This is probably the longest I have gone without posting. I weave no excuse, offer no explanation. Instead, I hope to make it up by fulfilling a promise I made long ago, and finally write about the origins of all names in here: each in "Etienne Suarven Lorneau", and the "Vineyards". Oh, yes, Suarven, middle name; few of you knew, fewer remembered.
Once upon a time there was a city called Dellin. It was a city built in SimCity 2000, when the game was young and everyone played it because it was the greatest achievement in simulation (not considering naval and flight, of course). Dellin was my little pearl in that game - I sat in front of the terrain editor one day and said "I will make a city to surpass all those I made so far. It will be huge, I will plan it to be huge from the start!". So I edited the terrain: plains, no mountains; seaside; river. And it started. The beginning was a bit hard, as I placed the industrial and residential zones too far apart because they would complain about pollution, and my citizens complained about that instead. No money cheat to aid me, I just kept going with what I had, bandaging a thing here, fixing another there, until it finally was on the right track.
Two questions need to be answered, then:
Why "Dellin"?
No reason. No, it has nothing to do with Delhi (or Deli) in India. I usually gave my SimCities names created from thin air. That was one of them.
What is the point of talking about Dellin?
You wait over 40 days for me to post again, and you do not have the patience to keep reading to see how it fits in the big picture?
With that out of the way, I continue.
Dellin prospered. I put a tremendous amount of effort into it. Kept monitoring police and fire department coverage all the time, never let a region without a hospital and a school. I had plenty of these 6x6 blocks (most of the city was 6x6 blocks) with one of each: police, fire department, hospital, school. Then I realized it was wrong, so I made other little blocks: school, college, museum, library, and a few small parks or subway station, because the library was not 3x3, so there was space left; and the police block gained large parks where there were schools. It helped a lot with pollution, and my citizens were very happy (although the secretary then complained there were too many schools, colleges, museums and libraries).
That kind of fine-tuning in a city takes hours, and in-game that means decades. It was then that I noticed a pattern. By that time, I had the Fusion Power Plant, the most advanced and expensive in the lot. It lasted 50 years. On the 50th year, if the treasury had enough money to buy a new plant, nothing at all would happen, and the 50 years count would reset; if the treasury did not have the money, the plant just imploded and left the city in the dark. On a settled city, with disasters turned off, that was really the only thing the player had to do after a while: make sure there was enough money for a new power plant after 50 years.
Dellin, being made from zero to be a metropolis, worked nice enough withot any interference. And in each of its five decades it accumulated enough money to replace the power plant, and have something left. So I did something unthinkable at the time: I left the computer on, running SimCity 2000 at the highest speed, and went away. "How can you leave a computer unattended!?" It was a revolution. I remember leaving it overnight once, it was unheard of. The result of all this time running by itself was a large sum of money accumulated after a few days, money enough to make the city double in size in mere minutes. Some more fine-tuning, and it was ready to be left alone for another few days, before facing another unnatural, sudden growth again. It was quite amusing, though, that thanks to my long periods of complete city inactivity, and the marvellous health care, more than 10% of the population was between 95 and 100 years old.
After a while, Dellin had everything a city in SimCity 2000 could have, and had enough money to buy the neighbors and grow further, if that was possible. A friend came boasting one day that his city in SC2k had four Archologies (huge self-suficient constructions housing up to 200,000 residents, very expensive); Dellin had more than half of its residential zones replaced with Launch Arcos, the biggest of the Archologies. It came to a point where it was no longer possible for it to grow; in fact, it was impossible to navigate through all those Archologies, there was no way to see what was below them. And very often planes would get trapped between them, so I had to destroy a few and put them up again. I had achieved my goal, but it had become rather pointless then.
I saved many copies of Dellin, should I want to gaze at my untouchable metropolis sometime in the future, or just unleash multiple disasters at it at once, just for fun. And so I set for another Sim City 2000 challenge, because games were very scarse those days: I would make a very small city.
What would a small city be like?, I thought. I imagined, then, it was a countryside city, with farms around it. No use - although in the original Sim City, if I am not mistaken, there was "Farmland", SC2k had no such thing. So I just made a beautiful terrain, and I would put a tiny city in the middle of it, and pretended there were farms all around. But what crops? Oranges, wheat? No - grapes. It was a little French town. So I needed to create, out of thin air, a name that sounded French. And so I came up with "Lorneau".
The little city of Lorneau failed miserably. In contrast to my "empires" in Civilization and other such strategy games, where I am everything but expansionist, in Sim City I simply did not work with a small city. I restarted Lorneau city a number of times, but never managed to go far. Eventually I gave up, and left Sim City 2000 aside, going straight into Ultima 8, which is the off-line game where I put the most of my time and efforts, ever. Sometimes, months later, I would look at SC2k again, destroy Dellin for fun, try to make Lorneau stable, but these game sessions never lasted. The name of my two special cities were always in my mind, no less.
Years went by, the age of modems arrived, and with it the age of online games. Nexus. From the same company, Dark Ages would come out. They were selecting people for the first beta phase - the Chaos Age. The intention was to get the best among the best; the form had many questions concerning one's experience as a roleplayer, both online and on pen-and-paper, one's knowledge of the universes and pillars Dark Ages would be based upon, et al. I was very frustrated, since the main subjects were unknown to me, except for H.P. Lovecraft, of whom I had heard of, and knew the style. But I chose not to apply for Chaos Age, and explained why to a friend who did apply, and did make it. She was very supportive, and told me to apply to the next phase; she would provide some texts to get me started on those titles I would need to know about.
It was indeed helpful, I read a lot about Lovecraft - but still not a word by Lovecraft. I noticed, at one point, that some texts compared Lovecraft to Edgar Allan Poe (a comparison I now find absurd). I checked the list of subjects for the beta test again; Poe's "The Raven" was listed there, along Lovecraft's "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath".
"One work from each", I thought. "I guess they are both as important in the game's atmosphere. But these works say Poe is better. And I noticed it is easier to find his texts, too; I will read Poe instead." For the whole month I read nearly everything by Poe I could find - starting, most unfortunately, with "The Balloon Hoax", because the title made me curious, and then starting back in alphabetical order, with "The Angel of the Odd", which is among my favorites up to now. "How to write a Blackwood article" and "Xing off a Paragraph" were very hard to understand, at the age I was, and having no idea what was going on - although "Blackwood article" was very funny. I just kept on reading, regardless, mainly because I was loving it, far less for the Dark Ages beta, which I had forgotten. My advantage, I believe, for not reading the classical, day-to-day Poe: Raven, Usher, Amotillado, Black Cat, Berenice, Morella, Telltale Heart, Rue Morgue. When I finally reached the "important" ones, not knowing they were the most famous, I could appreciate them for what they were, not for what I had been told. I am very glad I came to know Poe this way, and not led by anyone's hand.
"The Angel of the Odd" was joined in the list of my favorites by "The Cask of Amontillado" (see note above, bah), "Metzengeirstein" and "A Descent into the Maelstrom". "Maelstrom" in special fascinated me for some reason; I read it a number of times in a row, and noted each time I had some trouble reading the name of the isles mentioned.
I was reminded of Dark Ages some days before the deadline for the application for the second phase of beta test - Atavism Age. I took a look again at the list of subjects, and roleplaying advice. So I spent a month reading Poe, and never touched Lovecraft or Conrad. Shame? No matter. I filled in the form, making a point whenever possible that Poe was my favorite of all people mentioned (including Chris Carter, creator of "X-Files" and "Millenium"; I always found that amusing), so if I seemed to be talking too much about him it was solely out of personal preference (and to hide the fact I knew him twenty times better than any of the others by then). The final test in the application: write at least 50 words about Lovecraft, or what you believe the world of Dark Ages is like, based on all these influences. Something like that. Tough. I again resorted to the Raven breeder, and wrote 200 words of a comparison between Lovecraft and Poe - after all, before going into Poe, I did read a lot about Lovecraft, I had enough basis to write something convincing.
It was convincing enough - although my previous roleplaying experience probably had a much greater role in my acceptance to Atavism Age. It was very unexpected. It would be open in a few days. For a moment here I felt the truest form of nostalgia. It is gone, I continue with the story.
There were some pages of roleplaying advice, explaining the world of Dark Ages (Temuair) and the influences in it. For some reason I came to believe Temuair was just an imaginary portion of Europe, specifically of the British Isles - guess I misunderstood the part about "based on Celtic and Irish folklore". So, a Medieval Europe setting it was. That reminded me of a few movies, and in particular one I love dearly: Ladyhawke. I felt quite a lot like watching it, and so I did.
No need to tell the story of Ladyhawke here; anyone who does not know the movie should go out and rent it as soon as possible, or at least check IMDb for it (I provide no links tonight because... I do not feel like it). Important fact is, the male protagonist, former captain of the guard, was called Etienne Navarre.
"That is a good French name, for a good warrior!", I thought. I had decided I wanted a warrior, or whatever had to go face to face with the enemies with a sword in hand in Temuair - I had a long enough time as a healer in Nexus. And I decided he had to be French, because it was set in Europe anyway, and if I had to go along with the bestest roleplayers in the crop, I would better pick something they would not beat me too badly in - if I said my character was British or Celtic, as I thought everyone else would, I would fail miserably in comparison. So, French. And Etienne Navarre was a good French warrior.
But I do not think anyone has the right to take the name of a character and use it in another environment, another story. I would not use Etienne Navarre, then. But I liked that name, Etienne. So I needed another French last name to go with it. And the first thing that came to mind was the name of my little failed city, and its vast imaginary grape fields. Etienne Lorneau. Sounded fit.
Yet something was missing. It felt that way for a number of reasons. He surely had a mother, so he should have her family's name as well. He should, because I quickly grew extremely disgusted with the "I am an orphan", "I was raised by wolves", "My mother was a Succubus", "I am the son of one of the gods" stories that people created for their characters. I lost count of how many demigodly heirs to distant kingdoms never before heard of there were in Dark Ages and Nexus. So my Etienne had to have a human father, a human mother, both from recognizable parts of the world. And I was left with the problem of finding a middle name.
That was quickly solved when I remembered how grateful I was for Poe. I had both found a great writer, and used him mercilessly to get into Dark Ages. So it was fair that I paid my homage to him with that last name. But no, I could never follow the example of "Conrad Allan Faulkner" - that is just too obvious. I remembered the isles in Maelstrom; I opened the book, looked for them, and found the perfect middle name: Suarven. Because his French father had married a lady from the Nordic region. Etienne Suarven Lorneau it was.
Later I realized Temuair was not part of Europe, but a completely different world (even though it did look suspiciously like the British Isles set sideways); the cities in it, however, each represented a nation of Medieval Europe. "Which is France?", was my first thought. "Ah, Loures. The capital, that is perfect." Etienne, from Loures. And until the appearance of Valhalla Valis, the only Aisling born in Loures - and proud of it. Those few who had not been born in distant kingdoms, what did they have against Loures? Bah.
Unfortunately, there were no Norway, Sweden or Finland represented in Temuair. But the city of Abel had no defined representation, either. So I just settled for "his mother's family is from Abel", and they mysteriously have this Nordic family name in Abel. It is a big trade city, after all, it is bound to have odd names from everywhere.
Hey, that is all fine, but Etienne is a wizard, not a warrior!
He is both. No, he never subpathed, do not offend me. Truth is, he began as a warrior, but warriors always needed healers with them, and my social skills were (are) ridiculous, so I never could find a healer to go with me, and the silliest centipede defeated him each and every time. On top of that, on a 33.6k modem, in a country so poorly served in terms of bandwidth and internet backbone, it was extremely laggy (people said latency of anything beyond 200ms was unthinkable; I had never seen anything lower than 500ms). When the director offered everyone to change classes, I was quick to jump at the opportunity. If I wanted to get anywhere, I needed a class that hit from a distance (so lag would not be so huge a problem) and could stand on its own. Wizard it was, and wizard Etienne became. But he still has his sword, and his cousin Stella has always been very annoyed that he abandoned that path, especially because she decided to follow it herself, too.
Parentheses here. Stella was my little warrior - I wanted one, when my connection was stable a few months later (350ms, hooray!). So Marie-Stella Lorneau Navarre was created (or was it Stella-Marie? I never knew). I had to use the Navarre somewhere, no? Lorneau from her mother, sister of Etienne's father; Navarre from her father, former captain of the Lourian guard. Heh heh. Parentheses closed.
So we have the explanation on Etienne, Suarven, and Lorneau. But what about the Vineyards? Oh, quite obvious by now.
Lorneau was the countryside little city surrounded by grapes, in Sim City 2000. It was just logical, then, that the Lorneau family had vineyards! The Lorneau Vineyards, producing the highest quality wine in Ardmagh since Danaan 2934... or something like that, I forgot when the Danaan years end - but it was about two centuries before Deoch dating, and no one was sure of the exact year.
(I can stop here, yes? But I will not.)
This little story became well known among my friends. So, whenever Etienne got online, he "had just come from the Vineyards"; whenever he was gone for too long, he "had some troubles in the Vineyards". (The majority of these troubles were copied from the farming troubles of Constantin Lievin, from "Anna Karenina", which I read slowly through that early period.) When Etienne was leaving, he "was returning to the Vineyards".
It sounded just right, then, that if I was to use Etienne Suarven Lorneau's name in a place out of Temuairan sight, it had to be the Vineyards - that is where he always was when there were no Aislings around.
(Rumor has it, though, once or twice, another Aisling, a female monk, with long golden hair, was seen there with him, early evening, sharing a bottle of wine; neither of them ever commented on this rumor.)
But one day, in Temuair, those very few left who remembered him noticed he was gone. Was he locked in the Vineyards, a self imposed exile (or asylum?) from a land who took so much from him? Some believe he simply died, others that he could not bear being outshined and chose reclusion. A few believe he is studying the most occult of magic, in an attempt to someday destroy that execration people now call Temuair, and replace it with that of his memory. Or he lived happily ever after.
Personally, I would go with the "destroy Temuair" hypothesis.