’quins slang for sequins.
R
Rabbitt, Farmer ~ see Farmer Rabbitt.
Rakes, the ~ items on a menu considered to be common and unfashionable; food for rough and rustic folk to eat; the cheap part of the menu. See Best Cuts.
ram(s) also rams-of-the-main, men-of-war and sometimes grandly called naufustica; the ironclad, gastrine-powered ships of war used by most of the navies of the Half-Continent. The forwardmost tip of the prow is pushed forward in a great iron “beak” called the ram, giving these vessels their name. With their iron hulls blackened or browned with special chemicals to stop corrosion (called braice) and sitting low in the water, rams look sinister and powerfully threatening. Yet though the outside might be dark iron, within a ram is a world of wood: beams, posts, planks, bulkheads, smelling strongly of creosote, gunpowder and sweat. Rams are generally divided into two types: the smaller, lighter, faster, less heavily armed called cruisers; and the big, heavily gunned and armored and slower kind known as capitals, rams-of-the-main or just rams. Cruisers have only one gun deck and no more than three masts. They are the workhorses of a navy, used most in escort, reconnaissance and running messages. They are the eyes and ears of the fleet, roving out from the main battle (fleet) to find the enemy’s position. The lightest cruiser is the gun-drudge, followed by the frigate, the largest being the drag-mauler. This cruiser has the largest ram of all, and is built to charge monsters and other vessels and survive the impact. Drag-maulers are the fastest rams at about 14 to 16 knots. The quickest ever, Scythe 36, achieved an unheard of 18½ knots in a fair wind with all limbers to the screw. Frigates are only a little slower at about 13 to 14 knots. Gun-drudges can manage only about 11 knots. Capitals or rams have two gun decks, with the heaviest cannon arranged on the second or lower gun deck. Essentially floating batteries, capitals line up stem to stern one after the other in a fight. This is called the line-of-battle, and in this formation enemy fleets will pound away at each other for hours until a decision is reached. Cruisers are considered too small to take a place in the line-of-battle and patrol behind their own line to protect its flanks. The lightest capital is the iron-dought, whose upper gun deck extends only two thirds the length of the vessel and travels as fast as 11½ to 12 knots. The next is the main-ram. Achieving no more than 11 knots, they are still by far the most common of the capitals, forming the backbone of all serious navies. The largest of all rams are the main-sovereigns, which are so large they can do little better than 8 knots and often require gun-drudges to help them maneuver. Different captains will employ their rams in different ways, concentrating one or a combination of the three basic tactics:♦ gunnery—simply standing off another vessel and blasting at it with your cannon till it submits. Rams rarely sink under a barrage of shot but their masts and upper works are typically smashed and their strakes (iron plates) always in need of serious repair.
♦ ramming—where the ram is moved into a favorable position to gain momentum and strike another vessel with its beak. Ramming is most likely to sink a vessel.
♦ boarding—involving getting in close, launching harpagons (see lambasts) and drawing alongside the enemy so that your crew armed with pikes, axes, hangers, blunderbuss, bothersalts, grenadoes and pistols can drop gangplanks and leap the gap between. Boarding is the best way to keep a ram intact for recommissioning into your own navy.
Though a captain may train his crew as he wishes, there will be a preferred method for the whole fleet as set by the lords of that particular navy. Commonly, states who build their own rams are more inclined to board or shoot, for they know how much it takes to make one. States that buy rams from others and from private manufacturers will as happily sink a vessel by ramming it as blast away at it with guns. It is interesting to note that the larger a ram is, the more its captain will be paid to work her. When a ram is commissioned (officially named and launched), it is quickly crewed and sent to sea. There it will spend the rest of its days, returning to its home port only occasionally and rarely staying for long. See frigate, navy and Appendix 6.
reagents any of the ingredients used for potives and drafts; also called parts or the Parts.
realm • a specific group of scripts, all with similar effects. See scripts. • in the politics of the Empire and its neighbors, a realm is any region controlled by a king or queen.
red must edible fungus from the must family. Not all musts are toothsome, and some are downright poisonous. One of the great advantages of red must is that it keeps a very long time, squashes without bruising, is very light and very good for you. This makes it ideal wayfood.
repellents typically a combination of the realms of scripts (repugnants, fulminants and discutants) incorporating all chemistry designed to dissuade and drive monsters (and people) off. Bothersalts is one of the more popular repellents, though not the most powerful. Others include Salt-of-Asper, Frazzard’s powder, glitter-dust, trisulxis, bombast’s ash, boglebane and green-flash or gegenshein.
restorative scripts concerned with reviving and healing. See scripts.
revenant, rever-man, rever what we would call “zombies,” “the walking dead”; some are whole reanimated corpses, others are made from bits and pieces of different corpses and even animal parts. They take a lot of learning and skill to make properly. If not well preserved, their stink gives them away. If their brains are not reconstituted correctly, they are wild and unmanageable. The best quality revers are used as assassins, often dissolving to puddles of untraceable filth when the dastardly deed is done. Occasionally one breaks free of its everyman masters and terrorizes a community for a while or escapes into the wilds, where it gets short shrift from the local monsters, who hate such abominations and are hated by them in return. See gudgeons.
revenue officers employed by almost every state or realm, they are used to gather the duties and taxes of imported and even exported goods. Revenue officers have a mandate for search and seizure, and go on patrols and raids. Usually efficient and zealous, they have the power of state and Empire behind them and the fear of the gallows or Catherine wheel at their employ. They are the harriers of smugglers, corsers, ashmongers and all those involved in the dark trades. Such as these guard both the Axles and the Spindle, and work closely with lamplighters to catch the crooks.
rhatany one of the ingredients in Cathar’s Treacle, made from the poisonous black rhatan bloom, which is native to many of the most threwdish and haunted swamps and bogs, particularly the Ichormeer. The whole flower is dried and crushed very finely to make the powder. On its own it is very poisonous.
rhombus a place where skolds go to learn their craft. In their two years there the student skold, called a rhubus, learns the basic scripts, and from these how to prepare his or her own nostrum and vulgum. In this they are taught the Elements and Sub-Elements, the Bases and their Combinations, Körnchenflecter, the Four Spheres and the Four Humours. They also study the Vadè Chemica and many other forbidden books on habilistics , ancient and new, as well as matter (history). People are not allowed to attend a rhombus unless they already have their letters, that is, they can read and write.
rivergates great fortifications built across rivers and broader streams to protect a certain valuable place or as an outworking of a city’s more terrestrial embattlements. Certain riverside duchies and principalities have long used their rivergates to control trade, not just into their own domains but into domains beyond as well. Though the cause of wars and great resentment, ancient Imperial Concessions that allowed these states to legally inspect and tax riverine trade under Imperial observation were kept when the Haacobin Dynasty seized the Imperial Seats. This has been much to the disgust of other states who have suffered the tollways for centuries—and a bitter disappointment too: it had been hoped that the Haacobin Emperors would bring a new kind of justice to the Empire. Since then, a handful of more aggressive states have successfully lobbied the Emperor for the right to build their own rivergates, and so to have their share in the great profits. Th
is has meant that some rivers have two or three or even four such structures choking them, as their owners rant and politick and threaten the others—for example the troubles on the river Humour between Boschenberg and its ancient Axles, and Brandenbrass with its smart new Spindle. Many of the less honest have devised ways to get by rivergates, especially those engaged in the dark trades or others wanting to avoid the taxes and tolls they charge.
rivermaster the most senior officer aboard a barge or any other rivergoing craft; not always the owner of the vessel; lower in rank than a captain.You have to serve on the vinegar waves to be allowed that rank.
rock salt salt mined like a rock from the earth. Fulgars suck or chew on lumps of the stuff to keep the concentration of salt in the blood high, thus making them better conductors of electricity.
Rossamünd said “ross-uh-moond”; awkward boy-hero and under-grown foundling of Madam Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls.
Rupunzil, the ~ fine cromster of sixteen guns, owned by Rivermaster Vigilus.
S
sagaar(s) dancers and fighters whose skills and art came originally from lands far to the north beyond the Marrow—Samaarkhand, Mansuûng and Ghadamése—and were first encountered by the Empire as it came into conflict with the kingdom of Wenceslaus. There are many forms and styles of sagaris (the skill of the sagaar) more complex and varied than harundo and the other bastinade arts. Sagaars live to dance, to attain a state known as “the Perpetual Dance,” where every action, every tiny lift or twitch, is all part of one unbroken, lifelong dance. In the lands of their origin they are court-entertainers and the prime teratologists (monster-hunters), employing their extreme flexibility, nimbleness and speed with varieties of potives even older then the skolds’. In the Empire, sagaars are thought of only as teratologists and find many opportunities to hunt and drive off monsters. Yet all sagaars would just prefer to dance. Sagaars usually wear tight-fitting clothes to allow unhindered movement of limb and those of the Empire also mark themselves with spoors in the form of spikes radiating down and around one cheekbone, just under the eye (usually the left). It is well known that sagaars and lahzars do not like each other very much.
sailer vessel under the power of sails rather than gastrines; not to be confused with a sailor, a fellow who works on a ship at sea.
Sallow Meermoon reluctant fugelman skold of the communities around the Brindleshaws. Being forced by her parents and fellow citizens to train as a skold at the rhombus in Wörms, she has recently returned and is very unhappy with her lot in life. Despite this she has still been very thorough about being a skold, even down to getting the vertical-stripe spoors that are a mark of her trade. A fugelman is a teratologist employed by a community to be available to defend it from monsters. Candidates for this task are usually local, and most are proud to serve their homeland in such a way. Fugelmen are traditionally skolds, but wealthy communities have taken to sending their candidates off to be transmogrified into lahzars.
scourge also exitumath or orgulars (“haughty ones”—the name once given to the heroes of old; this is a title also given to lahzars); a skold who specializes in monster-hunting exclusively, making and using the most powerful, dangerous and deadly potives: potives that melt things on the spot, or cause them to almost instantly rot or turn to carbon or even petrify living things to stone. Scourges are typically covered from head to toe in special bandages and wear quartz-lensed spectacles to protect them from their own chemicals. Though they are preferred to a lahzar, scourges are still regarded as a bit unhinged and unmanageable, and live a life of violence much the same as their lahzarine rivals.
screw(s) what we would call a propeller; a method of propulsion used by gastrine vessels. Gastrines turn the shaft which drives the screw that in turn pushes the ship forward.
script(s) also called thaumacrum; the name for all the chemical concoctions made by dispensurists, skolds and scourges. They are divided into basic “types” or realms:♦ restoratives or vigorants—healing and well-being, such as birchet or evander water
♦ fulminants—explosions and flashes and makers of fire, such as Licurius uses
♦ discutants—concusives, closely related to fulminants, though not causing fire
♦ pestilants or venificants—poisons
♦ mordants—corrosives such as special kinds of acid used by scourges
♦ abruptives—preventative measures such as nullodours
♦ repugnants—scripts that repel like bothersalts and those that attract, like john-tallow
♦ alembants—scripts that alter the biology, such as the washes that transform the vision of a leer’s eyes. Cathar’s Treacle comes under this heading too
♦ expunctants or obliterants—scripts that utterly destroy or slay instantly, many of which are theoretical “superweapons.”
There are four recognized physical states these realms can come in:♦ fumes—smokes and gases
♦ pomanders or ashes—powders
♦ liquors or waters—liquids
♦ sugars or salts—crystallized versions of the above three.
scrutineers another name for revenue officers, sometimes used to especially mean those who have the power of search and seizure.
Sebastipole, Mister ~ leer and agent for the Lamplighter-Marshal of Winstermill; has served there for over half of his life. His mother coming from Pollux and his father from Sebastian, Sebastipole was raised in the small southeastern kingdom of Burgundia. He is sharp-minded, efficient and fiercely loyal to the Lamplighter-Marshal. About ten years ago, Sebastipole became a leer at the request of his superiors. He appreciates the power of his augmented sight but finds the wearing of a sthenicon repulsive. Therefore, although he possesses one, he uses it only seldom, when duty calls for it. His eyes give him away as a falseman. See leers.
sedonition the state of being a sedorner; loving monsters, or at least not hating them, as most folks do.
sedorner official and most insulting and incriminating name for a monster-lover. Anyone having any sense of friendship or understanding with monsters is said to be under the influence of outramour—the “dark love.” Those worse affected by this outramour are apparently meant to run off into the wilds to spend the rest of their short lives with the bogles they so admire. To be heard even trying to understand monsters from a sympathetic point of view can bring the charge upon you. Different communities and realms deal with sedonition to different degrees of severity, but it is not uncommon for those found guilty to be exposed on a Catherine wheel or even hanged on a gallows.
Senior Service, the ~ the name the navy gives itself; service in the navy is considered superior to service in the army, as a lamplighter, in an Imperial post or anything else. See navy.
sequin second-highest value coin of the Soutlands, made of a silver alloy.Worth one sixteenth of a sou or twenty guise or one twenty-fourth of an oscadril, it is represented by the letter q. See money.
she-oak medium to tall tree with a single straight trunk and possessing long needles instead of leaves that droop to the ground and hiss musically in even the lightest breeze; tough trees that grow in almost any environment.
Shunt, Mister ~ gastrineer of the Hogshead and probably one of the nastiest fellows you are ever likely to meet. He speaks little and uses his knife a lot.
Signal Stars, the ~ also called the Superlatives. The nightly glowing orbs that are said to show one’s way through life and the land. They include the Signals of Paths (also known as the Atrapës), which aid navigation (probably the most important and genuinely useful); the Signals of Ardence, meant to aid those in love; the Signals of Lots, apparently watching over those making important choices or testing their fate, and so on. The stars that do not have these mystic or informative qualities are called the Luminaries.
Silvernook large town between High Vesting and Winstermill made rich and bustling by the silver mine nearby opened over a century before and still proving to be a plentiful source of the precious metal.
Sinster city where lahzars are made; remote, built on the fork of two threwdish rivers in the region known as Burgundis. It is divided into two parts: Sinster Major and Later Sinster. Sinster Major is the original city founded before the beginnings of the Empire by a community of Burgundians. When, centuries later, the survivors of the fall of Caathis (the Cathars) arrived, they were welcomed, and expanded the city, building Later Sinster. It is from here that they perform their blasphemous surgeries to turn people into lahzars. Ironically, the notorious surgeons of Sinster are also the best, and despite their reputation as black habilists, have secretly saved the life of many of the Empire’s loftiest peers.
Sitt footman and bootblack—or shoe polisher—working at the Harefoot Dig. As it was once so excellently said, “A scuff, madam, is a terrible thing!”
skold(s) also habilist or zaumabalist (“soup-thrower”) or fumomath, the term for a teratologist who does the work of fighting monsters using chemicals and potions known as potives. They throw these potives by hand, pour them from bottles, fling them with a sling or fustibal (a sling on a stick), fire them from pistols know as salinumbus (“salt-cellars”), set traps, make smoke and whatever else it takes to defeat and destroy a monster. We might call them “combat chemists.” They typically wear flowing robes and some kind of conical hat to signify their trade. The most common hat is the overtap, which folds back slightly over the wearer’s head (see page 201). More serious and aggressive skolds will mark themselves with distinctive spoors, a vertical bar running over the eye (or both eyes) and down the face from hairline to the jaw; or a horizontal bar from one earlobe across the mouth to the other earlobe. Skolds learn their arcarnum (“secret knowledge”) and the skills peculiar to their trade at one of many organized “colleges” throughout the Empire called a rhombus. It takes at least two years to properly prepare a person as a skold, and any more years spent after that hone their knowledge and some skills still further. Entry into a rhombus is expensive and difficult, and places are limited.The best have waiting lists over twenty years long. The forerunners of the skolds were the self-taught rhubezhals (said “roo-beh-zaal”), the monster-hunters of the ancient people know as the Skylds. In fact the word “skold” is a corruption of “Skyld,” a name given to those rhubezhals who ventured beyond their lands to serve ancient foreign kings. These expatriate rhubezhals learned new skills and scripts in those foreign lands, and began formalizing their knowledge, writing it in books. Finally they formed guilds with each other—the rhombuses—and began to train recruits. And so the skolds as they are recognized today were founded. Skolds earn a good portion of their living also making potives to sell to everyday folk, so that they might also protect themselves from and even fight the monsters. Scripts made for this common use are called vulgum; scripts that skolds keep secret to themselves are known as nostrum. Your basic vulgum potive like bothersalts sells for about 1 guise for one dose. The average skold will earn about 180 sous a year in prize money, monster-ridding contract fees and sales of their vulgum. Used broadly, the name skold can mean one of five different trades:♦ skolds—sometimes called high skolds, formally trained at a rhombus, your standard “combat chemist”;
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