THE INDEX

THE INDEX

Slang/Referential

Consang: A term denoting closeness; or kindredness. Can be used mockingly. Derived from the word: Consanguinity.

Nova: A term referring to the potency or coolness of something.

Stay zero: Stay calm; don't be rash.

Numb: A drug; also means to chill out

Joy: A nanotech drug that causes blood to clot together and sets the mind afire with hours of rapturous ecstasy.

Joyhead: Someone who habitually uses joy.

Chromer: Someone who is heavily augmented with cyberware; usually seen as low class and crassa street snuffer.

Razorboy/Razorgirl: A chrome aesthetic that foregoes armor in exchange for blades, reflexes, and speed.

Squire: An unofficial reference to an honorable and reputable street merc operating in New Vultun.

Necrojack/Necro: Someone who uses ghosts to hack minds, steal memories, or inflict severe cognitive damage. They spend most of their time diving in the Nether and engaging each other using ghosts and phantasmics.

Enforcer: An in-field asset to a Syndicate or a Guild; someone who engages enemies in person.

Drone-jock/Jock: Someone who links and connects to various vehicles, missiles, and platforms to pilot them from afar.

Grafter: Someone who fits you for implants, alters your gene code, or grafts augments in general.

Agnos: An agnostic of the old faithsthe few people who are permitted to know scripture under their pact with Jaus and the Guilds. Are unaffiliated to all factions and perform metaphysical tunings and maintenance for Liminal Frames, Heavens, and Hells.

Coldtech: Natural technology. No thaumaturgy.

Thaumaturgy: The quintessence of a god that warps and usurps reality in certain and specific manners.

Jaus: A phrase of astonishment, excitement, or surprise. Taken from the name of Jaus Avandaer, former leader and Crownbearer of the Eight Guilds after his passing. Against his will no less. The man didn't want to be revered as a god.

Snuff: To kill; to snuff out someone's existence.Ñøv€lRapture marked the initial hosting of this chapter on Ñôv€lß¡n.

Null: To mutilate someone's mind so badly that they succumb to madness or are rendered catatonic.

Dive: To cast deep into your subconsciousness and ride one's mind like a vehicle through the Nether, traveling from memory to memory; alternatively, it means a contracted gig commissioned to a Necrojack or a team of street squires.

Rotlick: A derogatory term for a ghoul; a creature that likes to eat rotting bodies at times.

Synced: Slang meaning to understand; if one is on the same page as another.

Scalpel: When a Guild lobotomizes someone with a Heaven of Light from on high.

Paler: A term for a ghoul; popularized amongst those of Ori-Thaum during the war.

Voidship: A spacecraft built for sailing the expanse of deep space; unable to fly through the Sunderwilds.

Sunderwilds: Vast eldritch wounds scabbing over into reality from years long prior. Horrific entities and primordial beings lurk in their clefts. The Guilds irregularly send expeditions into its depths to procure more Souls. At once a natural disaster and a major resource point. This is a major reason why void travel is extremely difficult.

Fallwalker: A unaligned, mercenary Godclad. They gained the name "Fallwalker" by being the only units that are commonly capable of fighting in regions affected by Ruptures originating from Fallen Heavens. Due to being Godclads, they bear intra-sovereignty rights, recognizing each of them as a sort of "foreign dignitary" and bestowing them with knightly privileges that are afforded to few others. This is mainly to put an end to the constant dueling between rival Fallwalkers seeking claim each other's Heavens and Hells.

Wombrash: A metaphysical contagion that leaked into the world after the Rupturing of the Heavens of Lust, Love, and Fertility. Due to this, the Physical Intimacy Ban is in full effect for New Vultun and the surrounding areas. All lustful activities must be conducted using proxies in the Nether, and any physical intimacy will trigger an outbreak of the rash, which causes a body's biomass to begin producing womb sores that incubate half-formed homunculi. The transmission vectors of wombrash are: physical, auditory, and visual. All physical intimacy conducted in reality constitutes a felony of the highest order and will be monitored by Guild Exorcists.

The Maw: A great Hellvent built into the bottom of the city made to dissolve disposed matter and waste. Runs across the city in grand chasms and is built in a sigilic symbol through the city's divided Sovereignties.

The Underhive: An undercity that once was the seat of power to the Hungers of Old Noloth before their destruction during the Godsfall. Was briefly the territory of the Low Masters before they were massacred during the Fourth Guild War. Comprised of the Umbra and Penumbra.

Warrens: The unofficial "topside" of New Vultun. Where natural ground level is. Separated into three layers and built like a stacked city of increasing prosperity as it goes upward. Layer One parts the Gutters from the Spine of the Warrens. Layer Two parts the Spine from the Throat. And Layer Three parts the Throat from Light's End.

The Tiers: A vast, ringed mountain made from memetic matter that holds up the core of New Vultun were the Arks of the Guilds are based. Only anchored to reality, the Tiers are actually far larger than they appear, spearing into the clefts of space itself to be an expansive city scape of blooming wealth and splendor, but also hyper-competitive rat races due to the limited number of citizenship slots. At the very bottom of the Tiers is the Undercroft, where most wagers, Low-Guilders, and newly minted citizens reside. Above that are Purgs (short for Purgatories), each of which is a different plane unto themselves, rooted to a different Ark and a different Guild. These are populated by mid-level Guilders and established Fallwalkers. Then, at the very apex, above even the Arks are the Elysiums--"paradise" realms where only the elites reside. It is their ultimate goal to overwrite reality with their Elysiums. Or so they claim.

Thaumaturgy

Thaumic Mass: The quintessence of a Soul, and that which allows one to manifest and grow Heavens and Hellswhich are officially referred to as ontologics. Thaumic mass can best be understood to be ontological capacity--or how complex of an alternate reality a Soul can create and project into reality. Complexity and vulgarity (how deeply they affect the natural laws) cause the mass of Heavens to grow, so the Soul must in turn generate more thaums to support it.

Thaums: Effectively the metaphysical fuel of raw willpower and belief. Claimable only from dead beings capable of self-awareness and worship. In previous ages, thaums were expended entirely to fuse into miracles, necessitating rituals of mass sacrifice in return for the gods to manifest.

Essence: A standard willpower unit measured in echoes and taken from the dead. Becomes thaums upon being fed into a Soul.

Thaumic Cycler/Essence Cycler: A metaphysical construct created through the sacrifice of a dragonan leviathan that eats itself eternally in a looping stasis of immortality. It is through this method that Liminal Frames are capable of being the perpetual miracle machines that they are.

Soul: An eldritch fire that burns, ever-bright, ever-unfading. This is the quintessential and key ingredient to the overall structure of a Liminal Frame and of the fallen gods. Souls cannot be replicated and are effectively the rarest substance in-setting with their place of origin now formally shrouded in myth. Hence, Godhunts and harvests in the Sunderwilds inevitably result in massive skirmishes between the Guilds.

Heaven: Hollowed vessels of eldritch gods now lobotomized and slain. Each one is shaped by a specific concept or aspect of reality, which serves as its primary Domain or Domains.

Hell: A implanted module meant to be attached to a Heaven as a "thaumic recoil compensator." Effectively, while a Heaven is creating its miracles, a Hell uses the parts from the Heaven to create counter-miracles of equal and opposite impossibility, thus balancing out the Rend.

Liminal Frame: A metaphysical rig that is burned over one's ontology--fusing itself over your consciousness and not allowing your death to dissolve your being as it anchors you just beyond the threshold of reality, serving as something of a metaphysical respawn point.

Canons: Metaphysical codes that usurp the laws of reality while a Heaven is active.

Hubris: Something that a Heaven is explicitly unable to do; a leftover from old scriptures and primal Heavens. Most modern Guild-made Heavens do their best to remove hubris or reduce them.

Rend: The vulgarity-damage a Heaven's manifested miracles inflicts on reality. Can be converted to entropy and vented from a Hell.

Rupture: When a Heaven overloads from building up too much Rend, causing localized reality to tear and become unstable.

Fallen Heaven: A Heaven with contradictory canons or a constantly triggered hubris that continuously spikes its Rend and constantly Ruptures. Must be contained or they will grow indefinitely, albeit slowly without active thaums to feed them.

Thaumic Backlash: The sudden spiking of Rend within the system of a Heavenusually triggered by incurring hubris or encountering a paradox.

Paradox: The clashing of two absolutes, creating an impossibility. Example: A Heaven of Indestructibility clashes against a Heaven of Destruction or one that dissolves matter. The resulting collision between two counter-simulated realities projected from clashing Soulsregardless of thaumic mass or designresults in both spiking with Rend and the need to vent their Hells.

Spheres: A rating system for the reality-twisting potential of a Liminal Frame and its Heavens. Heavens of the First to Third Sphere are usually tactical-level threats, capable of destroying entire megablocks or brigades. From the Fourth to Sixth, they become strategic category threats capable of reshaping entire engagements from multiple asymmetrical angles. From the Seventh onward, the user of said frame will be marked as a priority target in any engagement due to their capabilities at outright editing or retconning major parts of reality to suit their needs.