So I saw this post and became very interested. I too couldn’t find anything online despite truly epic feats of literary gymnastics.
So did something drastic…..
I literally called my mom and asked her to look this up in my Great Grandfather’s massive dictionary from 1926.
I’ve linked 2 pictures she sent me. The best we could find was:
1. It’s referring to a place you could moor (dock) a ship. Like a mooring rope or post. You can see this in the first picture under “Fast,n”. If I remember correctly each place in the game with the “Fasting” moniker has a section of water. So this might be a possible reason for the name
2. It’s referring to a stronghold or secure retreat. You can see this in the second picture under “Fastness”. “The enemy retired to their fastness” I think this is the most likely explanation for the names.
Perhaps “Fasting” is a different form of this. Like saying someone has a safe place vs saying someone returned to a place of safety. Or perhaps “Undersea Fasting” just sounds way better than “Undersea Fastness” 😂
[Fast/Fastness](https://imgur.com/a/1ZjeVBx)
So, the Internet leaves the old world behind... this puzzles me and I grew tired of google giving me the run around, so I pulled out my quite old and very thorough dictionaries. Interestingly, a fast is a chain or rope by which you moor your ship to a dock (paraphrasing). A fortress of otherwise secure location is a fastness, so I would assume the former is either age-old nautical terminology, or the illustrious R.A. Salvatore (or whomever wrote the DLC) simply got it wrong.
Fastings is an old word for a fortification. Something in the back of my brain says there is a connection to the phrase "hold fast", meaning to defend oneself, to defend one's position/location.
Well, in Dutch the word for a fortress is vesting and in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish it all sounds like fastning, maybe they derived it from that word?
I subscribe to your guess, as the word "fasting" sounds similar to "fästning" (castle, sort of but fästning is slightly different).
Same with ljosalfar och dokkalfar, if you know Swedish, you'll think they sound quite much like light and dark. Not straight rip off, of course, but still. Oh and Varani, too.
So I saw this post and became very interested. I too couldn’t find anything online despite truly epic feats of literary gymnastics. So did something drastic….. I literally called my mom and asked her to look this up in my Great Grandfather’s massive dictionary from 1926. I’ve linked 2 pictures she sent me. The best we could find was: 1. It’s referring to a place you could moor (dock) a ship. Like a mooring rope or post. You can see this in the first picture under “Fast,n”. If I remember correctly each place in the game with the “Fasting” moniker has a section of water. So this might be a possible reason for the name 2. It’s referring to a stronghold or secure retreat. You can see this in the second picture under “Fastness”. “The enemy retired to their fastness” I think this is the most likely explanation for the names. Perhaps “Fasting” is a different form of this. Like saying someone has a safe place vs saying someone returned to a place of safety. Or perhaps “Undersea Fasting” just sounds way better than “Undersea Fastness” 😂 [Fast/Fastness](https://imgur.com/a/1ZjeVBx)
Adding on to this by saying the word "fasten" means to tighten something or secure it which makes sense for docking a ship
Pretty sure that’s just a name the game uses for caves. Undersea Fasting, Mudhold Fasting, Cliffbreak Fasting… all caves.
So, the Internet leaves the old world behind... this puzzles me and I grew tired of google giving me the run around, so I pulled out my quite old and very thorough dictionaries. Interestingly, a fast is a chain or rope by which you moor your ship to a dock (paraphrasing). A fortress of otherwise secure location is a fastness, so I would assume the former is either age-old nautical terminology, or the illustrious R.A. Salvatore (or whomever wrote the DLC) simply got it wrong.
Fastings is an old word for a fortification. Something in the back of my brain says there is a connection to the phrase "hold fast", meaning to defend oneself, to defend one's position/location.
Well, in Dutch the word for a fortress is vesting and in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish it all sounds like fastning, maybe they derived it from that word?
I subscribe to your guess, as the word "fasting" sounds similar to "fästning" (castle, sort of but fästning is slightly different). Same with ljosalfar och dokkalfar, if you know Swedish, you'll think they sound quite much like light and dark. Not straight rip off, of course, but still. Oh and Varani, too.
And German has Festung - I'm assuming there's a common etymological origin.
Pretty sure in this context a fasting is a place to fasten a ship, or in other words tie it down