---
title: "Glossary"
summary: "The words of heaven and of the world between, from Aldric's Well to the white."
status: concept  # A proposal: the story, world and art direction, invented for Alex to keep, change or cut
section: "The World"
html: glossary.html
source: www/content/world/glossary.md
---

# Glossary

*The words of heaven and of the world between, from Aldric's Well to the white.*

> In the Vale the old farmers use one word for the fog and the sea, and they say it quietly.

Terms as heaven and the Hearthfolk use them. Entries say when a word names something in the current build. Words marked *(proposal)* are not decided yet; words marked *(earlier story)* belong to the descent the game told before 25 October 2026 and no longer hold as written. The rest of heaven's words were decided by Alex on 25 October 2026 (see the [overview](../world/overview.md)). History, factions and people have their own pages: [History](../world/history.md), [The factions](../world/factions.md), [The world between](../world/the-world-between.md), [Characters](../world/characters.md).

## Heaven and the war

- **Act boss.** The fight at the end of each act of a climb. Each gives back a memory.
- **Apostates.** The renegade faction, who say there shall be no God and want the House broken. They cut angels loose, and every fallen is one of theirs. See [The factions](../world/factions.md).
- **The board.** The world, as heaven sees it: made as the battleground for heaven's war, so it can be fought without damaging heaven. Its creatures are the pieces, and are never told.
- **Broken ground.** A region whose champion has been killed, so that it is nobody's, and neither is its twin above. The Apostates' front. See [Heaven's war](../world/heavens-war.md).
- **The camps.** The Wardens' name for the Heirs' cities *(proposal)*.
- **Champion.** An angel's true form set down on the board at the heart of its army: each region's boss. In the endgame, you are your faction's champion.
- **The City.** Heaven's celestial city, held by the Wardens, with the House at its heart *(the name is a proposal)*.
- **Climb.** The campaign: three acts from the bottom of the world to the gate of heaven. There are two, the second a hundred years after the first. See [The campaign](../game/campaign.md).
- **Cold embers.** The coals on the floor where the fallen wake that guttered before they touched any fire. Each is an angel heaven never gets back.
- **The court.** The ground around the House. It holds for nobody until the whole board does, and always has one more stair.
- **The Doorward.** The Warden who keeps the House's door, perhaps named Abdiel *(proposal)*.
- **The faithful.** Believers of the forbidden faith the Apostates planted. They keep fires for whoever climbs, keep the hubs, and burn when they are found. See [The world between](../world/the-world-between.md).
- **Fallen.** An angel cut loose from heaven, who wakes at the bottom of the world with no memory. The player is one. The game calls the players *the Fallen* (decided 26 October 2026); see [Who you are](../fallen/who-you-are.md).
- **Fires.** The fires a fallen lights wherever it rests. It steps from any of its fires to another, and relights at the last it touched. A century puts them all out. In game, perhaps the waypoints and checkpoints *(proposal)*.
- **The gate.** Heaven's gate, at the top of each climb. Its keeper is a fallen, each age's trial.
- **Glamour.** Heaven's white, which holds only in heaven. In the world, angels show their true form.
- **Go-betweens.** Fallen who carry the secret trade between the Apostates and the great factions, and deal at your seat.
- **The hammer.** The Apostates' tool for cutting an angel loose. It works only in heaven, and only in an Apostate's hand. The hammers were made below.
- **Heirs.** The great faction that follows the Prophet and wants the House's door opened for him. See [The factions](../world/factions.md).
- **The House.** The round domed house at the centre of heaven where God is supposed to live. Nobody may enter it, and whether anyone is inside is never answered.
- **Kin.** Fallen who share a fire. A party is kin from the moment it sets out, whatever banners its fallen chose. In game, a party.
- **The law.** Angels may not fight in heaven. It binds every angel but the fallen; an angel who breaks it is called an Apostate. Also *ground for ground*: each region of the world is bound to a place in heaven, and whoever holds the region holds its twin above.
- **League.** A season of the endgame. At its end one place nearer the House changes hands.
- **Memory.** A short scene of who you were, and a strength the character keeps for good. Each act boss of a climb gives one back. See [The second climb](../game/second-climb.md).
- **Pieces.** The world's creatures, as heaven made them. *Pieces in play* are those a faction has bound, raised, or converted and armed, and they carry its white. Pieces nobody plays (farmers, priests, traders, children) watch the war.
- **Pinnacle.** A fight in heaven, in person, at a broken place that matters. Fallen against fallen.
- **The Prophet.** The Heirs' leader, who says God speaks through him, perhaps named Ithiel, called the Listener *(the names are proposals)*.
- **The second climb.** The climb again, a hundred years after the first, keeping your memories and your faction, through a world your choice has made worse. It replaces Nightmare.
- **The second fall.** The fall at the end of the first climb, willingly, to pay the Apostate who raised you. There is no third.
- **Seat.** Your place in heaven, given back at the end of the climb. In game, the hideout.
- **The still angels.** Angels who stopped playing, and stand where they stopped with dust on their shoulders *(proposal)*.
- **Sworn fallen.** A fallen sworn that no fire will relight it. In game, hardcore.
- **The trade.** The secret dealing by which both great factions buy fellings from the Apostates, paying in keys, unwatched wings and unbarred posterns.
- **True form.** What an angel is in the world, under heaven's glamour. The Wardens' are lifeless, the Heirs' godlike, the Apostates' human. A fallen's is its shadow, its wings and its light.
- **The Unmakers.** The Apostates' name for themselves *(proposal)*.
- **Wardens.** The dominant, declining great faction, who say God chose them to protect the House and forbid anyone to enter. See [The factions](../world/factions.md).
- **The white.** Heaven's colour, and in this game the colour of evil. Every piece in play carries it; every kill leaves a little on your hands, and it is how a fallen grows stronger, and the corruption coming back. In game, experience. *The white settles* in the passive tree.

## The world between

- **The Age of Hearths.** The three hundred years when Velmarch mined the Ember and was the brightest place in the world. See [History](../world/history.md).
- **Aldric's Well.** The spring on the Barrow Moors, beside the first king's barrow, where the Ember was found. It steams in winter.
- **Barrow Moors.** The high grassland where Velmarch's kings are buried, near the top of the climb. See [The Barrow Moors](../journey/barrow-moors.md).
- **Bilge Market.** Hearthold's market, held on the floor of the hull on market days. See [Hearthold](../journey/hearthold.md).
- **Candlecap.** A pale fungus of the Gloamroot that gives about as much light as a candle.
- **Cinderborn.** Things the fire made or remade. See [The world between](../world/the-world-between.md).
- **Cinderworks.** The foundries at the bottom of the Underhalls, still burning without fuel. See [The Underhalls](../journey/underhalls.md).
- **Coalwrights.** The guild that works the fire into gear, and the home of crafting. See [The world between](../world/the-world-between.md).
- **Crowned Gull.** The royal flagship of Velmarch, carried forty miles inland by the flood and left keel-up on a hill. Hearthold is built in and around it.
- **The Drawn Sea.** The bed of the southern sea, emptied by the Tide to drown Saltreach. See [The Drawn Sea](../journey/drawn-sea.md).
- **The Drowned Coast.** Where the Tide came in. Salt marsh, the spires of Saltreach and the Sunken Reach. See [The Drowned Coast](../journey/drowned-coast.md).
- **The Drowned Court.** King Orrin and what is left of his court and garrison in drowned Saltreach, still holding the old posts. See [The world between](../world/the-world-between.md).
- **The Ember.** To the world, the living fire under it. Proposed: what is left of an angel's grace, the coal in a fallen's chest, and the fire Velmarch mined. See [Fire, tide and white](../world/fire-and-tide.md).
- **False lamps.** The Hearthfolk's name for Cinder Imps drifting between the trees of Harrowwood.
- **The fogline.** The rows of whitewashed stones across the Vale, one row a year, that mark how far the fog has come.
- **Gloamroot.** The roots of Harrowwood, going down into the dark beneath the forest.
- **Greyhallow.** The stone hut at the top of the High Pass, where travellers once kept a fire.
- **Guttering.** A fallen's fall when its life runs out: its coal gutters, and relights at the last fire it touched. In game, death.
- **Harrowwood.** The kings' forest. See [Harrowwood](../journey/harrowwood.md).
- **The Heartfire.** The core of the Ember, at the bottom of the world. Proposed: the great heap of fallen grace where the fallen land. See [The Heartfire](../journey/heartfire.md).
- **Hearthfolk.** The people of the Vale and of Hearthold.
- **Hearthold.** The hill-town in the stranded *Crowned Gull*, and a hub of the climb.
- **The High Pass.** The snowbound road through the mountains, the last stretch below heaven.
- **The Hunger.** The age when the Ember burned hotter the more Velmarch took, the first fallen came up from the shafts, and fires spread on their own.
- **The Hush.** The old miners' name for whatever lives in the Unlit. Never said underground.
- **Kindled.** *(Earlier story.)* The players' name before 26 October 2026; they are now *the Fallen*. The word lives on as the lowest tier of a fire affix.
- **Kings' lamps.** The coals that glow in the hollow trunks of Harrowwood, warm to the hand and burning nothing.
- **The Kingsdelve.** The first hall of the Underhalls, cut in Aldric's reign.
- **The Last Hearth.** Hearthold's great coal, the size of a house, in an iron cradle.
- **The Lighting.** Hearthold's oldest rite. Proposed: a fallen lights its own fire from the Last Hearth, so that Hearthold becomes one of its fires. *(Earlier story: the rite that gave someone an ember.)*
- **The Lisle.** The clear river of the Vale. At dusk the drowned wade up it out of the fog.
- **The Long Grey.** The years since the drowning, while the fog comes in a few fields a year and the Last Hearth burns lower.
- **Lowmouth.** The old mine-head on the Drawn Sea, where the Plumb stands.
- **Night of the Tide.** The night Orrin opened the Tidewall and the coast drowned.
- **The Plumb.** The Coalwrights' great winch and iron cage at Lowmouth, which lowered miners into the Underhalls.
- **Relighting.** A guttered fallen rising again, at the last fire it touched or at once from a friend's warmth. In game, resurrect.
- **The Salt Road.** The old road from the coast over the High Pass, Velmarch's spine.
- **Salters.** Hearthfolk who cut salt on the Drawn Sea and carry it home by night.
- **Saltreach.** The capital of Velmarch, now standing in the sea.
- **Shared warmth.** Kin growing from each other's kills. In game, experience shared within a radius.
- **The Smoking Pit.** A collapsed shaft between the Vale and the coast, the nearest to Hearthold, which has breathed red smoke since the drowning.
- **The Stilled.** The quiet sect who believe the Tide is mercy and drink seawater to forget. See [The world between](../world/the-world-between.md).
- **The Summer Sea.** The southern sea before the Tide drew it out of its bed. Now the Drawn Sea.
- **The Sunken Reach.** The flooded streets of Saltreach, walkable at low water.
- **The Tallow Quarter.** The district of Saltreach that burned for a month in the Hunger. Its people walked out unharmed.
- **The Tide.** The sea that drowned the coast and is still rising, and what it does to what it touches. Proposed: a cold that comes from above, where a falling angel's memory goes.
- **The Tidewall.** The great sea-gate of Saltreach, opened by Orrin and still standing open.
- **The Underhalls.** Velmarch's mine-halls, at the bottom of the climb. See [The Underhalls](../journey/underhalls.md).
- **The Unlit.** What lies below the fire. Perhaps a region of the endgame *(proposal)*. See [The Unlit](../journey/the-unlit.md).
- **The Vale of Velmarch.** The last green valley of the kingdom. See [The Vale](../journey/the-vale.md).
- **Velmarch.** The kingdom, half drowned: the part of the world between the deep and heaven that the climb passes through.
- **Voidsteel and Ether.** Materials said to come from the Unlit. In game, the Voidsteel Sword and Ether Wand item bases.

## Words of the earlier story

- **The Descent.** *(Earlier story.)* The endless depths of the endgame, which had no bottom anyone had found. The endgame is now the contested world, regions opened as maps from your seat. In game today, the cave levels that go on without end, one portal at a time: the deep where the climb begins.
- **The Undersky.** *(Earlier story.)* The dark sky of unlit coals a Kindled saw inside themselves. The passive tree is now [the Rose](../fallen/the-rose.md). See [The passive tree](../fallen/the-rose.md).
- **Newly Lit.** *(Earlier story.)* Someone just given an ember in the Lighting. The fallen arrive with their coal.