Fantasy Backstory Help

So, there's a fantasy story I'm working on (I say "story" because I'm not sure whether it's going to be a single book or more than one), and I'm having some issues working out the backstory of the world's mythology. What I have so far in terms of backstory is this:

The story starts with a titanic battle between two powerful Main/Precursors, one representing Order and the other representing Chaos. The one representing Order prevailed, sealing the other one in a parallel dimension called the Reflection World and splitting itself four beings called the Sentinels to prevent it from escaping. Like that would ever happen. Cut to thousands of years later. The Wall Between The Worlds, which separates the physical world from the Reflection World, is starting to crumble and even the Sentinels are unable to do anything about it. As the Wall starts to crack, powerful Eldritch Abominations emerge into the physical world—these are the Emissaries, representatives of the original Chaos being. When the shit REALLY hits the fan, an entity known only as "the Lurker" gets involved. This Humanoid Abomination shows up to menace our hero when it starts getting close to his goal, which is to defeat the Emissaries and return the Wall to its original state. Also accompanying the hero—but as a friend—is a young woman who is actually the original Order being in a mortal form.

I still have some rough patches here, though. For example, what should I name these beings? I want the names to sound "consistent", like they all came from the same fictional language. What should my main character's motivation for trying to fight the Emissaries be? Any suggestions?

The story sounds every so slightly Troperiffic (not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you), so when naming stuff, you probably want to avoid Tolkienesque names, like "Aelion", or Finadral" or whatever, because then it'll be a gauntlet of standard fantasy plot and standard fantasy names. Maybe pick a real-life language that you like the sound of and compose some words from its sounds? You'll certainly get consistency with that approach.

As for the possible motivations:

• It's the character's job (maybe he's a warrior monk whose order trains to fight Chaos or something?)
• He's teh Chosen One
• The Emissaries wrecked his home town, and now it's revenge time
• He's the champion of his country (crown prince, greatest warrior, master sorcerer)
• His Order Reborn friend asks him to help her
• He's the Right Man in the Wrong Place when Emissaries first appear, and he decides to do something about it
• He's the Right Man in the Wrong Place when some great Emissary-banishing power is being dispensed, and he gets this power
• He starts getting visions of the world's end for one reason or another
• His Order Reborn friend starts getting visions of the world's end and he accompanies her to help her prevent it
• He's investigating a crime of some sort that turns out to have been perpetrated by the Emissaries and uncovers a bigger threat than he'd thought

The Born. Born of nothing. The Null'mu, to whom the question of life does not apply.

The hero is fighting solely to go home, and no one told him he actually has a goal besides "go home and have a slice of pie." I figure, it'd be more interesting if this story was short on explanation and from the POV the reader can see, it's just weird things happening that might not even be connected to each other. So the hero is an Action Survivor who is trying to get himself and his friend (who doesn't remember that she's Order) home safely, having gotten stuck somewhere in between The Worlds.

Anytime I need another/new language, I run an IRL language through Japanese pronunciation and then mangle that into written English.

I was giving the protagonist's culture a language based on Hawaiian or Maori. Can't think of many fantasy settings that use those after all.

As for Tolkien similarities, there aren't as many as you might think based on the summary I gave. For starters, the setting is mostly Steampunk/early 20th century in terms of technology. There are steam-powered Humongous Mecha, giant airships, biplanes, and other such technologies.

The species also aren't the stereotypical "Tolkien-lite" Five Races, but some that I came up with myself, such as Koreenians (long-tailed rabbit-like humanoids with a Wild West-type society), Mantakhans (intelligent bipedal felines with venomous quills), Ju'utexians (asexually-reproducing Always Female Lizard Folk), and Krasyth (a race of pirates and raiders who resemble human-sized mantis shrimp).

As for the Emissaries, they're more or less Eldritch Abominations that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion or Puella Magi Madoka Magica. In fact, there are a lot of Evangelion references in this story: for example, the woman who accompanies the hero is a clear Rei Ayanami Expy.

So, in other words, nothing like a stereotypical Medieval European Fantasy at all.

edited 17th Jul '17 7:47:14 PM by ElSquibbonator

Is the culture the protagonist is from also based on Pacific Island culture? Otherwise I'd avoid basing their language and names on Pacific Islander languages and names. In fact, I'd kinda recommend people who aren't Pacific Islanders themselves stay away from any 'borrowing' from Pacific Islander culture at all.

Because Pacific Islanders have been one of the few cultures fucked over by colonialism lucky enough to not have their culture dismantled for scrap parts to be used as 'exotic' elements in the very western stories of their very western descendants of the former oppressors of their ancestors. (Aside from the occasional misplaced Tiki thrown into otherwise fully African/Caribbean ersatz cultures... And Bionicles.)

OK. Scratch that. Any other suggestions? It wasn't actually going to be a real language, I was just going to base it on the patterns found in one. All I know is that I'd prefer it be a non-European language. I spent three weeks in New Zealand last year, so that's sort of colored my preferences a bit.

edited 17th Jul '17 8:49:25 PM by ElSquibbonator

Well, if you were just going to use Māori and Hawaiian (or the Polynesian language group in general) phonemes and word structures, that's probably more ok, but I'd still recommend pilfering from a wider range of languages.

Else your new language will sound, to a reader who speaks a Polynesian language, like a bunch of gibberish in their own language, rather than a separate language. (Personally my native language is Dutch and on a forum I used to visit I once read a story by a Filipino writer who'd created a conlang out of Dutch patterns and phonemes. To all the other writers on the forum it read and sounded like a real foreign language. To me it read and sounded like it belonged somewhere in the middle of a Lady Gaga song.)

I kinda disagree, since that refusal can cause certain insolation that only breed more misunderstanding but that is off the topic anyway.

Anyway, maybe he should be use titles or nickname? abomination work better than way because it based in what they can do, rather in make them chararter with robe the of their mistic aura.

The monster design is a completely different issue. It's the language that I'm having trouble with right now. I want it to not be obviously identical to any real-world language, and preferably not too similar to a European language since I don't want this to come off as "Tolkien-lite".

Some other possibilities for "inspiration languages" I've been tossing around are Chinese and possibly some kind of Mayincatec. I should probably point out again that these would just be inspirations, the actual words wouldn't be from any real language.

Yeah, that's why I recommend taking inspiration from multiple languages. Taking inspiration from only one language will inevitably lead people who speak that one language to recognise that you're using the 'Swedish Chef' version of their language. Using complementary elements from multiple languages is more likely to lead to it feeling like an actual language.

OK, gotcha. In that case, I have a new question. Do you have any advice for how I can make a language that doesn't sound like it's cribbed from a real one, especially not a European one?

.... Yes. It's the one I've given twice already: Take elements from multiple different languages and combine them.

Or try this web service!

https://www.vulgarlang.com/index.html

It's a language generation program that you can demo and it generates like 200 words of a made up and non appropriated language.

Check it out!

edited 18th Jul '17 8:53:33 PM by Strontiumsun

Thanks!