So this "one guy" who figured out steel...is he marketing it as "god metal" yet?
Also would steel share the magesplodingness of iron?
Magesplodingness is a word.
Its right up there in the Bay12ionary next to the verb Derm.
Yes, it does. Steel is still 90-odd percent iron, after all. Hell if you're unlucky blood can set it off! So it's not because of iron's magnetic properties.
And the one guy who figured it out... He couldn't get his forge hot enough to work it and figured he must have destroyed the iron. It was a freak accident that led to the creation of the brittle (and frankly crappy) alloy he produced; since it couldn't be worked and wasn't much better than iron, he tossed it out.
In a few hundred years or so when a young Yagalian girl discovers it, he's going to feel right stupid. Or dead. Probably dead. But he'd feel stupid if he was still alive.
The apostrophes are to denote glottal stops, exactly as you think. Zue'qki'ptar is three words. Or one word in three parts. The Southland concepts are a bit odd. The 'qk' is a click that's somewhere between a 'qu' sound and a 'k' sound. The letter 'x' would have been a better representation, but I named the place before I brushed up on my Xhosa.
From the land of Zue’qki’Ptar (Their name has a few clicks in it!)
Emphasis mine.
Yeah, yeah, I know. There's only one major click and that's the 'qk'. The 'pt' has a silent-ish 'p' sound that's really more of a mental note to me to look up the correct letter for that particular sound. It's a sucking of the tongue against the roof of your mouth and pulling it down sharply. It's almost a 'ts' sound but not at all at the same time.
But does the pronunciation really matter? You know it's a strange as hell word and you'll probably never hear it spoken aloud. At the time that I was making the name up, I wanted something visually distinct from nearly any fantasy-land country I'd ever heard of, and that name which makes a mockery of syllables seemed like a good starting point.
Although if you must know, Zue'qki'Ptar's local god figure is the
much more reasonably-named Nyami, based on the Tongan river spirit of the same name. Well, the real one is called Nyami Nyami to be exact, but minor details. (Yes I know Tonga =/= Xhosa. It's the same as why Yagal is actually a blend of Germany and Russia; I hate copy-paste culture)
Incidentally, Cylenia is actually fairly Scottish (minus the accent), with a dose or two of Swiss thrown into the mix. Limero is based on a couple of Indonesian countries, although there's a dash of Imperial China tossed in for good measure.
Incidentally incidentally, my ipad keeps autocorrecting "the" into "hither". I haven't the faintest clue why.