Expulsions & Examples
And a special festive goose offer
This Week’s post looks at the power of specific ways of speaking in Bastion.
As you might expect, Bastion doesn't have an official language.
Who let the Mock Linguists in here?
Well yeah everybody can muddle through conversation through pointing and pantomime. That system of exaggerated gestures is as close to a common tongue as you'll get here.
So basically everybody can co-communicate a bit even if they're from distant boroughs or just got off the Deep Country Express.
Yes it is!
Sure, there are regional dialects. People revel in their local slang, lilts, and drawls. I reckon some ham it up to let you know where they're from. If the roof sweeper speaks like they grew up on the Slatefield then you might grant them the assumption of sure-footing and pay them a bit extra.
But now we're getting into Parlance.
No! This isn't like Cants or Codes. Those conceal a message.
Parlances enhance the message and maybe add a little extra.
Here are six of them. They can be learned, but those in the know will recognise a chancer from the real deal.
Parababble
Some will be keen to point out that Bastion is full of aliens, all of whom face some sort of barrier to communication. Parababble emerged from communities of Bastiards who found themselves dealing regularly with Aliens. Lots of familiar words, but pronounced at a strange pace, emphasising unexpected syllables and inserting hums between particularly long words.
Although it doesn't really aid in Bastio-Cosmo communication, it demonstrates to other people that you are the sort of person that roams in such circles. Maybe you're a little bit above all this human nonsense. You know, from the stars Bastion looks so small.
Actually that's not true, but that's a topic for another day.
Barlingo
A sort of branch of legalese with some bureaucratish and politican mixed in. Allows to very carefully, very precisely, say something truly reprehensible in a reversible manner.
You can quite plainly proclaim something that you'd never say out loud under normal circumstances and look around to see if anybody agrees with you. If somebody looks shocked or offended the whole meaning can be shifted with the addition of a word of two.
Yargon
This started as a joke. A load of fake, sarcastic technical terminology that you'd throw out when you didn't really understand what you were talking about.
Then some joker actually gave a load of those terms real meaning with a heavy dependency on context.
Now speaking Yargon means you absolutely do know what you're talking about... unless you're doing it in the old fashioned way... or in the newly-emerging ironic way.
Best to just let them get on with the job and see how it turns out.
Baztic
The ur-tongue of Bastion. So prestigious! You can see its influence in just about every dialect in the city and beyond. Words used in a bygone time, the legacy of our ancestors.
But it's just made up, really. You take some modern words and mess them around a bit. Make sure you stick your chest out when you speak.
Makes you sound educated and fancy to people who don't know better, but you'll embarrass yourself in front of anybody switched onto such things.
Punchbunk
There's way of talking as if you're tough. That might work on some people.
But Punchbunk is specifically a way of using slang and innuendo to describe how you're going to hurt somebody with such poetry that the words cause physical pain. They say it started in prisons, where inmates would shout such vivid descriptions between cells that they'd wake up bruised.
I don't know about all that, but there's certainly an art to the wounding word.
Trivel
A way of speaking that involves dropping as many references as possible to books, songs, esoteric history, just about any piece of trivia that you might hope somebody else recognises.
But there's no point if everybody recognises it. The dream result is that the other person recognises you've made a reference without fully understanding how it's relevant to what you're saying.
It puts them on the backfoot. They smile and laugh like they understand. Now you're winning the conversation!
As well as that y...
I was talking because this is my thing! This isn't your classroom.
I'm not even a student here!
Wait, when did we get here?
Wait, the Dean? Is that the one I saw in
Oh.
Elsewhere if you missed it the last few years, there’s a festive supplement for Electric Bastionland entitled The Twelve Failed Careers of Oddmas which is exactly what it sounds like.
It also has all of the rules for Electric Bastionland, so I guess it’s technically a standalone game!
It also dips into what Oddmas actually means in a place like Bastionland. As usual, nobody agrees.
Well this year I’ve dropped it down to half price at $2.99, so you can check it out at itch or drivethru (preferably itch if it’s all the same to you).
Enjoy!
Coming Soon
This week on Patreon I talked about what I want from an Example of Play.
It's easy to laugh or cringe at those old Examples of Play written like an amateur stage script or... worse.
The GM grins and grabs the d12. The players watch it in terror.
GM: Aha! Now the real danger begins.
There's a glimmer in the GM's eye. Everybody applauds.
Yeah I hate them too BUT I think a little informality goes a long way. Dare I say we should have examples of play where the GM makes mistakes? There are few GM skills more useful than knowing how to recover from a blunder or improvise your way out of a dead end.
The full post will go up next week, with a look at the Example of Play I’ve written for Mythic Bastionland.
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