alex_greene
Guest
Here's something you might like to think on for a bit.
Traveller was originally conceived by the Third Imperium's equivalent of The Great Bird of The Galaxy, Marc W Miller; roleplaying's answer to Gene Roddenberry, JMS, Verity Lambert, Terry Nation, Kit Pedler, Nigel Kneale and Russell T Davies.
(I couldn't pick just one name ...)
Now, the thing I remember from the CT adventure Expedition to Zhodane was the piece at the end, where they described the Zhodani naming conventions. You know, Intendants all get one name ending in -iepr, Nobles get a variety of suffixes depending on their Social Standing like -tlas, -tlasche' and -iashav and so on.
One thing they did was to describe proles' naming conventions. Proles get two names, given name first, family name second. Some proles get to use the -qaf suffix, as in Mozhitsarpr Jdiprielqaf, which means "from a place," hence "Mozhitsarpr from Jdipriel." It could be a city, region, continent, world, subsector or even sector somewhere in the Consulate. If the Prole comes from there, -qaf be on his name.
Another Prole suffix, however, is -nad. This means "person who does something," or "tradesperson." And the example they always give is Tliaqrnad, one of the commonest surnames among Proles in the Consulate.
Which is cool, until you realise that the surname comes from the verb tliaqre' - which means "to grind or mill corn."
And here, the majesty of this little Easter egg emerges, when you put it all together and you realise that Tliaqrnad is Zhodani for "Miller."
That's his signature. That is finding a perfect circle drawn in ASCII art, ten trillion digits into the number Pi in base 11.
I love these little Easter eggs.
Traveller was originally conceived by the Third Imperium's equivalent of The Great Bird of The Galaxy, Marc W Miller; roleplaying's answer to Gene Roddenberry, JMS, Verity Lambert, Terry Nation, Kit Pedler, Nigel Kneale and Russell T Davies.
(I couldn't pick just one name ...)
Now, the thing I remember from the CT adventure Expedition to Zhodane was the piece at the end, where they described the Zhodani naming conventions. You know, Intendants all get one name ending in -iepr, Nobles get a variety of suffixes depending on their Social Standing like -tlas, -tlasche' and -iashav and so on.
One thing they did was to describe proles' naming conventions. Proles get two names, given name first, family name second. Some proles get to use the -qaf suffix, as in Mozhitsarpr Jdiprielqaf, which means "from a place," hence "Mozhitsarpr from Jdipriel." It could be a city, region, continent, world, subsector or even sector somewhere in the Consulate. If the Prole comes from there, -qaf be on his name.
Another Prole suffix, however, is -nad. This means "person who does something," or "tradesperson." And the example they always give is Tliaqrnad, one of the commonest surnames among Proles in the Consulate.
Which is cool, until you realise that the surname comes from the verb tliaqre' - which means "to grind or mill corn."
And here, the majesty of this little Easter egg emerges, when you put it all together and you realise that Tliaqrnad is Zhodani for "Miller."
That's his signature. That is finding a perfect circle drawn in ASCII art, ten trillion digits into the number Pi in base 11.
I love these little Easter eggs.
