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Guides are a Sentinel’s only hope of survival.

Unlike Sentinels, which were artificially created, Guides are natural-born miracles.

Despite ongoing efforts to increase their population, Guides have difficulty reproducing, and their powers are never inherited. Guides appear to be born at random, and they may not be identifiable—even through genetic testing—until long after the onset of puberty.

This creates barriers to identifying, protecting, and educating young Guides who must grow into the backbone of our empire’s defense.

Faervaine condemns any Sentinel caught capturing, concealing, or mistreating a Guide. Offenders are induced to rampage and sacrificed to monster territories.

Hellfire - The highest tier of flame. Magic fires burn on a hierarchy, and hellfire reigns at the top in terms of pure destruction.

Hellfire is rarely seen as it’s only accessible to upper echelon devils and dragons.

With a liquid, contagious quality that incinerates all it touches, hellfire is malleable in experienced hands and a hazard when left to spread uncontrolled. Few materials can resist its heat.

Horde - An army of monsters. Hordes form when intelligent monsters with shared races or goals continue to spawn in a concentrated area.

Most hordes seek to exterminate humanity.

If hordes grow unchecked, they colonize human territories, establishing settlements, farms, and even rudimentary industry.

For reasons yet unknown, the presence of a horde increases local spawn activity.

Thus, colonized land becomes exponentially more difficult to recover over time.

Hordes must be broken up and eventually destroyed.

Huldra - A female hulder—a minor nature spirit.

Like nymphs, sylphs, dryads, etc., the hulder exhibit wide-ranging nature-related powers (ex.

ice-fang huldra). They may spawn more frequently than known as they prefer to conceal themselves and avoid human contact.

Do not provoke. All hulder fight viciously when their territories are threatened.

Imprint - The intimate soul bond that can be formed between Sentinels and Guides who exceed 80% compatibility. A pair imprints by manipulating their soul-silks until achieving permanent fusion. This can change the color and even quality of the soul.

Imprinting is a relatively recent phenomenon, which has yet to be fully understood. It’s clear that imprinting facilitates more effective (and pleasurable) guidance. Well-matched pairs may be able to share emotions, senses, dreams, or even thoughts and powers.

Thus far, imprints have only been established 1-to-1 between pairs. Given the small pool of available Guides, research is urgently underway to determine whether A- and S-class Guides could be induced to carry multiple imprints.

Severing an imprint severely damages the soul, most often leading to death. Thus, imprinting remains a frowned upon practice, with risks unequal to its benefits.

Every Sentinel is a precious military resource, deserving the highest level of care.

Every Guide is a gift from the heavens, deserving the adoration and worship of numerous Sentinels.

Kobold - a low- to mid-tier monster, which spawns widely throughout Faervaine.

Kobolds can be identified by their distinct, dry-scale scent.

Part lizard, part dog, and roughly humanoid, they have tails, fur, and fanged snouts.

Kobold civilization is primitive. Their craftspeople produce armor and cold weapons, and their military strategies are simple.

They prefer to travel in mobs and hordes, overwhelming their enemies with numbers.

Kobold mages are a greater threat than their warriors, using chanted spells that are particularly dangerous under siege conditions.

Kyorgos (sounds like poor ghost) - a ducal house in the east of Faervaine. Though not prolific, they are famed necromancers, and their bloodline has protected our Eastern shores for generations.

Legion - The largest unit within Faervaine’s military. Faervaine maintains five legions (Imperial, Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western).

The Imperial Legion serves directly under the emperor, defending the imperial family and the peaks of the capitol region. Each of the remaining legions is managed by one of the ducal houses and is tasked with protecting their region from the ceaseless spawn of monster hordes.

Lich (rhymes with witch, plural liches) - A high-level undead.

Necromancers become liches by preparing their death in a series of elaborate rituals.

After their planned resurrection, liches gain greater power to raise and control hordes of undead servants.

Liches are difficult to eliminate; they can sub-divide their souls into a near-limitless number of vessels.

As long as a shred of a lich’s soul survives, they can possess a host body or, with sufficient time and resources, condense a new physical shell.

Take care to destroy all objects and potential hosts near a lich. Where possible, raze the surrounding land. Use magical containment to prevent the lich’s soul from jumping hosts.

Margrave - A hereditary title bestowed to all A-class Sentinels born to proven bloodlines, regardless of gender.

Vassal to a ducal house. Rules over a march within the duchy.

The number of active margraves varies as new bloodlines are established and old bloodlines are lost or weakened, failing to produce qualified heirs.

Meridians - Also referred to as magic veins. Meridians are the pathways by which magic, soul-silks, and other supernatural energies flow through the body.

Clogged or damaged meridians cause painful and serious side-effects.

Because Sentinels inherit their powers through their monster bloodlines, any use of magic gradually corrupts the meridians, body, mind, and soul.

Only a Guide can heal a Sentinel’s meridian damage.

When the soul-silks are properly guided and toxins are promptly removed, a Sentinel’s meridians remain clear, allowing the strongest possible output of their magic.

Naga - A race of giant, serpent-human hybrids.

They possess the lower bodies of snakes, and the upper bodies of attractive humanoids.

Naga are matriarchal. Powerful and intelligent, they consider humans beneath their notice; they will casually kill males but tend to ignore human females.

Rarely encountered. Considered SS+ or Apocalypse-class before their disappearance.

A single scale shed by the naga queen sired Mirta Supreme, establishing the naga bloodline among the largely female dukes of House Mirta.

Nobility - Bloodline prowess, acknowledged by the granting of hereditary titles and military authority.

Prior to the first spawn and the rise of Sentinels (and later, Guides), a single heir inherited a family title based on arbitrary criteria such as birth order and gender.

In today’s Faervaine, nobility is determined solely based on power.

The Supreme bloodlines, which produce S-class Sentinels generation after generation remain ducal houses. Any scion of the four houses who achieves an S-class power rating earns the title of duke.

Similarly, when maintaining good standing, A-class families produce margraves, B-class families produce counts, C-class families produce barons, and D and F-class families produce lords.

If a house fails to produce at least one adequate bloodline heir per generation, their nobility may be demoted or abolished.

Rampage - The loss of rationality and inevitable magical implosion that occurs when a Sentinel fails to receive timely treatment from a compatible Guide, and their bloodline power corrupts their soul.

Rampaging Sentinels may experience: pain, violence, short- and long-term memory loss, impulsivity, changes in personality, loss of conscience, physical transformation, wounds and bleeding, headache, nausea, apathy, loss of consciousness, loss of sensation, loss of control, paranoia, possession, and death.

Roc - A giant, majestic, avian-type monster. Rocs appeared in human myths long before the first spawn. Their recent return to the human world ended all space exploration, satellite launches, and commercial air-travel.

Scion - A descendant. Specifically, Sentinels who are the descendants of a Sire and carry the traits of their progenitor monster through their bloodline.

Sire - The progenitor of a bloodline. Some monster sires willingly granted their bloodlines to humanity through wholesome, natural reproduction.

Hostile sires were subdued and harvested for genetic materials.

Each contributed to new bloodlines, fostering future generations of Sentinels.

Some bloodlines venerate their sires, whereas others hate or even fear the return of the races from which they were created.

Soothe - To calm, treat, or heal a Sentinel. Guides soothe Sentinels using various pacification techniques, including massage, verbal reassurance, and physically manipulating the soul-silks. During soothing, transformed Sentinels shed their monster features and revert to their human forms.

Soul-silks - Most often referred to in the abbreviated form, “silks,” these threads of power are the physical manifestations of a transcendent human’s soul.

Silks function as metaphysical hands, allowing Sentinels and Guides to exert their willpower and cast magic outside the body. These silks are visible to other transcendents and can perceive sensations similarly to physical nerves.

Touching someone’s soul-silks is extremely intimate. It can be invasive and even painful without sufficient trust and compatibility between partners.

Healthy silks flow through the meridians within the body just as blood flows through veins and arteries.

They can behave independently or unconsciously, and often telegraph their human’s emotions—waving softly like anemones when open and curious, or going rigid and prickling when threatened or cautious.

Whereas the human body has organs designed to remove toxins from the blood, Sentinels acquired their magic through artificial experimentation and have always lacked a system to purge contaminants.

As Sentinels use the powers inherited through their monstrous bloodlines, corruption accumulates, and their meridians take damage.

Their soul-silks tangle, tear, and lose their function.

The Sentinel gradually loses mental control, falling into a painful state of rampage and eventually self-destruction.

Guides are treasures born with natural soul-silks that never become corrupted. Their silks are inherently gentle, allowing them to soothe Sentinels, heal their accumulated damage, and prevent the descent into rampage.

Highly stimulated silks are known to cast a glow, but further research is recommended to understand the triggers and extent of this phenomenon.

Spawn - The sudden appearance of monsters (see Horde ).

The origins of these monsters are not yet understood, but spawn points are theorized to be “gates” to other worlds.

Spawns rarely occur in large cities and are most common in sparsely populated wilderness areas.

They become exponentially more frequent as humans are pushed out of a territory.

As the increasing spawns spill magic of unknown origin into the local environment, previously common human technologies, such as wireless internet and electricity, are disrupted and eventually cease to function.

Magic and radio remain the most reliable means of communication in high-spawn areas.

Supreme - A title given to the first Sentinel to successfully inherit each monster bloodline (ex.

Azrid Supreme, the first vampire Sentinel).

With the gradual death and disappearance of these original, titled Supremes, the term came to refer to the five supreme bloodlines, which continue to dominate the empire’s aristocracy by producing S-class Sentinels, generation after generation.

The current supreme bloodlines:

FAERVAINE (the dragons of the peak) - the imperial family, commanding their own Imperial Legion and the four regional legions

AZRID (the vampires of the north) - a ducal house, commanding the Northern Legion

KYORGOS (the liches of the east) - a ducal house, commanding the Eastern Legion

TREZZORAN (the devils of the west) - a ducal house, commanding the Western Legion

MIRTA (the naga of the south) - a ducal house, commanding the Southern Legion

Transcendents - Humans who have surpassed the limits of humanity, either through natural or artificial means. Guides and Sentinels fall under the umbrella of transcendents, as do various support classes such as healers.

Thrall - A mindless servant. Monsters and Sentinels from diverse bloodlines can make thralls of humans and other creatures using hypnosis, venom, magic, or even chemical means.

Thralls may be living or undead. Some thralls can regain their free will.

Others have their essence burned away and willingly or unwillingly become bound to serve a master throughout their life and death.

Killing the master always eliminates the thrall.

Troll - A large and physically hardy monster, with a lumpy, muscular appearance.

They’re most often encountered in caves.

Troll intelligence varies, but even speaking trolls tend to be dim-witted and easily tricked into the service of other, more powerful beings.

Vulnerable to poisons and mental attacks.

Unit - The smallest grouping within the military hierarchy. The ideal unit comprises four Sentinels and one Guide, or five Sentinels when not enough Guides are available.

Wyvern - An inferior dragon, unworthy of its inclusion at the lowest tier of the draconic hierarchy. These pitiable, armless misfits can exert substantial firepower, thanks to their corrupted dragon blood. To be killed on sight. The imperial family generously rewards wyvernslayers.