Alchymist

Oellyll: A lyrinx city in Meldorin.

Patterner: A semi-organic device developed by the lyrinx to pattern torgnadrs and other artefacts used in their Art. The patterner essentially copies a particular human's talent into the growing torgnadr, greatly enhancing the talent and allowing it to be controlled by a lyrinx skilled in the Art.

Pliance: Device that enables an artisan to see the field and tune a controller to it.

Port-all: Tiaan's name for the device she makes in Tirthrax to open the gate.

Power: A mancer, Nunar, codified the laws of mancing, noting how limited it was, mainly because of lack of power. She recognised that mancing was held back because power came from diffuse and poorly understood sources. It all went through the mancer first, causing aftersickness that grew greater the more powerful it was. Eventually power, or after-sickness, would kill the mancer.

The traditional way around this was to charge up an artefact (such as a mirror or ring) with power over a long time, and to simply trigger it when needed. This had some advantages, though objects could be hard to control or become corrupted, and once discharged were essentially useless. Yet some of the ancients had used devices that held a charge, or perhaps replenished themselves. No one knew how, but it had to be so, else how could they maintain their power for hundreds if not thousands of years (for example, the Mirror of Aachan), or use quite prodigious amounts of power without becoming exhausted (Rulke's legendary construct)?

Nunar assembled a team of mancers utterly devoted to her project (no mean feat) and set out to answer these questions. Mancing was traditionally secretive — people tried (often wasting their lives in dead ends) and usually failed alone. Only the desperate state of the war could have made them work together, sharing their discoveries, until the genius of Nunar put together the Special Theory of Power that described where the diffuse force came from and how a mancer actually tapped it, drawing not through the earthly elements but through the ultradimensional ethyr.

The ultimate goals of theoretical mancers are the General Theory of Power, which deals with how nodes work and how they might be tapped safely; and, ultimately, the Unified Power Theory, which reconciles all fields, weak and strong, in terms of a single force.

Secret Art: The use of magical or sorcerous powers (mancing). Snizort: A place in Taltid with a potent and concentrated node, near the famous tar pits and seeps. The lyrinx took Gilhaelith there to help them find the remains of a village lost in the Great Seep thousands of years ago. When he did so, they excavated a tu

Strong Forces: Forces which are speculated to exist, though no mancer studying them has yet survived to prove their existence.

Thapter: Tiaan's name for the flying construct she and Malien created in Tirthrax.

Torgnadr: A device patterned by the lyrinx to drain a field dry, or to cha

Well of Echoes, the: An Aachim concept to do with the reverberation of time, memory and the Histories. Sometimes a place of death and rebirth (to the same cycling fate). Also a sense of being trapped in history, of being helpless to change collective fate (of a family, clan or species). Its origin is sometimes thought to be a sacred well on Aachan, sometimes on Santhenar. The term has become part of Aachim folklore. 'I have looked in the Well of Echoes.' 'I heard it at the Well: 'I will go to the Well.' Possibly also a source; a great node.

The Well is represented by the three-dimensional symbol of infinity, the universe and nothingness. A Well of Echoes, trapped in Tirthrax, is held there only by the most powerful magic.