My madness for Kickstarter started in 2022. One of the earliest projects that I backed on Kickstarter was the campaign for the video game Erra: Exordium by Fair Pixel LLC. I was a higher tier backer, so I had the chance to influence some aspects of the game. This post is about the items and lore from the game that were based on my input.
The game has a 50% discount on Steam right now. The game is a dieselpunk 2D platformer with a lore based on the Akkadian-Sumerian mythology. The game has an interesting setting and atmosphere.
My Influence
If you want to play the game and don’t want any spoilers, don’t watch this full gameplay by Zhain Gaming. The video is useful to show where the items based on my ideas appear in the game.
I like the history of science and I know that astronomy played an important role in Mesopotamia. My first suggestion was an item related to astronomy or ancient constellation charts. They used the suggestion to create the Babylonian star map item. The message of the item says” The ancient map seems to have an unknown power. You have received Anu’s blessing and shots accuracy increases.” In the video you have to go around the 2:49:50 mark to see the item and the message. The image below shows how the item looks in the inventory.
I also gave a suggestion for a character that appears in the lore of the game. In one of my posts I discuss the etymology of my last name “Prisacariu” and the fact that it means “beekeeper” in Romanian. I thought it would be cool to have a Sumerian beekeeper character. Based on Google searches I found out that the Sumerian deity Lulal may be connected to beekeeping. Based on the info from this page, Lulal means “syrup man”. The name is derived from lu= grown man and lal= honey, date syrup. Lulal was the son of goddess Inanna.
Based on my suggestions, they made a tree with a beehive. The tree has a collectible item called “Lulal. treatise on the construction of beehives”. The body of the text says “Bees communicate with each other using body movements and certain pheromones. Infected mechatrons are also very similar to bees, they interact like a swarm”. You can see the tree with the beehive and the text message around 3:17:50. Below you can see a static image.
I have received a portrait of Lulal, but I am not sure if the portrait was included in the game. You can see some bees in the portrait image.
As a side note, I can mention that I may have distant connections to ancient Mesopotamia despite being an ethnic Romanian. In a previous post I discussed the fact that I belong to Y-DNA haplogroup J2 and in another post I talked about my autosomal DNA. A lot of males in the Middle East region belonged and still belong to the J2 haplogroup. In my autosomal post I mention that my test showed some small amount of Sephardic Jewish (about 2%) and Northern Levant (about 1%) trace DNA. These DNA tests are not reliable enough, especially when the estimates go under 10%. Nonetheless, a lot of Jews did live in Romania in the past, so it’s possible that my Middle Eastern and North African trace DNA is connected to a more recent Jewish ancestor (I think that your autosomal DNA is the average of your last 6-8 generations of ancestors). A Sumerian alter ego of myself is not totally out of place 🙂