r/starfield_lore

So, I'm a south Slav, specifically a Bosniak, and I've noticed that much of the Va'ruun stuff seems to be directly inspired by south Slavic culture/language, in addition to Arabic and some other cultures and languages.

Apologies if this post is long-winded and a bit all over the place, I'm very tired but had this rattling around my brain for a bit and wanted to put it out there.

The names of people and certain other things in particular, and I believe that much of the influences are south Slavic specifically because of the fact that the spelling of these names is south Slavic, including names that originated from Arabic, Persian or Turkish but became common among many south Slavs during the time of the Ottoman Empire.

There are also some names that are either clearly neither, or seem heavily inspired by one or the other, or are more broadly Slavic, but I'm just rambling now.

There's also clear Arabic influences that seem to be strictly Arabic, and probably a couple other cultural and lingusitic influences that I haven't listed, but again, primarily, south Slav (and to a lesser extent, IMO, more broadly Slavic) and Arabic. And because I'm a south Slav, I'm mainly gonna talk about the Slavic stuff.

For example, koza, the alcoholic milk drink thing, is literally just the word for goat in most Slavic languages, having stayed consistent since proto-Slavic, as most words in our languages for common animals and certain other things have more or less stayed the same.

Andreja's name is mispronounced but is spelt exactly how you spell it in our languages. This, again, seems to be an Anglicised pronunciation of a common south Slav name. It's also typically a male name.

Then you have Mir'za, which is just Mirza with an apostrophe, and pronounced exactly the same way, although it's also a male name and if I remember right the character in the game is a woman. I believe the name is Persian in origin initially but came to us, again, via the Ottomans and is now a pretty common name among Muslim Slavs in the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia.

There's Djimal, which is Arabic in origin IIRC, and English-speakers would probably recognise the name better as Jamal. And while I don't think that it's spelt Djimal in any language that I'm aware of, Džemal and Džemila are both common Bosniak names, with the variant spellings of Djemal and Djemila not being too uncommon. I believe that Djemal is also how Turks spell it.

Now, one of the most obvious ones for me is House Ka'dic, which is very clearly derived from the surname Kadić, though again, it is pronounced in a very Anglicised way. It's meant to have a soft "ch" sound at the end, not a hard K. In real life, they were an Ottoman Bosnian family, nobility more or less. Their descendants still have the same surname.

Then there's Kavnyk, which is very likely based off the Slovenian surname Kavnik. Not sure of the exact origin of it, but the suffix -nik in Slavic naming is more or less equivalent to -er, -ist or -ian in English. Closest word I can think of that's similar enough to the "kav" bit at the start is kava/kahva/kafa, which is literally just coffee. Though I doubt that the star system Kavnyk was named by one of the game devs/writers thinking "you know what would be a great name for their star? Coffee guy."

There's multiple other names, so I won't draw this out too long, but just to name a few others that are either south Slav names or broadly Slavic: Alicja, Kreso, Lucjan, Irina, Karija, etc.

I still have an issue with the fact that the pronunciation of most of the names is heavily Anglicised, but it's honestly not unexpected in western media, to be honest. Personally, I will never pronounce Andreja's name with a "zh" sound rather than a "y" sound because that kills my brain.

Special shoutout to Ivica Vukovic in New Babylon. Not part of house Va'ruun, but very obviously a south Slav, and he even says some BCMS words in his dialogue and on his terminal.

He pronounces several of the words incorrectly and emphasises them like a Russian or other east Slavic language speaker, though. But hey, I'll take what representation I can get.

If I've made any mistakes, or if any of you feel like any of this is a stretch for whatever reason, let me know. And again, sorry if I'm kinda all over the place with my writing.

Tl;dr: Va'ruun is very much culturally/linguistically south Slav and Arab influenced in many ways, with a lil sprinkle of eldritch horror.

With the initial release of the game, I was under the impression that “flight speeds” between planets were something more hard science fiction. Constant thrust thanks to space tec magic, then a flip and burn. Hence, the travel between planets being as they made it. My only real support for that was the derelict with all the cultists who off themselves to “join” with the comet. It seems very clear in the notes they had to time it right, whereas If they had access to a faster thrust they could just keep up.

My question is if anyone knows whether this was the case, and cruise mode was just a gameplay addition, or if such a faster speed was always implied to exist before said addition.

Edit: something I just remembered, after your initial liftoff, crimson fleet pirates seem to almost “warp” in to the AO. That does feel suspiciously like an admittance of FTL in system flight.

Always seemed weird to me that New Atlantis and Akila city are the only cities on each planet.

Is there a lore reason, or are other cities ever mentioned.

I get from a gameplay perspective, having to generate cities would be too resource intensive.

We all know the gameplay loop: you enter the Unity, become Starborn, and upgrade your powers. But looking at it strictly from a lore perspective, why does the Constellation protagonist feel the need to do it dozens of times?

If you think about it, after the first few jumps, the "discovery" phase is pretty much over. You’ve seen how the artifacts work, you know the players involved, and you've met the Unity's representative. From that point on, you aren't really discovering "new" secrets of the universe—you’re just repeating a cycle.

So, besides the hunger for power (which is the Hunter’s whole deal), is there any other reason in the lore for the MC to keep going?

What would their origin and continuation stories be like? Ones from all those bases you grab the artifacts from repeatedly in your NG+ speed runs.

They appear again and again, they must have something s8gnificant to do with the future, being such a statistical certainty.