Glossary

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Ark ship: One of the early settler ships that carried the clans' founders to Mars. Each clan is named after its ship.
Artificial gravity: False gravity from constant thrust or spin; humans cannot make true gravity. See Technology.
Authority / Trader / Outlaw flotilla: An Authority flotilla is chartered and owes allegiance to one shipyard in the human home system. A Trader plies business across the stars, hiring protection against pirates, rivals "and worst of all: the taxman". An Outlaw leads a band of pirates and rogues using captured ships.
Battle of Rhea: Opening of the Solar War; Queen of Saturn declares war on Solar emissaries at Rhea. See History.
Blind fold: A fold into space that nobody has mapped. Only blind folds are limited to outside a combat zone.
Burns: Short bursts of a fusion drive, used in combat because a constantly firing drive is easy to track.
Carapace: A ship's armour and skeleton, constantly repaired by drones and repair protocols.
Ce-Co debt: An inherited or earned obligation to the Ceres Cooperative's bank. Not loan-shark debt, but leaving is rare. See Life in Ce-Co.
Ce-Co: The Ceres Cooperative.
Ceres class: Ce-Co ships specialised for debris fields, easy repair and rapid revolving guns. See Ceres class.
Certainty sphere: The space in which an observing ship can be sure another ship or object is.
Clan markings: Tattoos or scars on a Martian's face that show their clan and record its victories. Usually hidden behind a plain mask.
Communication buoy: A relay that passes messages across a system in minutes or hours. Signals cannot cross waystations, so news between systems travels by courier ship.
Confusion Wars: A run of civil wars and instability on Earth in the 21st–22nd centuries; historians still debate their causes. See History.
Conqueror: The Solar government transporter that carried occupation forces to Mars in 2525.
Cults of Sovereign: Secretive groups in every nation that worship Sovereign. Some claim it still speaks to them. They are rarely tolerated.
Cybernetics: Machine and medical upgrades to the body. Most people hide them to look human; attitudes vary by faction. See Technology.
Dead men: Members of a secretive Plutocracy mercenary legion with many names. Recruits are given new identities and become the legion's slaves for life. See The Plutocracy.
Deep void: The far, little-known reaches of space beyond the settled systems.
Digital afterlife / digital hell: A synthworld eternity of bliss sold by the Plutocracy, or its opposite: endless torment or senseless nothing, said to await those who cross a Plutarch.
Digital downloaded consciousness: The Plutocracy practice of downloading a person's mind before death.
Director (Ce-Co): A Foreman voted onto the Ceres Cooperative's board by the subsidiaries' shares. Directors pitch plans, and the most popular pitch wins a time-limited leadership contract.
Drexel society: The loose name for the trader, pirate and other dreg salvagers who break ships down when yards will not.
Emergency fold: An automatic fold by the ship's AI when the hull is about to fail. Rushed, often damaging or badly placed; still preferable to dying in space.
Escort: A craft too small to count as a true ship; skippered, not captained (in NOVA). Too small for a fold drive; they ride with larger ships.
EVA: Extra-vehicular activity; leaving the ship in a suit to work outside. Hull-to-hull leaps are a joke; jet suits are for careful close work. See Technology.
Extinct aliens: Long-dead civilisations, many apparently the builders of the waystations. Many digitised themselves and live on as data in colossal obelisks.
Flotilla: A commander's force of ships, escorts and freighters.
Fold / folding / fold drive: Unreliable alien tech from Sovereign. Opens a wormhole to mapped space or a guided point; gravity makes planetary folds lethal; arrival accuracy is many cubic kilometres (still within a ship's certainty sphere). See Technology.
Fold tether: A buoy left at a rally zone to guide a fleet's fold out of danger so ships still arrive close together. Works only within a solar system; waystations are needed for interstellar jumps.
Foreman: The head of one of the Ceres Cooperative's subsidiary businesses or organisations (for example Foreman Edgermann). The best Foremen are voted up to become directors.
Free Void: The open frontier of space, where "the distinction between pirate and authority is a thin one".
Gemling: A crystalline, gremlin-like Ce-Co ship creature; pet, mascot and pest. Almost unknown outside the Cooperative. See Cultures of the void.
Hab cylinders: Habitation modules making up the Earth's orbital ring and Phobos Station.
Hammer class: Phobos / Martian ships with all-forward guns and heavy prow armour. Called Phobos class by outsiders. See Hammer class.
Holo table / holomap / holopanel: Commanders' holographic displays.
Hologhast: The holographic projection of a Plutocracy digital consciousness, a ghost of light.
Hydra (moon / syndicate): Moon of Pluto; a shipyard syndicate that builds Hydra-class ships exclusively for Plutarchs. See The Plutocracy.
Hydra class: Stealthy Plutocracy ships specialised for outmanoeuvring and hiding. See Hydra class.
Intelligent primitives: Intelligent alien species that have never left their planet. Some become protectorates or are uplifted.
Jonahs / Mobys: Voidsman slang for void whales.
Long lives: Lifespans past 300 years, achieved through costly technology and medicine. Rare and expensive, though numerous in absolute terms. See Technology.
MacTavish (Paul): 22nd-century founder of the first thriving Mars colony; spark of Mars Madness. Martians say roughly "Makhta-VISH". See Mars.
Mars Insurgency: The Martian clans' guerrilla war against the Solar government's occupation of Mars, which began in 2525.
Mars Madness: The late-22nd- and early-23rd-century rush of settlers to Mars after Paul MacTavish's colony thrived. It faded once O'Neill cylinders were invented.
Martian clans: The wild, tribal descendants of Mars's first settlers, who keep faith in MacTavish's promised Eden. They remain the main power on Mars.
Martian Confederacy: The union of the Martian clans and Phobos Station that unites Mars.
Martian: Of the Martian Confederacy. It is commonly used for Phobos flotillas, since Phobos speaks for Mars beyond its skies.
Missile: Usually a smaller rocket, for escorts or ground forces; often used loosely for torpedoes too.
NOVA: The Naval Office for Void Administration.
Old Man's War: An early Earth war remembered for fighters averaging about sixty-five after low birth rates. Historians disagree over whether it came before or after the Confusion Wars.
Phobos class: Outsider name for Hammer-class Martian ships. See Hammer class.
Pioneers: A people within the Kingdom of Saturn; Queen-chartered explorers from a former belt nation, mostly on Sovereign-class ships. See Cultures of the void.
Plutarch: One of the high rulers of the Plutocracy, who takes "protection" from Kuiper belt ventures and does no work of their own. Compare plutocrat.
Plutocrat: An ordinary member of the Plutocracy, as opposed to its ruling Plutarchs.
Protectorate / protectorate civilisation: A subordinate state. Earth's old nations became protectorates of the Supremacy, and some Void aliens become protectorates of human factions.
Rail cannon: The standard ship "gun".
Raptor class: NOVA ships with atmospheric wings, lock-and-fire missiles and interceptor escorts. See Raptor class.
Scrapfish: Escort-sized machine animals that school through the void eating wrecks and scrap; also called Remoras, Gnashers, Hullmites or the Feast. Rogue packs sometimes attack live ships. See The Web and aliens.
Ship shard: A fragment of a clan's ark ship, cut from the family's piece and given as a wedding gift. Often worn on a chain by Phobos soldiers and voidsmen.
Ship yards (the Solar Ship Yards): The great ship-building powers of the solar system. Each builds its own ship class.
Ship's biscuit: A swallowable nutrient pill that expands in the stomach; flotilla mass rations. See Technology.
Simple life: Bacteria and low-intelligence alien fauna, found on many moons and planets.
Sinlap: A crater on Titan, entirely enclosed as the largest cathedral in the known universe. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Sinlap, a burial place of Saturn's heroes and a pilgrimage site for Nicene Christians across the solar system.
Six types of void vessel: Five true ships (corvette, frigate, destroyer, cruiser and freighter) plus escorts. See Technology.
Skipper: In NOVA, the commander of an escort. A ship has a captain, while an escort has a skipper. Other factions have their own terms.
Sol Waystation: The waystation in humanity's home system. The nations found it after the Solar War by tracking the retreating Solar Navy.
Solar citizen: Under Supremacy law, any human living beyond Earth, and so subject to Solar authority.
Solar Navy (remnants): The defeated fleet of the old Solar Supremacy, still somewhere in the Web. Aggressive, heavily cybernetic, ships upgraded toward Sovereign-class standard; they refuse to be taken alive. See History.
Solar Supremacy: The old de facto government of humanity, overthrown in the Solar War.
Solar War: The Sovereign-led uprising that defeated the Solar Supremacy and the Solar Navy.
Sovereign class: Ubiquitous free blueprints from Sovereign (easy to get); the baseline of 31st-century ships and much other tech. See Sovereign class.
Sovereign law: Sovereign's commandments to humanity after the Solar War.
Sovereign: The Digital Intelligence of unknown origin. See Sovereign.
Sovereigns: The untraceable, unforgeable cryptocurrency created by Sovereign, used across the void for large-scale trade and for everything in the Kuiper belt.
Stellar law: Human-made treaties and conventions between nations, separate from Sovereign law.
Synthworld: A digital existence that people plug into and escape to. Popular with plutocrats, but illegal in most nations. The Plutocracy also sells digital afterlives, and some Plutarchs are whispered to keep digital hells for their enemies. See The Plutocracy.
Temples of Mars: The clans' places of worship, set among biodome gardens, where MacTavish's writings are read.
Terran citizen: Under Supremacy law, a human living on Earth, as a subject of one of the old nations under Supremacy protection.
The Ring: The orbital band of O'Neill cylinders around Earth, mostly synthetic farms feeding the solar system. It is a democracy home to billions, where NOVA is the most influential party.
The Tide: A widespread wayfaring species of aquatic, crab-and-octopus-like aliens whose shells grow into their powered armour. Usually hostile.
The Void: Space in general.
The Web / web space: The network of connected waystations and the systems they reach.
Tishpak: The Martians' name for the lizard-like aliens of a desert moon out in the Web, claimed by the Martians and named after a Mesopotamian warrior god whose sacred beast was a serpent-dragon. Their eggs are traded to Phobos and raised as shock troops.
Titan class: Kingdom of Saturn ships with unique energy shields, long-range gun decks and ornate interiors. See Titan class.
Torpedo: Official term for a large ship-to-ship rocket. Voidsmen often say missile interchangeably. See Technology.
Uplift: Raising an intelligent primitive species' capabilities, done by some human factions for their own ends.
Void keepers: Silent, relentlessly hostile machines of the deep void that attack human settlements. They may be waystation defences or an alien species that became robotic.
Void vessel: Any vessel that travels the void. Every ship is a void vessel, but escorts are void vessels that are not true ships, even if people casually call one a ship or a boat.
Void whales: Colossal ship-sized alien animals that travel in family pods and fold through waystations. Also called Mobys, Jonahs, Ahabs and Pequods. A nesting ground is a Nantucket.
Void-locked aliens: Aliens that control their own solar system but cannot use the waystations.
Voidscape: A view of the void, or a battle fought in it. Also spray-painted space art ("poster voidscapes").
Wayfaring aliens: Aliens that travel the waystations and compete with humanity.
Waystation: An alien device orbiting in a system, through which ships can fold to a connected waystation in another system. Damaging one breaks Sovereign law.
Writings of MacTavish: The prophet's extensive notes, with rules, guidance and discoveries about Mars. Hidden from outsiders and still fought over.