GENERAL
Q: How do you pronounce all the names?
A: Ocera: oh-sair-uh (Like O'Sara)
Saruth: sa-rooth
Dechaerrim: dek-kay-reem
Teliah: teh-lye-uh
Harziyax: har-zee-yaks
Shicerbix: shee-sair-beeksh
Yaliretor: ya-leer-ey-tor
Igneous: ig-nee-us riss-ee-ose
Kerrigan: kair-reh-gun tra-vee
Dellos: del-lohs seh-nit-tee
Akizu: a-kee-zoo na-sock-oh
Elesonya: el-le-sone-yuh
Adeena: a-dee-na
Avanie: a-vawn-yay
Weis: "Vice"
Lauder: "Louder"
Boucher: boo-share/boo-sheah
Rahim: ra-heem
Q: Is Oceran a 'dark' language, like Mordor?
A: No, it's not magical at all. It acts like a bad memory trigger for Tim though. Others simply associate it with demonic, barbarian natives.
Q: Why are they 'demons'? Are they evil by default?
A: (Originally yes.) I hate the concept of any race being default anything. I can only accept animals being neutral by default since they don't possess the reasoning ability to make moral decisions and are incapable of genuine malice. Any thinking species, however, should run the full gamut of alignments. The slice of Theksarsi culture we've seen is a window of time at its absolute worst. They were once a more populous race, never hunting even for sport, revering their gods and nature, cultivating happiness because of their empathic powers.
Then their gods went dormant and seemed to abandon them, and over time they slowly lost interest and forgot about them. Then Harziyax happened. He utterly destroyed their civilization, their sense of community, their ability to trust each other. No one remembered what things used to be like, only his reign of terror. It's like he turned their whole world into little more than a prison facility without the guards.
Originally yeah they were just some generic hell-demons, in another story I wrote and never finished.
As to why they're unholy NOW: think of it as just another kind of elemental energy. They are attuned to fire and electricity and weak to ice. They're also attuned to unholy energy and weak to holy. I used to say that long ago one of their gods cursed the entire planet in a fit of spite, to make them weak to the very aura of their own deities, and maybe this is true but I haven't decided yet.
Q: What do all the names MEAN?
A: Dechaerrim: demon-offspring-half
Teliah: human-hand
Harziyax: scale-chin
Saruth: monarch-mercy (same meaning in Hebrew and Oceran)
Shicerbix: mother-death
Yaliretor: was supposed to be not-seen but... I messed up... it's not-seed
Rahim: (actually a real name, but this is the Oceran meaning) dog-half
Monica: advisor, truth (I picked it because of the 'mon'. Like de-mon.)
Igneous: a type of volcanic rock
Stead: home, place
Timber: strength of a tree
Audrey: noble strength
Elesonya: have mercy, and wisdom (Latin Eleison, taken from lyrics to "Lilium": "kyrie, ignis divine, eleison"/"O Lord, fire divine, have mercy"; and Greek Sonya)
Grace: grace... duh
Roger: spear
Kerrigan: apparently, 'black-haired'. Named because I needed a name, I looked at a chocolate milk bottle, carrageenan was an ingredient.
Travi: Travis without the S. Apparently, 'from the crossing or tollgate'.
Nilah: misery (Drow)
T'Puli: silver, white (Drow)
Richard: noble king, but named literally just to be Dick because it sounds like Dech
Lauder: gift-giver, but named after Harold Lauder from Stephen King's "The Stand"
Kenneth: handsome (lol)
Walters: army ruler
Any other names I don't feel like looking up or just don't have meanings anyway. (Akizu Nasako and Dellos Cenitti have no meanings. Dellos was named after the Dell computer because I was using one at the time.)
Q: What does all the Oceran MEAN?
A: Here is all the Oceran in its most literal translation.
Harzih! Bazi aerras ta-harzih? : "Scale! What kind of child possesses scales?!"
Harzih... eyax... Thaas bixibas... Harziyax... : "Scale... chin... My termination... Harziyax..."
Sisolyet! Yod, yod, yod tapir! : "Be silent! Tens of tens of tens of voices!" ("a thousand voices")
Yushaiyet! Batir thaas alirtiya zi bixibasyen? : "Stop! Why my sibling you have killed?"
Abap, thaas aerr. Hashadyet... apirsi. : "I am sorry, my child. [You] must go... far away."
Tatupi-bipel! : Coward-beetles!
Zi... : "You..."
Sisolyet! : "Silence!"
Zinutsi zixi bixibasi! Kavishirsi! Adashyet il apavyet! Kavishirsi! : "Little metallic deadly [one]! Slow! Come here and suffer! Slowly!"
Zi... : "You..."
Sisolyet! : "Silence!"
Rirran, aippha. : "Goodness, companion." ("good day, my friend")
Thaas tuvahas madim ziya, zeril thaas olra piripmiyet... : "My territory you are in, should my language learn..."
Abap. : "Sorry."
Yushaiyet! Tha -- : "Stop! I --"
Yu-- : "St--"
Abap. : "Sorry."
Tatupi-bipel! Thaya zi bix! : Beetle-cowards! I kill you!
Ocera: parent/planet (like Gaia/Mother Earth to us).
Theksarsi: demonic-monarch, demonym. "Thek" shares roots with "dech".
Dizastrusi: Oceran animal life.
Zitansi: Oceran plant life. Shares roots with "zi" ("you") and "zinut" ("little").
An interesting thing I noticed after writing it: when Dech kills his sibling and yells, "SHUT UP!", since that's in Oceran, he's screaming, "SISOLYET!" just like his father did on two occasions. Serendipity!
Q: What do all the other foreign language bits MEAN?
A: Okay, this is not proper French, but Babelfish French, so bear with my inetivable errors, illuminated Francophones. I THINK the German translated better, because the snippets were small and simple.
Gutentag. : "Hello."/"Good day."
Mon petit : "My little"
Wie gehts es? : "'How are you?"
Triste à Nourrir : "Sad enough to eat", a pun stolen from Camille's "Le Festin", originally "Triste à Mourir" meaning "sad enough to die".
Dieu malveillant, pourquoi avez-vous pris de moi? : "Malevolent god, why have you stolen from me?"
Au contraire! : "On the contrary!"
Mon beau : "My beautiful"
A-arrêter! : "S-stop!"
Mon femme rousse : "My redheaded wife/woman"
Au revoir. : "Goodbye."
Mon roux : "My red"
La Manche : "The Channel", French name for the English Channel
Q: So if they have namesense, what happens if two Theksarsi have the same name?
A: They don't, ever, in all of history. No two Theksarsi ever share names. It's part of their soul and the source of their empathic and telepathic powers. For this reason, Theksarsi are basically incapable of time travel even if they discovered the magic or tech to do it. They could never coexist with their past or future selves. They'd have to travel outside the scope of their lifetime. Otherwise, they blink out of existence in the attempt, or a god steps in to erase one of the duplicate names. (Yes, the gods can revoke names.)
Q: Do Theksarsi have an afterlife?
A: They have THREE afterlives, an evil, a good, and a neutral one, each dominioned over by a separate deity. The good and evil deities rotate every few millenia or so. The third, neutral one decides when to demote or promote the other two and is the god-spirit of the entire planet. It's basically their Mother Nature. The neutral afterlife is also where Dizastrusi souls go. The specifics of what the afterlives are like vary between which gods are in charge.
Q: Do all the Theksarsi live underground?
A: Mostly yes. They're uniquely adapted to subterranian life: red skin for camouflage, thick hides and magical immunity to damage so they can crawl around on the rocks, fire immunity so they can live way down close to the magma, toxin immunity so the sulphur gases and such don't kill them, x-ray vision and darkvision so they can see through rock and don't need light, and no need for food so they don't have to worry about hunting.
Q: What's Ocera's surface like?
A: Massive archipelagos of mostly tropical jungle, with lots of deserts and sandy beaches as well. Three moons, so really wacky tides. Lots of warm rainfall. Lots of intense seismic activity with a prominent mountain chain that's huge, red, sharp and jagged running over the caves where most of the story takes place. The trees are all freakin' huge. There is NO civilization except some semi-sapient Dizastrusi. The flowers are also huge. The plants tend to come in a lot of colors other than green because the sun takes a weird path and they get more light reflected off of the moons than the sun, in that particular region.
Q: Three moons?
A: Theksar, a big red one, Dizastr, a medium blue one, and Zitan, a small white one. Nights of Ocera are rarely without moonlight.
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