So back when I was much younger, before the first Protogen was activated, and the first Dutch Angel Dragon had manifested, Anthrocon had not yet broken 2500 attendees, and Uncle Kage had a full head of hair, I joined a D&D campaign played online over Avians.net IRC. Started in 2004, and played over OpenRPG and later Fantasy Grounds. At the time, the players all wanted to play birds, for some reason, but we decided against using the aarakocra (which at the time were four limbs, instead of the modern six-limb version). So the GM made the Thoradan, and the Asari, two closely allied races of bird people. Thoradan were human sized by the rules, and based on eagles, whereas Asari were halfling sized, and based on hawks. This is the origin of Kawheek as a character.
The campaign ended in 2007, as I recall. Mid-year or so. In late 2007, some game called “Mass Effect” released, also having a race called “Asari.” I had begun using Kawheek elsewhere as a roleplay character, and after the game released, I started to get frequent accusations of plagiarizing the word from the game. As I do not drive a Delorean, this has never been the case, and has been a bit of a pain point since. People are dumb. (I later learned that “asari” is also a word in Japanese for a type of edible clam, which makes the plagiarism accusation EVEN DUMBER).
But over time I’ve grown tired of this, and as I generally play the two races as a single culture, I’m debating dropping the Asari label. It’s too much effort to explain every time, “No, not those alien women, these bird people.” As both races are closely aligned, forming mixed villages, I’m beginning to wonder if it should just be something else. Like that they’re really one race overall, with large size and plumage variations. I’m not using this for Dungeons and Dragons anymore, and really the stat block was the biggest difference.
I’ve since also changed the Thoradan to “Thordani”, which I like better as a plural, and a name for the culture. Sometimes I use “Thorsari” (a portmanteau of Asari and Thordani) to refer to their villages, but I think it might just be time to sweep that vestige off the board.
Alternately, the other idea I have is to use the term “Faenyan” as both races worship Faenya as their creator and patron goddess, but that might be better reserved for the faith itself…and also, that might be narratively constraining as a race name if I use them in non-fantasy settings at some point.
Stuff to think about, at least! Figure out a new way forward. Got thoughts? Blogsquawk@vershaft.com
-Arrow