Twelve trees and green suns; refrences to a real world mythology?

[Bohandas]

Yes, I familiarized myself with the historical Virginia Dare after encountering these stories and TV shows but I've been unable to trace the origin of the depictions of her as being a witch (unless one of the media I cited is the origin, which is possible)

 

[Tonguez]

Yes, I familiarized myself with the historical Virginia Dare after encountering these stories and TV shows but I've been unable to trace the origin of the depictions of her as being a witch (unless one of the media I cited is the origin, which is possible)

Apparently in 1837 Eliza Lanesford Cushing wrote an article for a womens magazine that claimed that Virginia had survived Roanoke and how her "fair skinned beauty dazzled the swarthy indians, but Virginia remained chaste, keeping their uncontrolled passions at bay." This apparently spawned a whole series of legends about the fair Virginia surviving in the North Carolina wilderness, it then intersected with weirder theories about Roanoke (the people were taken to Fairyland, or by demons etc) and unfortunately 1830s race politics where "the first english baby born in the new world" became a symbol of America's 'Anglosaxon identity".

Even the more likely story that the Roanoke community found refuge with the Croatoan tribe on a nearby island gets twisted with claims that a evil shaman fell in love with Virginia but she rebuffed him and in revenge he changed her into a white deer - which can still be sighted today.
Theres also a 1908 novel that posits that Virginia Dare was the mother of Pocahontas.

So Virginia Dare is a survivor of a 'mysterious' (possibly supernatural) disappearance, has uncanny beauty and skill, remains 'pure' despite the lusty natives, and is celebrated as a pillar of "Merican" identity. - theres a whole lot of American colonial folklore weighing upon the baby girl from Roanoke.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Radium itself emits sufficient radiation to excite nitrogen in the air to glow, but that's much dimmer, and a pale blue color.

Bloody hell, I didn't know that and that certainly speaks to the sheer amount of radiation radium emits. You learn something every day! I thought I knew quite a lot about radium, too!

 

[Umbran]

Bloody hell, I didn't know that and that certainly speaks to the sheer amount of radiation radium emits. You learn something every day! I thought I knew quite a lot about radium, too!

Despite my own phrasing earlier, isn't really about the "amount" of radiation, but about its characteristics. It just happens to have a decay step with the right energy to excite nitrogen to glow. If each individual atom decaying released just a bit more or less energy, it wouldn't glow.

 

[Bohandas]

The Inspired from Eberron and the Dragonblooded from Exalted. They're both fake arhats. Do they have a common inspiration?

 

[Autumnal]

Chinese and Indian folklore. Still pretty current: Cui Jian, the godfather of Chinese rock, has a critical song about such types from the 1980s.

 

[Bohandas]

Here's another weird idea that shows up in a couple of places. In both Metalocalypse and the last two seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 there's a bit about water being used as a recording medium. Are they refrencing something?

 

[Tonguez]

Here's another weird idea that shows up in a couple of places. In both Metalocalypse and the last two seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 there's a bit about water being used as a recording medium. Are they refrencing something?

Sound is a series of pressure waves that travel through a medium, and water is an excellent conductor of sound. Theoretically if the vibration of water molecules could be captured and read then the sound would be reproduced.
But water is fluid and rapidly returns to equilibrium, no technology exists that can capture sound waves in water for long term recording.

 

[S'mon]

Green light is often used as an unnatural symbol of evil, see eg the Loc-Nar in the Heavy Metal movie. 12 is a holy number because it's so divisible, making it evil is a subversion. 13 ofc the reverse.

 

[S'mon]

Here's another weird idea that shows up in a couple of places. In both Metalocalypse and the last two seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 there's a bit about water being used as a recording medium. Are they refrencing something?

"Written on Water" is a metaphor for something that will pass quickly, that no one will remember. So this is a subversion.