#or as the wiki has already pointed out it could be 'somnium' plus 'novem' which is the number 9 in latin

[void-writing]

Gotta love that the Cognouza Ward is basically Little Nightmares meets Alice: Madness Returns with some sprinklings of Laputa from Studio Ghibli’s Castle in the Sky and the city of Xerxes from Fullmetal Alchemist.

Respectively:

-Little Nightmares = general body horror aesthetic, themes of hunger, the recurring eye motif, floating mass of horrors out in the (astral, in this case) sea that reaches out in order to draw like-minded individuals to it.

-Alice: Madness Returns = themes of madness (obviously), lost memories and erosion of history and identity

-Laputa = flying city most likely full of powerful arcane macguffins and is implicitly capable of wrecking untold chaos if allowed to.

-Xerxes = an entire city lost and consumed due to a handful of powerful and arrogant peoples’ pursuit of immortality, leaving the unfortunate citizens forever lost in an agonizing congealed mess of souls that eventually completely erodes their sense of identity. Also with the--presumably--leaders being representations of human qualities (emotions rather than vices in this case).

It gives me the heeby jeebies but also it’s really fascinating on a meta-level and I can TELL Matt put a lot of time and thought into this, so good for him. And since a lot of the names in this are Latin based or just straight up Latin, I’m putting my three years of Latin classes to use :) (I nerd out a bit about names in the tags if anyone’s interested)

#screaming from the void #...okay that tag has a different meaning in this context #critical role #the mighty nein #c2e137 #the cognouza #fun latin fact (that im sure someone else has already pointed out): 'cognosca' is probably derived from the latin verb 'cognosco' #*cognouza #which means 'to learn' #(well technically it's 'i learn' since this is the first person singular form rather than the infinitive 'cognoscere') #and 'somnovem' can be several things #the latin noun 'somnium' which is literally 'dream'; the latin verb 'somniare' meaning 'to dream' #or one of the above mentioned but mashed together with the latin adjective 'novus' meaning 'new'; #which would make the literal translation 'new dream' #or it could be 'somnium' plus 'vis' which is a latin noun meaning 'power or might' in the physical sense; so it could be 'strong dream' too #or as the wiki has already pointed out it could be 'somnium' plus 'novem' which is the number 9 in latin #also 'aeor' might just be a mash up of the latin prefix 'a' and the present passive form of the verb 'eo' #the first meaning 'aside' or 'away' and the second meaning 'to walk/march/pass time/etc' #in general just indicating movement #so it could translate as something along the lines of 'i am walked away'