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LOTRfan
2010-12-12, 11:04 PM
Alright, I have a holiday one-shot coming up, where the players will be playing either anthropomorphic reindeers or house elves (like in Harry Potter). Problem is, I need a name for the race of reindeer.

So far, I'm thinking about Markku. Markku actually has real-life connections to Reindeer (similar to the Onager anthropomorphic donkey in Savage Species), and it acts as an easter egg for those who know their Finnish geography.

Any other suggestions?

Acanous
2010-12-12, 11:10 PM
isn't there already an anthro reindeer in some anime? They must have names >.>

Scoot
2010-12-12, 11:17 PM
isn't there already an anthro reindeer in some anime? They must have names >.>

You're thinking of Chopper from One Piece, perhaps.

A reindeer that ate the Hito Hito no Mi (Human-Human Fruit), turning him into a human hyrbrid.

You could possibly take something from one of those two names.

Winter_Wolf
2010-12-12, 11:19 PM
I'm super lazy so I'm just going to use translate.google.com, English -> other language, "reindeer":
Icelandic: hreindýr
Norwegian: reinsdyr
Swedish: renar
Finnish: poro
Russian: severnyĭ olenʹ

I like the Swedish and the Russian, personally. This is just a down and dirty way to do things on the fly. I've done essentially the same thing with Japanese and Chinese language for anthropomorphic beast men in my own campaign. People have either not gotten the reference and thought it was cool, or have gotten the reference and thought it was cool. Or they were lying to spare my feelings. :smalltongue:

Zergrusheddie
2010-12-12, 11:21 PM
Rudolfians?

Jarrick
2010-12-12, 11:25 PM
LOTRfan, My Christmas special is going to have toy-making elves (That is, standard dnd elves that happen to make toys). Our two factions should go to war over a certain piece of polar property. :smalltongue:

Make sure you include a Reindeer-folk Warlock that flies and fires eldrich blasts from his shiny nose. :smallbiggrin: This might be my next character.

Also, I want the stats for these when you're done. :smallwink:

The Rose Dragon
2010-12-13, 12:00 AM
Rudolfians?

Actually, there are nine different races of the species. Rudolfians are to the reindeer like drow are to the elves.

Coidzor
2010-12-13, 12:17 AM
Blitzmen. :smallbiggrin:

Though Renar-jin is delightfully mish-mashy.

JaronK
2010-12-13, 12:22 AM
Make an evil undead version. Call it a Paindeer. Tada!

JaronK

dgnslyr
2010-12-13, 12:27 AM
Sleighers? Sounds very Chaotic Evil...

Of course, you asked for a PC race, which usually means a good/neutral campaign, but I couldn't resist.

WinceRind
2010-12-13, 12:30 AM
R'udolf.

>_>

Okay, R'uud Olfe.

In all seriousness, it depends too much on the setting. Because if you consider a lot of things even in D&D, they might not make sense if seen from a non-human-centric point of view.

I mean, halflings wouldn't call themselves halflings, would they? For them that is the normal height. If they'd come across humans the first time, they'd probably call the latter giants.

Same logic applies to your race. If their race name comes from another race/culture, even reindeer or some lame pun on it works fine. Or something else related to their general look - if they have antlers, incorporate that. Antlermen or whatever.

If you want to go deeper and create their own race name, then it can be literally anything. You could base it on whatever creation myth or any other significant cultural ideas they might have, but seeing how this is a one shot campaign I don't think you should bother. They could call themselves "Children of Winter", or something, for example, but still be called "Reindeer" by everyone else.

I mean, dwarves and halflings MUST have their own names for their races, so eh.

WinceRind
2010-12-13, 12:34 AM
Sleighers? Sounds very Chaotic Evil...

Of course, you asked for a PC race, which usually means a good/neutral campaign, but I couldn't resist.

Sleighers, a horrible mutant slave race created by an evil lich S'anta Claws to serve as bodyguards and workers. Bred to survive the toughest coldest weather, granted with supernatural powers by their master through horrible rituals, they're a formidable foe indeed.

Perfect flight maneuverability with FTL flight speed, gore attack, ability to shoot lasers from their noses every 1d4 rounds doing 2x character level d10 damage, half of which fire half vile.

Yeaaaaah.

Coidzor
2010-12-13, 12:39 AM
Me, I'm now imagining shotgun toting, cigar chomping greaser moose-kin mowing down families of elves with their pockets full of shells. x,x

dgnslyr
2010-12-13, 12:51 AM
These foul beasts adorn their armor with the skulls of the slain, with humanoid teeth inside to create the rattling of bone on enamel. Over time, the people who live in the shadow of these terrors began to refer to the blood-chilling rattles as "Slay-Bells," after the massacres left in the wake of the Sleighers.

BridgeCity
2010-12-13, 01:05 AM
Caribeings.

Jjeinn-tae
2010-12-13, 01:16 AM
Sleighers, a horrible mutant slave race created by an evil lich S'anta Claws to serve as bodyguards and workers. Bred to survive the toughest coldest weather, granted with supernatural powers by their master through horrible rituals, they're a formidable foe indeed.

Perfect flight maneuverability with FTL flight speed, gore attack, ability to shoot lasers from their noses every 1d4 rounds doing 2x character level d10 damage, half of which fire half vile.

Yeaaaaah.

Just for fun... SCIENCE:


? ? ? ? ? After much research we present the annual aeronautical engineers report on the theory of Santa:
? ? ? ? ? ? No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300000 species of living organisms yet to be classified and while most of these are insects and germs this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
? ? ? ? ? ? There are 2 billion children (persons under 1 in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim Hindu Jewish & Buddhist children that reduces the workload to 15% of the total -378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children/household that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes that there's at least one good child in each. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits/second. That is to say that for each Christian household with good children Santa has .001 second to park hop out of the sleigh jump down the chimney fill the stockings distribute the remaining presents under the tree eat whatever snacks have been left get back up the chimney get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.
? ? ? ? ? ? Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which of course we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept) we are now talking about .78 miles/household a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting stops to do what most of us do at lease once every 31 hours plus eating etc. So Santa's sleigh must be moving at 650 miles/second 3000 times the speed of sound.
? ? ? ? ? ? For purposes of comparison the fastest man-made vehicle on earth the Ulysses space probe moves at a pokey 27.4 miles/second. A conventional reindeer can run tops 15 miles/hour. If every one of the 91.8 million homes with good children were to put out a single chocolate chip cookie and an 8 ounce glass of 2% milk the total calories (needless to say other vitamins and minerals) would be approximately 225 calories (100 for the cookie give or take and 125 for the milk give or take). ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? Multiplying the number of calories per house by the number of homes (225 x 91.8 x 1000000) we get the total number of calories Santa consumes that night which is 20655000000 calories. To break it down further 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories. Dividing our total number of calories by the number of calories in a pound (20655000000 / 3500) and we get the number of pounds Santa gains 5901428.6 which is 2950.7 tons.
? ? ? ? ? ? The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 lb.) the sleigh is carrying 321300 tons not counting Santa who is invariably described as overweight. On land conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300lb.
? ? ? ? ? ? Even granting that 'flying reindeer' (see #1) can pull 10 TIMES the normal amount we cannot do the job with 8 or even 9 reindeer. We need 214200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353430 tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth. 353000 tons traveling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance.
? ? ? ? ? ? This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short they will burst into flame almost instantaneously exposing the reindeer behind them and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within .00426 of a second. Meanwhile Santa will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa being very conservative in terms of guessing Santa's weight would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4315015 lb. of force. If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve he's dead now.


As for something on topic... I second the Russian word for Reindeer: severnyĭ olenʹ

WinceRind
2010-12-13, 01:18 AM
On the darkest night of the year, their dark master reigns them into a dire sleigh, and rides into the world of men. On this night, even the gods are powerless to stop their carnage!

Moving faster then thought, S'anta Claws and his horrible minions scourge the world... The screams of their victims fill the air, but there's no-one to hear or help. Their blood spills upon the snow, and colours the pristine lich's body red as he feasts upon their lifeless bodies! Their heads are collected in a giant sack, to be used as a decoration for the sleighers fearsome armor in next year's raid...

Only with the dawn the survivors overcome their fear and come from hidings to witness the devastation, yet powerless to stop it.

Hell yes, this would make a cool plot for a campaign...

WinceRind
2010-12-13, 01:23 AM
Just for fun... SCIENCE:




As for something on topic... I second the Russian word for Reindeer: severnyĭ olenʹ

On the matter of your spoiler, that's why I mentioned their faster-then-light flight capabilities =p

And sadly "severnyi olen" just means northern deer (or whatever you call those animals, caribou? Northern caribou could work too) and honestly seems kind of awkward for a race name. But maybe it's just me.

In my opinion, any kind of play on words or pun or even fleeting mention of "stag" in the name would be pretty cool. And not to bring up my previous post, something like "Children of Winter" as an inter-racial race name, and, hell, "stagheads" or "reindeers" as the "normal" race name would work just fine.

Jjeinn-tae
2010-12-13, 01:27 AM
The faster than light travel was what made me dig through my email to myself to find it. Your Sleighers need a lot of fire resist though...

dgnslyr
2010-12-13, 01:30 AM
Pity the catgirls slain on what should be a time of joy...

WinceRind
2010-12-13, 01:35 AM
The faster than light travel was what made me dig through my email to myself to find it. Your Sleighers need a lot of fire resist though...

Just fire immunity should be enough. And it's not like it's very hard to achieve.

Now when it comes to other obstacles like... well, everything aside from friction which could be dealt with fire immunity and incredible DR/ Fast healing/ regeneration, that's where the real problem starts.

WinceRind
2010-12-13, 01:36 AM
Pity the catgirls slain on what should be a time of joy...

More blood to keep S'anta jolly and his trappings red!

Coidzor
2010-12-13, 01:41 AM
Pity the catgirls slain on what should be a time of joy...

Pity? No. Thank. Their holiday sacrifice will be what fills our bellies to help us last through the winter.