Names matter. Royal Road West’s history begins with the anonymous former newspaper Editor from a fog-shrouded Midwestern town who pulled a cache of historical records from ancient Kesteva through a multidimensional door.
The Editor tried to get universities and academic journals to treat his find seriously, but he was ignored or shown the door. In one case, he may have been carried through a university building’s exit bodily, but we have little information about the incident. For that matter, we have little information about the Editor. To this day, we have neither met him nor had a phone conversation with him. Our intermediary is the Translator—whom we also have not met.
Out of desperation, the Editor turned to those of us who would become the future Royal Road West.
We try not to take it personally. Instead, we put Royal Road West into motion.
The name comes primarily from the Royal Road, a marvel of ancient Kesteva. The Road is the ancient kingdom’s highway, main post road, telegraph trunk, watchtower network and lodging system rolled into one. It stretches from the eastern mountains to the western sea and connected Kesteva with such efficiency that, according to our preliminary research, economic activity rose at least 25 percent in its first 10 years of operation.
Given all that, we thought “Royal Road” would be a good name for the Editor’s great project.
“West” comes from a couple of things. First, the story of Kesteva’s founding is the story of Aelfric & Aelin’s flight from the Old World, with thousands of their closest followers, and their subsequent march from the mountains to the sea.
That is, their westward march.
The company also is located in the western United States. And so “Royal Road West” was born.
Discussion question: If you were to name your own adventuring company, what would you call it? What elements would you try to capture in a name?
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