Help me build a Vaulter vocabulary

[Vitruviansquid]

I'll soon be running an RPG set in the world of Endless Legend where my players will be Vaulters of one description or another. Vaulters are a people who originally came to the world in a spaceship crash, but have long since lost their technology and reverted to a more primitive, tribal society. They are insular, mostly live underground, and I have decided they enshrined strange, distorted bits of their old culture into their new.

For example, their word for "warrior" is "Marine," even though they have long since forgotten how to travel the stars or even oceans. They use the word "Captain" to refer to a tribal chief or king, "Officer" to mean a shaman or wizard, and the crossbows that they use have strange, nonfunctional parts that should really only make sense on a firearm. A "mess" is a sacred gathering place for friends and family where communal meals are had, and can be roughly analogous to a "hearth" in small cases or a "hall" for a powerful Captain.

So what other words would a tribal, primitive society use that might have be traced from an advanced interstellar navy?

[kieza]

All the tunnels on the same level make up a "deck."

Walls are called bulkheads.

For reasons they don't remember, all of their settlements have directions designated fore, aft, port, and starboard.

[Gildedragon]

Cabin: private space (often bedroom)
Berth: bedroom, bed, resting area
Pilot: wanderer, nomad
Ly (lee, derived from lightyear): roughly the distance that can be traveled in a day from dawn to dusk 10-30 miles depending if they have horses or not
Station: town
Bay: Big room
Mess: Communal lodge used for eating, and religious ceremonies
Fubar: Calamity
Eywol: Dead (if undead exist it might refer to the state of undeath as in "it looks like C, but it's eywol...")

probably need a term for children: Civvies?
outsiders, their main source of food, their key domesticates, and probably a couple terms for weapons... ordinance (or some corruption of) for arrows or spears (or spells if magic exists)

[kopout]

I"Officer" to mean a shaman or wizard,

Maybe "Scientist" instead. Have you read "The Integral Trees" By Larry Niven? It also has a society like the one you describe.Thats what they call the tribe's lore keeper.

A Servant or Slaveis called a Bot. A Bard is a Mora (From moral officer). Their creator deity (unless gods are real in this settling) is some version of the ship's name.

[Fri]

I think it'll be cool if the words have drifted but would still have obvious roots that your players can easily notice (and make them different in pronounciation as well).

Something like Mareen instead of Marine, Ficer instead of Officer, Capin instead of Captain, and so on.

[Knaight]

Keeping the idea of names reflecting ancestors trades way back in the day, but using high tech trades could work. You've still got your Millers and Smiths, but every so often you get someone with a last name like Geneticist or Hydrologist.

[Gildedragon]

Maybe "Scientist" instead. Have you read "The Integral Trees" By Larry Niven? It also has a society like the one you describe.Thats what they call the tribe's lore keeper.

A Servant or Slaveis called a Bot. A Bard is a Mora (From moral officer). Their creator deity (unless gods are real in this settling) is some version of the ship's name.

Brass is an elder of the group
Chit is either a standard unit of trade OR the act of trading itself "I'll chit you three hides for a week's rent"

a two intersected red stripes with four white dots in the corners indicates a herbalist or healer... or is used as a standard healing rune

Yayess (EAS): death

Garrison: the unmarried adult's home

Arendar (R&R): leisure, art, or sex

Grunt: person in general

[Vitruviansquid]

I have not read The Integral Trees, in fact, it's the first I've heard about it.

I like Guigarci's idea of using directions on a ship for non-ship situations. Vaulters are known to be traditionalist and superstitious, so on top of settlements having a fore and aft, It'd also be cool if they oriented all their settlements in the same direction as the original ship that crash landed (kind of like praying toward Mecca).

Knaight, I had an idea much like that, but I was thinking to make the great warring clans of Vaulters named after major sections of a spaceship. Clans would have names like Hydroponics, Armory, Quarters, Reactor, and such. All meanings behind these names have been lost to time, but it is important for the legitimacy of a clan to derive its name from words found in the original wrecked ship, sort of like a Greek king tracing his lineage to a heroic demigod.

[Gildedragon]

I have not read The Integral Trees, in fact, it's the first I've heard about it.

I like Guigarci's idea of using directions on a ship for non-ship situations. Vaulters are known to be traditionalist and superstitious, so on top of settlements having a fore and aft, It'd also be cool if they oriented all their settlements in the same direction as the original ship that crash landed (kind of like praying toward Mecca).

Knaight, I had an idea much like that, but I was thinking to make the great warring clans of Vaulters named after major sections of a spaceship. Clans would have names like Hydroponics, Armory, Quarters, Reactor, and such. All meanings behind these names have been lost to time, but it is important for the legitimacy of a clan to derive its name from words found in the original wrecked ship, sort of like a Greek king tracing his lineage to a heroic demigod.

It was Kieza not me that suggested the direction thing. As to warring clans... Nah have the "ship sections" be last names, lineages. Within one village one had several clans. Have there be taboos and customs around how clans mate, and how clan-affiliation is transfered. Some clans are by adoption, functioning as secret societies. There can be moieties "Enlisted" and "Settlers" for example. Two or three clans per moiety.