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<blockquote data-quote="monsmord" data-source="post: 8184885" data-attributes="member: 6876475">Good suggestions? Hrm. Not yet.Just a note that the name may not be the only thing to consider changing for publication. Are they dark-skinned? If so, the potential for criticism remains. You might spin it based on real-world examples of entirely subterranean species that lack pigmentation, making them pale almost to the point of translucence. That would deepen your well of descriptors quite a bit.But a uniformly &quot;evil race&quot; where they are all one colour and of limited variability might raise eyebrows, even if those colours are &quot;weird,&quot; as they may be viewed as proxies for real-world racist dogma. (Not saying this is or isn't fair, just that this criticism has been levelled before, as we've seen with orcs, etc.) Could you give them some variety in appearance (or background) and instead base their epithet on some other feature recognizable to outsiders, say a geographical one, cultural one, or some sign the corruption has left on them? Like, they're named after their home city or the entity they serve, they're known to forge and specialize in a culturally-unique weapon, their language includes unique phonemes, they permanently mark themselves in some extraordinary way to demonstrate fealty, they have a daily ritual that grants them racial abilities, their eyes look like gems (and the type may represent clan relationships), they only have four fingers on their hands, they have eerie glowing veins in their necks, etc.? (These are terrible examples for illustration only. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )Sure, post more about what you have. Sounds fun. I'm always down for some corruption.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="monsmord, post: 8184885, member: 6876475"] Good suggestions? Hrm. Not yet. Just a note that the name may not be the only thing to consider changing for publication. Are they dark-skinned? If so, the potential for criticism remains. You might spin it based on real-world examples of entirely subterranean species that lack pigmentation, making them pale almost to the point of translucence. That would deepen your well of descriptors quite a bit. But a uniformly "evil race" where they are all one colour and of limited variability might raise eyebrows, even if those colours are "weird," as they may be viewed as proxies for real-world racist dogma. (Not saying this is or isn't fair, just that this criticism has been levelled before, as we've seen with orcs, etc.) Could you give them some variety in appearance (or background) and instead base their epithet on some other feature recognizable to outsiders, say a geographical one, cultural one, or some sign the corruption has left on them? Like, they're named after their home city or the entity they serve, they're known to forge and specialize in a culturally-unique weapon, their language includes unique phonemes, they permanently mark themselves in some extraordinary way to demonstrate fealty, they have a daily ritual that grants them racial abilities, their eyes look like gems (and the type may represent clan relationships), they only have four fingers on their hands, they have eerie glowing veins in their necks, etc.? (These are terrible examples for illustration only. :) ) Sure, post more about what you have. Sounds fun. I'm always down for some corruption. [/QUOTE]

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