I find myself with not only quite a bit of spare designing time staring me in the face, but also with a decided bug to start something new, and tons of energy to devote to the project.
This will in no way take away from the Castle of the Archmage core levels; I’m back on track to get a level out each month, and that will take priority; I anticipate being done with the core levels 2-13 by Autumn.
So what does this entail? Well, it’s going to be a TON of work. I expect that if I continue at a fairly good clip, I’ll be working on it for at least the better part of 2010. I am hesitant to go into any more detail, but it’s something that speaks to my particular background, strengths, and skills, and it’s going to be a blast. Oh, and it has something to do with gaming. But, since I posted this here and not someplace else, you probably already figured that out.
The reason I’m hesitant to spill any details is that I don’t want to go great-guns for two months, and then get sick of the thing, and have all sorts of expectations hanging over me. Once it looks like there’s light at the end of the tunnel (or at least parts of it), I will reveal more of the nature of the beast.
Why “shibboleth”? I found this Random Word Generator and that’s literally the first thing that came up as an “uncommon noun”. Read nothing into it other than that.
Exciting!
Curiouser and curiouser….
Allan.
The term Shibboleth originates from the Hebrew word "shibbólet" (שִׁבֹּלֶת), which literally means the part of a plant containing grains, such as an ear of corn or a stalk of grain or, in different contexts, "stream, torrent". It derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect lacked a /ʃ/ sound (as in shoe), from Gileadites whose dialect did include such a sound.
In the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead inflicted a military defeat upon the tribe of Ephraim (around 1370–1070 BC), the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the Jordan River back into their home territory and the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. In order to identify and kill these refugees, the Gileadites put each refugee to a simple test:
“ Gilead then cut Ephraim off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever Ephraimite fugitives said, 'Let me cross,' the men of Gilead would ask, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he said, 'No,' they then said, 'Very well, say Shibboleth.' If anyone said, 'Sibboleth', because he could not pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell on this occasion. ”
—Judges 12:5-6, NJB
(From Wikipedia [of course])…
A Gygaxian 2nd edition, maybe..?
That would indeed be a ton of work.
🙂
Oh, man, Joe! You guessed it.
Actually, I believe in the 1e Greyhawk box set in the map there is a city called 'shiboleth' around the Gran March.