[Scoop?] Libris Mortis: The Book of the Undead, from WotC

[Nightfall]

Well you knew Draconomicon COULDN'T be the only one...

 

[megamania]

ooohhhhh....awwww..... I can't wait. Time of release?

 

[Hypersmurf]

What do ablative, dative and genitive mean?

They're cases for nouns.

We don't really have an ablative or dative case in English. We do have a nominative and a genitive, and a lot of pronouns have an accusative case.

The nominative case is used for the "subject" of a sentence.

"I" is the nominative case of the first person singular pronoun in English. I only use it when "I" am the subject of the sentence.

The accusative case is kinda the object of the sentence. "Me" is in the accusative case.

I can't say "The dog bites I." The dog is the subject of this sentence; I'm the object, so I have to use the accusative case to refer to myself. This sentence is "The dog bites me".

The genitive case is for possessives. In English, we use apostrophe-S for the genitive singular, and S-apostrophe for the genitive plural.

I don't say "That is the dog ball"; I say "That is the dog's ball".

Pronouns in English have their own genitive case. "That is I dog" or "That is me dog" are both incorrect; "That is my dog" is correct.

Now, in English, we use the accusative with most prepositions. "Me" is what I use in all these sentences:

"The dog is with me."
"He took the dog from me."
"He bought the dog for me."
"She gave the dog to me."
"The dog comes to me."

In Latin, however, they would use the ablative form of "me" for the first two, the dative form of "me" for the second two, and the accusative form of "me" for the last one.

Example:

femina: woman
puella: girl
villa: house

femina villam puellae dedit. The woman gave the house to the girl.
femina villae puellam dedit. The woman gave the girl to the house.
feminae villam puella dedit. The girl gave the house to the woman.

The word with the -a ending is in the nominative case. The word with the -ae ending is in the dative case. The word with the -am ending is in the accusative case.

The nominative is who is giving; the accusative is what is being given; the dative is what (or who) it is being given to.

mortis is genitive - the possessive case. So it means "death's", or "of death".

The genitive singular of puella is puellae (yes, the same as the dative ). So "villa puellae" is "the girl's house", or "the house of the girl".

And Libris Mortis translates at the Books of Death, right?

Sort of Since Libris is either ablative or dative, it only really works in a clause that requires one of those cases.

puella in Libris Mortis est. The girl is in the Books of Death. (The preposition "in" is followed by the ablative case.)

But just saying "Libris Mortis" by itself is... odd.

-Hyp.

 

[D'karr]

And even more odd is the fact that the book is supposed to be about UNDEAD not the dead.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Nice to see someone at WotC finally paying attention.

I'll definitely pick this up; I'm a sucker for undead. If it has production values as high as Draconomicon's then I don't anticipate being disappointed.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

The undead suck at latin - it's, after all a dead language, not an undead one. Give'em a break.

A "coffee-table book" about undead sounds weird (that's what they said about the draconomicon), but a big fat complete book about undead would be a nice thing. Could be the second best thing after the Necrotelecomnicon (which tells you how to call the dead)

What I hope is in?

A comprehensive step-by-step description of your average lichdom ritual. (Insert knive a into virgin b)
a lot of sample zombies and skeletons

Lots of new and revised undead buggers

Something about how undead work

Info for the DM to make the players' life a(n un)living hell (feats, spells, tactics)

Tips for players how to fight undead, fight alongside undead, have undead companions and undead players

Nice coffin ads . Seriously, maps and descriptions about typical undead dwellings.

Deities of undeath and divine foes of the undead.

And a lot of vampire seductresses (for those who want to see how you can undead look good)

 

[EricNoah]

ooohhhhh....awwww..... I can't wait. Time of release?

Doesn't say. But we pretty much know the schedule up through about August/Sept so it must be after that.

 

[Saeviomagy]

What I hope is in?

I hope we see:

Templates for every undead that started out as something else.

Slow diseases that convert people into undead.

Rules for playing as undead (ie - what happens to a ghoul who's starving to death?)

 

[kilamanjaro]

In a recent interview Andy Collins said something about working on an October product that would "restore a sense of dread for the players". I'm sure this is it.

 

[Desdichado]

I think that might be a typo, though -- the other scoop thread that was just closed reported it as Librim Mortis. Of course, my Latin's really sucky, so I don't know if that's right or not. If only they were Russian cases!