Below is an incomplete glossary of words, terminology, and turns of phrase you have learned in your travels beyond your hometown, and which you have learned are in common use by others in the wider world.


Ascrete
An extruded chemical-mineral amalgamate used for forming streets and related infrastructure. Ascrete begins as a superheated sludge and must be kept mobile and hot until poured in place, at which point it cools into a tough, stonelike material with a relatively smooth surface that is also chemically inert, making it highly durable.

Bioprint
The basis for a computer-generated health profile, created by gene sequencing in a medical scanner. A bioprint provides numerous "at a glance" insights about the subject, including allergies, organ function, brain activity, and other information used to create a full profile for long-term care and treatment.

Ceramite
A composite material with a quartzite structure that offers massive tensile strength and energy insulation. Like kyber and plasteel (see below), ceramite is one of the "big three" mnemonic or "smart" substances used in both civspec and milspec industrial environments. It can be found as a coating on cookware as readily as a bonded outer layer on armor that diffuses weapon fire.

Citizenship
Civilian membership within a water guild, which is broken into two types: Firclass and seclass. Firclass citizens live normal lives and are afforded certain privileges, such as protection by guild security forces and water credit guarantees. Seclass citizens have more limited freedoms and may even suffer restrictions on where they can live, what sorts of jobs they may work, or what kind of education they are allowed to receive. The rights of firclass and seclass citizens and the specifics of what divides them or what determines one status or the other can differ between guilds, but generally speaking, anyone who retains citizenship while moving out beyond guild sweep zones or geobounds is downgraded to seclass, effectively giving the guilds an excuse not to waste resources on them. Such individuals or communities are officially left to survive on their own.

Civspec
Short for "civilian specification(s)," meaning designed for everyday, nonmilitary use. For example, civspec weaponry is intended as a personal deterrent against street-level assault or theft, and is therefore manufactured under heavy restrictions with regard to energy cell or power pack capacity, rate of fire, and stopping power.

Corprison
Conjunction of "corporate prison," referring to a privately-owned and -operated detention facility where detainees are held on a contractual basis. Although guilds have their own similar institutions, as well, it is usually cheaper to pay a corprison to detain someone than to build and maintain such a facility. Licenses are granted to detainment corporations to do so in the guild's stead, and then the corporation collects a quarterly, semiannual, or annual fee per detainee in exchange for their services. Corprisons are held to guild security codes and staffing regulations, but little to no concern is spent on the comfort, hygiene, or rehabilitation of their inhabitants; the insides of such places are often a mess of gang violence, protection rackets, and myriad other forms of abuse.

Frigate
A milspec class of landship (see below) with an average tonnage of 7000. Frigates always travel heavily armed and are capable of comfortably carrying two to three hundred persons in addition to a crew complement of one to two hundred, plus jackrigs, drones, and other equipment.

Geobounds
The borders around a water guild settlement or outpost, describing the maximum distance to which they patrol or enforce their laws. Civilians who live outside guild geobounds may still hold citizenship of some kind, but exist at their peril and are not officially protected by guild security forces.

Holomap
Refers to any hardlight navigation interface, but especially the compact kind meant for personal use by civilians, traveling merchants, and so on, which can easily be worn on a belt or kept in a pocket. A holomap self-updates in real time when it can access the phenocryst network, and otherwise locally stores point-of-interest, geographical, climate, hazard, and other data useful to finding one's way around. This includes common functions like the capability for the user to place their own map markers and notes, or for the device to project to a larger display, when one is available.

Hydrocrat
General term for any ranking official of a water guild, but especially someone with wealth, power, and influence; a guild decision- or policy-maker.

Inssuit
A contraction of "insulated suit," referring to any milspec or heavy-class civilian armor that protects the wearer from exposure by regulating temperature, moisture, and so on.

Jackrig
Also simply "rig" for short, the colloquial term for any heavy-class automaton. Some jackrigs are tailored to civilian duties and purposes, while others are milspec. Older models of rig (like the U-17) are controlled using a slate computer, while newer ones have different interfaces.

Klick
A common slang term for kilometer. Synonymous with "kilo," which usually refers to weight but is also a more common term for distance among wasters.

Kyber
A light, incredibly strong black substance with almost infinite potential uses. Kyber can be manufactured in sheets, blocks, or even as a thread; while its primary purpose is to reinforce other composite materials, it appears in armor, weaponry, machinery, large-scale construction, and even clothing. An enormous variety of mundane items and military gear are printed from kyber, which is synthesized mostly from reclaimed elements. Kyber has the highest rate of recycling among all commercially available materials, reaching nearly 100%.

Landship
The broadest possible term for any class of large hovering vehicle. A typical landship is powered by a skymetal propulsor jet for forward movement, a charged repulsor keel that keeps it from touching the ground (providing varying amounts of adjustable lift, depending on size and carriage class), and rotary stabilizers for additional lateral movement and to keep it from capsizing. This word is not usually used to describe small one- to four-person personal transports.

Macro
A colloquialism meaning "on the grander scale" or "the broader situation." For example, to "think of the macro" means to see the bigger picture. The opposite (and somewhat lesser-used) term is micro, of course referring to smaller, more specific, or immediate situations.

Milspec
Short for "military specification(s)," meaning designed with combat in mind, or deliberately made to kill.

Mocomp
Conjunction of "mobile computer," referring to any travel-sized device capable of network connectivity and general clerical tasks, such as navigation, voice communication, accounting, etc.

Mykrove
A small machine used for quickly cooking food, based on commands input on a computer console. It operates through a combination of heat convection and agitation of water content in whatever's put inside it.

Nanoform
Materials or structures that are planned out on a computer and then built by preprogrammed nanites, which usually break down after assembly into menmonic alloys appropriate to the job. While the term can be applied to such construction regardless of size, it most often refers to microscale endeavors that can only be accomplished through nanite applications.

Netsite
A virtual space on the network, accessed through a digital address that defines its "location" relative to other sites and to whatever medium servers as a home to its files. Netsite contents can (broadly) include anything, from carefully-filtered guild news and propaganda to literature, music, sportscasts, games, images, adult content, and more. The most popular netsites are guild-branded social media platforms like ViewTube, Mumblr, Spacelook, Seddit, Flitter, and Glitch; all of these are heavily patrolled by their respective owners, who track usage data to perform targeted marketing and to keep watch on suspect individuals. Unfiltered and uncensored netsites without this tracking do exist, but must be maintained on a VPN (see below) and are generally under constant siege against guild hacking and disruption attacks.

Network Handle
An alias used in network communications, often a nickname or nonsense moniker meant to conceal a user's identity or allow them to create a new one, such as for a brand. Largely synonymous with "callsign," though the latter more specifically refers to an alias used during voice communications.

Plasteel
A synthetic polymer available in an enormous spectrum of densities, colors, and grades, plasteel is one of the most common substances in commercial production. From transparent plasfoil packaging to tempered solar cell window panes, plasteel shows up in every corner of day-to-day life. It is highly recycled, but also accounts for the bulk of civilian waste thanks to its inexpensive manufacturing process and adaptability. Since it is also easy to composite, plasteel is equally perfect for disposable meal trays and for lightweight and particle-resistant milspec armor plating.

Prosthetic
Broadly, any artificial body part or organ replacement, especially for a limb. There are many kinds of prostheses, but the most common sort are passively computer-controlled using the existing nervous system. Many prostheses incorporate additional functions that a normal organic part couldn't perform, such as time-release medication or hideaway tools.

Radiance
Refers both to the light given off by skymetal and its dangerous energy. Exposure to radiance is the cause of star sickness (see below).

Raider
Largely synonymous with "outlaw." Raiders are aggressive, twisted, barbaric, and typically insane. Some raiders suffer from exposure to skymetal radiance, but more often they are simply people driven mad by isolation, starvation, and the other terrible conditions they endure before (and after) joining a raider band. Being part of such a group offers some semblance of family and belonging, but in execution, they are more like gangs or even cults; there is no consistency in custom between one band and the next, and hierarchies are primarily determined by violence: Whoever can fight or kill their way to the top is in charge until someone else claws them down. Raiders spend their time fighting with other wasters and vulnerable guild civilians, usually claiming a swathe of nothingness as their "territory" and demanding a toll from those who pass through, or using the bogus claim as an excuse to terrorize those who commit the crime of already living there. While they will steal anything they can, water and valuable resources like weapons and skymetal are a raider's favorite treasures, and they decorate themselves, their clothing, and their possessions with whatever scrap they find or arbitrarily meaningful symbols they concoct.

Rajathad
A common term of acknowledgment, said to demonstrate understanding; literally, "message received."

Skiff
The smallest class of landship (see above), typically with a tonnage of 300 to 350. Skiffs can be armed, as can any landship, but are most often used for simple transport of personnel and equipment, such as to a research or construction site.

Sparkler
A common slang term for a phenocryst array, the mobile version of which is also sometimes called a comm dish. Phenocryst arrays are complex devices that connect to and help extend the global guild communications network—the mostly invisible field of controlled skymetal radiance that carries information, entertainment, and so on around the planet from one location to another. Each array has a unique address through which both incoming and outgoing traffic is routed, meaning messages sent to or from a particular array can be traced by their origin, as well as their destination, unless a user is on a VPN (see below). A device must be tethered or hardlinked to an array to access the phenocryst network, meaning it isn't available in places without a sparkler. Remote locations outside guild geobounds sometimes have to erect and maintain their own arrays, or else languish without any kind of network access, while large guild settlements may have multiple arrays in order to handle heavy loads. To ensure communications between cities, most maglines are fitted with sparklers every 50 klicks or so.

Star Sickness
Perhaps the most common colloquial name for one or several diseases that can be contracted from exposure to the radiance of skymetal. Symptoms include discoloration, pain, and itching similar to sunburn, accompanied by a gradually deepening ache in the bones, eventually followed by hair loss, muscle spasms, blindness, and organ failure if too much radiance is absorbed. That the sickness does not fade on its own, over time, would be disconcerting enough, but the end result of star sickness is that those who succumb to it become withered, half-living husks that mindlessly attack the nearest stimulus.

Sweep Zone
The area within and near the edges of a water guild's geobounds through which security forces patrol with some kind of consistency. A sweep zone is considered a militarized area, and citizens there are officially protected by their guild, just as outlaws are considered fair game.

Tedniz
A disease that breeds in scrapheaps, junk piles, and other areas of refuse. It generally enters the body through the blood, such as via injury, but can also infect water sources and be contracted through ingestion. Iconic symptoms include painful muscular contractions that often strain the neck and jaw, leaving victims partially or completely unable to open their mouths.

Vid
A live or recorded visual, usually including sound and a combination of real and artificially-manipulated elements. Most computerized devices can record vids, albeit at varying quality, thus the network is populated with vids whose contents range from independent musical and comedy performances to adult entertainment, instructional or educational demonstrations, and of course guild propaganda. Among the most popular type of vid is the dateline report, which is a regularly-scheduled presentation of current events. The term may also refer to a display which plays vids, as shorthand for "vidscreen" (for example, "what's on the vid?").

Virtual Phenocryst Network
Abbreviated VPN, a virtual phenocryst network describes a software program or configuration that routes network traffic from a device through multiple arrays to conceal the user's address, helping to mask their point of origin and the destination of any communications they send. While it doesn't make a device invisible on the network, it makes it much harder to trace and requires that significant work be done in order to pinpoint the user. Since the path of the VPN's routing self-alters constantly, such an investigation must be performed each time someone wishes to locate the device, by the end of which it will have changed again.

Waster
A generic term used to describe anyone living out in the dust, specifically well away from the nearest town or city of any considerable size (like you). It is not usually meant to be offensive, but can easily become a condescending insult in the right tone or context.

Water-Hoarder
An insult describing hydrocrats, referring to the water guilds' control of hydraulic distribution and accusing them of keeping more than their fair share.