A Glossary — The World of Caldrith

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.
the Conclave: The council of every sorcerer in Caldrith, seated at Skyveil.
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.

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