Editing SeventhSun:Glossary

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= 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.

{| class="wikitable"
! 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 || Name given to nomadic Inheritors. Also known as Roadclans.
|-
| 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.
|}

[[Category:Seventh Sun]]
[[Category:Setting]]
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