Imperial
Ilyrion and its oldest holdings
Soft consonants that trail off: -yn, -ys, -aine, -orin. Liquid, aristocratic, old.
Aurevane · Kaerys · Sarreth · Vaelorin
Front matter
Say it the way they say it.
A great deal of this world’s politics is conducted by choosing which word to use in front of a witness. The rest of it is craft slang, which is more precise than it sounds and worth having in your mouth before session one.
Trade languageCrew slangHow places get named
01
Crystal, and the people who work it
Nobody in the working world talks about crystal as memory, whether or not they would recognise the description. It is craft slang, and it is precise.
- Dull
An ordinary mineral that holds one repeated pattern — light, heat, a turning motion, a held charge.
It cannot judge. It repeats. Most people think about it about as hard as they think about a magnet.
Common knowledge- Quick
Crystal that holds skill, judgement, recognition, and command, because it was a person who had those things.
Common knowledge- A tenant
The person inside a quickened matrix.
An industry word, and deliberately domestic. Somebody chose it.
Common knowledge- A drawing
One extraction.
Always passive. A drawing was performed, a drawing is scheduled. Nobody says who did it.
Trade knowledge- A mark
An assessment grade, first through fifth. It sets your term and your beneficiary schedule.
First mark is a fortune. Fifth is a term barely worth serving. Below fifth is a rejection.
Common knowledge- Thinned
A survivor of a failed drawing: permanently missing a trade, a name, or a skill their hands remember and their mind does not.
Both a diagnosis and an insult. Common enough in refinery ports to be a recognised local population, and rare enough to be uninsurable.
Common knowledge- A house
A refining concern.
They do not call themselves companies, and they are careful about it.
Common knowledge- Articles
The contract. A fixed term of service, signed before a clerk, witnessed, filed, and enforceable.
Common knowledge- A singer
A crystal about to fail.
A crystal under stress makes a sound. When a mechanic says the lift matrix is singing, everyone in earshot moves, and nobody has said anything.
Trade knowledge- Willing, sour
How a crystal is behaving today. A tuner coaxes a sour one and does not always succeed.
Trade knowledge- Tuner, grader, coaxer
The crystal trades, in ascending order of pay and descending order of honesty.
A tuner’s joke, told by tuners.
Trade knowledge
02
The water, and the crews who cross it
Sailor slang crosses every nation, because the thing it describes does.
- An arm
A branch of the Still reaching up between two continents. Each has a name, a width, a season, and somebody claiming the sky above it.
Common knowledge- Going grey
Crossing the Still.
Also dying. The two meanings are not kept apart, and crews use both in one sentence without noticing.
Common knowledge- A fog year
A year the Still sits low and more wrecks are workable.
Salvage crews live for them and die in them.
Trade knowledge- Steam hand, envelope crew, rider, herder
The rungs of the flight ladder, as job titles.
Common knowledge
03
Politics, in two syllables
A great deal of this world’s politics is conducted by choosing which word to use in front of a witness.
- Kaerys, the Windlass
The same city. The first is on every chart and in every Crown document; the second is what the yards call it.
Which one you use tells the city your politics before you finish the sentence. In a divided port that is not dialect. It is a daily choice, made in front of witnesses, dozens of times.
Common knowledge- The Leash
What the Nine Crowns’ former subjects call the Nine Crowns.
Not a compliment, and not said in the upper city.
Common knowledge- A leash-name
A title, honour, or commission granted by the Crown.
Worth nothing now in former imperial territory. People still put them on their doors.
Common knowledge- The Hall
The intake building in Kaerys. It has a proper name over the door, about assessment and displaced persons.
Nobody uses it.
Common knowledge
A tool, not a list
How places get their names.
The continents were isolated for centuries, so each one has its own sound. Which word a character uses for a shared thing places them instantly — and these rules are enough to invent a hometown, a family, or a ship that will not sound out of place.
Industrial
Harrowmark and the foundry coast
Two plain words stuck together, or a thing plus a job. Named by the people who worked there.
Coldwater · Harrowgate · Sixteen Locks · Kettlebridge
Classical
Coravant and the contested middle
Latinate, administrative, faded. A place that was organised once.
Coravant · Corvenna · Marentium · Old Antiora
Northern
Vorn
Consonantal, cold, long-memoried.
Vorn · Vornhavn · Skaldrgate · Yrnholt
Herd
The Longreach, and every port they were scattered into
Positions in a sequence. Third, last, meeting, turning, rest. Every one is a waypoint on the route.
Thirdwater · Meetsend · the Long Turning · Lastwater · Sixth Rest
Nobody names anything after the Still on purpose. Places near it are named for what people were doing before they looked at it.
Crews of every nation say the Still. Everybody also has a word of their own, and which one you reach for first says where you were a child.
These are the common local names recorded on this edition of the chart. Families, subregions, faiths, and trades still keep more particular words.
| Region | Common local name |
|---|---|
| Ilyrion | Vaelmara |
| Harrowmark | Deadwater |
| Coravant | Mare Cineris |
| Vorn | the Skerrywaste |
| The Longreach | the Long Silence |
Bring to session zero
- The more particular word your character’s family uses, and what they say instead when children are listening.
- One piece of trade slang from your character’s own line of work that nobody else at the table knows.
- A proposed name for the place you are from, built from the rules above rather than picked off a list.