Glossary

The world of the Seventh Sun has inherited words from more than a billion cycles of history. Some retain precise technical meanings. Others have changed from Sun to Sun, or survive only because no better word has replaced them.

Term	Meaning
Age	A subdivision of an Epoch. Historians use Age and Era inconsistently, and the two terms are not reliably distinct.
Aeon	A numbered subdivision of a Sun. The present is the Seventeenth Aeon of the Seventh Sun.
Alliant	One of the posthuman lineages of the Seventh Sun, distinguished by a living or engineered exoskeleton.
Antilife	A force, condition, or process arising from the darkest days of an earlier Sun. Its nature remains uncertain, but it is worse than an ordinary plague, machine revolt, or berserk nanite swarm.
Behemoth	A colossal war machine, engineered monster, or other immense engine of destruction surviving from an earlier age.
Blade	A Path whose heroes meet danger through direct action, physical courage, and martial prowess.
Civil Order	The laws, customs, institutions, and mutual obligations by which civilized communities govern themselves.
Cycle	A standard measure of time of uncertain origin. Some Magisters associate cycles with deep periodic fluctuations in the phasm.
Cycloid	A calendrical measure related to the cycle. Its origin, duration, and theoretical significance are disputed.
Dawn Time	The beginning of history: our own remote age, at least a billion cycles ago. No one agrees upon a more precise date, and what does it matter?
Devisor	One of the posthuman lineages of the Seventh Sun: compact, powerfully built people with a strong affinity for tools and machines.
Emissariate	The body of Emissaries who serve the Monitors and minister to the peoples of the Seventh Sun.
Emissary	A Path whose heroes serve as the agents, ministers, and living conduits of the Monitors.
Epoch	A named subdivision of an Aeon, such as the Epoch of the Great Freeze or the Epoch of the Golden Archon.
Era	A subdivision of an Epoch. Historians use Era and Age inconsistently, and the two terms are not reliably distinct.
Fifth Sun	An earlier Sun remembered for terrible wars and transformations whose consequences still trouble the Seventh Sun.
Gorgonid	A broad family of peoples created or altered during the wars of the Fifth Sun. Civilized prejudice commonly treats all Gorgonids as monsters, although they are neither uniform nor necessarily hostile.
Grace of the Monitor	The alteration made by a Monitor to an Emissary's nervous system, allowing the Emissary to receive the Monitor's contact and channel phasm without a vinculum. Usually shortened to the Grace.
Inheritor	One of the posthuman lineages of the Seventh Sun.
Legacy	A surviving thing, place, system, creature, or consequence inherited from an earlier Sun.
Magister	A formal title for one who generates and shapes phasm, and the name of the Path devoted to that art.
Manifold	A component of the process by which a Magister generates and shapes phasm. It is not a name for the universe or a collection of realities.
Monitor	One of the immensely powerful intelligences that watch over cities and peoples, command phasmic power, and act as the practical gods of the Seventh Sun.
Optimate	One of the posthuman lineages of the Seventh Sun, created for exceptional physical and mental capability.
Path	The fundamental manner in which a hero meets danger and changes the world. A Path guides a concept without functioning as a class.
Phasm	The medium or process through which reality can be altered by trained minds, ancient machines, Monitors, and other powers.
Phasmic	Involving, produced by, or operating through phasm.
Phasmoid	A creature, entity, or phenomenon substantially constituted, generated, or sustained by phasm.
Protyle	Reconfigurable matter found in many relics. Protyle can assume new forms and functions, although its operation is rarely obvious and it comes with no manual.
Resurrector	A Path whose heroes restore, repair, and awaken the machines and systems of the past rather than inventing replacements for them.
Scourge	A contagious form of undeath associated with invasive or corrupted ancient technology.
Scutter	One of the small, agile, tree-dwelling posthuman lineages of the Seventh Sun, recognized by tails ending in leaflike fans.
Seventh Sun	The present great division of history, now in its Seventeenth Aeon.
Shadow	A Path whose heroes rely upon secrecy, subtlety, infiltration, and indirect action.
Shaper	A colloquial term for a Magister: someone who generates and shapes phasm.
Sun	One of the great successive divisions of history after Dawn Time. Each Sun encompasses multiple Aeons and is separated from the next by a profound transformation of civilization and the world.
Tineran	One of the posthuman lineages of the Seventh Sun.
Tradition	A body of practices by which a hero develops a Path according to the strengths, customs, and teachings of a particular culture or discipline.
Tzaadra Magna	The great supercontinent of Earth in the Seventh Sun. Tzaadra has no independent meaning and is not a name for the planet.
Viator	One of the posthuman lineages of the Seventh Sun, adapted to travel and life beyond settled lands.
Vinculum	A device or implanted instrument through which a Magister generates and shapes phasm.
Waylander	A Path whose heroes master travel, survival, and action in the wild lands beyond the protection of civilization.