Glossary#

What a word means here
Each term in a line, and where to read more. The words are the game’s own: when a page bolds a word, it’s usually here.

AC: Armor class. A character's natural AC comes from their race and starts their Defense; a creature's AC is its Defense.
Area: One square of Sedia's map, the unit a road is counted in. Each takes a quarter of a day on foot.
Ascended: A hero who rose to serve a god as its avatar, an avarie or a daemune. Not a race anyone starts as.
AWS: After the War of Souls, the count of years everyone uses. It is 1512 AWS. Scholars also count BB (before the Breaking) and TB.

Bleak: The undercontinent: caverns, catacombs and buried ruins under the whole of Sedia, with five provinces of its own. Narsis is the only one with a city.
Breaking: The age that began when the gods made mankind, 0 to 2144 TB: Ettephemone's avatar was lost, and the celestials, the infernals and the Ancients left Urd one by one.

Check: A d20, plus a score's modifier and a tenth of any ability made for it, against a DC.
Citizenship: A province's civil ladder of rank, from citizen to emperor, bought with a charter from level 20.
Clan: One of the five powers that hold most of Sedia's real power: the Tribes of Tyr, Schzo'ersch, the Exuvae, the Revnati and Mandak's Legion.
Condition: Something the dice leave on you, like blind, poisoned or exhausted, with what it does until it ends.
Critical: A blow that lands in a weapon's critical range, for multiplied damage.

DC: Difficulty class: the number a check, a save or an ability's roll has to meet.
Defeated: Beaten to 0 health or less by someone who chose not to kill you, and helpless until you mend.
Defense: What an attack roll has to meet to land: natural AC, your Dexterity modifier and your guards.
Devotion: What tithes to your own temple earn you, a point for every 10 dover. It carries you up a temple's ten ranks.
Dover: A hundred vern.

Efficacy: How well you actually use an ability, from 0 to 100. Practice raises it, and a tenth of it adds to the ability's rolls.
Everspark: The crystal staff that held Lythantos's avatar to Urd, broken into nine pieces in the War of Souls. Each province stands around one.
Experience: What a character earns for foes beaten and deeds done. Each level costs 1,000 times the level you're at.

Fizzle: An ability under 80 efficacy failing on its efficacy check, for half its cost.

Guard: A parry, a shield or a dodge, added to your Defense against blows you can see coming.

Health: How much harm you can take. At 0 or less you die, or lie defeated.
Heroic levels: The levels past 100, one for every 100,000 experience. They bring standing and titles, not new abilities.

Initiative: Who goes first: whoever started the fight, then everyone else by a d20 and their Dexterity modifier.

Modifier: A score divided by 4, rounded down. It's what a score adds to rolls.

Natural 1: A d20 that shows 1. It always misses or fails, and in a fight it rolls on the fumble table.
Natural 20: A d20 that shows 20. It always hits, opens anything that could be opened, and earns a practice tick.

Practice points: What each level gives you by your wisdom, each worth 10 efficacy in one ability.
Province: One of the ten lands of Sedia, nine on the surface and Narsis under the ground. Your home province is where you grew up.

Rode: The one path of trials a character commits to from level 20, set by its master, with five ranks.

Saving throw: A check to shrug something off: poison, disease, a trap, a cold night.
Sedia: The one charted continent of Urd, where everyone lives.
Sovern: A hundred dover. Most people never hold one.
Stamina: What combat skills and physical abilities cost. It comes back with rest.
Storyteller: Whoever runs the game: the world, everyone in it, and every ruling the rules leave open.

Title: One of the four ranks a class grants at levels 100, 200, 300 and 400, each with its own rights.
Tradesguild: A trade your character practices, with six ranks. You belong to two at most.
Training points: One a level, spent with a trainer to raise an ability score toward its maximum.

Urd: The world, which turns in a figure eight around two suns, Aveo and Oeva.

War of Souls: The sixty-two-year war of the gods, Narsis against the Kingdom of Menes, that buried Narsis, burned Menes and broke the Everspark, 3118 to 3180 TB.
Willpower: What spells and mental abilities cost. It comes back with rest.