Glossary

═══════════════════

Everything here is written plainly from its definition and spoils no lore.

═══════════════════

THE WORLD

The Hundred Calamities — The hundred named and numbered calamities the world lives under. A numbered Calamity may be a single Host, or several smaller ones that split from it long ago.

The Calendar — The scripture that names the Calamities, forecasts their Returns, and marks unstable ground.

Doom — The disaster a Calamity brings when it wakes.

Magnitude — The scale disasters are ranked by, in roman numerals.

Host — A Calamity in a humanoid body. Hosts think and plan. Slaying the body scatters relics; the Calamity itself recedes.

Return — A Calamity waking and bringing its doom across its territory.

Turning — The act of repelling a Return. Wardens don’t kill a Host, but they beat it back until it recedes into dormancy early.

Misprint — Mapped ground where the Calendar’s forecasts come out wrong, garbled, or inconsistent.

Hybrid — A Calamity that brings more than one doom at once.

The Eye — The dead-calm center of a Calamity, where its Host usually stands.

Regalia — Sets of relics shed by Turning a Host. They are thematically matched and always share a Litany.

Wardens — Relic-armed defenders trained to perform Turnings.

Parish Warden — A self-proclaimed Warden who governs one area without any oversight, and whose Turncount comes from testimonies alone.

Turncount — The number of Turnings credited to a Warden.

The Almanac Church — The keeper and interpreter of the Calendar.

═══════════════════

RELICS & THE SYSTEM

Relic — An object holding a stable fraction of a Calamity. Humanity’s only weapons and only shields. A relic is typically measured by three properties: Grade, Mercies, and Longevity.

Grade — A relic’s rank:

Crude → Common → Blessed → Anointed → Sanctified → Hallowed → Sacred → Exalted → Divine

Longevity — A relic’s durability:

Null → Minute → Hour → Day → Week → Month → Season → Year → Lifetime → Age

Mercy — A concrete and often passive ability that a relic grants.

Type — The form a relic takes:

Arms — Wielded relics; weapons and tools.

Vestments — Worn relics; armor, cloaks, boots.

Tokens — Relics carried only for their Mercy.

Viaticums — Single-use relics, swallowed or broken.

Hearths — Installed relics that radiate a passive Mercy over an area. The owner chooses whom the Mercy affects.

Fatherlands — Hearths at civilizational scale. Their owners can’t choose whom the Mercy affects.

Burn — Deliberately dumping a mass of Longevity into one surge, for a strike above the relic’s weight.

Omens — Raw crystallized residue shed by Calamities during Returns and around Misprints. The base material of everything: consecrated into man-made relics and burned as fuel for re-consecration.

Litany — A matched set of shared origin. Each additional piece worn "adds a verse" and completing the set "closes the Litany" for a Mercy none of the pieces holds alone.

═══════════════════

THE BLESSING OF AUTHORSHIP

The Sheet — Milo’s blessing notice: an old, yellowed, crumpled page that writes itself. It answers rarely, and what others see on it doesn’t seem to match what Milo sees.

Authorship — Milo’s blessing: the right to claim a defeated Calamity as his own.

Communion — The act that follows a claim: the Calamity is absorbed into Milo. It ceases to exist as an independent entity and takes root within him, growing the Calamity Tree.

The Calamity Tree — Where claimed Calamities take root and grow.

Primary Branch — When a claimed Calamity takes root, its growth splits into several possible branches. Milo may choose only one, and the choice is permanent.

The Innate Column — The traitless foundation of Authorship. It matures through Absorption, and each Maturity grants one Development: a new, unique ability that stays with Milo for good.

Absorption — The act of consuming a relic, which converts it into growth.