#compulsive probing

[crapeaucrapeau]

You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop…

COMPULSIVE PROBING - What the nomenclatures of the home systems of the alien species of Mass Effect can lead us to imagine (3/?)

Part 1 - humans and asari - here ; Part 2 - salarians - here.

The turian home system : Trebia

Whereas the humans and the asari named the planets in their home system after deities, and the salarian re-named their own after significant figures from the early days of salarian space exploration relevant to the individual planets, the planets in the turian home system are also named after historical figures but of a very different kind.

Starting from the planet closest to TREBIA then going outward, the planets are :

Aventen

Caelax

(Palaven)-[Menae, Nanus]

Impera

Essenus

Datriux

The theme here is figures from turian history who were influential in one way or another on the constitution and ideology of the Turian Hierarchy ; this means, by extension, that as with the salarians the turians renamed the planets of their home system, in that case at some point after the formation of the Turian Hierarchy. The figures we know of are :

Aventen was "a tactician-philosopher whose treatise on leadership is known by every turian youth who pays attention in class." ;

Caelax, "[like] … Aventen", was "an ancient philosopher and author. But where Aventen wrote for the military leaders of tomorrow, Caelax focused on those who feed, clothe, heal and arm the soldier. Her enormous tome, "Service" features a lengthy chapter on laws that formed the basis for the turian concept of citizenship tiers."

and Atrin Impera was the so-called "'turian Machiavelli', whose ambitious political philosophies led to her reign as regent in the continent-spanning Nialin Empire for more than a decade. She famously combined citizenship tiers with a meritocracy, rather than a caste system, which served to strengthen her empire. This practice fell in and out of favor for centuries before its revival early in the turians' age of nation-states."

But we don't know who Essenus and Datriux are named after, even though we have every reason to assume those are significant figures in the history of the Hierarchy.

A few notes on those three turians :

They each provided a core element of Hierarchy society : Aventen was a tactician who wrote on military leadership ; Caelax provided the basis for citizenship tiers ; and Impera appeared to have foregone the caste system of the Nialin Empire in favor of a meritocracy. Moreover, it appears that Caelax wrote to complement Aventen, and that Impera expanded Caelax's proto-citizenship tiers system ; in other words, each of what I'll be calling the "Planetary Figures" added something which constituted a progress in the direction of the Turian Hierarchy. Therefore, it's likely that Essenus expanded on what the first three did before, and that Datriux made the final step.

Speaking of which, it appears that the closer to Trebia a planet is, the more remote in time their namesake will be. While both Aventen and Caelax are deemed "ancient" philosophers, which means they might have even been contemporaries, Caelax appears to have reacted to Aventen, meaning Aventen's work is the earliest ; moreover, the use of the word "ancient" places them both in the very remote past, close to prehistory (turian history is canonically 15,000 years old or so at the time of the Reaper War). Meanwhile, Atrin Impera and the Nialin Empire appear much closer to the present, as only "centuries" separate them from the rise of the turian "nation-states" (something which IRL happened after the spread of liberal democracy and industrialization). In other words, the planets of the Trebia system are named in chronological order. This entails that Datriux, the planet farthest from Trebia, is the most recent figure in turian history, whereas Essenus would stand at some point between Impera and Datriux.

Finally, I would be remiss not to note that of those three figures, at least two - Caelax and Impera - were women (Aventen's gender is unknown). Those are perhaps our only insights into gender in/equality in pre-Hierarchy turian societies : whereas IRL influential ancient woman philosophers are basically unheard of in Greek and Roman societies (because those very misogynistic societies couldn't imagine and therefore couldn't allow a woman who thought and was an authority on thought), here we have a prominent female philosopher in the turian philosophy canon - so major in fact she got a planet named after her. This suggests that, in Caelax's ancient society at least (but that's a society that was deeply and probably directly influential on the Turian Hierarchy) there was no misogyny, or if there was misogyny it was very different and/or less intense than our own. Impera's title of "regent" is likewise interesting but ultimately less telling : there are examples of women temporarily ruling in a (male) monarch's stead in our own misogynistic history, such as the wives or mothers of kings ruling in their king's stead (e.g. Catherine de' Medici in Catholic France), or the daughters of kings (e.g. Anne de Beaujeu, still in France which literally barred women as well as men descended from kings through women from the throne), or the sister-wives and aunt-stepmoms of kings (e.g. Hatshepsut in Egypt in the 15th century BCE). Perhaps what's most interesting about Atrin Impera is that she was only the regent, even though she appeared to have been a very skilled politician, whereas Hatshepsut in Egypt or Wu Zetian in China managed to leverage their position of regent to then successfully usurp the throne and rule in their own right ; then again, the original human Machiavelli, while enormously influential in political philosophy for his novel pragmatic approach to politics tied to a realistic understanding of human nature, didn't have such a good time in actual politics. As Machiavelli would have probably told his turian counterpart, since Impera was trying to radically change her political system by upsetting customary power relations, she is bound to have earned the hate of those who would have been in power if not for her (and in all likelihood with only lukewarm support from those who might stand to benefit from those changes in theory). (But I guess Machiavelli is in fact the human Impera, since he's a Renaissance Italian man while she lived and died at some point before 500 BCE ?)

And that's where we stand on canon material for the Trebia system !

A headcanon : Essenus and Datriux

Living at the time of the industrial nation-states, Triantian Essenus was the founder of a philosophy subsequently known as Essenism, which demanded, in the name of peace, absolute altruism — that all turians, no matter their nationality, race, gender or any other determiner, be treated as members of one's own family. While the concept of altruism as the basis for morality is an old one in turian culture, Essenus took it to its extreme. Essenists were famous for coming to the aid of far-flung communities engaged in defensive wars, and they advocated international unity and government in order to end all wars.

After the collapse of the liberal regimes, General Aren Datriux brought about the Last Revolution which conclusively established the Turian Hierarchy. She was inspired by the Epimist philosophers (named after Gallian Epimus) who had devised a meritocratic society based on Equalitarian, Pragmatist and Essenist values, but with the distinction that it would be headed by military officers — in other words, a stratocracy. The Epimists believed that only those who had set out to give their lives for society's sake could achieve "the balance of authority and responsibility", as unlike politicians they would be ready to prioritize the good of all over their own. It took a series of attempted coups d'état both civil and military, a few civil wars, and a number of pro- and anti-meritocracy revolutions to establish the Turian Hierarchy ; motivated by her Epimist ideals, Datriux emerged out of what would be subsequently known as the Last Revolution as the leader of her country before exporting its model to the rest of Palaven through conquest.

While Essenus and Datriux can be considered the true founders of the Turian Hierarchy, turians honor equally all the people, great and small, which led to the establishment of the Hierarchy, the acme of 15,000 years of continuous turian civilization ; as with all things turians, it was a team effort.

Other instances of turian-named systems

Other turian-named systems or planets do not fall into this historical mold, making it an oddity in turian space.

Planets can be named after common word or phrases literally or metaphorically describing some of their key characteristics : this is the case of Erros ("overlook", "pleasant view" — a reference to its lack of atmosphere) or Choitadix ("gap-toothed" — a reference to its formation) in the Milky Way, or to Mornax Vinkaar ("bad mistake" — a reference to its unfortunate settlement efforts) over in Andromeda. This tendency is something turians have in common with salarians.

Planets can also be named after spirits if Temerarus (named after a spirit said to have inspired the crew of the first manned moon launch, presumably a spirit of, uh, temerariousness — I mean, temerity.) Note that turians also name weapons after spirits, for instance the Phaeston (an assault rifle named after a spirit of creation).

Finally, I'd be remiss not to point out turians rename their conquests with turian names, at least as far as Gellix is concerned : formerly a krogan colony established in 658 CE, the planet was contested and conquered by the turians during the Rebellions before its formal annexation in 801 CE. While Gellix is a planet turians cannot use (but are unwilling to give up), it is nonetheless extremely probable it was renamed : the "-ix" suffix suggests that "Gellix" is a turian word, and the original krogan name remains unknown. Likewise, the planet's capital Anapondus has a distinctly turian-sounding name (Latinate "-us" suffix), but whether this is a krogan settlement that was renamed or an original turian settlement is unknown.

Rather strikingly, we have no single example of planets being named heroes, which could be expected given how martial turian culture is. The only exception I could find is the name of a city, in this instance Shastinasio, the capital city of Invictus, named after the colony's (re)founder Shastina Emperus (suggesting "-sio" might be a turian suffix meaning "city", so that "Shastinasio" might mean "Shastina City" or "Shastinatown").

Finally, before leaving, I should point out that, like so many other planets, we only have the human names of some turian planets, following their own nomenclature* — for instance every single planet in the Fortis system, named after Roman virtues. This frustrates my efforts.

* : There's also a pun IRL about the name Triginta Petra : as the Wiki notes, this is likely a subtle joke reference to the TV series 30 Rock.

Next time : krogan ???

[crapeaucrapeau]

Hey. You think I didn't see you back there ?

I had a simple post, once. A single one. Not a series this time, I told myself. Just a bit of fun.

But that was before I started my…

COMPULSIVE PROBING - What the nomenclatures of the home systems of the alien species of Mass Effect can lead us to imagine (2/?)

Part 1 - humans and asari - here.

The salarian home system : Pranas

The names of the planets in the salarian home system have a unique nomenclature, unlike anything else in the galaxy - and it is hugely informative about the salarian mindset. Starting from the planet closest to PRANAS then progressing outward, those are :

Saradril

(Sur'Kesh)

Dragel

Halegeuse

Paeto (a planet for our purposes, but in fact an asteroid)

[SPOILERS ???]

And what's striking about those is that they are all named after fairly recent salarian historical figures, specifically those that have something to do with the exploration and exploitation of the individual planet :

Saradril "is named for the Saradril Clan, specifically the salarian dalatrass Saradril Il Sorason Mal Netya Par Tore Nura, who sponsored the first manned mission to the planet."

Dragel "is named for the matrilineal clan that sent the first manned mission to the planet’s surface."

Halegeuse "bears the name of the Halegeuse Corporation, which combined the best efforts of several salarian clans to manufacture the advanced shielding necessary to colonize the planet's moons" in 560 BCE.

and Paeto "is named for the clan of Paeto Il Ginon Mal Eneste Dut Solem Ammar, known to humans as Ammar Solem", who "ran the fateful test that discovered [the] mass-affecting properties" of eezo, first discovered on the Paeto asteroid.

You know what makes those unique ? In every single case, whatever names those planets had before were stricken - replaced. This is implicit for all of them, and explicit in Saradril's entry : "In antiquity, the planet was named for various gods, as well as the astronomer who first classified it as a planet rather than a star. But Nura's political machinations won out and the planet now bears her clan's name on all standard salarian star maps." What's interesting here is that we get a sense of clear historical and cultural transition : 1) various cultures in antiquity give the names of gods to Saradril, much like the humans, the asari, the krogan, the volus, etc.

Then 2) the name of the astronomer who first understood heliocentrism (i.e. that Sur'Kesh wasn't what everything revolved around and that the motion of the wandering stars could be explained if they happened to orbit Pranas) supersedes at least some of those names, which in and of itself suggests that there might have been some positivist, anti-religion pushback going on (the "Pfaugh, nothing but superstitions !" type).

(Noteworthy that it would have been named after the astronomer, and not the astronomer's patron or the astronomer's clan. Though maybe the name might have referred to all three.)

I mean - who does that ? Literally no one on Earth has ever done that. I don't think the USSR did that - and I think if anything on Earth could have renamed the planets for ideological purposes, it's them. But anyway, one of the recurring things in that series we'll find out is, when the planets in a species' home system do not have traditional names (usually the names of gods and goddesses), that means there is some kind of ideology going on. As the astronomer was a scientist, we can guess that ideology was along the lines of Science>Religion, Progress>Tradition, the New>the Old.

That is, until we get to 3) when Dalatrass Saradril made sure (in her lifetime, no less, given that her personal "political machinations won out") to have the planet renamed after her for individual prestige and the everlasting political glory of her clan - indicating that in the early salarian space age, there was so little respect left for either traditions or science that planets and their names were a big buffet - first come, first served. (It's a bit sad, really. It's the salarian equivalent of billionaires naming planets after themselves.)

In fact (with the possible exception of Halegeuse), every single planet was the occasion of a fraught political battle over who should get to name it after themselves. In Dragel's case, "a thriving minority from the Sylar Clan, who sent the first manned mission to orbit the planet, insists to this day that their landing attempt was sabotaged by the Dragels and the planet should bear their name. Relations between the two clans remain tense." Meanwhile, for the hugely significant Paeto asteroid, "For three centuries after [Ammar Solem's] death, rival clans fought for credit for the discovery, but the truth won out after a lengthy academic war."

But why was it so damn important in the salarian mindset ? Well, because to name a planet is a perpetual reminder of much your clan or your corporation was instrumental to the space age and was the best of what salarians had to offer - it's kinda spelled out in Halegeuse's entry : "Halegeuse [the corporation] was bought out centuries ago, but the name endures as a symbol of salarian innovation and cooperation." That the names endures is pretty striking, when we know all the previous names were replaced at the beginning of the salarian space age - especially in a corporate context, one could have expected the corporation which had bought out Halegeuse to rename the planet after themselves !

Which leads me to consider the following possibility : maybe there wasn't a shift away from the ideology of the New (for lack of a better term) between the early modern period of salarian history and the early space age ? Maybe instead the choice to rename the planets was both a self-serving, pragmatic PR move and a sincere acknowledgement that the achievement of the Saradril, Dragel and Paeto clans and the Halegeuse corporation really trumped whatever the planets had been previously named after - that their achievements were the up-to-date New as it related to those planets - achievements of "innovation and cooperation", scientific and technological achievements.

I'll leave you to make up your mind. We're done with the planets of the system.

Wait - what was that [SPOILERS ???] thing back there at the bottom of the list of the planets ?

Oh ! I'm glad you asked, imaginary representation of my readers, created to mask the unresponsive, uncaring void where I howl all of my words !

There is a planet in the Chomos system, in the Phoenix Massing, far away from the salarian home system, where we can learn a bit more about the history of salarian astronomy :

"Trigestis is a gas giant, named for the first salarian astronomer to predict planets' occurrences mathematically rather than through direct observation."

This is a reference to astronomer Urbain Le Verrier, who IRL predicted the existence and position of Neptune using only mathematics in 1846 (based on how Uranus's orbit did not correspond to mathematical predictions, suggesting a source of perturbations) - as Neptune was simply too far from the Sun to be observable from Earth.

Here's the thing though - Halegeuse, the farthest planet from Pranas, is only 3.6 AU from its sun. In the Sol system, Jupiter and Saturn, both perfectly visible from Earth, are at 5.2 AU and 9.6 AU, respectively ; Uranus, dimly visible, is at 19.2 AU ; and Neptune is at 30.1 AU.

What I'm saying is, there are no planets in the Pranas system as we get it in ME3 that are far enough from Sur'Kesh that you'd need mathematics to guess their positions. Therefore, who the hell is Trigestis ?

The answer is : the guy who wrote about Trigestis in ME2 forgot about him by the time he had to write about the planets in the Pranas system in ME3, and goofed.

Now, the fun answers we can headcanon are :

the farther "planets" (plural) Trigestis discovered are just not shown in ME3, but they exist ; for some reason, they are beyond the orbit of the mass relay in Pranas.

or they are not shown because they do not exist anymore, because the salarians did mad scientist bullshit on them.

Anyway, the planet Trigestis has three moons named Sidacha, Norem and Bestia. I think those could be the name(s) of the planets Trigestis discovered, or the names of other famous salarian astronomers. Or both.

Other instances of salarian-named systems

Salarians turn up regularly in the lore as explorers, and even though we see far less salarian worlds and salarians in the games than every other major species in the ME universe, we have an abundance of planets named by salarians. In that sample, Trigestis is the only one to be named after a major historical figure ; every single other name we have is either a word or a phrase in a salarian language, describing some attribute of the planet literally or poetically :

In particular, out of the seven planets of the Faryar system in the Hourglass Nebula (which appears to be a privileged zone of salarian expansion, with Erinle, a major salarian world, in the gateway system), five have explicitly salarian names : Tunfigel ("hard heart", for the planet's high density and gravity), Nephros ("restless sleep", seemingly for its spectacular storms and winds), Alingon ("deceptive", as that seemingly banal planet has a magnetosphere intense enough to interfere with all electronic systems), Wenrum ("white knight", because of its white, highly reflective surface), and Antictra ("fused metal", because of its iron craters constantly battered, melted and fused by nearby asteroids). This suggests to me that the last two planets of the system, Quarem and Daratar, also have meaningful names that come from a salarian language.

Sidebar : Wenrum's description provides an interesting detail in salarian history : the planet takes its name "from a salarian story in the Romantic period of a knight who refused all temptation to riches, carnality, and even flavorful food until justice was served to the poor and oppressed." This reveals that a) salarians had a "Romantic period", whatever that means ; b) that salarians had the equivalent of knights, which makes sense given their feudal system ; c) that a salarian could refuse "carnality", which is surprising for a species with cloacae and no sense of sexual attraction (perhaps he simply refused to reproduce and further his clan's best interests ?) ; and d) that he basically went on strike. The fact this is from a "story" from the "Romantic period" makes it likely Wenrum/the Wenrum is either fictional or fictionalized (one of the characteristics of Romanticism IRL is an exaltation of the Middle Ages and its emblematic figures, such as the knight, ideals contrasting with the corrupt, materialist and alienating late 18th-early 19th centuries).

The other two examples we have of salarian-named planets are Lattesh ("translated from a salarian dialect as 'it's still winter'", named from its unusually cold temperatures which seemingly keep life from appearing), Trigestis's companion in the Chomos system (Phoenix Massing) ; and Osalri ("(Covus salarian - 'fire maiden')", named in light of its being "a boiling hot dwarf planet") in the Imir system, the gateway system of the Eagle Nebula where Korlus can be found. This suggests to me that the other three planets in the system - Korlus, Quodis, and Gregas - also have salarian names we don't know the meaning of, probably in Covus as well.

Moreover, as this is the gateway system of the cluster, it's beyond likely that salarians were the ones to first open, access and explore the Eagle Nebula.

The planets named after salarian words make salarian languages the alien language family we know the most in the OT (in Mass Effect as a whole, the honour goes to the angara language Shelesh, by far).

Next time : the turians !

[crapeaucrapeau]

Hey, come here. Yeah, you. Come closer.

Don't you think there's something to learn about the way the various Mass Effect species name the planets in their home systems ?

Yeah, me too.

Let's start with humanity : the Sol system

So, as you're aware - humans have named all of the planets, and most of dwarf planets and moons after figures from Greco-Roman mythology. I'm sure you'll find some of the following information interesting !

Since the dawn of recorded history, the planets have intrigued all of our ancestors, because those were object that looked like stars but which did not keep a fixed position relative to the other stars in the night sky. In our solar system, there are five naked-eye planets, i.e. planets which anyone at any time in history could see in a clear night sky, without any tool like a spyglass. Those are : Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Uranus, Neptune and the other bodies of the Solar system were discovered much, much later. Uranus is technically visible but because it's very dim and very slow-moving, it wasn't identified as a planet until 1781, by the famous astronomer Herschel who wanted to name it Georgium Sidus, or "George's Star", after his patron King George III. But his choice didn't prevail ; there was a lot of debate over how this new planet should be called, with "Uranus" first proposed in 1782 but only becoming unanimously accepted in 1850. "Uranus" might not be to everyone's taste, but I think it's better than George - the logic was to give to the planet after Saturn the name of the god Saturn's father, much like Saturn was Jupiter's own father.

All of this to say : names matter. The names of planets are not inconsequential, they're a political matter, and they tell you a lot about the people who named them, what they valued. What we can learn here is : that the Europeans looked up to the ancient Romans, who first named the classical planets in their geographic area, to the point they didn't modify those names ; and that ultimately, the Europeans preferred to retain a harmonious nomenclature, instead of a list that goes Mercury - Venus - Earth - Mars - Jupiter - Saturn - GEORGE - and probably Louis-Philippe.

But at the same time, you have to keep in mind that the common names of planets are also testament to the political and historical realities of the world they've been observed from. The Chinese, the Maya or the Egyptians didn't call Venus "Venus". Hell, I think most if not all cultures on Earth retain their own names for the planets - but the "official" names - the prevalent ones - are the Western names, for reasons I don't need to explain.

tl;dr : The names of the planets are an indication on what culture is in a position of power over others on the homeworld, and what that culture values.

Other human-named planets

Keeping this in mind, in Mass Effect :

humans usually name planets after other pantheons (e.g. the Amun system) or follow another theme (e.g. the Sowilo system). What matters is that there is a theme.

It's worth noting that the fact a planet has a human name in-game doesn't mean that the planet was discovered by humans or is settled by humans. For example, the planets of the Osun system are named after the Yoruba of Nigerian mythology, but this is a system settled by salarians and discovered at least a century before any human could have found it and given it an original name. tl;dr : A planet can have multiple names even though we usually only know one in the experience of the games, and the only thing a name of human origin indicates is that that is the name humans generally use. The planets of the Osun system have their own salarian names, but we don't know them.

But that doesn't mean all the planets humans can find have their own separate human names : sometimes, for whatever reason, humans choose to use a name from a past alien figure (e.g. Sharblu) or a name in an alien language (e.g. Wenrum).

Having said that, we can now proceed to what this post is actually about…

COMPULSIVE PROBING - What the nomenclatures of the home systems of the alien species of Mass Effect can lead us to imagine (1/?)

The asari home system : Parnitha

Exactly like most human cultures IRL and, as we'll see, a lot of species in the galaxy, the common asari names for the planets in their home system is the name of the goddesses of a pantheon. Those being, starting from the one closest to PARNITHA then progressing outward :

Kurinth

(Thessia)-[no moon]

Piares

Lucen (a planet for our purposes, but in fact an asteroid)

Janiri

Athame

Tevura

All six figures come from the mythology of the pantheon that predated and formed the basis of the monotheistic Athame Doctrine, which itself was superseded by pantheistic siari after asari made first contact with the salarians. In that regard, they are equivalent to what we have going on in our own solar system : the names are relics of an older, defunct belief system, replaced by a monotheistic religion.

Out of those, we know that the asteroid Lucen was discovered "soon after the asari invented optics" (i.e. after they started making spyglasses) ; we know that the gas giant Athame was on the edge of naked-eye visibility, which entails that Kurinth, Piares and Janiri, which are closer to their sun, are also visible to the naked eye. In fact, Kurinth is so bright at dawn and dusk that it casts "noticeable shadows" where there aren't other brighter light sources at night (in a goof, the description speaks of "moonless nights", but Thessia has canonically 0 moon).

The question is : since Athame is already barely visible, is Tevura, the farthest planet, visible from Thessia to the naked eye ? I think it isn't - at least, to the naked human eye. Tevura is "a hydrogen-methane ice giant", i.e. a planet like Uranus or Neptune, with an albedo (roughly, how much a planet reflects light) around 0.3. Moreover, Tevura, at 24.4 AU, is actually farther from Parnitha than Uranus is from Sol (at 19.2 AU). Since we know that Uranus, while technically visible to the naked eye, was actually so dim and so slow that no one noticed it was a planet until the late 18th century, Tevura, similar in composition to Uranus but even farther and therefore dimmer and slower, is likely at best to be in the same situation - technically visible, but not recognized until after the invention of optics… unless a) the asari have better eyesight than us (we do know they can see UV light, so that may come into play, I don't know), or b) if Parnitha belongs to a type of star that emits significantly more light than our sun (which is unlikely, as Thessia is actually slightly closer to Parnitha than Earth is to the Sun ; if Parnitha packed a lot more heat than Sol, literally, then Thessia would be too hot to be hospitable to life).

But either way, the pre-Doctrine culture on Thessia started naming the planets after the goddesses of their pantheon and their descendants stuck to the naming scheme, at the very least with Lucen. But what's most interesting is that it's possible to interpret one entry ("Piares") as indicative of the members of the pre-Doctrine culture believing that the "wandering stars" they named after their goddesses were literally the homes of their goddesses.

Indeed, Piares, the goddess of death, is described as having "her home in the stars" from which she could answer the prayers of asari who had lost a lover - which I take to be suggesting that those ancient asari thought the planet Piares was the home of the goddess Piares. Likewise, the light of the planet Kurinth was interpreted as a blessing from the goddess Kurinth herself - a stronger identification between planet and deity than what the Romans did in their times, which I choose to be supporting evidence for this reading.

Other instances of asari-named systems

In the sample of the planet descriptions we get in the OT, all the other examples we have of planets named after mythological figures are to be found in the heart of asari space :

Kralla in the Athena Nebula itself (Orisoni system) ;

Pania in the Nimbus Cluster (Kallini system) ;

and Vylius, also in the Nimbus Cluster (Mesana system).

Out of those, the choice of Kralla's name appears to be entirely circumstantial, as it was decided after "half the crew of a survey ship died in a freak accident" (Kralla is a "demon of misfortune"). It is therefore perfectly possible that the names of the other planets in the system are not related to Kralla.

There are no such circumstances for Pania and Vylius, making it more likely that the names of the other planets in their respective systems follow a related theme : for example, Ithrone and Lemnia, Pania's system, could have names referring to characters from Pania's mythology, perhaps other heroes.

This appears to be highly probable for Vylius's system, Mesana, as we know about the origins of the names of two other planets : Medokos and Shastessia. In the entry of the latter, the two asari after which the planets are named are described as "a semi-mythological pair of twins from asari antiquity". I find it very likely that Vylius originates from the mythology of the culture where Medokos and Shastessia were enshrined, which suggests to me that the other planets of the system, Lesuss and Lymetis, also have names that come from the mythology or the mythologised history of the same ancient asari culture.

Overall, in the sample we get in-games, what's most striking is that we have no examples of descriptive words or phrases in an asari language for planet names, unlike other species ; and not many examples of additional mythological figures. On the contrary, most of the time, when asari name planets, they name them after historical figures :

Medokos and Shastessia, I have mentioned already - their historical existence appears to be accepted in Shastessia's entry ;

Teukria, "a legendary asari archer from Thessia's Iron Age", in the Crescent Nebula's Tasale system (Illium's system) ;

Quirezia, in the Silean Nebula's Teyolia system (Nevos's system), was an "ancient asari queen" famous for her necklace, a "legendary jewel" after which the "band of seven large moons" orbiting the planet was named - it's impossible to know if the Necklace's name led to Quirezia's name or if the reverse is true instead ;

Siano, in the Pylos Nebula's Dirada system, is named after "an ancient asari philosopher known for being a contrarian", and it appears the name was chosen because the planet orbits its star in retrograde (i.e. in the direction opposite every single other planet in the system) ;

Paphos, in the Silean Nebula's Loropi system, is named after "a prominent asari lawgiver" whose work deeply influenced "asari political theory that led to Thessia's modern golden age" ;

and Sharblu, in Argos Rho's Gorgon system, was named after an asari soprano popular in the 17th century, when the planet was first surveyed by an asari crew ; the "azure" hue of the planet was similar to the singer's "unusual skin tone", for which she was "renowned". (The choice of words here makes it enormously funny with Lair of the Shadow Broker providing hindsight.)

First of all, I should stress that no other species gives the name of figures from their past to planets as much as the asari (perhaps unsurprisingly, for a somewhat gerontocratic species who think they've figured it all out long ago), and frequently enough that we can find such names in numerous systems spread out all over the galaxy.

Second of all, outside of myths and legends, those historical names often come from leaders and philosophers (or both, in the case of Paphos), which absolutely not surprising.

But what's most striking here is that, sometimes, when asari name planets after historical figures, it's because the planet has a distinctive feature reminding them of that historical figure - in which case we can assume the system's planets' names are unlikely to share a theme. Note that this doesn't appear to be the case for Teukria and Paphos.

Finally, I should note that the fourteen moons of the gas giant Triodia (Hekate system, Hades Nexus) are all named after "asari virtues", though we do not know the name of any. But it's a unique naming theme so far.

Next time : salarians !