Bridge glyphs
The seven proto-Veranthi characters that have been identified as direct adaptations of Vel-Drath originals. Their identification is the central argument of Thessaly Vorn's banned paper. See Chapter 8.
Names, places, artifacts, and old words carried forward from the Sundered Age.
These entries are adapted from the Companion volume’s reference section. Vel-Drath words are included alongside places, peoples, artifacts, and institutions so readers can follow the deeper lore without reading the whole companion text in order.
The major ideas, races, objects, and forces that shape the Sundered Age.
The seven proto-Veranthi characters that have been identified as direct adaptations of Vel-Drath originals. Their identification is the central argument of Thessaly Vorn's banned paper. See Chapter 8.
The event, approximately three thousand years before the current era, that severed the world's relationship to its own past. Not a single cataclysm but a progressive failure of reality's memory-coherence mechanisms, precipitated by the vel-iss period of the late First Age. See Chapter 3.
The Firstborn. The race that predates all others in the known world. Their bodies are composed of living mineral threaded with kallite. They went still after the Collapse and have not been seen in the known world for three thousand years, until the events of Book I. See Part Three.
A Drevari artifact of the First Age. Anchors the world's natural rhythms — weather, seasons, tides. Stolen from the Drevari during the vel-iss period and incorporated into Aldenmere's treasury, where it has been used to stabilize trade routes and political conditions for approximately three hundred years. Its misuse is a contributing factor to the Unmaking's acceleration.
The luminous mineral threaded through Drevari bodies and found in Drevari ruins. Resonates in response to spoken truth; blazes in response to vel-orn (founding truths). Removed from a living Drevari body, it loses its resonant property. See Chapter 11.
The mortal adaptation of Vel-Drath developed by elvish scholars in the late First Age. Retains the geometric logic of Vel-Drath but replaces stone-cut angles with curves and connecting strokes. See Chapter 8.
The Aldenmere Empire's covert intelligence apparatus, reporting to the Imperial Curator of Continuance. Tasked with containing destabilizing historical truths, recovering forbidden artifacts, and managing the records on which the empire's self-understanding depends.
The active manifestation of the rupture created by the vel-iss period. Not a person or a god: a wound in reality that learned hunger. Spreads fastest where truth is buried. See Part Four.
Old words from the Speech of the First Age, including the names Vorrath gives to people, places, and truths.
Thessaly Vorn's name in Vel-Drath. First-voice-of-truth: the one who was first to say the correct thing. Assigned by Vorrath in Book II.
Breck Ironhallow's name in Vel-Drath. Stone-path: the one who walks where stone leads.
Vel-Drath. The void; absence-time. The Drevari name for what mortals call the Unmaking in its most advanced manifestation — time that empties itself. Distinguished from thal-iss (forgetting, a process) by word order: in iss-thal, the absence comes first.
Vel-Drath. Prophecy; held-truth. Also Sable Dunmore's name in Vel-Drath. From kel (memory, held thing) + orn (spoken truth).
Burr Dunmore's name in Vel-Drath. Origin-held: the one who keeps what matters without knowing he is doing it.
Vel-Drath. Forgetting; time-absence. The process by which time's memory empties. Distinguished from iss-thal (the void) by word order: in thal-iss, the time comes first — it is still primarily a temporal phenomenon.
The First Hearth. From vel (origin/first) + an (great) + dur (stone). The origin point of all life in the known world, according to the fourth part of the prophecy. Not on any mortal map. Reached by the company in Book III. Site of the Gathering.
The Speech of the First Age. The language of the Drevari, predating all other known languages by at least eight thousand years. Written in concentric rings, outermost first, in purely angular script with no curves. See Chapter 7.
Vel-Drath. Origin-absence. The extraction of kallite from a living Drevari body, which removes portions of their inherited memory. The practice that triggered the Collapse.
Vel-Drath. Origin-memory; inherited memory. The chain of complete ancestral recall that every Drevari carries. The vel-iss period broke this chain for those Drevari who were hollowed.
Vel-Drath. Founding truth. A truth that was true before time had the capacity to argue with it. When a vel-orn is spoken near kallite, the mineral blazes.
Mara Ashbone's name in Vel-Drath. First-voice: the one who heard it before others could.
Continents, archives, empires, ranges, and homelands that define the known world.
The dominant human political entity in Valdenmoor. Founded approximately two thousand years before the current era. Current administration overseen by a hereditary emperor and an extensive civil bureaucracy, of which the Office of Continuance is the most consequential.
The dominant institution of elvish scholarship, located at Vel Tharun in northeastern Valdenmoor. Maintains the largest collection of pre-Collapse texts in the known world. Institutional tendency to suppress scholarship that undermines its own accepted translations.
Common speech name for Kharanor, the southernmost of the three great dwarven stonehalls on Thurak. Home of the Ironhallow family.
Mountain range in northern Valdenmoor. Site of the largest concentration of known Drevari ruins on either continent. Geologically anomalous: older than surrounding terrain by an order of magnitude, warm at depths where mountains are not, responsive to speech in ways that suggest presence rather than passivity.
The body of water separating Valdenmoor from Thurak. Wider than it was in the First Age. The name dates to the aftermath of the Collapse.
The seat of the Grand Linguistic Archive in northeastern Valdenmoor. Childhood home and academic training ground of Thessaly Vorn.
A loose cluster of low green islands southwest of Valdenmoor's main coastline. Home of the Wrenfolk. Self-governing since before any mortal historical record. Trade routes pass further north now; the Isles are slowly being forgotten by the rest of the world, which has not yet noticed that this constitutes evidence of something larger.
Key figures whose names appear throughout the companion material.
Imperial Curator of Continuance. The architect of the Quiet Ledger and the empire's system of historical management. Believes, sincerely, that peace requires managed ignorance. Not wrong about all of his observations; wrong about his conclusions.
The first Drevari found in the Sundered Age. Approximately fourteen thousand years old. Has been resting in the Karath Range for three centuries. Woken by Sable Dunmore's reading of the tablet in Book I. The only known living Drevari until events late in Book III.