In the Supermassive Games tradition of having characters with surnames that allude to their character traits, the original characters that I have injected into the universe of The Quarry are no different.
Of course, Deirdre Alan was a stage name, but it has significance in the same way the character's birth name does. Her actual name, Alanna Deirdre O'Drochrath, incorporates the name Alanna, an anglicized version of the Irish álainn which means beautiful, and is ostensibly how she arrived at the last name "Alan". Her actual last name, minus the patronymic O' is a bit foreboding: drochrath is gaelic for bad luck.
Deirdre, the character's middle name that became her first, does not fare any better. In Gaelic, it means many things: sorrowful, broken-hearted, and in some translations raging. Deidre, a heroine of Celtic legend, committed suicide after the murder of her lover. While our Deirdre instead seeks revenge, one could argue that by going to Hackett's Quarry, she did herself in.
Just as tragic is Deirdre's Irish-born fiance Eoin Caillte. Caillte is Irish Gaelic for lost, a nod to both the fact that it was his loss that moved Deirdre to seek revenge, and that he - and so many of Deirdre's other friends - were lost at sea.
Then there is Gerhard Fluchvater, the sinister German director whose blind ambition would (in a roundabout way) result in a terrifying night for nine counselors almost a century later. Fluchvater translates literally from German to curse father.
When concocting a backstory for Silas Vorez, I settled upon the surname Hewitt, because it is associated with someone who lives in a clearing in the forest. This name foreshadows his tragic end, shot dead in his cage in the clearing of Hackett's woods.
Caleb Hackett made good use of a couple of different aliases in order to engineer his revenge plan. Timuskus is Estonian for darkness, and Gezurra means lie or deceit in Basque.
Even places can play the name game. For my Spanish-speaking readers, it may not have been lost on you that the island where Deirdre and Eoin built their secret retreat, Isla De Metilo translates literally to Island of methyl, a nod to the tragedy on the horizon.
The exception, of course, was Ginny Brown. As it was her maiden name Vorez that was most important to the story, the meaning of her married name was immaterial.
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Return to The Quarry
FanfictionIt's 2027. The luxury resort built on what was once Hackett's Quarry Summer Camp has folded and wants to close out their accounts - which include paying off the debts of the former camp and damages to the nine counselors nearly killed in the "bear a...
