Naming
My aforementioned TTRPG sideproject does not yet have a name; I feel like I'm close to one but can't quite seal it up in a way that I like. Naming things is incredibly hard, trying to marry theme, mouthfeel, memorability, uniqueness, tone is a very fine balancing act.
It's rare for me that a name just arrives fully formed for a project, most often it's a product of the best creative tool I know of: writing out every idea, no matter how bad, then iterating over and over.
Below is the working list of names for The Banished Vault, sorted from newest to oldest so I don't have to scroll to write a new idea down:
Exile Vault
The Exiled Vault
The Exile Vault
The Banished Vault
Vault of the Exiles
Vault of Penitents
Exiled Vault
Vaults and Exiles
Vault for Exiles
heretics
shunned
cursed
expatriate
excommunicated
Static Vault
Hypervault
Flight of the Orion Vault
Flight of the Stellar Vault
Null Vault
Abyss Vault
Zero Vault
Vault Zero
Scattered Vault
Sleep Vault
Stasis Vault
Cold Sleep Vault
Hibernation Vault
Stargaze Vault
Hypersleep Vault
Vault of Stasis
Stellar Vault
Interstellar Vault
Vault of Stellar Wilderness
Wilderness Vault
Vault of Interstellar Dreams
Starlight Vault
Starlit Vaults
Void Vault
Black Vault
Vaulted Black
Geometria
Stasis
Orion Abbey
Armillary Gothic
Interstellar Gothic
Abbey at Tau Ceti
Galileo Divergence
Cathedral Hegemony
Cathedral at Tau Ceti
Archaic Light
Among the Angels
Endless Firmament
Solar Monastery
Ravens
Guiding Star
Those Who Will Sleep
Dreamers of the Star Light
Downsystem (too system of a down!)
Down Gravity Well
Empty Lightyear
Empty Parsec
Eleven Dreamsec
Dreamsec
Dream V
Dreamers on a Sunlit Voyage
Century of Dreams
Dream Century
Centuries Between the Stars
Dreamless Stars
A Thousand Dreamless Stars
Ten Million Sunsets
Dawn at Ten Million
Sleepless Centuries
Starless Nights
Void Born
Life Support
Remmer
Remnaut
Lucid Stars
Actual Velocity
Project Hibernaut
Hibernauts
Ten Million Dreams
10c Dreams
The Failed Odyssey
The Last Odyssey - thriller book
Odyssey - with any number that could be a year, is a honda car
Lifeboat
Migration
Transfer
Transit
Transit: Void
Transtellar
Solar Map
You can get a sense of the process here, especially reading from bottom to top: lots of space themes, journey, travel, gothic, math, etc. Very often a good word will emerge, like Vault in this case. The good word holds a lot of the themes on its own: vault as in imprisoned, jumping, below the cathedral, hoard, and so on.
Then you just keep working with that word or term until something feels right. Exile was the next word, but we didn't want to tread to closely to the extant game Path of Exile so that got demoted to an in-game term only, and Banished took its place.