#compulsive probing

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).

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.