The Glossary

Vellum's charts, gazetteer, voyage journal, and realm names borrow real cartography, heraldry, seamanship, and geography vocabulary, some of it centuries old. Here's what it all means.

The sheet and its frame

The document itself: what a chart is printed on, and the marks a maker leaves at its edges.

Cartouche

The decorative title panel on an antique-style chart.

Colophon

The maker's note at the foot of a book or sheet, saying who made it and when. Vellum's journal signs off with one, and the seed it names is the whole world in a single number.

Docket

The summary endorsement written on the outside of a folded document, so it could be identified without unfolding. Vellum's verso carries a docket line for the same reason.

Neat line

The ruled border enclosing a map's content, where the chart formally ends and the margin begins.

Plate

A single printed sheet or figure, from the engraved copper plate it was once pulled from. Vellum's rainfall and temperature sheets are plates in this sense.

Recto

The front of a chart: the side the map is drawn on. Turn the sheet over in the Explorer to find its verso.

Surveyor's glass

The hand lens kept on the chart table, and the Explorer's magnifier named for it. Lean closer over an antique chart and the surveyor redrafts the window under the glass as a finer regional survey, its coastline inked in and its newly placed names drying by tier; stand back and the full sheet returns.

Verso

The back of a chart. Real charts were folded into pilot books and docketed on the reverse, so Vellum's verso carries a docket line, the surveyor's attribution, and a survey-office stamp. Turn the sheet in the Explorer to read it.

On the chart itself

These print as literal legend or key text on a rendered chart.

Contour line

A line joining points of equal elevation. Its two cousins below, the isohyet and the isotherm, do the same for rainfall and for temperature.

Hypsometric tint

Shading land by elevation band, the coloring scheme used on the topographic style.

Isohyet

A line connecting points of equal rainfall, the contour lines on the Rainfall plate.

Isotherm

A line connecting points of equal temperature, the contour lines on the Temperature plate.

League

An old unit of distance, roughly three miles, being about as far as a person walks in an hour. Vellum's scale bars are ruled in leagues, and its daily hunt measures your guess in them.

Realm seat

A settlement that serves as a realm's seat of power: the capital, or one of its smaller provincial seats.

Rhumb line

A straight line of constant compass bearing, radiating from the compass rose in the old navigator's style.

At the drafting table

The words on the Explorer's own controls.

Coast warp

How much a world's coastline wanders. Calm keeps the shore plain; lobed lets bays and headlands cut deeper. Every step of warp is a different world, redrawn when the slider is let go.

Seed's choice

The default in the type and climate pickers: left alone, each world decides its own shape and weather from its seed. Pick a value to overrule it.

Survey

The expedition's completed track, inked onto the sheet with the ship's daily stations. Tick survey in the Explorer to lay it over the chart at rest; its day-by-day journal is kept in the Reading Room.

Soundings & sea marks

What the nautical style prints on the water.

Fathom

A unit of water depth equal to six feet (about 1.8 meters), the traditional unit for nautical soundings. Vellum's depth readings are labeled in fathoms.

Ocean current

A steady drift of water across the open sea, drawn as a curved arrow. A ship that works with one arrives sooner than her log suggests.

Prevailing wind

A world's dominant wind direction, drawn as arrows on nautical charts.

Rock awash

A nautical chart mark for a rock exposed or barely covered at the surface, a hazard to ships.

Shoal / danger line

A tinted shallow-water zone on nautical charts, bounded by a dashed line marking the hazardous edge.

Sounding

A numbered depth reading, in fathoms, scattered over open water on nautical charts.

Coming in from the sea

The voyage journal is written in a working sailor's language. These are the words in it most likely to mislead, because each one has a harmless everyday meaning as well.

Bar

A ridge of sand, shingle, or gravel thrown up across the mouth of a river or harbor, shallow enough to stop a ship until the tide serves. The same word names the gravel banks a riverman knows further upstream.

Double

To sail around a headland. To double a point closely is to cut it fine, saving distance and risking the shore.

Hand

A scribe's individual handwriting, so a manuscript written in "two hands" passed between two people. Also, at sea, to hand a sail is to take it in and furl it.

Holding ground

The quality of the seabed for gripping an anchor. Good holding ground is thick mud or stiff clay; a pilot who speaks ill of it means you may drag in the night.

Pilot

A local expert taken aboard to steer a ship through water only long practice can read. The pilot outranks the captain in his own approaches.

Roads / roadstead

A sheltered patch of open water off a coast where ships may lie at anchor, short of a true harbor. When the journal says the survey made the roads before dark, nobody has touched a road.

Slack tide

The still interval at the turn, when the tide is neither running in nor out. The moment to move a ship in tight water.

Warp

To move a ship by hauling on a line made fast to a fixed point, rather than under sail. The lines themselves are warps, and a crew warps in when the wind will not serve.

The waterfront

The built edge of a harbor town, as the gazetteer describes it.

Breakwater

A barrier of stone built out into the sea to take its force off the water behind, so boats can lie quiet in weather.

Chandler

A shore merchant who outfits ships: rope, canvas, tar, lamp oil, and salt provisions. A working port keeps a row of them along the front.

Moorings

The fixed places a ship ties up to in a harbor. Inner moorings in a tidal port can be left dry twice a day.

Quay

A built stone landing running along the water, where ships lie alongside to work cargo. Older charts spell it key, and pronounce it that way still.

Strand

The shore itself, treated as a place rather than a line: the beach a boat is run up on and a landing party crosses.

Waterman

A boatman who works a river for hire, ferrying goods and people. A good one knows every gravel bar between his town and the sea.

Wharf

A landing structure ships lie against to load and unload. Where a quay is the built bank itself, a wharf is the platform put out from it.

On the prospect plate

The built works a settlement's engraved prospect names in its lettered key.

Abutment

The masonry at a bridge's end, taking the whole thrust of the span into the bank. A bridge stands or falls by its abutments, which is why a ruin keeps them longest.

Arcade

A run of arches carried on piers, here the open working front along a quay face. Goods pass through an arcade dry while the weather does what it likes outside.

Jetty

A narrow structure run out into the water to land from, lighter than a mole and often timber. Where a key letters both, the mole shelters and the jetty lands.

Keep

The fortified tower at a castle's heart, the last room an attacker reaches. On a capital's prospect the keep is usually the tallest mass on the skyline.

Mill race & mill wheel

The cut channel that takes a river's water to a mill, and the wheel that water turns. A prospect pairs them with the weir that holds the water back to feed the race.

Mole

A massive work of stone thrown out into the sea to shelter a harbor, heavy enough to walk on and to take the sea's force.

The river & the fen

Inland water, and the words for working it.

Beck

A brook or small stream, a northern English word taken from Old Norse and still living in place names across the Dales.

Fen

Low waterlogged ground, reed country, neither properly land nor properly water. Fen-dwellers cut reed for thatch and worked at the water's edge.

Osier

A willow shoot cut for basketry, grown by cropping the tree back hard so it throws up long straight rods.

Reach

A straight stretch of river between two bends, long enough to be named and fished as its own place. The daily hunt borrows the word for a different job, meaning the eastern or western side of the chart, away from its middle.

Weir

A low dam built across a river to raise its level or divert it, often to drive a mill. A fish weir does the opposite work, funneling fish into traps set in the gaps. In the oldest usage the word meant sea-weed.

The road & the market

What the journal meets between one town and the next.

Drover

One who walks livestock to market on the hoof, sometimes for weeks, along routes kept wide for the purpose.

Fallow

Ploughland deliberately left unsown for a season so it can recover. Leave it longer in warm country and the forest takes it back.

Market cross

The stone cross set in a town's market place, marking its chartered right to hold a market and serving as the spot where bargains were struck and news was read out.

May

Hawthorn blossom, not the month. Hedges white with may put the journal's date in late spring without naming it.

Pack train

A file of laden animals carrying goods where the way is too steep or too rough for carts.

Reeve

A local official set over a village or manor, collecting dues and answering for the place to its lord. A traveler with business asks for the reeve.

Threshing floor

The hard swept ground, often shared by a whole village, where grain is beaten from the straw after harvest.

The court & the realm

The vocabulary of rule, as the gazetteer describes a capital.

Charter

A written grant of rights from a ruler, to a town, a guild, or a market. Old charters outlive the hands that can still read them.

Citadel

The fortress commanding a city, held as its last defence and often as a garrison against the city itself.

Envoy

A ruler's representative sent to another court to carry terms. Waiting is a large part of the work.

Fealty

The loyalty a vassal swears to a lord, binding both: service upward, protection downward.

Guildhall

The hall of a trade guild, its meeting place, its court, and frequently the richest building in a town after the cathedral.

Levy

Troops or money raised as an obligation rather than hired. A realm's strength on paper is usually its levy.

Tithe

A tenth part of produce or income rendered as a due. Paying it late is an old way of saying a place is only half loyal.

Vassal

One who holds land from a lord in return for service, and who may have vassals of his own beneath him.

Weather & climate

Biome

A category of plant and animal life shaped by climate. Tundra, taiga, steppe, savanna, and forest all appear across Vellum's worlds.

Glass

The barometer. When the journal says the glass stood fair it is reading the weather, not looking through anything. Period sailors called any instrument of glass by the name, the surveyor's glass above among them.

Orographic

Having to do with how mountains shape weather, especially by wringing rain out of wind forced upward: orographic lift on the wet side, a rain shadow on the dry one.

Windward / leeward

The side of high ground facing into the wind, which catches the rain, versus the sheltered side, which stays dry.

Heraldry (coats of arms)

Blazon

To formally describe or display a coat of arms.

Charge

A symbol or figure placed on a shield.

Colours

A ship's identifying flag, the one piece of heraldry meant to be read at a distance. A watch that knows your colours has recognized you before anyone has hailed.

Ordinary

A simple geometric band across a shield: a cross, chevron, bend, fess, or pale.

Rule of tincture

The heraldic law that color can't sit on color, nor metal on metal, so a shield always reads clearly at a glance. Every coat of arms Vellum draws obeys it.

Tincture

The limited heraldic palette: two metals (gold, or; silver, argent) and five colors (red, gules; blue, azure; black, sable; green, vert; purple, purpure).

Geography & place

Archipelago

A scattered group of islands, one of Vellum's four map types.

Atelier

An artist's workshop. Vellum calls itself "an atelier of imaginary cartography" in its own footer.

Confluence

The point where two rivers meet.

Estuary

The widening mouth of a river where it meets the sea.

Gazetteer

A directory of place names. Vellum's gazetteer lists every town on the map, grouped by realm, with a line or two of travelers' notes.

Hinterland

The inland territory a city depends on, especially a city-state's supporting countryside.

Vellum

Prepared animal skin used as a writing and drawing surface for real medieval maps and manuscripts, the material this whole project takes its name from.

Watershed

The boundary between two river drainage systems. Vellum's realm borders prefer to follow these.

What a place smells of

The gazetteer gives each town an air, drawn from what its culture burns, brews, and grows. Several are worth knowing on their own.

Attar

Distilled flower oil, the costliest being rose. It takes a great many petals to make a very little of it.

Camphor

A white aromatic crystal from an East Asian laurel, burned, carried against sickness, and worked into chests to keep moths out.

Copal

A pale tree resin burned as incense across Mesoamerica, where its smoke carried offerings upward.

Copra

Dried coconut kernel, pressed for its oil. The stuff of island trade, and the smell of the sheds it is dried in.

Frangipani

A heavily scented tropical blossom that keeps its perfume long after it has been picked.

Kvass

A mildly fermented drink made from rye bread, sour, cheap, and everywhere in the northern towns.

Sandalwood

A dense aromatic heartwood, burned as incense and carved into boxes that hold the scent for years.

What a place ships

A town's cargoes come from the same table, and say as much about a town as its walls do.

Cochineal

A brilliant crimson dye made from a dried scale insect farmed on cactus. For centuries it was among the most valuable cargoes crossing an ocean.

Indigo

The deep blue plant dye, difficult to make and long a luxury, which is why blue cloth once signalled money.

Iron bloom

The spongy mass of iron and slag drawn from a smelting furnace, sold on to be forged. Not yet a tool, but no longer ore.

Lacquerware

Wood built up with many thin coats of tree sap and polished hard, producing a surface that is waterproof and nearly indestructible.

Obsidian

Volcanic glass, flaked to an edge finer than any metal blade, and traded far from the few mountains that produce it.

Quetzal feathers

The iridescent green tail plumes of the quetzal, reserved for rulers in Mesoamerica and taken from living birds, which were then released.

Sable

A dark, exceptionally soft northern fur, and a currency of the taiga in its own right. Not to be confused with the heraldic sable above, which simply means black.

Words on your own map

Each of Vellum's ten invented cultures borrows its realm and place-name vocabulary from a real language or region that matches its sound. Here's what those words mean where they come from, grouped by the culture that uses them.

Norden, the hard northern tongue

Fell

A mountain or stretch of high, barren moorland, a word used in Northern England and Scandinavia.

Jarldom

The territory or rank of a jarl, an Old Norse nobleman roughly equal to an earl.

March

A borderland or frontier territory, the root of "the Welsh Marches" and "margrave."

Ordai, the steppe tongue

Bulak

A spring or water source, a Turkic word that ends dozens of real Central Asian place names. On open grassland, a reliable spring is where a town begins.

Dag / Uul

Mountain: dag in Turkish, uul in Mongolian. Both end real peak names across the steppe and the ranges south of it.

Dalai

Sea or ocean in Mongolian, the word behind "Dalai Lama," an ocean of wisdom. On a landlocked steppe it names the great inland waters.

Gol

River, in Mongolian.

Khanate

The territory ruled by a khan.

Khot / balik

City, in Mongolian and in Old Turkic. Hohhot is the "blue city"; Beshbalik was the "five cities."

Kol / Nor

Lake, in Turkic and in Mongolian. Kyrgyzstan's Issyk-Kul and the salt flat of Lop Nor both carry the word.

Kurgan

A burial mound raised over a grave and heaped with earth, left in their thousands across the steppe by peoples who built little else that lasted.

Orda / horde

A khan's camp and court, the moving capital of a steppe empire. English borrowed the word as "horde" and lost the palace in it.

Oromi, the island tongue

Atoll

A ring-shaped coral reef, island, or islet chain enclosing a lagoon.

Chiefdom

A hierarchical society under a paramount chief, more organized than a tribe, less centralized than a state. Historically the term used for pre-contact Hawaiian and other Pacific island societies.

Sylvan, the woodland tongue

Downs

Open, grassy chalk upland, like England's South Downs.

Mere

An old word for a lake or shallow pond.

Tor

A rocky hilltop or craggy outcrop.

Vale

An archaic word for valley.

Wold

Open, rolling, treeless upland, like England's Yorkshire Wolds or the Cotswolds.

Tezcal, the jungle tongue

Apan

"On the water" in Nahuatl, from atl, water. It ends real Mexican river names like the Papaloapan, and ends Vellum's Tezcal rivers the same way.

Cenote

A limestone sinkhole opening onto the groundwater beneath, the Yucatan's natural well and its only water on a peninsula with almost no surface rivers. From Yucatec Maya ts'onot.

Fifth Sun

In Mexica cosmology, the present age of the world: the fifth creation, after four earlier suns each ended in catastrophe. Vellum's Tezcal realms are dated by it.

Tepetl

Hill or mountain in Nahuatl, worn down to the -pec that ends Chapultepec, "on grasshopper hill."

-tlan

"Place of," the commonest Nahuatl place ending: Mazatlan is the place of deer. Its neighbor -pan means "on" or "over."

Thalassic & Draket, the seafaring and mountain-clan tongues

Dominion

A territory under a ruler's control. Historically also the term for self-governing territories of the British Empire.

Tsuren, the tongue of the eastern isles

-gawa / -kawa

River, in Japanese. Kawa softens to gawa when it ends a compound, which is why the Edo river is the Edogawa.

Mandate

The Mandate of Heaven, the classical Chinese doctrine that a ruler governs by heaven's warrant and forfeits it by misrule. A dynasty that falls is held to have lost the mandate, not merely the war.

-mori

A forest or grove. Aomori, the city at the top of Honshu, is the "blue forest."

-shima

Island. It voices to -jima in many names, Iwo Jima among them, but not in all: Hiroshima keeps its s.

Shogunate

The rule of a shogun, the military governor who held the real power in Japan for centuries while the emperor reigned in name.

-yama

Mountain, the yama that ends Okayama and Wakayama.

Veshari, the desert tongue

Sultanate

The territory or reign of a sultan, a Muslim sovereign.

Wadi

A valley or channel that runs dry except in the rainy season, in North Africa and the Middle East.

Zoryan, the taiga tongue

Balka

A broad, grassed-over gully cut into the steppe by meltwater, an old ravine gone soft at the edges.

-grad

Town, and originally a fortified one: Belgrade is the white town, Novgorod the new one.

Liman

A shallow lagoon where a river mouth has been dammed off from the sea by a sandbar, the classic Black Sea coastal form. The word reached Slavic from Greek limen, a harbor.

-ov

A possessive ending: the place belonging to someone, as in Rostov or Kirov. Its siblings -sk, -in, and -itsa end town names the same way.

Ozero

Lake, in Russian.

Planina

A mountain range, in the South Slavic languages: the Balkans' own Stara Planina is the "old mountain."

Reka

River.

Taiga

The word itself: English took it from Russian, which took it in turn from a Turkic or Mongolic source in Siberia. What it names, the northern conifer belt, is one of the biomes above.

Tsardom

The realm of a tsar, a title descended, by a long road, from Caesar.

Voivodeship

The province of a voivode, a Slavic warlord turned provincial governor. Poland still calls its provinces voivodeships.