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so we found the notebook full of ikenfell naming research! y’all almost had “Ixenveil”, “Ikenvell”, and my favourite... “Yeiastervel”
some early logo scribbles once we’d chosen the name. don’t ask why there is a goat in the corner, I HAVE A PROCESS.
amongst the naming notes is this page of ancient celebrated holidays. we were brainstorming what sort of thing things this world would celebrate, and if any of them might play a role in the story.
pretty sure “Aeldra” was one of the first names we liked, and its meaning “lives at the elder tree”, suited the headmistress well, who was intended to be a gardening/plant witch who ran a very green school. You can also see “Bax” on here, which simply means “Baker”.
here you’ll see “Gilda” (which obviously means “golden”, and suits the character well), and “Harac”. Harac is actually the first name of the duelling teacher, professor Radegund, but i think the first name actually never made it into the game’s text, so it’s not canonical.
here you’ll find “Ifig”, which means “Ivy”, another gardening witch, and Aeldra’s partner. also “Maeret”, “Oxley”, and “Rook”.
oh, also “Stoc”, the name of the innkeeper.
another page, narrowing down on some names we liked. at the very end, we decided on the starting character, “Maritte”. a form of “marines”, which means “Of the Sea”. i’ll explain that one...
Maritte originally was intended to be enamoured by the sea, and actually Safina’s precious wand (alluded to in the game) was a whale-bone wand given to her by maritte, which is why it was so precious. none of these details made it into the final text.
in ikenfell, “wands” can be any object, really. maritte’s is a handy pocket knife she carries, pertisia’s is a mirror... for story reasons i will not spoil here. ima uses a paintbrush. the more precious, treasured, nostalgic and historic an object is, the better a wand it makes.
so naturally, Safina’s wand: the bone of a majestic creature, found and carved by a sister she loves, and travelled a great distance, is notably quite powerful. but... only for her, it’d be lesser in the hands of another.
here you can see we really liked “Rekka”, which i think was the main character’s name before we came up with the ocean-stuff, at which point we liked Maritte (“Pearl”) more. i think maritte also had several different meanings, which i liked. also, Safina first appears here.
i know we also had a couple pages of notes of item/equipment name ideas. illl see if i can find them! i remember that ima’s brush, called “Art is Hard”, is one of the first i came up with, and set the tone for how i decided to name the objects in the game.
and by this i mean: most equipment and wands in the game aren’t named after what they *are*, but rather named after their *nature*. some idea associated with them. often tongue-in-cheek, another thing that gives objects power.
there are a bunch of story planning notes i won’t post, but we are HOWLING at the triple-appearance of “BIG ORB” throughout these notes. if you’ve played the game, you know that this aforementioned orb plays a fairly important role in the plot.
also, the FIRST story notes for the most popular character, Gilda! simply:
- duelling gim
- HAVING HER MOMENT
- mid season witch *POWER TRIP*
- duelling gim
- HAVING HER MOMENT
- mid season witch *POWER TRIP*
it is hilariously appropriate that this sentence just cuts off abruptly (i assume we stopped writing and started about the details of this situation)
the entire sister-idolizing angle was dropped completely, but i love how ominous this cutoff is. if you know anyone hint about the nature of safina’s work in the game, then it works on so many levels.
