Meph is shorthand for Mephistopheles, from Goethe's Faust.
And I am no official anything. I simply wanted a mod that made the game faster, so that I can play it on my netbook. Didnt quite work out that way. There is no partnership between Tarn Adams and me, till a month ago I never even talked to him, and I dont think that he knew about me or MasterworkDF at all. I am clearly no editor employed, or even working together with Tarn Adams.
To answer your real questions: No, there was no plan. I simply enjoy RTS games, thought DF is fun, but too much a simulation. So I started modding. Then I had the idea of a UI, because people could never agree on one change. I made polls: Should I do A, B or C? and people wanted all three, which were mutually exclusive. So I asked Lucas for the LNP source code and wrote my Settings.exe. Then, everything started to get bigger and bigger.