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

[Dark Jezter]

Pokénomicon.

Pikachu varata nicktos!

 

[johnsemlak]

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".



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.

Very good latin lesson Brings back memories.

I personally would argue with you where you say we have a genitive case in English. I think we have a possesive case. We only use possesive forms to show, well, possetion. The Genitive case (in Latin and other langauges like Russian) has uses besides possession.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I personally would argue with you where you say we have a genitive case in English. I think we have a possesive case.

Sure. But it didn't seem necessary to get that picky for the purpose at hand

-Hyp.

 

[Li Shenron]

It would be nice if this book contained some more ideas or variants about how do undead come to unlife, because it quite sucks that most of the undead are always spawned from creatures killed by an undead of the same type or otherwise animated by evil clerics or necromancers.

 

[KingOfChaos]

Hmm

I don't know whether to be irritated or extremely happy. Help! Moment of crisis!

Also, shouldn't it be Libris ex Mortis? Book of the Dead? As it is, its currently entitled 'book dead'

 

[Dark Jezter]

Hmm

I don't know whether to be irritated or extremely happy. Help! Moment of crisis!

Also, shouldn't it be Libris ex Mortis? Book of the Dead? As it is, its currently entitled 'book dead'

Maybe the title was picked by A Silent Wail.

Two points if you catch the reference.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

They should have zombies with tentacles coming out of their head, not like Mind Flayers, but just coming out of everywhere. Cause I once had a dream where zombies with tentacles coming out of their head killed an astronaut that was on the moon. They just came out of nowhere and ate his brains.

 

[Gez]

If the title was picked by the "silent whale", then the book is for the d02 system.

 

[Ranes]

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

Lots of good ideas for the book here. But I will only buy it and the Draconomicon once I've restored my cashflow > sense status. Then again, that shouldn't really be too difficult...

I enjoyed the Latin lesson, too. Thanks for the scoop.

 

[Gez]

I don't think it's a blunder by Paizo, there's a feat from the book in the newest installment of the adventure path. The feat is pretty sweet for evil clerics, it makes negative energy heal you and positive energy hurt you.

Especially sweet for wizards and sorcerers. They have spells that deal negative energy damage.