Ancient Greece Terminology
Basic Greek Concepts
Acropolis: The settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city (esp with a citadel and steep hill for defense purposes).
Agora: A public gathering area in the middle of a city; the center of the athletic, artistic, business, social, spiritual and political life.
Bathhouse: A public gathering place for baths and socializing.
Chiton: A common outfit: a single piece of cloth with a belt at the waist.
Clubs: Small groups/organizations of Greeks who unite over a similar interest/subject.
Drachma: The silver coins used by most of Greece.
Demiourgoi: Lower class.
Delian League: The allies of Athens, originally formed to oppose Persia.
Emporoi: Maritime traders.
Eupatrids: Upper class.
Geomoroi: Middle class.
Hoplite: Citizen-soldiers of Ancient Greek city-states who were primarily armed with spears and shields.
Kápêloi: A professional retailer; a salesman more than a tradesman.
Kykeon: A popular drink in rituals (and with peasants), somewhere between alcoholic and psychotropic.
Liturgies: Taxes paid for public works.
Mysteries: A secretive religious order, focused on worship (sometimes apocryphal) and maintaining its secrecy.
Oikos: The household (both as a physical property and a social unit).
Paideia: A well rounded Greek education of liberal arts, sciences, and physical education for the middle/upper class.
Peloponnesian League: The forming allies of Sparta who stand in opposition to the Delian League.
Polis: Greek term for city-state.
Promnestriai: Professional match-maker (not highly regarded).
Strategos: A military general.
Symposium: An aspect of a gathering, after the meal, where people entertain one another with culture and philosophy.
Syssitia: A large communal meal (not common in Athens, but a means of building kinship nearly everywhere else).
Telônai: Bureaucrats and tax collectors.
Trireme: A very popular form of boat with three rows of oars on each side.
Xenia: The sacred practice of hospitality.
Athenian Terms
Archon:: A council of 9 elected officials with purview over the civic, military, and religious affairs of the state.
- Eponymous Archon: Chief Magistrate. The key archon on the council that kept things organized.
- Archon basileus: King Magistrate. A sort of city figurehead and remnant of the monarchy.
- Polemarch: War Magistrate. This archon would be responsible for overseeing military affairs, now generally delegated to strategoi.
- Thesmothetai: The other 6 Archons; essentially junior archons and judicial officers.
Banausos: A social class of artisans and manual laborers.
Ephebos: A social class of essentially students or citizens-in-training.
Episkopoi: A diplomatic position that would 'oversee' and inspect subject states.
Heliaia: The supreme court of ancient Athens.
Metic: A social class for foreign residents without Athenian citizenship.
Parthenon: The city's primary temple to Athena.
Spartan Terms
Agoge: A rigorous training and education for warriors; the Spartan substitute for the Paideia.
Drax: The salted iron currency of the Spartans.
Ephors: Five leaders elected annually to oversee the Spartan Kings.
Helot: The lowest social class in Sparta, superficially identical to serfdom.
Pheiditia: Spartan-specific term for Syssitia.
Xenelasia: Spartan practice of expelling foreigners and discouraging citizens from traveling outside.
Garou Terminology
Basic Garou Concepts
Apocalypse: The age of destruction, the final cycle, the birth of death, the everlasting corruption, and the end of Gaia. A word used in Garou mythology to describe the time of the final battle with the Wyrm.
Auspice: The phase of the moon under which a particular Garou was born, which is thought commonly to determine personality and tendencies. The auspices include: Ragabash (New Moon; Trickster), Theurge (Crescent Moon; Seer), Philodox (Half Moon; Judge), Galliard (Gibbous Moon; Moon Dancer), Ahroun (Full Moon; Warrior).
Breed: The ancestry of a Garou: wolf, human or other Garou.
Concord, The: The agreement all the tribes reached to formally establish tribes and the Litany, after which the Impergium ended. Its traditions are still obeyed today.
Crinos: The half-wolf, half-human war form of the Garou.
Delirium: The madness and memory loss suffered by humans who look upon a Garou in Crinos form.
Fera: Garou term for shapeshifters other than werewolves; most are presumed extinct.
Fetish: A spirit bound into an item in a long-term pact that empowers the item to do superhuman things.
Gaia: The Earth and related Realms, in both a physical and a spiritual sense; the Mother Goddess.
Garou: The term werewolves use for themselves.
Glabro: The near-man form of the Garou.
Harano: Inexplicable gloom, inexpressible longing for unnamable things, and weeping for that which is not yet lost. Some say it is depression caused by contemplation of Gaia’s suffering.
Hispo: The near-wolf form of the Garou.
Homid: A Garou of human ancestry. Occasionally used disdainfully by ferals (e.g., “That boy fights like a homid.”). Also the human form of the Garou.
Impergium: The 3,000 years during which strict population quotas were maintained on all human villages.
Kinfolk: Those humans and wolves who are related to the Garou and are not prone to the Delirium, but who are not actual werewolves.
Klaive: A fetish dagger or sword, usually of great spiritual potency and nearly always made of silver.
Litany: The code of laws kept by the Garou.
Lupus: A Garou of wolf origin. Also the wolf form of the Garou.
Ostraka: The sterile and often deformed offspring of two Garou; generally reviled by Garou society.
Pact, The: The ancient accord between the first theurge and the spirits that allows them to empower our gifts and rites and us to uphold worship of them.
Taint: The spiritual marker that one has drifted too close to any one aspect of the Triat,
Talen: A single-use spirit bound into an item that performs some basic function; often given to other garou in chiminage.
Triat, The: The Weaver, the Wyld, and the Wyrm; the trinity of primal cosmic forces.
Tribe: The largest social unit of Garou. Tribe members are often bound by bloodlines, similar totems and lifestyles.
Veil, The: A poetic term for the false assumption that the supernatural does not exist, which the Delirium reinforces.
War of Rage: An ancient war where the garou attempted to wipe out the rest of the shapeshifters. The few they didn't slaughter went into hiding.
Ways, The: The traditions of the Garou.
Weaver, The: Manifestation and symbol of order and pattern. Science, logic, and mathematics are examples of the Weaver’s influence on the material plane.
Wyld, The: Manifestation and symbol of pure change; the chaos of transmutation and elemental force.
Wyrm, The: Manifestation and symbol of evil, entropy, and decay in Garou belief.
Umbra: The spirit world.
Social/Sept Terms
Anruth: A Garou who travels from caern to caern but is bound to none of them.
Bawn: A boundary area around a caern, patrolled and monitored carefully.
Callow: Unaware of the garou nation, but born into it (lost kin especially, but occasionally used for cubs)
Caern: A sacred place; a meeting spot where the Garou can contact the spirit world. (Surrounded by a bawn [border] and populated by a sept [social group] with a Caern Heart in the middle.)
Caern Heart: The core of the caern, where the Gauntlet is virtually gone and Gaia's touch is strongest.
Challenge: The formal means of resolving an issue or gaining most positions.
Chiminage: A form of “favors done for services rendered.” A werewolf may perform a task or offer talens as chiminage in order to repay a spirit for teaching him a Gift, or to repay a sept for allowing him to use its caern.
Concolation: A great moot, wherein many tribes gather to discuss matters that concern the Nation of Garou.
Moot: A sept or tribal conclave that takes place at a caern.
Pack: A small group of Garou bound to each other by totem and purpose, as opposed to culture.
Patrol: A small group of Garou temporarily bound for the same objective. A "temporary pack," with no totem.
Protectorate: The territory claimed and patrolled by a pack or sept.
Ronin: A Garou who has chosen or been forced to leave Garou society. It is a harsh fate to become a “lone wolf.”
Sept: The group of Garou who live near and tend an individual caern.
Staredown: A casual show of dominance between two garou to force one to acquiesce/submit to the other.
The Wyld
Gorgons: Creatures who have turned to the Wyld and who draw their power from it, often possessed by wyldlings.
Threshold: An area that has fallen to the Wyld to the extent that it becomes chaotic, unstable, and nigh-sentient.
Wyldling: A spirit of the Wyld, also used as a general term for the Wyld's various children and servitors. This is not a simple nature spirit but one possessed of profound Wyld taint.
The Weaver
Calcification: The act of rendering something completely stagnant and motionless; a common practice of pattern spiders to induce order.
Drones: Creatures who have turned to the Weaver and who draw their power from it.
Onesong, The: An innate rhythm all entities are said to possess; typically how weaver-spirits communicate. Said to be dangerously hypnotic.
Pattern Spiders: By far the most prolific weaver-spirit, seen all across the umbra as the means of preserving the shape of things in the realm (especially constructed things). Also protectors of the Gauntlet.
Three Seeds, The: Dogma, Science, and Technology; the legendary three gifts from the Weaver to humankind, allegedly granted to encourage humans to define and control their environment.
The Wyrm
Bane: Evil spirits that follow the Wyrm. Many different kinds of Banes exist, including Scrags, Kali, Psychomachiae and more.
Blight: Any corrupted area in either the spirit world or physical reality.
Corruption: The act of destroying, devolving, or debasing life; also, the often overwhelming effects of the Wyrm’s actions. In the present age, it often refers specifically to the ecological ruin humans wreak upon the environment.
Fomori (singular “fomor”): Creatures who have turned to the Wyrm and who draw their power from it, often possessed by banes. Common enemies of the Garou.
Wyrmhole: A place that has been spiritually defiled by the Wyrm; invariably a location of great corruption.
Umbral/Spirit Terms
Airts: The magical paths within the spirit world (e.g., Spirit Tracks, Moon Paths, etc.).
Anchorhead: A spirit gate between the Near and Deep Umbra. (See Membrane.)
Celestine: The greatest spirits; the closest things the Garou have to gods. Examples are Luna (the Moon) and Helios (the Sun).
Charms: The powers spirits use.
Deep Umbra: The aspects of the Umbra that lie outside the Membrane. Reality becomes more and more fragmentary the farther one travels from the Realm.
Domain: A mini-Realm in the Umbra, usually connected to a larger Realm in the Deep Umbra.
Gaffling: A simple spirit servant of a Jaggling, Incarna, or Celestine. Gafflings are rarely sentient.
Gauntlet: The barrier between the physical world of Earth and the spirit world of the Umbra. It is strongest around technological (Weaver) places and weakest around caerns.
Incarna: A class of spirits; weaker than the Celestines, but still greater spirits by any measure.
Jaggling: A spirit servant of an Incarna or Celestine.
Membrane, The: The barrier between the Near and Deep Umbra. To breach it, an Anchorhead must be found.
Moon Bridge: A gate between two caerns; it most often appears during moots.
Near Umbra: The spirit world surrounding the Gaian Realm.
Nesoi: Spirits that overlook individual islands in the Aegean Sea. This is a precursor to City Mothers/City Fathers, who are not yet established.
Penumbra: “Earth’s Shadow”; the spirit world directly surrounding the physical world. Many, but not all, terrain features have reflections there.
Reaching: Traveling into the spirit world. (See also Side-Stepping)
Realms: The worlds of “solid” reality within the Tellurian. Earth is often referred to as “the Realm,” implying its primacy.
Tellurian: The whole of reality.
Totem: A spirit joined to a pack or tribe and representative of its inner nature. A tribal totem is an Incarna, while a pack totem is an Incarna avatar (a Jaggling equivalent).
Conversational Slang
-anrae: "Of lesser station; a suffix appended to a name. Not commonly used.
Anamae: “Soul-friend”; another term for packmates.
Brugh: Any sort of mystic place, whether a Garou caern or a Wyrmhole. Often a glade or cave located somewhere in the wilderness.
Charach: A Garou who sleeps with another Garou or has done so in the past. Used as an insult/slur.
Feral: Slang term for lupus.
Flock, The: All of humanity, particularly those humans from whom the Garou recruit their members.
-ikthya: “Of the Wyrm”; a suffix appended to a name.
Inceptor: A Garou who guides another through a rite. An inceptor is also called a ritemaster.
Leech: A slang term for vampires.
Moon-Calf: Idiot, simpleton. Used as an insult/slur.
Mule: A term for ostraka, inspired by their infertility. Used as an insult/slur.
Pericarp: The Near Umbra around each Realm.
Praenomen: The guardian spirit (totem) of a pack.
-rhya: “Greater in station”; a suffix appended to a name.
Scab: Slang for a Wyrmhole, often used as an insult/slur for cities.
Sheep: Humans.
Stepping Sideways: Entering the spirit world (see Reaching). Many elders consider this term flippant and disrespectful.
Throat: To best another in ritual combat. Used as a verb (e.g., “Elder or not, I’ll throat him if he gets up in my face one more time”).
Urrah: Garou who live in the city; also, the tainted ones. Used as an insult/slur.
-yuf: “Honored equal”; a suffix appended to a name.
Please note that some terms (specific umbral realms, leylines, Abscess, etc.) are too rare to be considered common knowledge, and will be introduced as concepts to players through the use of the Scholar Of... Merit, Occult tests, and IC experiences if they come up.