Lessons on Etymology
As all young children, Nemyro Arianys had a natural dislike of the long learning sessions noble scions were expected to take in the realm, except of course when the lessons strayed from economics and biology and into the more fantastic tales of magic and battles that had forged The Empire from the barbaric tribes that had inhabited the coasts of the narrow sea.
"But Maester Arnold" he asked his teacher, who had arrived from the New Andalos citadel with a full chain in Sacred Bronze for pedagogy, "The visiondisk said that the place was called Torturer's deep, are you sure there really are no ghosts under the palace?"
The kindly old man smiled, in a way that Nemyro had learned meant that he was preparing for a story, he hurriedly grabbed one of the cushions and took a more comfortable position to wait for the story.
"I assure you little Lord, that should any ghost from those times remain it has already signed with the scholarium and has no intention of harming you or any of your friends, in the hypothetical scenario that you and your friends should sneak into the caves instead of following the tour, which being law abiding citizens you won't of course"
They changed knowing smiles, exploring the caves and other hidden places of the Deep was a well loved pastime, with even rumors of being encouraged by the King, which made sense by the sheer amount of little "treasures" hidden away, that suspiciously the city never seemed to run out of.
"But more so, the name is actually a bit of a misnomer, scholarship was only really taking off in those days, and the pirates and brigands that lives on these islands were far from the most erudite, the Warrior-Poets of House Saan living on a nearby island"
"The names actually comes from the Old Valyrian "Torugya", meaning "Place of the Turtle Catchers", by way of Westerosi common the word was confused with "Torugia", the language does not have the proper sound for Valyrian "¥" you see, and being the home of lowlifes they readily accepted this meaning as being "cooler" and "edgier", as crass as it might sound to us nowadays"
"It is from this true, ancient meaning that Emperor Viserys took one of his most infamous titles, The Turtler, now sadly fallen out of use since the Treaty of the Spheres, which ceded control of the higher Spheres to the Imperium in exchange for a cease of hostilities and the banning of the practice of Turtling, and now the word has come to mean "Boogeyman" in many of the fiendish tongues"
"It is also from this meaning that house ShieldBrook took their words, "Our Shells are Shiny", both in homage to their ancestral adamantine shields, and their practice of gifting..."
