I wrote a Project Hail Mary fanfic about Christmas on Erid and you should totally read it (pretty please it's only 893 words).
https://archiveofourown.org/works/88365831
Summary: The Eridians discover Christmas.
The Eridian Welcoming Committee has an ominous message to send about this, Things is quite pleased, and Grace, Rocky and Adrian celebrate together
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It features the Eridian Welcoming Committee (by @justcakethanks) and Things the Eridian (by @sleepingreader) !
I was going to post it here but Tumblr got mad because it was too long :/
Decided to maybe do ArtFight again this year, despite falling out with certain people that can't communicate like a person in their 30s, so I'm prepping some character profiles. Figured I'd start with my Scions bc I've done a lot of story development in the last year, especially with just softening up Salem a lot
They're canonically 8 ft tall btw, Salem's just also a beanpole
So in my last post about this map I said that I would leave all of the metropolises unnamed for the time being because I argued that it was unlikely that any names on Earth would be reflective of our current era's culture and languages. Everything having changed so much by the Fall, an entire 5000 years were available for linguistic development, providing us with a linguistic evolution and diversity in scope similar to the difference between today and 3000 BCE earth.
At the risk of alienating people, I decided to come up with a very specific kind of naming scheme for Cradle regardless. I've listed all of the names that Union recognises as official, although it's important to mention that locals often have dozens of names for the same places, with usage fluctuating over the years. That's just how names change. However, what we see in real life as well is that the more significant and/or codified a placename is, the less it changes. It used to be that a town's name was at least spelled differently every century or so, but ever since governments began drawing up maps and writing everything down in registries, this sort of top-down reinforcement of the linguistic norm has slowed the process of names changing enormously. Similarly, names on Cradle capture the imagination of billions of tourists, as well as the biggest bureaucratic institution in the history of humanity, meaning that the locals remapping and reconstructing their own named spaces have to go up against significantly more weight than people did in the past.
Theory aside, names are divided in broadly four categories. We've got the "canonical" names, the "spaceports should sound cool" names, the "universal values" names, and finally, the bulk of the names are proto-language names. Union built these metropolises as planned cities, demarcating the rest of the planet for the natural world and the indigenous people who would live without destroying it, and as such, they picked the name. An important concession I made is that none of these names "evolved". Just like a planned suburb gets a name that reflects the values and the interests of the developers, all of these names reflect Union (or rather FirstComm) and their ideology.
For the first category we have Dharamsala, which exists in the Lancer canon (mostly? The Field Guide to Harrison Armory isn't strictly canon, but what can you do), as well as Ponente, the seat of the local government of Cradle, and Custodio, named in honour of the names of founders of Union mentioned in This One That One. We don't actually know how significant they are, but their names honour the founding of Union and a new start.
The second category consists of the spaceports and a few other "cool" names. Spaceports are the blue dots around the equator, official points of entry from space. (Cradle's terrestrial blink gate Huascarán is located in Heelam). These names are stylised references to old Earth, with the exception of Jìya ya Nyènde which is my proto-Bantu approximation of "path to the stars". Permit me the romanticism. Other names laden with romanticism are Last Vault, World's End, and Flower. The three Massif Vaults were found in different locations; Switzerland being an archetype of this sort of things, I thought it apt if Europe/Switzerland got the last (and likely least significant) of these vaults. World's End is my homage to the tendency of humans to name places World's End. It happens a lot. On the cusp of the Sahara and close to the Atlantic Ocean, which is by far the most quiet part of Cradle, it truly is the world's end, if such a thing exists in the space age.
The "universal value" names are rendered in English because so is the rest of the map. In the Lancer universe, these names would be in the Union Common language. Peace, Diversity, Freedom, and Labour are examples of this.
Finally, in the fourth category I constructed names based on the oldest (proto-)languages I could find for each region, reasoning that Union would have seen these names as universalising. Rather than dividing, every human alive Cradle during the naming process would share in the heritage of each of these names. That said, all of the names are similar to the universal value names, reflecting positive connotations only, such as "warm hearth" or "place of welcoming". I do have to put a disclaimer that I'm no expert on reconstructed languages and the research was relatively basic, so if you're an expert on proto-Bantu or proto-Indo European, these names probably look stupid to you. However, for me they were necessary in creating a system of names that is both universal, representative of Earth's current diversity (and as decolonial as I could manage), which meant I could not use English as a universal language. Since I do play Lancer in English, I solved the dilemma in this way.
Class: Scholar [Main], Summoner, Ninja [Post ARR Patches, at Yugiri's suggestion. Figures it a good backup to her magic], Bard [Post SB. Influenced by time at the Azim Steppe.] and Warrior [Post ShB, In memorial of Ardbert.]/ Omni Crafter and Omni Gatherer. [Hates fishing, but she'll do it.]
Height: 5'2"
Orientation: Disaster Bi-romantic Asexual, leaning towards women. [open to queer-platonic pairings.]
Idolizes: Y'shtola [Since she first met her in Limsa Lominsa], Cid, and Baderon Tenfingers [She once accidentally called him dad].
Personality: Tends to struggle with reading people, situations, and moods; Asel has a habit of withdrawing into herself if she cannot find what she feels is an appropriate response to a situation. This is rarely helped by her tendency to overthink things. She slowly gets better during her time in Eorzea and The First. In fact, there are points in the later expansion packs where she is too honest. Usually when she's angry.
Adaptable [by necessity] and excitable [despite herself]; Asel will speak more if she's comfortable in either her location or company. This can seem inconsistent as she has memory problems when it comes to names and faces. Has a considerable amount of patience and tries to present a friendly face to those she helps despite her nerves. Asel is easily flustered and doesn't like being the center of attention. Her fame makes her jittery and anxious.
Hobbies: Loves to learn new things. Is usually drawn to folklore, mythology and fairy tales which is probably what influenced her to take up the mantle of bard. She takes to practicing the flute by some point in the SB patches, though only in private. She has stage fright and tends to freeze up.
Asel also loves to travel and explore new places. That being said, she wasn't exactly blessed by the Navigator. The aether compass Haurchefaunt gave her sees a lot of use because of this as it has a compass. Actually enjoys helping others and is unbothered by all the fetch quests she gets sent on. Prefers crafting to fighting, and wishes to make things for her friends. So far shes only gotten to make a hammer for Cid back when she first met him.
Unique animations: Rubs her eyes against her sleeve to prevent people from seeing her crying. Tends to default to crossing her arms across her chest.
Commonly found: The Great Gubal library, as soon as she learns of it. Asel starts making journeys to the Ziggurat when she learns of it's connection to red mage history from her research. She hopes to find more on the history of their weapons. She spends her spare time in The First either in the Cabinet of Curiosities or volunteering in the Spagyrics, putting her experience from working at her parent's apothecary to good work.
History:
Left home to see the world and continue her studies.
Daughter of two retired adventurers, her parents met when her father treated her mother for an injury that took the sight in one of her eyes. They opened an apothecary sometime between their marriage and the birth of their child. Asel worked there from twelve to when she left home at twenty-eight.
Has wanted to be an adventurer since she was a child. Her parents, determined to make sure she survived should she follow through with this goal, trained her to the best of their abilities in medicine, survival, and magic. She does know how to swim and is one hundred percent willing to help Alphinaud and Urianger should they ever ask. They probably won't
She started studying advanced aetherology around the beginning of Heavensward. At first it was in order to help in finding her fellow Scions. Asel decides to continue said studies once they are found in an attempt to keep up with them. Or at the very least understand what is being said.
Didn't have any real friends growing up, due to her job at the parent's store taking up a lot of her time, and her focus on her studies to become an adventurer. Her parents tried to help with this by having her do delivery work. Which gave her experience with communication and developing a good poker face but did not address the key issue. She now sees the scions as her family and can be a tad overprotective of those she gets close to.
