Some More Names I Think Are Good

I've talked before about the general scattershot way I name characters in this story, but now I want to highlight a few that make me laugh because of how dumb they are, and/or that have origins convoluted enough I couldn't reasonably expect people to deduce them.

First, everyone (in-universe)'s inexplicable favourite boy, Kyros son of Decross. Kamen Rider shows love to start with a spider guy and then a bat guy, and indeed in the Exile, Morgan first fights a warrior who can throw so many spears it's like he's got eight arms, and then one who can jump so high it's like he's got wings (which people have noticed). Indeed, up through the Destruction, every Hound belonging to either Gordios or the Angels (not the other kingdoms) that Morgan fights is in some way me shouting out the succession of monsters in the first 13 episodes of Kamen Rider, up to the episode where the first Rider passes the baton to the second. Some of these references are in name, some are in weapons and abilities, and some are in the situation they're encountered in (one is based more on her Shin Kamen Rider counterpart). Kyros is all three!

As for his name, it's a twist on chiroptera, the scientific name for bats. The really stupid part, though, is his patronymic, which seemed fitting for what's effectively the surname for an overhyped bat-themed warrior. "Decross" is a twist on "decrease", because a synonym for that is wane.

Anyway, next is Greatgather of the Hare's Leap, mentioned in the onomastic section of the Combat. Those who know me may correctly suspect that this is the answer to my previous lament that this was the one project I hadn't been able to get a bunnygirl into (in the sexy costume sense, not the furry sense, sorry)--especially with the mention of her winning at gambling. But even without her epithet, her name's a roundabout play on the idea. She's named for a "great gathering", or a "Dai-Con(vention)", if you will.

What's awesome is I genuinely look more and more like this every day.

Finally, you didn't think I'd let you go without bringing up Trackboar the Overmighty, did you?

He was invented when a friend mentioned a GI Joe character called "Roadpig", leading me to wonder if he would get on with the Overwatch character "Roadhog", and their shared debt to mad max. And then I joked that "the Gordian cycle equivalent of that would be, I dunno, Trackboar", and the thing is that basically every joke I make about something I would put in this story actually ends up in the story about a month later. And I just think "Overmighty" is a good word, and it made this overblown name sound even more grandiose, so naturally I needed to make him a big deal to live up to that, so I had found my Cobra Man shoutout (monster that is killed and revived with golden fangs and thus appears in two whole episodes, and appears in conjunction with a domineering woman with a whip), despite his total lack of snake theming.

I'm going to save talking about the Sideworlders' names until after the story is complete (they're considerably less obfuscated than these, for one), but I am quite pleased people have picked up on them.