[Kanpur] Replacing Sharn on Kulan

[Knightfall]

Years ago, after discovering Eberron, I decided to add Sharn to World of Kulan as one of the group of city-states known as the Free Cities. Now, with my trust in WotC shaken, I'm excising official D&D locales from my game world. Sharn is one of the major pieces of WotC IP that has to go. Sure, WotC put the 5E rules in creative commons, but I feel they were forced to do that due to the storm that followed after they tried to take away the OGL.

I've already begun the process to remove anything that could be considered "dangerous fluff" to use for Kulan. While I doubt that WotC's lawyers will come after my little homebrew, I'd rather not risk angering the beast. Plus, I've always wanted to make Kulan more my own. No, I'm not planning on publishing it as a physical book but that could always change. I want to be ready to make the shift to the ORC licence or another open ruleset in the future.

So, Sharn has to go.

The names I've included in the poll were (mainly) generated using an online city name generator. They are just ideas at this point.

Cheers!

KF

 

[Knightfall]

@Aust Thale, @JustinCase, @MetaVoid, @Neurotic, @ScottDeWar_jr, @TaranTheWanderer, @Tellerian Hawke.

Thoughts?

---

Note that this change won't affect the current Bluffside pbp game (unless you guys are willing to make the change). Phelix will still continue to be from "Sharn"; however, my version of Sharn is already meant to be different. I might ignore entire parts of the Sharn book and create a homebrewed version of the city with all the serial numbers filed off. It will become completely homebrewed, eventually.

I'm not going to continue to refer to Sharn and the rest of the Free Cities as the "Dragonmarked Cities." Instead, the city-states are sometimes referred to as the "Dragonwalk Cities", but the Free Cities is going to be the main name for the group of city-states going forward.

I don't think I've mentioned the names of the other Free Cities in game.

 

[MetaVoid]

The poll names aren't evocative of anything so that's good to avoid the conflict with original name. For me, the name should reflect the culture of free cities (i.e. they should be names similarly, if you go for Shozen (vaguely japanese) all should be done like that).

Would something generic as Free Towers or Endless Towers or Vertical Metropolis be appropriate? Even as a poetic name like 'Jewel of the North' equivalent

 

[Knightfall]

The poll names aren't evocative of anything so that's good to avoid the conflict with original name. For me, the name should reflect the culture of free cities (i.e. they should be names similarly, if you go for Shozen (vaguely japanese) all should be done like that).

Would something generic as Free Towers or Endless Towers or Vertical Metropolis be appropriate? Even as a poetic name like 'Jewel of the North' equivalent

The names of the other Free Cities are as follows (from west to east): Gadir, Kyrae/Kyræ, Thaurus, and Jaen/Jæn. All of them, except Jaen, are coastal cities.

'Sharn' sits in between Kyrae and Thaurus. It's name never really fit with the other names. The other free cities have a northern northeastern Mediterranean vibe but with a fantasy twist. Well, that's how I view them. The Greek influences are obvious, but I already have a "Greek" region father east past several other city-states.

Each city-state will have a generic descriptive nickname. Whatever Sharn becomes, it will be a city of towers, but with a more unique city nickname. For now, I'm calling the new version of 'Sharn' simply "The City" until I come up with something better.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

The only thing is Shozen sounds vaguely familiar to me but I can't put my name on where I've heard it. Maybe the name of a character in something. So I might suggest you not use that.

Besides that, I don't have a specific suggestion. I've never really read any of the stuff written by or owned by WotC so all these names are just nebulous to me. I don't know anything of their flavour. The only advantage of having me suggest a name is that I'll remember how to spell it

 

[Neurotic]

Xesas sound kinda Greek.

google translate says Towers equals:
πύργων
pýrgon

 

[Knightfall]

Xesas sound kinda Greek.

google translate says Towers equals:
πύργων
pýrgon

Pýrgon, that interesting. Something to consider...

 

[Knightfall]

The only thing is Shozen sounds vaguely familiar to me but I can't put my name on where I've heard it. Maybe the name of a character in something. So I might suggest you not use that.

Besides that, I don't have a specific suggestion. I've never really read any of the stuff written by or owned by WotC so all these names are just nebulous to me. I don't know anything of their flavour. The only advantage of having me suggest a name is that I'll remember how to spell it

It does sound familiar. Maybe that's might be why I picked it as one of the options. It had nice sounding 'ring' to it. Besides, MetaVoid is right, it sounds vaguely Japanese and the Free Cities are not Japanese.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

It does sound familiar. Maybe that's might be why I picked it as one of the options. It had nice sounding 'ring' to it. Besides, MetaVoid is right, it sounds vaguely Japanese and the Free Cities are not Japanese.

Shozen might be the bad guy from Samurai Jack

 

[Knightfall]

Shozen might be the bad guy from Samurai Jack

That's Aku.