Subject: Re: So many words for mages ... Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 22:39:37 GMT From: "John Bwah" Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.development > You forgot Necromancers, mages who call forth the spirits of the dead. > Enchanters, mages who can influence people's minds through charms and > song. Warlocks, who are just male witches. Seers, diviners who can see > the future. Geomancers, mages who do things through the use of > figures, lines, and geographic figures. And soothsayers, abjurers, transmuters, summoners, diviners, evokers or evocators, invokers, alchemists, paranaturals, psychics, psionicists, psychists, druids, heirophants, transmogrifiers, shamans, teratists, wu jen, anagakok, bards, callers, houngan, hoodoun, templars, mystisc, runecasters or rune wielders, ymir, sortilegers, occultists, thaumaturges or thaumaturgists, fetishists, idolaters or idolatrices (singular idolatrix), witch doctors, medicine men, spirit walkers, spiritualists, exorcists, charmers, warlocks, diabolists, oracles, obiists (practicioners of obeah), juju, wanga, magisters, savants, mystic, animists, hermetics, yogi, transcendentalists, metaphysicists, paraphysicists, macabrics, qabbalists (also spelled with a c or k, with an apostrophe after the q, with only one b, or so forth), prophets, mediums (which I keep wanting to call media - hee, hee), woodwards, pishogues, archmages, channellers, maguses (singluar magus), augurers, mesmerists, odylicists, espers, empaths, horreurs, triskelists, lamia, ecstatica, clairvoyants, clairaudients (etc), mudunugu, preternaturalists, shinobi (no, that's *not* a ninja), sirens, ritualists, teleasthetics, numinists or numinates, isangoma, spellbinders, charmers, periapterers or periaptrices (singular periaptrix), tiki, ankhara, premonitionists, dowsers, psychometers, sibyl (I'm not sure how to pluralize that), Circeates, or crypticists. Some would add bard, fey, empath, esoteric, fakir, mystagogue, automatist, phrenologist, haruspicater or haruspex, glamourer, psychosophist, telergist, gypsy / romani / romany, gramyre, nephandist (white wolf players like to say nephandi), disciple, geist, demonologist (or daemonologist if you spell it magick), astrologer, Rosicrucian or Rosicusist, phylacterist, exsufflationist, hecate, occultist, numerologist, artificier, hag, theurgist, archon, heirarch, and apothecary to this list. However, each has either alternate meanings, or does not really mean wizard. Moreover, you can construct words for specific kinds of mage by ending in -mancer (caster of). Thusly, pyromancers are fire-weilding mages, hydromancers water weilders, psychomancers: mind, oneiromancers: dreams, etc. Be careful: some of these constructs have fallen into seperate use (geomancer doesn't always mean earth mage, as sometimes it's used to mean pattern mage or so forth). Also, you can get away with ending in -urge or -ist, if you construct carefully (hydrothurge, pyrotist), but that's not actually correct construction, I believe. However, as most of these names come from dubious backgrounds or non-English sources, you can generally Get Away With It (tm). Ending in -gnomy means "interpreter of" (I believe), which also often means spellcaster, when used with arcane topics - for instance, chirognomy is the study of the form of the hand (also called palmistry). Gee, can you tell that I'm a tabletop gamer? (sighs) Or maybe I'm a conviviomancer. IIRC, there are some *really* good lists in one of the core 2nd ed AD&D books with a whole bunch of foreign analogues listed for class names. I think I've missed most of them. There are more things in language and art, Horatio! than are dreamt of in your dictionary. (Sorry, Bill.)