Thread Overview
What is this thread?
The deities used to have names, which were since removed/retconned out of existence. This thread is dedicated to finding those unused names and researching flight rising history.
The Names
Amogayvhi - Gladekeeper
Xhaztol - Arcanist
Rhenik - Tidelord
Akiri - Flamecaller
Thrage - Stormcatcher
Undel - Shadowbinder
Jhortanas - Plaguebringer
Ghurab - Windsinger
Artaios - Earthshaker
Rhiow - Lightweaver
How you can help
Post! Whether it's research into something new, a suspicion you have about previous data, a confirmation of something we already know, or a comment of appreciation, everything helps this thread! It draws more attention, for one, and it also expands the resource pool (theories and old livejournal links alike) we can draw information from. The World of Warcraft explorations wouldn't be possible if people hadn't posted their individual searches of SHC horde affairs, and the Ghurab = Windsinger confirmation wouldn't be possible without many people offering their suspicions and thoughts.
A thread write-up would also be appreciated. You may notice that [WIP] is plastered all over this thing. I imagine people would rather not read all 64 pages of this thread, so I've been (attempting to write) writing a summary of our research progress.
Disclaimer
In this research thread, we only stick to publicly-accessible tools and information, and detail how we found everything. We have no intent of defamation and we don't want to make any breaches of privacy; again, that's why we use only publicly-accessible tools and resources.
And yes, as far as I know, the admins are perfectly okay with us conducting this search. Xhaztol replied to the thread here. Later on, Akiri would reply too, saying "funny to watch, isn't it?". So they're quite aware this thread exists, but haven't shut it down, which implies their approval.
Names
A more detailed look at our list of names, including the decisive piece of evidence that led us to our conclusions.
The Names
Amogayvhi - Gladekeeper
Xhaztol - Arcanist
Rhenik - Tidelord
Akiri - Flamecaller
Thrage - Stormcatcher
Undel - Shadowbinder
Jhortanas - Plaguebringer
Ghurab - Windsinger
Artaios - Earthshaker
Rhiow - Lightweaver
Eberict - Icewarden
The names in the first table have been confirmed as appearing in the site's history, or otherwise approved by admins of Flight Rising.
Amogayvhi, Xhaztol, and Rhenik can be confirmed in this video. The most relevant bits are before the first minute elapses--Rhenik's name appears on the Front Page, in the "Recent Posts" sidebar; Amogayvhi and Xhaztol appear when Undel is demonstrating flight selection.
Akiri is confirmed by his deviantArt profile. It's literally just "Flamecaller Akiri".
For Thrage and Undel, it is extremely likely that the four founders of Flight Rising correspond to their element of choosing, especially since Xhaztol (Arcane) has been confirmed as Arcanist's name, and Akiri (Fire) has been confirmed as Flamecaller's name. So Thrage is theorized as the Stormcatcher's name, and Undel is theorized as the Shadowbinder's name.
The remaining names (Jhortanas, Ghurab, Artaios, Eberict, Rhiow) have strong evidence in their favor, but none from official sources (the direct actions of the administration). All evidence comes from the admins' history, before they started doing Flight Rising, along with hints from Beta and older users of Flight Rising.
Rhiow is confirmed as a deity name in this thread. However, which deity is named Rhiow was left unspecified, clarified by the player Rhiow herself.
[NEW!] 2008 Names
Some of the deities had different names in 2008 than they did in 2013. The deities themselves also had some pretty drastic design differences between those years.
Hirotomo - Tidecaller (former title of the Tidelord)
Rishmilu - Lightweaver
Akiri - Firelord (former title of the Flamecaller)
Evidence of these names mostly comes from Undel (Neondragonart)'s old livejournal. Some of her livejournal entries had pictures of dragons, tagged with flight-rising, deity/deities, and a name, which likely corresponded to the deity drawn. I've collected the relevant livejournal entries together on my FR blog.
Flamecaller
Tidelord
Lightweaver
Research
How far has our research come along? Where are we looking in the future? This is the section to find out.The Story So Far
This section is a chronological summary of findings and research. False positives have been omitted, but the process has been documented in lots of detail. It's pretty wordy; because it’s gotten so long, I’ve decided to split it off into separate posts. These separate posts are on page 59, mostly because I didn't have the foresight to reserve more posts on the first page of this thread.
If you just want the deity names, those are listed at the top of this post. If you don't want to read through the entire thread, but you’re interested in what we did and the methods we used, read this instead.
Some notes:
-Bold face indicates terminology, italics is more like emphasis and stress on thought processes.
-Each part has a short summary of topics discussed. Things in smaller print are briefly mentioned as a bit of foreshadowing, but aren’t discussed in great detail; that is, I mention them now because they contribute to progress much later, but because they didn’t create progress when they were first mentioned, they’re in smaller font.
-Each finding has a permalink to the forum post where it was first found.
-ShC stands for Shadow Council, a dedicated roleplay server for World of Warcraft. Horde indicates the Horde faction (instead of the opposing Alliance faction).
Part One
Pages: Names: Deities: Speculation: Name Sources: |
1-10 Amogayvhi, Xhaztol, Rhenik, Rhiow Gladekeeper, Arcanist, Tidelord, Lightweaver Admins = Deities Theory, Banned Name Test World of Warcraft friendships, Site Credits, ShC Horde and RP Haven |
Part Two
Pages: Names: Deities: Speculation: Name Sources: |
11-20 Rhiow, Ghurab, Jhortanas, Artaios, Xhaztol, Amogayvhi Plaguebringer, Windsinger, Earthshaker, Arcanist, Gladekeeper Early Users/Potential WoW friends, Starchart of Corvus, “Resonance of Death” hint Early Users/Potential WoW friends, Rhiow and Ghurab’s hints, ShC Horde and RP Haven |
Part Three
Coming Soon
Current Leads and Tools
Right now, we're just waiting for the admins to confirm or deny our set of eleven names. Akiri has already responded here, but I'd like to wait for a definitive yes or no answer.
Thank you for reading this far, and let's find those unused names!
Special thanks to: Ghurab, Rhiow, Acheronta, Tincanicarus, many others who I can't name right now because I'm super tired and I haven't finished the thread writeup yet.