Grammar
- Smart quotes
- Oxford comma
- M-dashes: no spaces
- Ellipses: spaces before and after
Spelling
Default to UK spelling unless otherwise specified.
- adviser
- agonise
- behaviour
- clamour
- colour
- crenellations
- defence
- dolour
- favour / favourite
- fervour
- fibre
- flavour
- fragmentise
- fuelled
- grey
- harbour
- honour
- instil (not instill)
- labour
- materialise
- meagre
- moulder
- neighbour
- oesophagus
- offence
- pleaded (not pled)
- plough (not plow)
- pretence
- realise
- recognise
- rumour
- savour
- smoulder
- splendour
- travelled / travelling
- valour
- vapour
Endings -t/-ed
- burnt
- clapt
- dreamt
- dwelt
- leant
- leapt
- learnt
- smelt
- spat
- spilled
- wrapt
Other Spelling Conventions
- show, showed, showed (not shown)
- shockwave (not shock wave)
- swathe (not swath)
- vermilion
Deliberate Archaisms/Literary Expressions
- aught
- betwixt
- morn
- mostlike
- naught
- phial
- whence
Pluralization
- akinakes > akinakai
- chimera > chimeras
- gladiolus > gladioluses
- kopis > kopides
- necropolis > necropoleis
- ostrakon > ostraka
- pegasus > pegasi
- phalanx > phalanxes
- symposium > symposiums
- xiphos > xiphe
Capitalization
Abbreviations of capitalized terms are also capitalized. For example:
- The World Tree simply as "the Tree"
Terms of address are capitalized when speaking to a person (e.g. "Yes, my King"):
- Son, Daughter, Brother, Sister, etc.
- King / my King
- Queen / my Queen
- Goddess / my Goddess
- God / my God
- Emperor / my Emperor
Cosmological Capitalization
In addition to standard capitalization, terms generally get capitalized in order to assign cosmological weight to the terminology.
- Dark/Earth/Fire/Mist/Moon/Storm/Sun/Water/Wood: Capitalized when referring to the elemental spheres (e.g. "Fire spirit") or a deification of such principles
- Abyss/Khaos/the Dark/Abaddon/Ginnungagap/Hunan: The primeval Realm of Darkness.
- Age: Each iteration of the Wheel of History is a single Era, which is subdivided into four ages of decreasing length and increasing corruption.
- arcana (lowercase): Secret lore of the Art, divided into several lesser arcana and the greater arcana (sorcery).
- Archon/Elder God: The nine ruling powers that govern the worlds Spirit Realm and thus the fundamental aspects of the World itself, though subordinate to the Hidden God. In addition to feeding off the Wheel of Life, they ensure Prakasa does not escape the bounds of the World.
- Art, the: General term for all paranormal disciplines and secret lore, vulgarly termed “magic.”
- Beyond Realms, the: Any or all of the Realms beyond the Mortal Realm.
- Destroyer: A soul, incarnated over numerous lifetimes, whose ultimate role is the end of each era, overcoming some cataclysmic threat and destroying the World in an Eschaton. Fundamental to the Destroyer aspect is that Fate binds him to always die in the attempt.
- Elder Races: The first two races to exist in the Mortal Realm, the Giants and the Asuras.
- Enthymesis of Dark: The consumption greed that drives the Abyss and tempts Mankind as creatures born of Dark, manifesting as unbounded desires.
- Enthymesis of Light: The desire of souls towards Gnosis and return to the henosis of the Akashic Realm.
- Era: A complete revolution of the Wheel of History, lasting roughly 5200 years, and subdivided into four Ages of decreasing length and increasing chaos. There are eight Eras.
- Eschaton: Cyclical destruction of civilization in the Mortal Realm at the end of each Era, prompted by the Destroyer.
- etheric/Otherworldly: Of or pertaining to Realms beyond the Mortal Realm (e.g. Etheric Being )
- Gnosis:Personal insight into the Ontos. Gnosis is actively resisted by the Hypostases of Khaos as a threat to their illusion. In theory, Gnosis could lead to the liberation of Light from the World, though many who begin to experience it go mad.
- Hidden God/Yaldabaoth/Typhon/Set/Ahriman: The preeminent Hypostasis of Khaos whose power binds the Archons, and de facto demiurge most directly responsible for the World.
- Man/Mankind: The primary created being whose existence as conduits of Prakasa serve to feed the Archons via the Wheel of Fate. Conversely, Mankind also presents the sole chance of redemption of Light through Gnosis and ascension. (The species is capitalized; not the gender.)
- Mortal Realm, The/Earth: The physical world inhabited by Mankind.
- Mother, the: The first Aeon, who tried to shelter the captured Prakasa within the World by becoming the Tree of Life.
- Ontos/The Truth: The hidden, true nature of the World, of its inception and purpose. Exposure to the Ontos often causes madness as many minds cannot handle losing the illusions.
- Oracle: A person who can use the Sight for Divination. Unlike most arcana, sometimes people with especially sensitive minds develop this ability without outside training.
- Prakasha/Light: The Light of Akashic Realm, most directly manifested within beings of the World as souls, drawn up from the World Soul.
- Prana/Mana/Pneuma/Megin/Qi/Ki/Silla/Numen/Ruah: The vital force of life inherent in all beings and extant in places and things. Possession of greater amounts of Prana, in addition to promoting health, creates a continuous passive influence of the will upon reality, as a kind of supernatural charisma. Those with large amounts of Prana may also expend it to achieve superhuman feats. A body drained of all Prana risks its soul departing. Etheric beings are held together by entirely Prana and begin to fade away without it. Living beings regenerate Prana over time, absorbing it from the environment. For most people, the strongest source is the sun.
- Primordial: An uncreated demon originating in the Abyss.
- Qigong: A means of actively harnessing Prana internally to perform superhuman feats.
- Realms: In a cosmological sense, a reality of existence (a plane), namely the Mortal Realm, Spectral Realm, Roil, Spirit Realm, the Abyss, or the Akashic Realm. Also sometimes used by mortals to refer to geographic regions.
- Roil, The/Underworld/Hell: A nebulous liminal space surrounding the Spirit Realm.
- Sea of Time: Metaphoric term for the totality of the timeline as perceived by the most powerful Oracles.
- the Sight: Psychic ability whereby the soul apprehends a fragment of the Ontos. This supernatural sensitivity is necessary for serious practice of the Art.
- Spectral Realm, The/the Penumbra: A shadowy Realm surrounding the Mortal Realm.
- Spirit Realm, The/the Otherworld: A Realm of spirits existing beside the Mortal Realm, though separated by the Penumbra and the Roil.
- Supernal: The language of spirits.
- Tartarus: Two concentric walls and the portion of the Abyss contained therein that enclose the World and separate it from the Primordial Realms. Commonly considered a prison or Hell, though more accurately the World itself is the prison and Tartarus the outer walls.
- Tree of Life/The World Tree/Yggdrasil: The last physical form of the Mother, which serves as a conduit of souls and at the same time binds reality together.
- The Veil: An Etheric membrane that separates the Mortal Realm from the Penumbra and thus prevents eidolons from bodily entering the Mortal Realm. As a consequence, such beings require physical hosts in order to enter the Mortal Realm.
- Watchers/Rishi: The first created people, generated by the Mother, but conscripted as servants of the Archons.
- Wheel of Fate/Ananke/Fate/Chains of Fate/Web of Urd: A metaphor for the deterministic nature of the universe and the causal chains that ostensibly contravene free will. Commonly believed to be overseen by the Moirae.
- Wheel of History/Kalachakra: The cycle of history, progressing downward from a Golden Age toward a corrupted Dark Age before culminating in an Eschaton and laying the foundation for a new Golden Age.
- Wheel of Life/bhavacakra/samsāra: The cycle of reincarnation whereby souls (Prakasa) are drawn from The World Tree and invested into individual lives, only to be returned to the Wheel and spun out once more. The Hypostases of Khaos feed on the Prakasa of the gathered souls with each revolution.
- will (lowercase): The active principle of the soul, capable of making choices.
- World, The: The sum of the Realms created by the intermingling of Dark and Light, contained with the walls of Tartarus. Namely, the Mortal Realm, the Spirit Realm, and the liminal spaces in between. Capitalized when used in reference to the universe. Not capitalized when used in general.
Special Materials
- adamant: incredibly hard, dense metal
- orichalcum: rose-gold metal suitable for Soulforging
Era Glossaries
Characters
Locations
Maps
Titan Era
Ragnarok Era
