Author: Lurina

Glossary - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Thank you for reading. If you are struggling to keep up with some of the language used in this narrative, then this glossary may be of some assistance to you. Though certain terms will be excluded until they become pertinent for the purposes of dramatic tension, please note that this may spoil some light setting-related exposition which will be revealed later.

Arcana: A power created as a tool by the Ironworkers to assist in rebuilding the world. Sometimes referred to simply as the Power. Due to its complexity, practitioners (called 'arcanists') are separated into numerous disciplines, which are in turn divided into schools. Some pertinent disciplines:

///Aetheromancy: The study of utilizing arcana to manipulate space.

///Alchemy: The study of utilizing arcana to create medicine, or sometimes biochemicals for alternate purposes.

///Anima Scripting: The study of utilizing arcana to manipulate the anima script, a biopolymer which determines the development of organisms. Because the subject of the discipline is proto-life rather than life outright, it is technically not a school of biomancy, though this is the subject of some dispute within the academic community.

///Biomancy: The study of utilizing arcana to manipulate biology.

///Chronomancy: The study of utilizing arcana to manipulate time.

///Divination: The study of utilizing arcana to assess information and predict events.

///Egomancy: The study of utilizing arcana to alter the pneumaic nexus, the seat of human conciousness. Banned everywhere, save for the realms of the Uana. Archaically called Pneumancy.

///Geomancy: The study of utilizing arcana to manipulate earth, the landscape, and most broadly the climate.

///Golemancy: The study of utilizing arcana to create machines.

///Neuromancy: The study of utilizing arcana to manipulate the nervous system.

///Pyromancy: The study of utilizing arcana to create destruction via the direct use of energy; in a word, to create explosions.

///Runescripting: Not technically a discipline, though often treated as such. The study of engraving incantations, as runes, into various objects.

///Thanatomancy: The study of utilizing arcana to manipulate the process of death, or dead tissue. Archaically known as Necromancy.

///Transmutation: The study of utilizing arcana to change the nature of objects or matter. Most commonly used for replication.

Civil Dispute: Often called the Ikkaryonic Revolution by the young. A civil conflict within the Grand Alliance that arose based on a decision by its Old Yru Convention to treat the Ikkaryon Provisional Government, who seized the city after the rulers horrifically mismanaged it during an outbreak of disease and subsequent famine, as a criminal enemy of the state and violators of the Covenant. It ultimately led to the most serious armed conflict in 200 years, involving most of the nations of the Elysian Pangaea, before finally being brought to the end by the Summer Compromise of 1388, which granted amnesty and concessions to the rebels and their allies.

Covenant: Officially the "Covenant of the Mourning Realms". A set of oaths sworn upon by 6 of the Parties of survivors following the creation of the Mimikos, designed to create a civilization that is sustainable in the long term in the new circumstances of humanity. Though largely considered unquestionable by the political mainstream, the interpretation of its tenants have become the subject of conflict, with broadly three schools of thought.

///Fundamentalist: The belief that the tenants of the Covenant are absolute, and must be taken literally. After centuries of ideological dominance, its hegemony has been fractured in the aftermath of the Civil Dispute.

///Interpretist: The belief that the tenants of the Covenant should be interpreted more liberally in accordance with the spirit in which they were written, often under the guidance of a secondary, longer document written by the Covenant's authors known as the Proclamation of Mankind's Future. An ascendant ideology.

///Reformist: The belief that the tenants of the Covenant are flawed due to a lack of foresight by the authors and must be amended or abolished outright. Considered an extremist ideology, although relatively popular among the young.

Covenant Schism: A disagreement on the specifics of some of the Covenant's tenants between two Parties, the Lluatec and the Uana, and the other six. The result was that they did not settle the Mimikos, and follow a significantly different, and much briefer, version of the Covenant. Attempts have been made to mend this divide for centuries, with limited success.

Dementia: Shorthand for associative collapse-type dementia. A degenerative mental condition that is increasingly likely to occur in those older than 500, and especially 600 years. It is currently believed to be untreatable. With the exception of accidents, it is the most common cause of death in the civilized world.

Duumvirate: Shorthand for the Lluatec-Uana Duumvirate. A loose federation that oversees most of the states established by the Lluatec and Uana Parties, placing it in vague opposition to the Grand Alliance, though no hostilities have ever occurred. It dominates the Empyrean almost completely.

Era: A popular means of separating human history, based on broad trends in governmental development. Scholars generally observe five distinct eras.

///Primeval: The age before civilization (though not entirely before recorded history) characterized by small, largely isolated tribes.

///Old Kingdoms: The earliest age of civilization, characterized by local centralization the beginnings of specialization, but limited trade and simple government. Civilization controls only limited parts of the world.

///New Kingdoms: The first age conceived as truly developed, characterized by much greater centralization and high levels of specialization, trade, and complex bureaucratic government. Civilization controls the entire world, but is divided.

///Imperial: The apex before the collapse of the old world, characterized by a smaller number of impossibly complex and interconnected states which largely no longer required human labor to function. Civilization is united and absolute.

///Covenant/Mourning: The contemporary era, for which disagreement on the name exists.

Empyrean: The area of space both physically and extra-planarly above the Mimikos, largely unused by the Ironworkers. It is home to a variety of experimental structures.

Epoch: An alternative means of categorizing broad ages of history from a more anthropological perspective, based on the dominant 'tool' utilized by human beings. Divided into four - Bone, Fire, Iron, and Arcane.

Exodus, The: The event wherein the eight Parties, following their awakening from their slumber within the Tower of Asphodel, were incarnated into either the Mimikos of the Empyrean.

Generation: An informal label given to individuals based on the century of their birth that has become a socially acceptable way to inquire as to someones approximate age. In the contemporary social climate, the 14th and 13th generations are considered young, the 12th and 11th mature, and the 10th and beyond elderly. This excludes the most recent generation, the 15th, of whom the eldest are only 9 years old.

Grand Alliance: Shorthand for the Grand Alliance of the Mourning Realms. A single pan-national government under which the nations of the Mimikos united following the virtual elimination of scarcity and the period of universal good relations and heightened diplomatic spirit that marked the end of the Interplanar Colonization Period. Governed by the Old Yru Convention, a council of elected leaders, bureaucrats and heads of state.

Great Lamp: An artificial sun created by the Ironworkers to service the Mimikos. It crosses the sky each day by means of a giant mechanical edifice, with an angle that changes depending on the season.

Incantation: The words used to invoke a certain effect using the Power. Largely mathematical in nature, they are spoken in Eme, an ancient relative of modern Ysaran that has almost nothing in common with the contemporary language. They require extremely precise pronunciation and mathematics, or will fail - sometimes with spectacular concequences.

Iron: A substance of incredible power that was harnessed in the New Kingdoms Era, and became the backbone of civilization, enabling the impossible glories of the Imperial Era. As it was used to construct the Tower of Asphodel and preserve reality, it can no longer truly exist in the material world, in much the same way that a box cannot contain itself. However, there are some minor exceptions.

///False Iron: A shadow, or perhaps a simulacrum of iron, taken from the Tower of Asphodel as it exists in mundane reality. It is found underground in veins all over the Mimikos and the Lower Planes, and its connection to the Tower can never truly be severed.

///True Iron: Found only within the bodies of human beings in tiny quantities as a matter of necessity. It is the product of a stable paradox. It becomes False Iron when it leaves the body, and vice-versa.

Ironworkers: The scholars who labored to rebuild reality while the Parties slept within the Tower of Asphodel. Masters of its use from the Imperial Era, they were still limited in their success, and only able to approximate the nature of the plane from inference and incomplete records.

Logic Bridge: An interfacing tool used to connect the human mind to either other minds or objects via exercising the iron of the pneumaic nexus, and its connection to the Tower of Asphodel. In its most basic form, it consists of a piece of False Iron, a switch, and two polarized magnets. Can be used directly to facilitate awkward pseudo-telepathy, but a logic engine is required for translating more complex concepts.

Logic Engine: A machine used to perform reasoning. Most, but not all, interface with humans via logic bridges. Though logic engines can take many forms, the most common is the oscillatory logic engine, which utilizes microvibrations and extremely delicate machinery to store and process information, along with hydraulic power both to maintain its core tone and maintain operations. Though much slower than minds and the iron-based logic engines of old, they are capable of incredible feats of parallel processing, rendering them able to perform mathematics and analysis beyond the scope of human ability.

///Echo Maze: Properly called an Echo Labyrinth. A cube which stores information in its incredibly fine internal indentures. When sound passes through it, a logic engine can process the output as extremely specific information. The most common form of data storage in the present day by far.

Luxury Debt: A concept that has replaced currency since the advent of mass-duplication arcana destroyed the viability of a scarcity and labor-driven economy. Everyone receives trivially produced goods for free, but to procure something that is either abstract or cannot be duplicated and requires human labor, they must go into debt with the community. This must then be repaid either by community service, or producing something else of value to pass on the debt. Class disparity still exists, however, as it remains possible to amass disproportionate amounts of non-monetary resources for oneself or a company.

Mimikos, The: The final attempt of the Ironworkers to create a satisfactory replacement for the old world, and the home of the vast majority of living humans. It informally refers to both the structure itself, and the plane in which it was constructed. It is shaped like a giant, incredibly thick bowl, and derives its gravity from a combination of mass, horizontal, and vertical movement. It has three major landmasses.

///Elysian Pangaea, The: A massive, vaguely crescent-shaped continent that comprises over 80% of the surface landmass. The coasts of the ocean within the crescent, the Mnemonic Sea, are the center of international civilization.

///Inotian Archipelago: A large group of islands upon which the Inotian Party mainly settled. Though they comprise only around 1% of the land in the world, they are densely populated.

///Orphaned Continent, The: A continent in the far north, famed for being relatively untamed.

Party: One of the eight groups that successfully took refuge within the Tower of Aspodel during the collapse of Imperial Era civilization. Each represents a distinct ethnic and cultural group. Some have "legitimate" governments that can trace their leadership back to the Exodus, while others are the subject of more complicated situations. The eight Parties are: The Ysaran, Inotian, Mekhian, Saoic, Rhunbardic, Viraaki, Lluateci, and Uana.

///Ysaran: Meaning "alive". Considered the most politically influential party in the Grand Alliance, it originally settled the coasts of the Mnemonic Sea before splintering almost immediately due to a lack of clear leadership. Today, it is largely reunified under the Ysaran Accord, a democratic federation of nations, though the culturally distinct Asharomi cities and the nation of Ikkaryon remain separate. Its people generally have strong features and light-to-medium brown complexions, with a minority having darker brown. Ysaran (specifically, Towerward Ysaran) serves as the de-facto lingua franca of the modern world. They are famed for their grand architecture and their Aetheromancy, with Ysaran mathematicians said to be the greatest in the world.

///Inotian: Meaning "disparate". Inversely, considered the most culturally influential party due to its history of seafaring and colonization. Though the most direct continuity of its pre-collapse government founded the Republic of Irenca on the Orphaned Continent, the majority of the party splintered to build city-states on the islands of what is today called the Inotian Archipelago. Its people generally have very strong features and brassy complexions, with a minority being paler. They have a well-established scholarly tradition, with Inotian competing for Mekhian as the language of science, with a particular bent towards philosophy. The greatest Diviners in the world, the Sibyls, are Inotian.

///Mekhian: Meaning "balance-seeking". Historically non-interventionist yet arguably the most powerful party in a direct sense, the Mekhians are the only group to have experienced absolutely no political fractures since the settling of the Mimikos. Their state, the modestly-named Realm of Mekhi, consists of the entirety of the non-expatriate and non-expatriate descended population and spans almost the entire civilized east. Its people generally have medium to dark brown complexions and soft features. They also have a strong scholarly tradition, but with a more pragmatic character, and excel at civic management. During the Mourning Period, it was the global center of all arcane research, though its signature disciplines are Geomancy and Thanatomancy.

///Saoic: Meaning "grieving". Developing a very distinct culture due to its geographic isolation from the other parties (save for Rhunbard), the Saoic party settled the west of the continent, and today is divided into the Saoic Arcanoncracy, a bureaucratic state that is the last in the world governed by arcanists, and the much more liberal Dai League, comprised of various small nations and cultures. Its people have amber-to-pale complexions and very soft features. For a variety of reasons, it tends to punch under its weight diplomatically, but its artistic and literary cultures are the most popular in the world. Ironically, despite its government, it has no specific discipline for which it is famed, but instead is known for its conventional science, artificing, and being the birthplace of the modern logic engine.

///Rhunbardic: Meaning "survivors". A warlike party which settled the plateau and steppes in the center of the continent, with the exception of the exile-realms of Umbrica and Turaggoth on the Orphaned Continent. Once, the Rhunbardic Empire ruled half of the continent, but it was defeated at the climax of the Tricenturial War and became the much smaller Rhunbardic Kingdom, the last remaining monarchy (albeit a constitutional one) in the world. Its people have pale or sometimes very pale complexions, and features that vary from soft to mixed. Almost every aspect of Rhunbardic culture is militant - cities resemble fortresses, and roles for individuals are often strict and pre-defined. In terms of the Power, it is most known for its Pyromancy, though half the war-arcana in the world can be traced to it.

///Viraaki: Meaning "bliss-seeking". A party that is widely considered a late-bloomer, having been weak and politically irrelevant for almost a millenia since it settled the jungles and mountains of the south, but now rapidly increasing its influence. Its political structure is unusual, with its disunited realms swearing technical fealty to its capital city-state, Sacred Vir, despite it holding very little practical power. By far the most powerful of these realms is the Exarchate of Palaat, a young nation that has grown rapidly since its founding during the Rhunbardic occupation. Its people have medium to dark brown complexions, but a very wide range of features. It is extremely famed for its Biomancy, which it even incorporates into architecture, and has begun to challenge Inotia and Sao for their cultural and artistic influence.

///Lluateci: Meaning "discordant people" (a self-deprecating name adopted due to the circumstances of the Covenant Schism). One of the two Duumvirate parties based in the Empyrean, they accepted the Ironworkers offer of settling their smaller experimental structures, splitting into myriad small nations, though they have since reconsolidated into six. They generally have soft features and medium to dark red-tinted complexions. The culture of the Lluateci is hyper-liberal to the point that it can appear almost anarchic to outsiders, with tolerance for practices that would be outrageous elsewhere. Their signature discipline is Transmutation, a necessity for surviving in the void of space.

///Uana: Meaning "refusers". The second of the two Duumvirate parties based in the Empyrean, though in their case they remained mostly unified. A isolationist culture, the Uana scorn their bodies and the physical reality of the Mimikos as much as possible, choosing instead to interact through logic bridges. Superficially, their structures appear utterly mercenary; little more than floating blocks of concrete with incredibly basic living quarters. Yet those few who have visited them describe their society within the artificed space as being an attempt to emulate the old world to a greater degree of fidelity than anywhere else.

Period: A series of sub-classifications for periods of history within the current, post-Imperial era.

///Mourning Period: A time of low-population and great cultural grief for the old world, dominated by the survivors of the event, when civilization was briefly much more primitive than prior ages, mankind not yet having mastered the Power as a replacement for iron.

///First Resurrection: A renaissance characterized by a return to urban, centralized society and a resurgence in academic study, especially concerning arcana, resulting in the return of various amenities thought no longer possible without iron. A fleeting return of Imperial Era culture also occurs.

///Interluminary Strife: A brief but calamitous period brought on by damage to the Great Lamp, depriving the world of sunlight.

///Hollow Years: A dark age of recovery from the mass deaths of the previous period.

///Second Resurrection: A renewed renaissance, though with a more culturally conservative character, characterized by the emergence of Covenant fundamentalism. This is considered to be the earliest era that remains in living memory outside of the anomalistically elderly.

///Tricenturial War: A lengthy period of intermittent warfare between the Rhunbardic Empire and everyone else. Not actually three centuries long, despite the name.

///Planar Colonization Period: A period of interest in cross-planar colonization and settlement, as well as interaction (and, ultimately, tension and conflict) with the native inhabitants.

///Unending Peace, The: The contemporary age following the creation of the Grand Alliance.

Plane: An area of dimensionally and ruleset-consistent reality. Though the term theoretically applies to the millions of possible facets of the dimensional landscape in the universe, the more common use is in reference to the planes of the Tower of Asphodel, which all attempt at approximating the nature of mankind's long-gone original reality. A phrase often used to describe the latter in totality is the Remaining World.

Political Affiliation: Following the end of scarcity and the creation of the Grand Alliance, old political ideologies based around its management became inapplicable, becoming replaced by new variants focused on how society should encourage and reward participation and distribute political power. Often paired with the attitudes to the covenant listed above. For example, the political platform of the Grand Alliance is Humanist-Fundamentalist.

///Humanism: The belief that the state should serve every human need it can accomodate without substantial cost unconditionally (generally considered to include unlimited food of reasonable quality, clothes, basic housing and entertainment, education, and essential medical care) but that beyond that internal disparity is acceptable and that luxury and political power should be afforded only as rewards for communal participation, defined broadly as the creation or facilitation of luxuries, or the fulfillment of the essential needs of the state. Considered by its advocates to be the only value system that properly reflects the tenants of the Covenant.

///Meritism: The belief that the state should be obligated to provide only the barest essentials for human survival, and that all else must be earned either through either service to the community or personal entrepreneurship. It is conceptually rooted in the idea that human beings only thrive when forced into self-sufficiency, and that to offer too much for nothing, even when abundance permits it, fosters decadence. Many, however, accuse its advocates of more selfish motivations.

///Paritism: The belief that the state should offer the people unconditional equality in the distribution of resources, regardless of contribution or personal background. Extremely popular among the young, who have suffered the brunt of widening generational inequality, but considered fringe outside of the global east.

///Idealism: Sometimes defined as a subset of Meritism. The belief that the state should reward people neither universally nor on the basis of contribution, but rather by their degree of compliance with a set of national values or "ideals", usually moral in nature, but also often tied up in nationalism and religion. Extremists of this ideology are considered politically toxic and referred to as Iconists.

Prosognostic Event/Contact Paradox: Two potential results of individuals born from the same seed from the Tower of Asphodel coming into contact with one another. The former, caused by merely witnessing a face that matches own self-conception, leads to severe seizure-like symptoms, but this is merely a defense mechanism against the latter. If the individuals touch, the iron in both of their bodies and the surrounding area is obliterated by a temporal paradox, causing the death of both and any bystanders within a few meters.

Tower of Asphodel: The structure created by the Ironworkers at the end of the Imperial Era to provide refuge to those who could obtain it, and later to act as a foundation for the planes they would create. It is visible in the sky at all times, though it exists only partially as a physical object.

Profile Cards

Basic information on the characters present at the Conclave is recorded here, from the perspective on in-universe documentation on their attendance. They are listed in order of appearance.

--------------------
Utsushikome of Fusai
Qualification: Master with Special Honors, Thanatomancy and Natural Philosophy (Oreskios Memorial College), Exemplary Disciple, Entropic School (Tem-Aphat House of Resurrection) Ranked 4th among the acolytes.
Party: Saoic
Height: 5'7
Blood Type: B-
Resistances: AM(N)
Culinary Notes: Dislikes seafood
Role: Honored Guest
--------------------

--------------------
Ran of Hoa-Trinh
Qualification: Master, Divination and Mathematics (Oreskios Memorial College), Full Graduate, Special Course for Bio-Divination (Saoyu University). Ranked 11th among the acolytes.
Party: Saoic
Height: 5'1
Blood Type: A+
Resistances: AMN
Culinary Notes: Lactose intolerance
Role: Honored Guest
--------------------

--------------------
Kamrusepa of Tuon
Qualification: Seventh Understanding of the Mysteries, Foremost Among the Young (Order of Chronomancers). Ranked 3rd among the acolytes.
Party: Rhunbardic
Height: 5'3
Blood Type: AB-
Resistances: (A)(M)N
Culinary Notes: Vegetarian diet
Role: Honored Guest
--------------------

--------------------
Theodoros of Melanthos
Qualification: Master With Special Honors, General Transmutation and Scriptreading (Umbrios College of Arcane Engineering), ??? Ranked 8th among the acolytes.
Party: Inotian
Height: 5'7
Blood Type: B-
Resistances: AMN
Culinary Notes: Low-Carbohydrate diet
Role: Honored Guest
--------------------

--------------------
Ptolema of Rheeds
Qualification: Special Accolade in Field Surgery (Minos Surgical Academy), Special Accolade in Orthopedic Surgery (Minos Surgical Academy), General Certification (Old Yru Guild of Runecrafters) Ranked 10th among the acolytes.
Party: Viraki
Height: 5'6
Blood Type: A+
Resistances: AN
Culinary Notes: Extra meat, please
Role: Honored Guest
--------------------

--------------------
Seth of Ikkuret
Qualification: First Degree Graduate, Healing (Akhem Military Academy), Master with Special Honors, Biomancy and General Medicine (Tem-Aphat University) Ranked 6th among the acolytes.
Party: Mekhian
Height: 6'1
Blood Type: O+
Resistances: AMN
Culinary Notes: Tree nut allergy
Role: Honored Guest
--------------------

--------------------
Ophelia of the Glass Fields
Qualification: No formal qualification (Member of the Sacred Pallattaku Convention of Biomancers, also accepted through special sponsorship) Ranked 7th among the acolytes.
Party: Rhunbardic
Height: 5'8
Blood Type: N/A
Resistances: AN
Culinary Notes: Pescatarian diet
Role: Honored Guest
--------------------

--------------------
Lilith of Eskhalon
Qualification: Journeyman Artificer of Intelligence (Ba'Hon Temple of Golemancy) Master, Human Biology (Irenca University) Ranked 5th among the acolytes.
Party: Ysaran
Height: 4'2
Blood Type: A-
Resistances: AMN
Culinary Notes: Dislikes bulb vegetables, dislikes root vegetables, dislikes beans, dislikes rare meat, dislikes rice, all food must be finely cut
Role: Honored Guest
--------------------

--------------------
Mehit of Eskhalon
Qualification: N/A
Party of Origin: Mekhian
Height: 5'9
Blood Type: A-
Resistances: Unassessed
Culinary Notes: Yeast allergy
Role: Guardian of Attendee
--------------------

--------------------
Sac'Nicte'Ic'Nal
Qualification: N/A
Party: Lluatec
Height: 5'10
Blood Type: O-
Resistances: AMN
Culinary Notes: Small portions
Role: Servant of the Conclave
--------------------

--------------------
Bardiya of Tuon
Qualification: Microartificing, Master (Tuon Institute for Arcane Study) Anima Script Reading and Artificing Dual Course, Master and 2nd Placement (Aurya Grand University)
Party: Rhunbardic
Height: 5'11
Blood Type: A-
Resistances: (M)N
Culinary Notes: No alcohol
Role: Honored Guest
--------------------

--------------------
Linos of Melanthos
Qualification: Grandmaster of Transmutive Healing by Grand Alliance Accolade, First Chair Professor at the Altaian Institute for Arcane Transmutation and Synthesis
Party: Inotian
Height: 5'6
Blood Type: B-
Resistances: AN
Culinary Notes: Dislikes shellfish
Role: Order Master
--------------------

--------------------
Neferuaten of Amat
Qualification: Grand Alliance recognized founder of the school of Entropic Thanatomancy, Second Magi at the House of Resurrection, Arcane Advisor to the Mekhian High Council
Party: Mekhian
Height: 5'8
Blood Type: B-
Resistances: ANM
Culinary Notes: Avoid salt, if possible
Role: Order Master
--------------------