Glossary

108 names, powers, places and terms — what each one means, roughly how it is said, and where to read the rest.

A

The Abyssal Bloom: A dragon that came apart fertile, and has spent an age growing an argument for why it was right to.
The Age of Faiths: 1st – 11th centuries DS. New gods for a world that had watched the old ones kill each other.
The Age of the Elders: Fifteen centuries in which the Elder gods walked among their children — and led them to war.
Alignment: The second rung: integrated city-states under a recognised hegemon. Leadership, not subjection — a city can change it in a decade.
Amyramaam-ih-RAH-mah: Defensive stitching: the practice that keeps the barrier between the world and the void shut.
Anchor: Physical matter inside the Veil. It persists without any mind maintaining it — the only reliable foothold.
The Ancient Deity: Goddess of light and harmony, who died sealing her sister and left her radiance in the world.
The Ancient Devil: Goddess of strength and power, sealed beneath the earth, and venerated anyway.
Ancient Dragons: The paragons of sapient life, who gave up their eternities to become living seals.
Antaralaan-tah-RAH-lah: The Shallow Veil — a between-space steadied by the minds inside it.
Arcanaturaar-kah-nah-TOO-rah: Magic as a whole, primordially fire and ice.
AshanarASH-ah-nar: One of the three human peoples, called Stone in the old ledgers — covenant-minded and exact about terms.
The Ashen Plains: Volcanic desert. The baseline there is not hunting; it is total-use subsistence.
Astaurumas-TOR-um: A city of scholars alone on Thirvandor, counted among the greatest in the world and explained by nobody.
Astraiaass-TRY-ah: The power governing Astaurum, named in the ledgers more often than it is explained.
Avadaraah-vah-DAR-ah: The Material Plane — the foundation of becoming. Where you are standing.
Avaranaah-vah-RAH-nah: The barrier hiding the Veil from the material world. An active concealment, not a wall.
AzcalothAZ-kah-loth: The far north beyond the Dominion, and what the Blood Gate stands between the world and.

B

Beast: A legal and cultural category for the non-human peoples. Monster is an accusation; Beast is not.
Bloc: The third rung: several alignments holding together for trade and, above all, for common defence.
The Blood Gate: The fortress-gate the Bloodbound Covenant have held for centuries, feeding on whoever comes to breach it.
The Bloodbound Covenant: Cursed immortals of living ice, guarding the one thing that can kill them.

C

Cinderrot: Ground that is neither dead nor living, where heat sickens the soil and the days lose their length.
City-state: The first rung of the ladder: a city and every field, well and road it actually administers, taxes and defends.
The Conflagration: c. −100 to 0 DS. The war in which the Elder gods destroyed each other and very nearly the world.
CosmicaKOZ-mih-kah: The forbidden art of editing the world's own laws — and the reason reality is fraying.
Cryonicacry-ON-ih-kah: The first cold: the grammar of ice as matter, and the other pole.
Crystal Ships: The Elehath vessels. Remembered for crossing the sea; built to cross the Deep Veil.

D

DaskilonDAS-kih-lon: The armoured heart of the south-east, and the only place that still makes true steel.
The Deity's Sacrifice: Year Zero. The Ancient Deity spent her life to seal her sister away, and the calendar begins there.
Demon Fire: What came out of the wound in the Great Spirit of Fire. It does not warm; it unravels.
The Dragon's Curse: Not a punishment — a covenant. Each dragon took a shard of the corrupted fire into itself.
DSdee-ESS: The calendar. It counts from the Deity's Sacrifice; anything earlier carries a minus sign.

E

Eidoloneye-DOH-lon: An Ancient Dragon in its role as a seal — the apex of the Great Spirit of Fire's own order.
ElehathEL-eh-hath: The first people — radiant, crystalline, and the makers of nearly everything older than the Renewal.
The Emberguard: The order that tends creation fire — the flame that heals rather than devours.
Eternalyaeh-ter-NAL-yah: A name sailors are usually asked to stop repeating. Said to exist physically on the wrong side of the Avarana.

F

The Fivefold Fleets: −1,445 DS. Five fleets fleeing the collapse of Vadesh, and the founding of human Kworgalya.
Flamequake: Reality buckling near the grave of a dragon, where fire leaks through the seams of the world.
Floric RupturaFLOR-ik rup-TOO-rah: The Bloom of Contradiction: a magic that mutates whatever it touches into paradox.
Frostforged Valkyries: Made, not born — and the Polar Dwarves who make them.
Frostkin: The people of the deep north, shaped by the cold rather than merely enduring it.

G

Galforontegal-fo-RON-tay: The ascended one, sealed inside the Pyreheart Nexus and leaking out of it anyway.
The Glacial Dominion: The great power of the frozen north.
The Great Renewal: c. −2,000 DS. The act of creation, surrender and forgetting the mortal world was made out of.
The Great Spirits: Fire and Ice — older than the Elders, and the two poles the world is built between.
The Greathammers: The mountain range that broke into being, and the country Daskilon was built against.
The Green Peace: Hylessa's sanctuary law. No predation among residents, no blood-feuds, no hunting sapients.

H

The Hammer: Elder of making, whose work is written into every dwarf alive.
Harmonaliahar-moh-NAH-lee-ah: The Ancient Deity's schema — pooled authority held in an office rather than a person.
Harmoniahar-MOH-nee-ah: The Essence of Harmony — organised living matter, a third domain fire and ice make possible.
Hylessahy-LESS-ah: The forest-city that was sent to break the Beast peoples and sheltered them instead.

I

Ignis SanctumIG-nis SANK-tum: An Emberguard holding in the mountains, and a refuge for those fleeing the Infernate.
The Infernal Creed: The faith: veneration of the imprisoned Ancient Devil, and the claim that one of its own has already ascended.
The Infernate of the CreedIN-fer-nayt: The sorcerous theocracy — the state the Creed built. Not the same thing as the faith.

K

Kavachakah-VAH-chah: The armour between the Shallow Veil and the Deep. Deliberately made, and deliberately kept.
Kharbetakar-BAY-tah: The Infernate's religious capital — basalt ziggurats, and a very short credo.
Klerokoskleh-ROH-kos: A member of a Klerosian dynasty. Plural Klerokoi.
Klerosiakleh-ROH-see-ah: The Ruby's schema — a bloodline sharing one living reservoir of thymara.
KolmosKOL-mos: The harbour that speaks for the Verdant Kinship in every negotiation on the coast.
KworgaleKWOR-gayl: The world itself — every continent, ocean and island of it.
Kworgalyakwor-GAL-yah: The main continent, and the ground almost every story on this site stands on.

L

The Legion of Ash: Rysalia's army. Its soldiers pledge more than obedience, and the pledge runs one way.
Living ship: Not built — planted, trained, grafted, sung to, stressed, healed, and finally woken.
LohanarLOH-hah-nar: One of the three human peoples, called Iron in the old ledgers.

M

Memordiameh-MOR-dee-ah: The Warden's schema — fixed material intelligences and pooled ancestral memory.
MerynonMER-ih-non: Administrative and military capital of the Infernate. Called Domarus before the faith took it.

N

Navalisnah-VAH-lis: The Emberguard's heart, and the lock on every western pass into the Daskilon heartlands.
NuminaNOO-mih-nah: The Hammer's schema — magical work externalised into artifacts anyone can use.

P

Phosariafoh-SAR-ee-ah: Radiance — energy given direction and purpose before it arrives. Also the faith named for it.
Phosaria (the faith): The Radiant Light. Capable of a genuine mercy and a crusading certainty, and undecided which it is.
Pramasunaprah-mah-SOO-nah: The Deep Veil — madness, dissolution and void. Nothing that enters keeps its shape.
The Present Age: 1337 DS — the year the saga is happening in.
The Pyreheart Nexus: The heart of fire at the end of the world, and the prison at the centre of everything.
Pyronikapy-ROH-nih-kah: The first flame: the grammar of fire as energy, and one of the two poles all schemata descend from.

R

Radiance: The Deity's inherited light. Illuminates, converts, heals, and holds a thing coherent.
Radiant Fairies: Healers hunted almost to extinction for what their blood could do.
The Radiant Vanguard: Risbern's order for the threats a line of spearmen cannot be pointed at.
The Red Eyes: What happens to those who work longest closest to Daskilon's dragon-fed forges. Feared and coveted equally.
RisbernRIZ-burn: One of the greatest cities in the world, and the seat of the Radiant Light.
The Rootheart Maw: The submerged hive beneath the southern sea, where nature devours itself in cycles that never resolve.
The Ruby: Elder of fire, family and freedom — the most widely worshipped god still standing.
Ruby-as-Divine: The most widely kept faith in the Atlas — twenty-nine charted cities and six named aspects.

S

SchemaSKEE-mah: A system of magic — an architecture for how power flows, who supplies it and how it fails. Plural schemata.
The Scholar: Elder of enquiry, and of the reach that does not respect boundaries.
The Shadow Coven: The Cinder Witch's order of sorceresses. Whose ends it serves is an open question.
Shadowflame Fairies: The sisters who gave up purity to survive, won the war, and could not stop.
SkaitosSKY-tos: The Cinder Witch's seat, taken rather than founded.
Sons of the Black Horn: The minotaurs of Doosmund, waiting on something they will not name to outsiders.
The Sunfang: The werewolves of Sunspire — human hunters remade by the Ruby of the Wilds' dying gift.
Sunspire Forest: A forest on Thirvandor that decides for itself who may enter. A sanctuary because it is a grave.
SuvanarSOO-vah-nar: The gold-haired people of the Fivefold Fleets. Steel, discipline and the teacher-warrior tradition.
Syndesiasin-DEE-see-ah: The Scholar's schema — an unbounded network of expertise that reaches past the world's edge.

T

Teratriateh-RAT-ree-ah: The beast-yoke: will imposed on living animals. It has never once reached a thinking people.
ThirvandorTHEER-van-dor: The eastern landmass across an ocean most captains will not cross.
Thymarathih-MAH-rah: The energy sorcery is cast with. It is born out of sapience — minds make it.
Thymaraspherethih-MAH-rah-sfeer: The collective current of sapience. A soul's remaining thymara returns to it at death.
True Steel: A metallurgy ordinary ironcraft cannot approach. One city on the continent still knows how.
Tykoreiaty-koh-RAY-ah: The binding word — the schema by which an oath stops being a promise and becomes a structure.

U

Umbrasiaum-BRAY-see-ah: The Ancient Devil's schema — a pledged network of the living, feeding one holder.

V

VadeshVAH-desh: The homeland that fell, and the place the Fivefold Fleets sailed away from.
The Veil: The psychic plane covering all mental activity, including every dream. Lethal to visit in the body.
Velastraveh-LAST-rah: The oldest human city: black basalt cliffs, hanging water, and the Ruby's great library.
The Verdancy: The rarest faith on the map. A religion not of a god but of a balance.
The Verdant Kinship: Keepers of Harmonia, holding a beach on Verdarynia against something that never stops arriving.
Verdaryniaver-dah-RIN-ee-ah: The southern island where Harmonia was made, and where the Bastion of Stillbloom holds a beach.

W

The Warden: Elder of preservation and memory.

Y

The Years of Ash: 0 – c. 200 DS. Two godless centuries in which more died than in every war before them.

Pronunciations are given as plain English respellings, with the stressed syllable in capitals. They are a guide for readers, not a rule for the world — most of these names have been said aloud in more than one way for a very long time.