THE WORLD OF CALDRITH
A Glossary
THE WORLD OF CALDRITH
A Glossary
- abomination
- What people call a thing that should not exist. It is used more loosely than that.
- bonded
- Linked in soul to a creature of the Veil. It can happen by accident.
- bonding sickness
- What being bonded and not Tethered does to a body.
- cantrip
- A small spell, sold cheap.
- champion
- A person bonded to a great beast. Currency of power between the kingdoms, and the reason most disputes are settled by challenge rather than by war.
- draken
- An old word for a wyvern. Also drakken, draken-kynd. Nobody has needed the word in a very long time.
- fire pot
- A clay pot of secret oils, dropped from the air. The standard weapon of every eagle and hawk in the world.
- the Flux
- The disease that emptied Thevric. Fever, then black threads beneath the skin, then rage, then the end. There is no cure, only care, and a small window in which the strong sometimes break the fever. Those who do are never quite well again.
- great beast
- Any of the ten animals of the Veil. Also great creature, great animal, veil-beast, depending on how much the speaker likes them.
- hex
- A spell thrown as a fistful of light, and the sorcerer’s usual answer to a problem. Most burn purple. A hex is meant to cause pain and stop a man rather than kill him, and a hex that kills is a mistake or a murder.
- journeyman
- A trained sorcerer who is not a Shine, which is nearly all of them. They sell cantrips, cures and blessings for coin, and go where the Conclave sends them.
- Shine
- The chief sorcerer of a kingdom, and its seat in the Conclave. A Shine swears to the High Archon, not to their king.
- sorcerer
- One who can pull power up through the hands, where it shows as thin rivulets of golden-white light. They are trained in Evarra and nowhere else, and their creed is that they are those who shine in the darkness.
- the Tested
- Those who passed the Tether Test and are bound for training in Evarra.
- Tethered
- A champion who has completed the ritual of the Longest Night and tied the bond fast.
- the Veil
- The sister-world lying alongside this one, where the great beasts come from and where the Tested must go to find them. Sooner or later, everything in Caldrith comes back to it.
- were-lights
- Shifting green, silver and pink lights in the sea fog, commonest near the Longest Night. The souls of the dead, coming home.
- the Witch-Sorcerer Wars
- The last of the great magical wars. The sorcerers won, the witches were driven into the deep places, and Thevric paid for all of it.
- wyvern
- A creature out of legend, and not one of the ten. There has never been one in Caldrith. Until now.