Sylkaen
Glossary

The world and time

Sylkaen FR : Sylkaen

The world where Vestiges is played. An extremely old world whose origin no one truly knows, built in layers: every civilization that rose there left its own beneath the next. The site, the books and the store carry its name. Read more

Vestiges FR : Vestiges

The remains of vanished Cycles: colossal ruins, doors no one opens, incomprehensible machines, unknown materials, phenomena even magic cannot explain. They fascinate, enrich, and destroy. They give the world its name, and the roleplaying game its title. Read more

The Crown-World FR : Le Monde-Couronne

The present world, the inhabited surface of the current Cycle, the thinnest layer laid atop all the buried Cycles: six regions, six capitals, five continents. It is the subject of the atlas of the same name. Read more

The Cosmos FR : Le Cosmos

The whole of reality, governed by deep laws beyond mortals. It contains worlds other than Sylkaen, separated by the Strata; the oldest traditions hold Sylkaen to be “one threshold among a multitude.” Read more

Cycle FR : Cycle

An entire world, its peoples, its languages, its gods, its maps, that rises, thrives, and then collapses. Each leaves a layer atop the ones before it. Today's peoples live in the current Cycle, the last of these stacked worlds; scholars recognize eight. Read more

Rupture FR : Rupture

The collapse that ends a Cycle: it does not damage a kingdom, it erases an entire world. No one agrees on its nature; it is known only that after it, almost everything disappears, except the Vestiges. The Last Rupture, the only one known with any certainty, ended the Drowned Cycle and opened the current one. Read more

Comput of the First Furrow FR : Comput du Premier Sillon (P.S.)

The calendar of the current Cycle, counting the years from the First Furrow, the central continent where it was set. The current year is 3174. What predates the Comput is dated in relative terms, by Cycles. Read more

The Incomplete Wheel FR : La Roue Incomplète

The conviction that the Cycles do not merely follow one another: they repeat, like a verse rhyming with the one before it, without the circle ever seeming to close. The Synod of the Incomplete Wheel, an oracular order, teaches this repetition and reconstructs the list of vanished ages from the most legible Vestiges. Read more

The Rarefaction FR : La Raréfaction

The steady dwindling of the stock of Vestige-matter, which no living Cycle knows how to reproduce. It explains why the balance between the six powers of the Crown-World will not hold, and what that changes for the characters. Read more

Beneath the world

The Sediments FR : Les Sédiments

The depth of the world described in space: the layers of past Cycles crossed by descending. The deeper one goes, the stranger the world once was there, and the less its ruins resemble ruins. Going down is going back in time. A whole book is devoted to them. Read more

The six tiers FR : Les six paliers

Sounders divide the Sediments into six tiers, from nearest to deepest: the Living Crust (the ground people live on, charted), the Foundations (the layer people dig), the Bed of Ruins (the last place where things still look like what they are), the Bedrock (the last step where a step can still be recognized), the Deaf Layers (where stone stops keeping its promises) and the Bottomless (a name given to what people refuse to name). Read more

Vestige Forms FR : Formes des Vestiges

The typology of the Vestiges by appearance, in five forms: dwellings, resonants, Thresholds, Remnants, living ones. Living Vestiges are dead Cycles that carry on: creatures, forests, organisms pursuing the existence a vanished age made them for. Read more

Remnants FR : Survivances

Vestiges one can carry: machines, blades, and ornaments inherited from vanished Cycles, which no living hand knows how to make. Each keeps a share of its own will, its Echo. One does not make a Remnant; one comes to terms with it. Read more

Echo FR : Écho

The share of will and memory proper to a Remnant: the expression of the Resonance of the Cycle that saw it born, and the price it demands of whoever uses it. A Remnant is never a sword with a bonus: it has a memory, and sometimes an opinion. Read more

Crafted Items FR : Objets ouvrés

Magic items the living still know how to produce (a runic blade, a potion, a scroll): safe, reproducible, and without memory. The second family of Sylkaen's items, facing the Remnants. Read more

Attunement FR : Harmonisation

The close bond some magic items demand, Remnants above all, before they yield their benefits: a conscious intent, a rest devoted to the item. In Sylkaen, attuning to a Remnant also means accepting its Echo. Read more

Clandestine Salvagers FR : Récupérateurs clandestins

Vestige plunderers who dig up, without discernment, what the sentinel cities protect. The most ordinary danger of a descent, and sometimes the worst. Read more

The Strata

The Strata FR : Les Strates

Deep divisions of reality, each tied to a function of the Cosmos. Scholars recognize five: Time, Memories, Possibilities, Metamorphoses, Silence. They are reached only at the rare points where they surface into the world. They are not places one descends into: one tips over into them. Read more

Scar FR : Cicatrice

A rare point where two laws of the Cosmos touch; one of the places through which a Stratum surfaces into the world. The Sands of the Suture bear the largest. Read more

Threshold FR : Seuil

A place where the law of a Stratum bleeds plainly into the world without yet opening it: one brushes against it, one measures it. It is the intermediate degree of exposure, before a Door. The spells of the Strata and Thresholds open a passage toward a Stratum and let something through, one way or the other. Read more

Wardens of the Strata FR : Gardiens des Strates

Those who watch over the balance of the five Strata, teaching that they are the organs of one same living thing: to favor one is to weaken the whole Cosmos. It is also the Druid's archetype in Sylkaen. Read more

Magic

Resonance FR : Résonance

The idea that nothing which has existed ever truly disappears: collapsed Cycles, the dead, and their pains leave a lingering vibration in the Cosmos. The magic of Sylkaen does not command the world, it persuades it by finding this frequency. It is also the Archaeomancer's signature resource. Read more

Source (of magic) FR : Source (de la magie)

The place from which a caster draws their authority over the Cosmos. Sylkaen recognizes seven: Arcane, Divine, Natural, Psionic, Primordial, Vestigial, Technological. The eight schools say how a spell acts; the source says where the right to cast it comes from. Read more

Vestigial (~ source) FR : Vestigiale (source ~)

The source of magic unique to Sylkaen: interaction with the ancient Cycles, the art of convincing a ruin to remember. The signature of the world, and of the spells of the Vestiges and Resonance. Read more

Cosmic Domain FR : Domaine cosmique

What a spell actually touches within the fabric of the world (Time, Memory, Vestiges, Souls, Shadows…), beyond its school. The school says how; the domain says what it is made of. Read more

Archaeomancer FR : Archéomancien

A class whose magical authority is born of the Vestigial source: an Intelligence-based half caster that gets answers from the ruins and also draws on a Resonance pool. The archaeologist class of Vestiges, in four Paths. Read more

Mechanist FR : Mécaniste

A class that acts not through spells but through their Inventions, machines woken from the ancient Cycles; like the Archaeomancer, it obeys the laws of the Cosmos through a different door. Control and support, in four Paths. Read more

Paths FR : Voies

The subclasses of the Archaeomancer and the Mechanist: four per class, chosen at levels 3, 6, 10 and 14, which bend a versatile explorer toward protection, support, exploration or mobility. The twelve familiar classes receive, for their part, a Sylkaen archetype of their own. Read more

The Divine

The Laws FR : Les Lois

The great eternal principles of the Cosmos. A Law outlives the one who carries it; a god never outlives the Law it serves. Read more

Ascended gods FR : Dieux ascensionnés

Sylkaen's gods are mortal on the cosmic scale: they rise, embody a Law for the length of a Cycle, then fade and are replaced. The current Pantheon counts fifteen figures, major faces and dark faces of the Laws, including one fallen god, a lost Law. Read more

The peoples

Founding Peoples FR : Peuples Fondateurs

The eight peoples who shaped the foundations of most known civilizations: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, Orcs, Goblins, Colossi. Their relationship with the ruins is frankly utilitarian. Read more

Ancient Peoples FR : Peuples Anciens

Families of peoples that appeared during the first millennia of the current Cycle, in harmony with the harshest environments of Sylkaen: Saurians, Felyrs, Aeris, Nereans, Khepras. A patience measured in millennia. Read more

Peoples of the Strata FR : Peuples des Strates

Three peoples who carry in their flesh the imprint of a function of the Cosmos: the Eclipses (Stratum of Possibilities, what could have been), the Mnesics (Stratum of Memories, memories that are not their own) and the Morphids (Stratum of Metamorphoses, Resonance Moults that rewrite their bodies). Read more

Peoples of the Vestiges FR : Peuples des Vestiges

Four peoples who are themselves living remains of vanished Cycles: the Lithari (stone), the Ferrans (metal), the Verreens (crystal) and the Sylvans (plant-life). They descend from a world that no longer exists; to play one of them is to play an antique that still walks. Read more

Living in Sylkaen

The Standard of the Trading-Posts FR : L'Étalon des Comptoirs

The shared exchange system that unifies market values from one region of the Crown-World to another. Its currencies: the Nail (copper), the Measure (silver), the Full (gold) and the Shard, cut from Vestige-glass, for what no purse can carry. Read more

Nyméria FR : Nyméria

A great scholarly city of the Lands of the First Furrow, seat of a learned League that fixed the classification of Sylkaen's peoples, and the starting city of campaigns. Beneath its streets stacks the Workshop: one dead Nyméria per Cycle, from the Service Levels down to the Nyméria of Doors. Read more

Game Master (GM) FR : Meneur

The person who runs the game, describes the world and plays everything that is not a player character. The French books call this role the Meneur. The Game Master's Book is written for them. Read more