**My Name**

asanetargoss, 2024-05-01

Years back, there was a science fiction survival sandbox and empire-building MMO called Shores of Hazeron. It was a long-term passion project of a single developer. The 3d modeling was not good, the gameplay was janky, and the learning curve was steep, but the gameplay had a certain charm to it, especially with the intimate first-person camera view.

At the beginning of the game, if you chose to start an empire, a tutorial guide would appear, and its name was Targoss. The tutorial guide would take the form of a humanoid lizard, or a bug, or whatever form you chose in the species creator for your race. This tutorial guide would give you some guidance, and also gave you a torch to help you see at night.

It turns out that Targoss was killable, and if you managed to kill it, it would drop the following:

- A vulcium knife, the most powerful handheld weapon in the game, which normally was only craftable at a very high tech tier
- A carcass, which could be extracted for meat, bones, and leather. The latter two could then be used to craft a flag, which could be used to found the first city for your new empire.

This made killing Targoss a very useful earlygame strategy, and players found this very funny. You could also drop the vulcium knife on the ground and pick it up again to restore its durability. Early Minecraft survival multiplayer had a similar bug.

I, too, found this funny, so I decided to make it my Minecraft name. Except instead of just calling myself "Targoss," I called myself "a sane Targoss," because at least I was better than *that* Targoss! (I still do call myself Targoss, though.)

Anyway, the reason why I went off on this tangent of the story behind my name is because I just realized that [Hazeron Starship](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2239520/Hazeron_Starship/) was released! It is essentially a single player version of the MMO. From the achievements list, I can see that there is an achievement called, "Skin of Targoss," which in principle means that you too can make a flag out of Targoss! (but not *this* Targoss)

And now you know also why my avatar is a torch, albeit a Minecraft-ified one. The [pineapples](https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/show-your-creation/fan-art/literature/1580681-the-book-of-dreams-ch75-a-choice-to-live-with?comment=5) are unrelated.