FAQ

Foundation

What is this wiki ?

This is the Linguomancy wiki ; a personal project I had in the back of my mind for years, since 2022. It's concept actually predates this date. What you see in front of your eyes is almost a decade worth of conceptualizing and almost a full year worth of designing, coding, writing and drawing condensed into a wiki. I'm definitely proud of it !

Why did you make this ?

Back in my teens, in around 2014, I had this idea to create my own magic system for fun ; inspired by the likes of Skyrim, Pokémon and other systems in video games. The goal was to encompass every single superpower I could think of into a singular magic system, all while making it make sense. Over time, more ideas appeared, and the scope kept growing : the idea of Nouns and Verbs were born, despite lacking the term and lore for it. I managed to create an entire Excel sheet of 600+ unique spells from them. For fun.


The sheet eventually became too crowded and couldn't even catalogue lore, so I aimed to make a wiki site for myself in 2021, entirely coded myself. However, due to how gargantuan that task was, and with other hobbies having arrived in my life, I put it on the back burner.


In April 2025, I posted concept art for this magic system on my Tumblr account. It had substantial approval, with the readers asking me to either see the sheet or finish the wiki. Since I had to balance other hobbies, I decided to scrap the self-made site idea and instead host it on Worldanvil.

What's the scale of this wiki ? What do you plan on cataloguing ?

For now, I plan to release the wiki once it reaches a presentable state : The main part of the lore, Nouns and their Nuances, Verbs, Adjectives, and enough Idioms to showcase at least one of each Verb and Noun.
The final goal, however, is to fill out the entire array of Idioms (that's 900+ spells !) along with adding more details to the cultural background of Nouns and Verbs.

Who are you ?

You may call me Gurlu. I'm mostly a game dev, artist and writer, but I'm passionate about anything creative. This site hosts my magic wiki, but I use other sites to showcase my art and original characters. You may be interested in my Strawpage, where you can find all of my links.

Grandmaster Gurlu

       

What do you plan to use this with ?

I used to make this entire concept purely out of passion. It's just really fun to create ! Over time, I finally decided to attach some of my original characters to this system and world building. Other than that, I don't plan on doing much more out of it, but who knows what the future might bring !

What's next ? Is there more in store ?

Not much, depends on if I'm done with filling all the 900+ Idioms yet. I could elaborate more on the world building elements outside of magic usage itself, like maps, species and characters, but I'll be plenty satisfied with just the magic part done. I suppose it fully depends on if I want to put more time into making this wiki instead of partaking in another hobby !

Where to start ? In what order should I read the articles ?

This article is a good place to start, it explains all the lore associated with the magic in this world and how this ties to spell casting. Up next is this article, explaining how spell casting actually works. Other than that, you're free to explore to your heart's content ! The wiki was made to redirect articles between one another and explain each element as if it was your first time reading them. Don't hesitate to hover your mouse over things you don't understand (or press and hold on your phone ; though that might not work well if it's a link) ! There are a lot of tooltips to help you understand what you are reading.

Contact & Usage

Can I use this with my art / OC / projects ?

Sure ! So long as it credits me, is not for commercial use, and is not derivative. Sorry if this is a harsh rule, but I rather take no risks. I am fine with using and repurposing the spells or RPG sytem, but I am especially intransigent when it comes to doing that with the lore or sigils.
If there's any doubt, you can always contact me.
I at least hope this project can inspire you ; I'd be delighted to see what you can cook up with it !

Can I play this in a TTRPG ?

While the spells were thought out to be used in a TTRPG setting, only the RPG elements surrounding the spells themselves were actually thought of. Creating an RPG system to make them actually fully playable was sadly out of scope. While the implementation of the spells seem detailed, some finer aspects of the RPG system outside of spell usage is still too blurry to be utilized as is. You can definitely get inspired by them if you want !


I mostly focused on what the spells themselves would need, mostly the battle resource economy and roll system. The RPG system was made after the spells in order to incorporate them as best as I could. TTRPG systems closest to Linguomancy's are Pathfinder and DnD, as they uses similar concepts and resources ; so it might be easier to translate the spells into these systems. You may also find it difficult to try anything with the spells' values, since they use ratios over pure values to quantify things like damage.

How can I contact you ?

You may shoot me a DM on any of my socials. Just make sure I don't mistake you for a bot !

How can I support you ?

If you want to throw a compliment, the Worldanvil comment section works for that ! If you want to financially support me, you can check out my Kofi.

Is this game system balanced ?

I tried to make the Idioms balanced, along with the battle system economy. However, this is my first time making a TTRPG system, I'm not that experienced with playing TTRPGs, and there are more than 900 spells in total. I definitely cannot guarantee there are no exploits or broken mechanics, but it was definitely fun to try !

Can I provide translation ?

I'd love to have it translated, but I have no experience with handling this kind of translation project. As far as I'm aware, Worldanvil can't even host pages in multiple languages. I would've translated everything in French myself otherwise ! With that in mind, I'd be interested to hear how you'd manage to provide a solution and how it would even be organized, so feel free to contact me !

Feedback

There are a lot of Idioms that are missing on the table !

That means I'm not done filling them out yet ! Due to the sheer number of them, I decided to open the wiki to the public before I finished this task. The goal is to fill everything in the end !

I find this sentence / paragraph / article difficult to understand...

I tried to make it so that all relevant information is shown in articles, so that you'd still understand even if you ended up on it first. Make sure you checked those elements ! There are links and tooltips everywhere. Make also sure that you've read the introductory article if the uncertainty is lore related.
I also try to get my work reviewed by people who aren't familiar with it in order to avoid fuzzy sentences like that, but obviously there can always be bugs passing through the filters. Feel free to contact me if all else fails ; I'd like to fix that as soon as I can.

I found a typo !

A single typo in the middle of a well prosed text can immediately ruin immersion ; truly the greatest of evils ! Feel free to contact me so I can fix it.

This wiki / thing reminds me of this other thing !

I get comments like that sometimes.
I get inspiration and references from many things around me in order to build a solid foundation, but the final goal was to build upon this system ; making it unique and original in my own way. I wanted to be proud of it, a work that can stand out from the rest. No work is truly original, there's always something else that borrows similar themes or inner workings, intentionally or not.

Why is there French translation in some articles ?

Because this system was first made in my native language : French ! This wiki is the translation of this initial work, so that more people can discover it. There were a lot of very cool names I managed to come up with for spells and other elements, and it felt wasteful to throw them out. Most elements have a name translation as a result. The ones that don't are just written the exact same way in both English and French.

I have ideas for new Verbs / Adjectives / Nouns / Idioms !

Most elements in this wiki's lore are done, especially Nouns and Adjectives. No more can be added, it would break a lot of things, especially for the sigils. While more Verbs could be added, they don't always apply to every single Noun. In the same vein, some concepts for Idioms don't fit with any existing Verb ; some are even already taken ! But this is why Wild Verbs are a thing to begin with : they allow more to be created outside of this limitation. It's unlikely that there would be new Nouns or Adjectives, but new Wild Verbs is definitely something you can think of making to create your own custom spells while still being canon !

The names of the Idioms aren't very explicit...

I like cool names, but I agree that they don't always immediately provide an understanding of how a spell works on their own. I do try to respect a balance of both, finding 900+ cool names as surprisingly difficult.

Can your magic system do THIS power / technique ?

Probably so ! Any technique or power should be able to get associated with a specific Noun and Verb (even if it's a Wild Verb). Make sure you check the Nouns and their associated Nuances so you can grasp what they can actually make !

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