name fails the Banned Name Test doesn't mean it's disqualified from being a deity name.
But, more importantly, Undel’s response also explicitly confirmed that the name I found (and the name that couldn’t be used) was a deity name. The name I found was [b]Rhiow[/b], a name shared by a character in [i]The Book of Night with Moon[/i]; however, it was unknown which deity was named Rhiow.
The fascinating part was that there was a user who was also named Rhiow, with a very low user ID number and a rare Forum Vista (Gilded). Could this be the same Rhiow that the deity was named after? The admins did say that deities were named after friends, and Rhiow was a very early FR user--possibly beta, possibly backer.
I PMed Rhiow and asked if a deity was named after them, and they confirmed it. They refused to say which deity it was, but expressed interest in our research thread—and the first thing Rhiow did upon posting in this thread was to ping Hakka and Ghurab, two other early FR users. Their post can be found [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=16&anchor=8821876#8821876]here[/url].
From a person confirmed as the namesake of a deity, this ping was very suspicious—perhaps Ghurab and Hakka knew the deity names too.
[b]Ghurab[/b] in particular was of interest, since they’d posted in the thread before, talking with some of the posters there. The following is a conversation they had, spreading multiple pages.
[size=2]Note: this conversation happened before I found Rhiow and the lost thread, but for readability I’ve chosen to include it after I found Rhiow.
Also, each line of dialogue’s speaker has a permalink to the original post I quoted from.[/size]
[quote=Conversation][url= http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=8&anchor=7070813#7070813]Ghurab:[/url] ;;;;;;>_>
[url= http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=9&anchor=7312501#7312501]Akiri:[/url] Funny to watch, isn't it?
[url= http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=12&anchor=7876515#7876515]Ghurab:[/url] I love it.
[url= http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=12&anchor=7886399#7886399]Wonknevetnod:[/url] Ghurab,I'm taking this to mean you know [what] we're are after? Enjoy it while it's still limited knowledge - this will be uncovered!
[url= http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=12&anchor=7900418#7900418]Ghurab:[/url]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/ru012rf.jpg[/img]
[url= http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=12&anchor=7900418#7900418]Ghurab:[/url] But you know what? I'm actually very proud of you all for digging up as much as you did about those silly dragon names. I always get a kick out of seeing who you all uncover next. I'm still shocked you found out about ol' Amo'. There's a lot of history hidden in those names and the dragons themselves were, in many cases directly inspired by the people/characters whom the names originated from.[/quote]
Ghurab began posting hints to deity names, such as [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=18&anchor=8862485#8862485]this one[/url]. Rhiow would join in too, and these cryptic hints would characterize the later sections of our research, transforming the thread from an inductive search for patterns into a search for the meanings of the hints. Thus, this caused some redundancies in the “Speculations” and “Name Sources” portions of the chapter summary. We [i]knew[/i] that these hints meant something, and that they were name sources, but we didn’t know what they meant. Hence, they’re both a confirmed name source and a thing to speculate on.
[size=2]A note on inductive reasoning: “Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations…”
[url=http://www.livescience.com/21569-deduction-vs-induction.html ](x)[/url][/size]
For now, we’ll examine Ghurab’s first clue.
[quote=Conversation][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=16&anchor=8821876#8821876]Rhiow:[/url] Guys, the dragon P.I. are talking about me. What do I do?
[url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=18&anchor=8862485#8862485]Ghurab:[/url] Rhiow Aren't we just the worst? >:3
You want help? Here's a hint.[/quote]
[img]http://s28.postimg.org/prckhmwa5/Crv_www.jpg[/img]
[i]Ghurab’s hint.[/i]
A quick Google Reverse Image Search revealed this image, which I posted [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=18&anchor=8864342#8864342]here[/url]:
[img]http://www.davidmalin.com/fujii/image/Crv_www_c.jpg[/img]
Which labelled the stars in Ghurab’s image.
Of note was the constellation Corvus, which was depicted in full, rather than the partial depictions of other constellations. It seemed to be the focus of the image, but I didn’t see how it would help us. [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=view&tab=userpage&id=84393]acheronta[/url] stepped in at this point, posting [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=19&anchor=8870942#8870942]here[/url] and helping me interpret the stars. Each point of the constellation Corvus had its own name (Alpha Corvi, Gamma Corvi, Delta Corvi), derived from their Arabic names (Al Minliar al Ghurab, Gienah Ghurab, Algorab [rough translations]). acheronta concluded that Ghurab meant “crow”.
I followed up, saying that Corvus (the name of the constellation itself) was already the Latin name for crow, so this was confirming old information. But I’d already (sarcastically) guessed if Ghurab was Plaguebringer’s name, and Ghurab (the user) said no, so I didn’t really know what to associate crows with. Plus, Ghurab (the user) posted [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=19&anchor=8871871#8871871]here[/url] and said that the crow part “was a red herring”. So, at the time, I dismissed acheronta’s findings.*
[size=2]*A huge mistake on my part. As I found out later, there’s something else about the starchart, and it’s not the crow connection; it’s the fact that the star names had Ghurab in a lot of them. Essentially, Ghurab was hinting that they were a deity name, and I totally missed that! D: [/size]
Ghurab then dropped a second hint on us in [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=19&anchor=8872173#8872173]this post[/url]: “This time for the Plaguebringer, to honor Acheronta's research up there. Now PB's name is the very resonance of death.”
“Resonance of death” is a highly unusual way to say “sounds like death”, so it must’ve been a key phrase or a quote of some sort. I googled “resonance of death”, and in [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=19&anchor=8872469#8872469]this post[/url] I showed my results: an [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=outbound&loc=http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Jhor]article[/url] in the White Wolf Wikia about an entity named Jhor, who was (indeed) the resonance of death in the White Wolf universe. There was already precedence for a deity sharing a name with a different universe's character--Rhiow's name, after all, was borrowed from [i]The Book of Night and Moon[/i]. Furthermore, Jhor appeared on the site credits, indicating that they were close to the four admins! Thus, Jhor seemed like a very strong candidate for a deity name.
However, we were a little suspicious as well.
[quote=Conversation]
[url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=20&anchor=8872592#8872592]acheronta:[/url] IS THAT ANOTHER RED HERRING? I am suspicious of these “clues”. /shifty eyes
[url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=20&anchor=8872651#8872651]QuoPeregrinatur:[/url] [The evidence adds up a little too perfectly.] It could just be carefully chosen misdirection, though. For all I know, [Ghurab] could be deliberately jerking us around just to divert us from the truth. I TRUST that they're not.
[/quote]
acheronta then dived straight into [b]RP Haven[/b], the place which I had previously abandoned for being too big, and started scouring through the site. They found an interesting post [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=20&anchor=8872943#8872943]here[/url], indicating that Jhor RP’ed with the four admins. Now the evidence was really adding up!
[img]http://i.imgur.com/qELvKJV.png[/img]
[i]Jhor, Xhaztol, and Akiri, commenting on Fedora’s (lengthy) RP post. View the original post [url=http://rp-haven.com/blog/fedora/imperfect_specimen]here[/url]; the comments section is the interesting bit. [/i]
Clicking on Jhor’s profile reveals their full name to be: Jhor’tanas Dawnhaze. Seeing as last names and apostrophes aren’t allowed in FR’s system, we approximated the name to be [b]Jhortanas[/b], and submitted that as our guess for Plaguebringer’s name.
…and Ghurab [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=frd&id=1215877&page=20&anchor=8873279#8873279]replied[/url] with this:
[img]http://s24.postimg.org/8rubznwo5/Bwahaha.jpg[/img]
[i]What does this even mean???[/i]
Now I’ve always been pretty bad at reading reaction images. I write and I love metaphors and I love analyzing hidden meanings in literature, but when it comes to direct communication I’m a very literal-minded person. I couldn’t tell if Ghurab’s reply meant we were right or wrong. This sort of indirect communication would continue for a while, with Ghurab never outright stating anything. But we got over our initial suspicions, once all the evidence started adding up.
Eventually, Ghurab dropped another hint on us: this time, for Earthshaker. In the context of this section, all it means is that we’d “solved”, more or less, Ghurab’s clue about Plaguebringer.
[quote name="QuoPeregrinatur" date="2015-01-28 16:11:55”]
I believe we're getting closer. They're not saying no, and in this line of work, lack of a no means "go ahead".
At this point we can only wait for an admin to come along and comment on Plaguebringer's name. Ghurab knows this. Hence, [we were given] the hint about Earthshaker instead. I believe we are indeed drawing near.[/quote]
But what about the clue itself? Well, that’s a post for another time. Stay tuned for part three.
Part Two
Continuing from where part 1 left off…
This section started off slowly, with posts either expressing interest in the thread, or reconfirming what had previously been discovered. Of particular note is Sildrael’s discovery, documented here: using Wayback Machine, they saw the site in a very early state, where the deity accounts indeed had names.
Arcanist Xhaztol, rather humorously depicted with Gladekeeper’s icon. (Doesn’t it make you think of that one Greenskeeper’s Gathering?)
You can actually see this yourself, if you want; just plug http://flightrising.com into the Wayback Machine and scroll back to around 2012ish, and you should be able to see it for yourself.
After a lull in progress, in this post, I found the lost thread clockworkMoose had mentioned in the previous section—and by finding that thread, I found another deity name! In the lost thread, a user was asking why they couldn’t name a dragon a particular name, and Undel stepped in to explicitly say it was a deity name, and deity names used to be banned.
This bolstered the legitimacy of the Banned Name Test. I imagine they did unblock those names later, which is why Rhenik went through just fine, and why there was some doubt about the naming test. With this, I could formulate exact criterion for the name test:
1) If there's no discernable reason the name should be banned, then it is a deity name.
2) However, not all deity names are banned. So this only works if you enter a name and it's banned; in other words;
3) just because a name fails the Banned Name Test doesn't mean it's disqualified from being a deity name.
But, more importantly, Undel’s response also explicitly confirmed that the name I found (and the name that couldn’t be used) was a deity name. The name I found was Rhiow, a name shared by a character in The Book of Night with Moon; however, it was unknown which deity was named Rhiow.
The fascinating part was that there was a user who was also named Rhiow, with a very low user ID number and a rare Forum Vista (Gilded). Could this be the same Rhiow that the deity was named after? The admins did say that deities were named after friends, and Rhiow was a very early FR user--possibly beta, possibly backer.
I PMed Rhiow and asked if a deity was named after them, and they confirmed it. They refused to say which deity it was, but expressed interest in our research thread—and the first thing Rhiow did upon posting in this thread was to ping Hakka and Ghurab, two other early FR users. Their post can be found here.
From a person confirmed as the namesake of a deity, this ping was very suspicious—perhaps Ghurab and Hakka knew the deity names too.
Ghurab in particular was of interest, since they’d posted in the thread before, talking with some of the posters there. The following is a conversation they had, spreading multiple pages.
Note: this conversation happened before I found Rhiow and the lost thread, but for readability I’ve chosen to include it after I found Rhiow.
Also, each line of dialogue’s speaker has a permalink to the original post I quoted from.
Ghurab began posting hints to deity names, such as this one. Rhiow would join in too, and these cryptic hints would characterize the later sections of our research, transforming the thread from an inductive search for patterns into a search for the meanings of the hints. Thus, this caused some redundancies in the “Speculations” and “Name Sources” portions of the chapter summary. We knew that these hints meant something, and that they were name sources, but we didn’t know what they meant. Hence, they’re both a confirmed name source and a thing to speculate on.
A note on inductive reasoning: “Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations…”
(x)
For now, we’ll examine Ghurab’s first clue.
Ghurab’s hint.
A quick Google Reverse Image Search revealed this image, which I posted here:
Which labelled the stars in Ghurab’s image.
Of note was the constellation Corvus, which was depicted in full, rather than the partial depictions of other constellations. It seemed to be the focus of the image, but I didn’t see how it would help us. acheronta stepped in at this point, posting here and helping me interpret the stars. Each point of the constellation Corvus had its own name (Alpha Corvi, Gamma Corvi, Delta Corvi), derived from their Arabic names (Al Minliar al Ghurab, Gienah Ghurab, Algorab [rough translations]). acheronta concluded that Ghurab meant “crow”.
I followed up, saying that Corvus (the name of the constellation itself) was already the Latin name for crow, so this was confirming old information. But I’d already (sarcastically) guessed if Ghurab was Plaguebringer’s name, and Ghurab (the user) said no, so I didn’t really know what to associate crows with. Plus, Ghurab (the user) posted here and said that the crow part “was a red herring”. So, at the time, I dismissed acheronta’s findings.*
*A huge mistake on my part. As I found out later, there’s something else about the starchart, and it’s not the crow connection; it’s the fact that the star names had Ghurab in a lot of them. Essentially, Ghurab was hinting that they were a deity name, and I totally missed that! D:
Ghurab then dropped a second hint on us in this post: “This time for the Plaguebringer, to honor Acheronta's research up there. Now PB's name is the very resonance of death.”
“Resonance of death” is a highly unusual way to say “sounds like death”, so it must’ve been a key phrase or a quote of some sort. I googled “resonance of death”, and in this post I showed my results: an article in the White Wolf Wikia about an entity named Jhor, who was (indeed) the resonance of death in the White Wolf universe. There was already precedence for a deity sharing a name with a different universe's character--Rhiow's name, after all, was borrowed from The Book of Night and Moon. Furthermore, Jhor appeared on the site credits, indicating that they were close to the four admins! Thus, Jhor seemed like a very strong candidate for a deity name.
However, we were a little suspicious as well.
acheronta then dived straight into RP Haven, the place which I had previously abandoned for being too big, and started scouring through the site. They found an interesting post here, indicating that Jhor RP’ed with the four admins. Now the evidence was really adding up!
Jhor, Xhaztol, and Akiri, commenting on Fedora’s (lengthy) RP post. View the original post here; the comments section is the interesting bit.
Clicking on Jhor’s profile reveals their full name to be: Jhor’tanas Dawnhaze. Seeing as last names and apostrophes aren’t allowed in FR’s system, we approximated the name to be Jhortanas, and submitted that as our guess for Plaguebringer’s name.
…and Ghurab replied with this:
What does this even mean???
Now I’ve always been pretty bad at reading reaction images. I write and I love metaphors and I love analyzing hidden meanings in literature, but when it comes to direct communication I’m a very literal-minded person. I couldn’t tell if Ghurab’s reply meant we were right or wrong. This sort of indirect communication would continue for a while, with Ghurab never outright stating anything. But we got over our initial suspicions, once all the evidence started adding up.
Eventually, Ghurab dropped another hint on us: this time, for Earthshaker. In the context of this section, all it means is that we’d “solved”, more or less, Ghurab’s clue about Plaguebringer.
But what about the clue itself? Well, that’s a post for another time. Stay tuned for part three.
|
Pages: Names: Deities: Speculation: Name Sources: |
11-20 Rhiow, Ghurab, Jhortanas, Xhaztol, Amogayvhi Plaguebringer, Windsinger, Arcanist, Gladekeeper Early Users/Potential WoW friends, Starchart of Corvus, “Resonance of Death” hint Early Users/Potential WoW friends, Rhiow and Ghurab’s hints, ShC Horde and RP Haven |
Continuing from where part 1 left off…
This section started off slowly, with posts either expressing interest in the thread, or reconfirming what had previously been discovered. Of particular note is Sildrael’s discovery, documented here: using Wayback Machine, they saw the site in a very early state, where the deity accounts indeed had names.
Arcanist Xhaztol, rather humorously depicted with Gladekeeper’s icon. (Doesn’t it make you think of that one Greenskeeper’s Gathering?)
You can actually see this yourself, if you want; just plug http://flightrising.com into the Wayback Machine and scroll back to around 2012ish, and you should be able to see it for yourself.
After a lull in progress, in this post, I found the lost thread clockworkMoose had mentioned in the previous section—and by finding that thread, I found another deity name! In the lost thread, a user was asking why they couldn’t name a dragon a particular name, and Undel stepped in to explicitly say it was a deity name, and deity names used to be banned.
Undel wrote on 2014-01-01 17:29:37:
For a while the gods all had name names (in honor of some of our friends online aliases) these names were banned so as not to confuse the from the god accounts. Since it's been retconned that they have names, we can probably unblock these names later!
This bolstered the legitimacy of the Banned Name Test. I imagine they did unblock those names later, which is why Rhenik went through just fine, and why there was some doubt about the naming test. With this, I could formulate exact criterion for the name test:
1) If there's no discernable reason the name should be banned, then it is a deity name.
2) However, not all deity names are banned. So this only works if you enter a name and it's banned; in other words;
3) just because a name fails the Banned Name Test doesn't mean it's disqualified from being a deity name.
But, more importantly, Undel’s response also explicitly confirmed that the name I found (and the name that couldn’t be used) was a deity name. The name I found was Rhiow, a name shared by a character in The Book of Night with Moon; however, it was unknown which deity was named Rhiow.
The fascinating part was that there was a user who was also named Rhiow, with a very low user ID number and a rare Forum Vista (Gilded). Could this be the same Rhiow that the deity was named after? The admins did say that deities were named after friends, and Rhiow was a very early FR user--possibly beta, possibly backer.
I PMed Rhiow and asked if a deity was named after them, and they confirmed it. They refused to say which deity it was, but expressed interest in our research thread—and the first thing Rhiow did upon posting in this thread was to ping Hakka and Ghurab, two other early FR users. Their post can be found here.
From a person confirmed as the namesake of a deity, this ping was very suspicious—perhaps Ghurab and Hakka knew the deity names too.
Ghurab in particular was of interest, since they’d posted in the thread before, talking with some of the posters there. The following is a conversation they had, spreading multiple pages.
Note: this conversation happened before I found Rhiow and the lost thread, but for readability I’ve chosen to include it after I found Rhiow.
Also, each line of dialogue’s speaker has a permalink to the original post I quoted from.
Conversation wrote:
Ghurab: ;;;;;;>_>
Akiri: Funny to watch, isn't it?
Ghurab: I love it.
Wonknevetnod: Ghurab,I'm taking this to mean you know [what] we're are after? Enjoy it while it's still limited knowledge - this will be uncovered!
Ghurab:
Ghurab: But you know what? I'm actually very proud of you all for digging up as much as you did about those silly dragon names. I always get a kick out of seeing who you all uncover next. I'm still shocked you found out about ol' Amo'. There's a lot of history hidden in those names and the dragons themselves were, in many cases directly inspired by the people/characters whom the names originated from.
Akiri: Funny to watch, isn't it?
Ghurab: I love it.
Wonknevetnod: Ghurab,I'm taking this to mean you know [what] we're are after? Enjoy it while it's still limited knowledge - this will be uncovered!
Ghurab:
Ghurab: But you know what? I'm actually very proud of you all for digging up as much as you did about those silly dragon names. I always get a kick out of seeing who you all uncover next. I'm still shocked you found out about ol' Amo'. There's a lot of history hidden in those names and the dragons themselves were, in many cases directly inspired by the people/characters whom the names originated from.
Ghurab began posting hints to deity names, such as this one. Rhiow would join in too, and these cryptic hints would characterize the later sections of our research, transforming the thread from an inductive search for patterns into a search for the meanings of the hints. Thus, this caused some redundancies in the “Speculations” and “Name Sources” portions of the chapter summary. We knew that these hints meant something, and that they were name sources, but we didn’t know what they meant. Hence, they’re both a confirmed name source and a thing to speculate on.
A note on inductive reasoning: “Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations…”
(x)
For now, we’ll examine Ghurab’s first clue.
Conversation wrote:
Ghurab’s hint.
A quick Google Reverse Image Search revealed this image, which I posted here:
Which labelled the stars in Ghurab’s image.
Of note was the constellation Corvus, which was depicted in full, rather than the partial depictions of other constellations. It seemed to be the focus of the image, but I didn’t see how it would help us. acheronta stepped in at this point, posting here and helping me interpret the stars. Each point of the constellation Corvus had its own name (Alpha Corvi, Gamma Corvi, Delta Corvi), derived from their Arabic names (Al Minliar al Ghurab, Gienah Ghurab, Algorab [rough translations]). acheronta concluded that Ghurab meant “crow”.
I followed up, saying that Corvus (the name of the constellation itself) was already the Latin name for crow, so this was confirming old information. But I’d already (sarcastically) guessed if Ghurab was Plaguebringer’s name, and Ghurab (the user) said no, so I didn’t really know what to associate crows with. Plus, Ghurab (the user) posted here and said that the crow part “was a red herring”. So, at the time, I dismissed acheronta’s findings.*
*A huge mistake on my part. As I found out later, there’s something else about the starchart, and it’s not the crow connection; it’s the fact that the star names had Ghurab in a lot of them. Essentially, Ghurab was hinting that they were a deity name, and I totally missed that! D:
Ghurab then dropped a second hint on us in this post: “This time for the Plaguebringer, to honor Acheronta's research up there. Now PB's name is the very resonance of death.”
“Resonance of death” is a highly unusual way to say “sounds like death”, so it must’ve been a key phrase or a quote of some sort. I googled “resonance of death”, and in this post I showed my results: an article in the White Wolf Wikia about an entity named Jhor, who was (indeed) the resonance of death in the White Wolf universe. There was already precedence for a deity sharing a name with a different universe's character--Rhiow's name, after all, was borrowed from The Book of Night and Moon. Furthermore, Jhor appeared on the site credits, indicating that they were close to the four admins! Thus, Jhor seemed like a very strong candidate for a deity name.
However, we were a little suspicious as well.
Conversation wrote:
acheronta: IS THAT ANOTHER RED HERRING? I am suspicious of these “clues”. /shifty eyes
QuoPeregrinatur: [The evidence adds up a little too perfectly.] It could just be carefully chosen misdirection, though. For all I know, [Ghurab] could be deliberately jerking us around just to divert us from the truth. I TRUST that they're not.
QuoPeregrinatur: [The evidence adds up a little too perfectly.] It could just be carefully chosen misdirection, though. For all I know, [Ghurab] could be deliberately jerking us around just to divert us from the truth. I TRUST that they're not.
acheronta then dived straight into RP Haven, the place which I had previously abandoned for being too big, and started scouring through the site. They found an interesting post here, indicating that Jhor RP’ed with the four admins. Now the evidence was really adding up!
Jhor, Xhaztol, and Akiri, commenting on Fedora’s (lengthy) RP post. View the original post here; the comments section is the interesting bit.
Clicking on Jhor’s profile reveals their full name to be: Jhor’tanas Dawnhaze. Seeing as last names and apostrophes aren’t allowed in FR’s system, we approximated the name to be Jhortanas, and submitted that as our guess for Plaguebringer’s name.
…and Ghurab replied with this:
What does this even mean???
Now I’ve always been pretty bad at reading reaction images. I write and I love metaphors and I love analyzing hidden meanings in literature, but when it comes to direct communication I’m a very literal-minded person. I couldn’t tell if Ghurab’s reply meant we were right or wrong. This sort of indirect communication would continue for a while, with Ghurab never outright stating anything. But we got over our initial suspicions, once all the evidence started adding up.
Eventually, Ghurab dropped another hint on us: this time, for Earthshaker. In the context of this section, all it means is that we’d “solved”, more or less, Ghurab’s clue about Plaguebringer.
QuoPeregrinatur wrote on "2015-01-28:
I believe we're getting closer. They're not saying no, and in this line of work, lack of a no means "go ahead".
At this point we can only wait for an admin to come along and comment on Plaguebringer's name. Ghurab knows this. Hence, [we were given] the hint about Earthshaker instead. I believe we are indeed drawing near.
At this point we can only wait for an admin to come along and comment on Plaguebringer's name. Ghurab knows this. Hence, [we were given] the hint about Earthshaker instead. I believe we are indeed drawing near.
But what about the clue itself? Well, that’s a post for another time. Stay tuned for part three.
This is the most interesting thread on this website and I love checking in every so often to see what's up. I love how determined you are and how thorough you are in your research.
If I had the time I would read through every single page. Keep doing what you do.
@QuoPeregrinatur
If I had the time I would read through every single page. Keep doing what you do.
@QuoPeregrinatur
This is the most interesting thread on this website and I love checking in every so often to see what's up. I love how determined you are and how thorough you are in your research.
If I had the time I would read through every single page. Keep doing what you do.
@QuoPeregrinatur
If I had the time I would read through every single page. Keep doing what you do.
@QuoPeregrinatur
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Ping me or I won't see your post! I do art! Message me about commissions.    
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[quote name="Undel" date="2014-01-01 17:29:37"]For a while the gods all had name names (in honor of some of our friends online aliases) these names were banned so as not to confuse the from the god accounts. Since it's been retconned that they have names, we can probably unblock these names later![/quote]
And yet, Rhenik's been reblocked. Interesting.
I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of some of our other deity names, which were never blocked. Perhaps Plaguebringer Jhortanas, for example, never actually did have a name, and it was just Plaguebringer, which is why Jhortanas was never blocked.
But then that would imply that Jhortanas isn't the name of PB...
Ah, fascinating, this whole name banning issue.
Undel wrote on 2014-01-01 17:29:37:
For a while the gods all had name names (in honor of some of our friends online aliases) these names were banned so as not to confuse the from the god accounts. Since it's been retconned that they have names, we can probably unblock these names later!
And yet, Rhenik's been reblocked. Interesting.
I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of some of our other deity names, which were never blocked. Perhaps Plaguebringer Jhortanas, for example, never actually did have a name, and it was just Plaguebringer, which is why Jhortanas was never blocked.
But then that would imply that Jhortanas isn't the name of PB...
Ah, fascinating, this whole name banning issue.
[quote name="Dragonpuff" date="2015-02-04 11:55:48"][center][img]http://media0.giphy.com/media/11uArCoB4fkRcQ/giphy.gif[/img][/center]
You guys, each and every one of you, are amazing, and I applaud your detective skills. I've been stalking this thread since it's first few pages, and it's been crazy awesome to watch how you've dug up these names! Great job guys, I can't even articulate how amazed I am![/quote]
I'm quoting this because I can't put it any better, although I haven't been watching this for as long. Still, this is exceptional, and I can't wait to find out if those 11 names are correct!
Dragonpuff wrote on 2015-02-04 11:55:48:
You guys, each and every one of you, are amazing, and I applaud your detective skills. I've been stalking this thread since it's first few pages, and it's been crazy awesome to watch how you've dug up these names! Great job guys, I can't even articulate how amazed I am!
So, @Xhaztol, what do you think?
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Names
Artaios Akiri Rhenik Ghurab Thrage Eberict Rhiow Undel Amogayvhi Jhortanas Xhaztol |
Deities
Earthshaker Flamecaller Tidelord Windsinger Stormcatcher Icewarden Lightweaver Shadowbinder Gladekeeper Plaguebringer Arcanist |
So, @Xhaztol, what do you think?
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Names
Artaios Akiri Rhenik Ghurab Thrage Eberict Rhiow Undel Amogayvhi Jhortanas Xhaztol |
Deities
Earthshaker Flamecaller Tidelord Windsinger Stormcatcher Icewarden Lightweaver Shadowbinder Gladekeeper Plaguebringer Arcanist |
I'm impressed - I wanna see how you came to the name of the Earthshaker and the Windsinger - just reading them, I'd assume they'd be reversed - Ghurab sounds like a much more rocky name, wheras Artaios sounds more...flowy like wind.
*waits for progress*
*waits for progress*
I'm impressed - I wanna see how you came to the name of the Earthshaker and the Windsinger - just reading them, I'd assume they'd be reversed - Ghurab sounds like a much more rocky name, wheras Artaios sounds more...flowy like wind.
*waits for progress*
*waits for progress*
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