A Partial Glossary of the Kingdom

Terms & Instruments

Aetheric Telegraph, The A long-distance communication system, now decommissioned. Once capable of transmitting written messages across distances that would require a week's riding by conventional courier. The reason for its abandonment is not publicly recorded. Guild archives on the subject are sealed.

Aethersprite Lantern The instrument through which a licensed Dream-Wright constructs and delivers a specific dream experience to a consenting subject. The lantern requires skilled operation and produces no light visible to the naked eye. What it produces is visible only from the inside. Unlicensed lanterns exist and are technically illegal.

Approved Catalogue, The The Guild of Onierurgists maintains a catalogue of forty-seven licensed narrative categories for dream-work. All approved narratives end in resolution. The catalogue is periodically revised, though no revision has been made public in living memory.

Clear Coin A glass coin whose interior has run fully transparent, indicating a vow kept, a transaction conducted in complete good faith, or a truth told without reservation. Clear coins are kept. Some are worn. A few are mounted and displayed.

Common Glass The lowest denomination of the kingdom's glass currency. Used for everyday transactions. A common glass that runs murky is not legally void but is socially significant — the counterparty may decline the transaction without explanation.

Dream-House An establishment, licensed or otherwise, where the services of a Dream-Wright can be engaged. The licensed Dream-Houses of the Westgate Salon are formal, expensive, and Guild-regulated. The unlicensed establishments of the Tannery Quarter and equivalent districts are informal, cheaper, and considerably more honest about what they are doing.

Dream-Wright A licensed practitioner of the Aethersprite Lantern. Also called an Onierurgist in formal Guild usage, though the older term Dream-Wright remains in common speech. Unlicensed practitioners exist; they are called various things depending on who is speaking.

Empty Coin A glass coin whose interior is still — not murky, not clear, but absent of the usual slow weather of intention and history. Empty coins have no established meaning in Guild jurisprudence. They are, as far as the record shows, unprecedented.

Guild of Glasswrights Holds monopoly on the production of glass currency. Guards the location of productive Lethe sandbanks. Not to be confused with the Guild of Onierurgists, though the two organisations have a complex and occasionally hostile relationship.

Guild of Onierurgists The body that licenses Dream-Wrights, maintains the Approved Catalogue, and enforces the prohibition on unconsented dream-delivery. Its governance structure is opaque. Its membership is not published.

Implicit Memory, Somatic Not a kingdom term but a useful one from the world beyond the divergence. The body's memory of events for which there is no conscious timestamp — the Sunday lurch, the pre-presentation nausea, the inexplicable freeze. The kingdom's philosophers have their own vocabulary for this. The Dreamer card in the card deck addresses it directly.

Lethe, River The waterway whose sands, when heated and worked by a skilled glasswright, produce the kingdom's currency. The river is not fully navigable. Its source is unknown. The name is borrowed from our own mythology — in the kingdom it is simply a geographical feature, though one treated with some caution.

Mechanical Reaper Agricultural technology operating beyond our own medieval period. The social consequences of its introduction — for the peasant class, for the seasonal calendar, for the relationship between labour and the land — are a significant subtext of the Peasants' Workbook.

Murky Coin A glass coin whose interior has clouded, indicating deception, bad faith, or withheld truth. A murky coin is not technically void in law but is practically damaging. Receiving a murky coin in payment is a public record of the transaction's quality.

Refined Gravimetrics A system of measurement and navigation based on gravitational principles. Used in Guild architecture, in certain forms of cartography, and in applications whose details are not publicly described. The technology is not explainable by reference to our own history.

Sealed Coin A glass coin produced under witnessed conditions for a formal contract or significant vow. The witnessing Guild representative signs the production record. A sealed coin that subsequently murkies is a serious legal matter.

Sovereign Glass The rarest denomination of the glass currency, used only for oaths of permanent consequence. Sovereign glass coins are individually recorded. Their subsequent condition — clear, murky, or empty — is a matter of Guild record and, in significant cases, public knowledge.

Tannery Quarter, The A district of the City, or adjacent to it, associated with unlicensed practice, informal commerce, and the kind of transactions that the Guild prefers to neither permit nor acknowledge. Not dangerous in the way that such districts in simpler worlds are dangerous. Dangerous in a more specific way.