So, Hammer. Not sure this is the same fella as in Elite Legacy but given the rarity of name, I am going to say it is likely the same character. Hammer's from Lucifer - the hell planet of Sirius. Originally, the character is from a story from "Further Tales of Life on the Frontier" that shipped with FFE. Given Hammer's affinity for bars it would make sense this is same character.
Still processing the story and what we're supposed to take away from it - probably something along the lines of sometimes your preconceived notions need a harsh reality check.
WARNING
: Story is definitely R-rated but then again so were Wanted and Nemorensis. The galaxy is a rough place.
Interesting; I’ve not really read any of the older text / lore / Oolite or affiliated texts, being wholly suspicious of what is actually canon and what is not in direct association to Elite Dangerous.
I’ll need to read this over a big cup of tea to identify any applicable links, but let us not forget that ‘Legacy’ does give us some
very specific details about Hammer, his origins, and life, which will help establish an association if there is one.
In Legacy, Hammer was originally the son of a space trader and
spent his youth on his family’s ship, when he grew up he left to become a
farmer on some unknown
agricultural world. He only returned to space after pirates killed his family. It was from that point in time that Hammer in Legacy begun a career in space, hunting pirates using his farther’s ship, an
Anaconda, which he renamed as
Hammer.
The Character Hammer was not his original name, which was in fact legally registered as
Cmdr Mark Lamon. He had an interest in drinking, bar room brawls, and military history. His physical description matches that of Michael Brookes, who did confirm on the Forum the character was partly based upon himself.
In Legacy the character is described as a type of wandering
nomad and a crusader, and in relation to Norse mythology too, as like ‘one of those gods who came down from the mountain’.
Hammer may be a metaphor for ‘Thor’ then as the word literal means ‘hammer - a tool for hitting stuff); whilst Lamon means various things in different countries, but it’s Old English origins links it to the Norman ‘Logmadr’ or Scottish/Irish ‘Lamont’ meaning ‘law man’; the French origin of Lamont means ‘up hill’.
Given this limited set of very specific identifiers, if these characters are the same then it is these similarities which we need to identify, given the limitations.
If the link is ‘name’ only it might be construed as being too wide and unlikely?
Where was this other character born; what did he do in his youth; what is his physical appearance; does he have a real name; what hobbies does he have; what ship does he use, who were his parents?
Giving the new text a quick search I currently don’t see any matches for ‘Lamon’; ‘farm’; ‘farther’ nor ‘anaconda’.
Personally I don’t think there is enough here to establish a quick relationship, if anyone can find such relationships please identify, my tea has just been finished.
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Personally I suspect if the character in Legacy is intended, then one interpretation (of many) could be it is in regard to
spacial clues literally and not literary. But then again I do have a bias for spacial analysis
In Legacy Hammer talks of the
Beaumont system, unlike the other systems mentioned in the book this does not exist in game. However it is linked to the quest (not only by the reference to a children’s story (Julia of Freeholm) but the direction marker pointing us to
Achenar.
Hammer tells us the system is far below Achenar. I interpreted the Codex to identify the path of Persephone and the path of Satan to the Greek underworld.
This area might
potentially be in the same general vicinity of the Lost Realms - which I also postulated previously is what the later half of the Codex might identify - directly.
Beaumont means ‘
beautiful mountain’ in French. There are I might hypothesise various allusions towards concepts of mountains, throughout this quest. Miltons Eden was upon a hill/mountain; Dante’s paradise too was upon a mountain; the term Omphalos was used to denote a hill too, umbilical omphalos were/are ‘outies’ more than they were ‘innies’; Holdstock alluded to Barrows too and various myths linked to the ‘Otherworld’ included mountains; the epic of Gilgamesh too is present in game (Holdstock again with Ragthorn) who travelled through a magical mountain.
Then there is the weird use of the term fernweh coined by Prince Hermann Ludwig Heinrich von Pückler-Muskau, who just happened to buried under an earth Tumulus or
barrow!
So one could interpret that allusion from Legacy to possibly mean ‘look for the beautiful mountain below Achenar’?
I speculate (in the absence of any certainty) this could be an allusion to Norse and Celt mythology surrounding the concept of the ‘Otherworld’ and is in itself another Robert Holdstock / Miltonian reference. Obviously there are a number of systems around this area all with bodies named after mountain too, which I find suspect.
Again, the above is an
assumption, it may be wrong, but there are too many other directional allusions which point to this general area - not excluding what I believe is a very obvious clue included by FD as a memorial, namely the
Brookes Tours, as the second stage of that tour is in this same location.
forums.frontier.co.uk
. I did not remember the name Links Hammer.