Glossary

The three-tier competency scale used in Oath-Bound: Basic, Competent, Fluent. Applied to graduated entries in a character’s Competency Profile. Binary competencies — present or absent, with no meaningful graduation — do not use the scale.

Basic — functional and limited. A working relationship with the domain exists.

Competent — reliable and unfussy. The character operates in this domain without friction.

Fluent — natural and owned. The domain is part of who the character is; they do not think about it.

See also: Competency Profile.

The game world and setting within which the rules documented in this overlay and the CRM apply. Oath-Bound is a fully realized world with its own theology, economics, and social structures. It is not a generic fantasy setting adapted from AD&D assumptions — its rules exist to serve specific fictional requirements.

The structured record of what a player character has become through play. Not a skill list — a compressed character description rendered in a scannable reference form. Entries emerge from play and are named to fit the fiction; there is no master catalog of approved competencies.

Graduated entries carry a BCF rating. Situational entries — specific knowledge acquired through experience rather than development, such as familiarity with a particular geography or dialect — are recorded as present or absent without graduation.

The Competency Profile is a scratchpad, not a ledger. It helps players make coherent decisions about what their character can reasonably attempt. The Session Journal is the authoritative record from which profile entries derive.

See also: BCF, Session Journal.

A document header attribute (:content-origin:) present in every file in the Oath-Bound corpus. Records the provenance of a document’s content. Possible values: Human, Claude, ChatGPT, Mixed. This attribute is immutable — it does not change as documents are polished or revised.

The live rules document for the Oath-Bound setting. Where this overlay records the relationship between the DMG and Oath-Bound rules, the CRM expresses those rules in full. The two documents are designed to be read together. Cross-references in this overlay of the form (Link to Oath-Bound notes, "…​") point to CRM sections.

The primary dice resolution mechanism used in Oath-Bound, replacing the d20 used in standard AD&D for most mechanical adjudication. Adopted for the granularity it provides — finer distinctions between characters, support for minor magic items with small percentage benefits, and a resolution model proportionate to real differences in capability. Not applied universally: where d20 provides adequate resolution (notably the appendix random generators) it was left in place.

This document. A section-by-section record of the relationship between the AD&D First Edition Dungeon Masters Guide and the Oath-Bound rules system. It does not reproduce the DMG. It mirrors the DMG’s structure and records what was kept, changed, discarded, or replaced. Requires a copy of the DMG to use.

The principle by which sections of the DMG that do not apply in Oath-Bound are still documented in this overlay — marked Not used — rather than omitted. The record is complete. Absence of a rule is stated explicitly rather than implied by silence.

The umbrella term for player characters and significant NPCs in Oath-Bound — covering all four standard actor categories (Martial, Divine, Arcane, and Gray) when no distinction between them is necessary. Used at the table and in rules text when the point applies equally to all classes.

The term is descriptive, not honorific. Exceptional Actors are people who engage with the world at a level of consequence that most people do not sustain. Their presence tends to expand the range of possible outcomes around them. They are not cosmologically protected — they die. What distinguishes them is not providence but the kind of choices they make and the frequency with which they make them.

See also: Actor Taxonomy (Martial, Divine, Arcane, Gray).

The recommended approach to determining player character starting equipment and wealth. Rather than a strict random roll, the GM and players reach a considered, collaborative agreement on what constitutes an appropriate starting budget. Preferred in Oath-Bound because adventurers have a significant impact on the economies they interact with, and starting wealth has downstream consequences.

A Oath-Bound rules category covering harm events that occur outside standard combat resolution — drowning, falling, effects of intoxication, and similar. These are adjudicated under the Oath-Bound non-combat damage model rather than through the combat tables. The term is acknowledged as counterintuitive in some contexts within the overlay.

The design philosophy underlying the Oath-Bound rules. Fiction and judgment take precedence over mechanical resolution. Where a rule would interrupt or work against the fiction, the fiction wins. This preference has practical consequences throughout the system — most visibly in the flattening of weapon and armor interaction tables, and in the experience and advancement model.

The accumulated record of a campaign’s Session Journals. The term is borrowed from historical navigation — a rutter is a pilot’s record of voyages made, compiled into a practical guide for waters already traveled. In Oath-Bound, the campaign rutter is the table’s equivalent: the inside account of a shared fiction, built session by session. Not a published chronicle — a private document, valuable to those who made it.

See also: Session Journal.

The fixed ceremony conducted at the end of every session. A collaborative account of what happened, from which XP implications emerge naturally rather than being formally assessed. The ceremony is constant; its form is flexible — some tables will conduct it as an open conversation, others as a GM write-up circulated for comment before the next session.

The operating principle of the Session Journal discussion is: make your case for that activity being relevant. Every competency development or XP implication recorded in the journal represents a case made and accepted by the table. Sessions in which no meaningful development occurred are closed explicitly — the null result is stated, not assumed.

Session Journals accumulate into the campaign Rutter.

See also: Rutter, XP, Competency Profile.

The first campaign set within the Oath-Bound world. Occupies a bounded region of the Oath-Bound canvas — geographically, culturally, and chronologically. The broader Oath-Bound world beyond that region is, at the time of this writing, unwritten.

Unmodified AD&D First Edition as published by TSR. The term is used throughout the corpus to distinguish the base rules from the Oath-Bound overlay. Not pejorative — vanilla AD&D is a complete and playable game. Oath-Bound exists because some tables want something else.

The measure of character advancement in Oath-Bound. The concept is retained from vanilla AD&D; what generates it, how it is assessed, and what it means when advancement arrives have been revised.

XP is awarded solely by the GM at the Session Journal, honestly, transparently, and collaboratively. It is not accumulated by formula between sessions and is not tied to kills, treasure, or any other prescribed activity. The GM’s award reflects meaningful engagement with the fiction in the character’s domain, evidenced by the journal discussion and the Competency Profile.

The vanilla AD&D level structure and class differentiation remain intact underneath. A character does not level up — they arrive at a point where they are functioning at a new level. The level is a recognition of what the fiction already established, not an event.

Whether players are told their current XP total is a table option.

See also: Session Journal, Competency Profile.

The four standard categories of Exceptional Actor in Oath-Bound, replacing the vanilla AD&D class system. Each describes a dominant mode of engagement with the world rather than a fixed ability set.

Martial — acts directly through force, confrontation, and the disciplined application of violence.

Divine — acts through authority granted by institutional and theological structures: Foundation hierarchy, concord, and the oath economy.

Arcane — acts through learned engagement with nwyf, the substrate of arcane effect.

Gray — acts indirectly through access, positioning, information, and discretion.

The categories are not exclusive. What distinguishes an actor’s category is the dominant and most developed mode, not the only one available. Specialized roles — bard, assassin, druid and others — develop through play within this framework rather than being selected in advance.

See also: Exceptional Actors, Classes Become Actor Categories.

One of the two elven cultures of the Oath-Bound world. The Aelthir are geographically distant and profoundly insular — known to exist, encountered rarely, and understood hardly at all. What information reaches the wider world about them is fragmentary, old, and of uncertain reliability. They do not seek contact. They do not explain themselves. Whether this insularity reflects caution, indifference, or something else entirely is not known.

See also: Telvarir.

An oath that has been recognized and answered for by a god. The god becomes a party to the commitment, and what is fixed between the people present is fixed in something larger than either of them. A Bound Oath is not merely a strong social commitment — it is a theological event with consequences that extend beyond the social sphere.

How a Bound Oath is formed varies by tradition. The mediated oath uses a priest as intermediary to engage divine attention formally. The ring-bound oath approaches the same end through spectacle, witness, and focused intent. Both can produce a Bound Oath; neither guarantees it. Something capable of accepting the offered commitment must notice and respond.

Bound Oaths have shaped the history of Oath-Bound at the largest scale. The Foundation Oath that established the Velasian Empire was almost certainly the first fully mediated Bound Oath in recorded history. Its breach brought the Empire down.

See also: Mediated Oath, Ring-Bound Oath, Open Call, Oath Economy.

The measure of alignment in the relationship between a Divine Actor and their god, or between a divine foundation and their god. Concord describes the vertical relationship — the theological standing of the actor or institution in the eyes of the divine.

Concord is not a threshold crossed once; it is a maintained state, continuously demonstrated through conduct, oath observance, and the quality of the relationship with the divine as expressed through practice. A Divine Actor whose concord is intact has the theological standing from which miracles flow. A Divine Actor whose concord is damaged will find that access contracts before they are formally told why.

Distinct from fidelity, which measures the horizontal relationship between a Divine Actor and their foundation rather than the vertical relationship with the god.

See also: Fidelity, Oath Economy, Bound Oath, Actor Taxonomy. === Concordist / Concordist School

One of the four academically recognized schools of interpretation within the Founding Oath Controversy. Concordist theology holds that the Foundation Oath was made in full knowledge of its terms by all parties, including the divine, and that the obligations it created remain binding on the successor states and peoples who inherited from the original oath-takers. The breach was real, the consequences were just, and the path forward lies in renewed commitment rather than reinterpretation.

See also: Founding Oath Controversy.

A term with two distinct institutional meanings that share a word and cause confusion in mixed company.

A divine covenant is a document drafted by a Foundation setting out the terms to which a Mediated Oath will be spoken. It is the negotiated text of a commitment before it is enacted — a draft until the oath is sworn, at which point the god becomes a party to its terms and the full weight of the oath economy applies.

A contractual covenant is a legal instrument — an addendum to a signed contract that modifies or extends its terms. The emerging legal profession borrowed the word from ecclesiastical usage. No oath is involved and no divine sanction is implied, though the weight the word carries is not entirely absent from how such documents are received.

In practice, both are called simply a covenant. The precise forms — divine covenant, contractual covenant — exist and are used when precision is required. Context determines which is meant. The ambiguity is genuine, and confuses onlookers with some regularity.

See also: Mediated Oath, Bound Oath, Oath Economy. === Disputational

A fifth position within the Founding Oath Controversy, not granted School status by the institutional church. Disputational theology holds that the Foundation Oath was not legitimately formed — that the divine party either did not consent to the terms as understood by the mortal parties, was misrepresented, or was not genuinely present in the manner claimed. If the Oath was not validly formed, its breach carries no theological consequence, and the Fall was a political event, not a divine judgment.

The institutional church does not recognize this as a legitimate scholarly position. The characteristic register when it must be acknowledged: Disputational theology — if you can call it that.

See also: Founding Oath Controversy.

A practitioner within the Cwym religious and natural tradition. Not a game mechanic or class selection — a social, spiritual, and vocational role that exists in the world and that characters may grow into through sustained engagement with Cwym practice, natural tradition, and the communities that maintain them. Recognition as a druid within the Cwym tradition is conferred by that tradition, not declared by the player.

This term is distinct from the vanilla AD&D druid class. For how druid-type capabilities are handled mechanically in Oath-Bound, see Actor Categories.

See also: Cwym, Actor Categories.

The northern landmass of the Under Oath campaign setting. The name is Velasian in origin — the empire’s own term for the territory beyond their world, meaning something close to "out land" or "the land outside." The designation reflects a Velasian perspective: Velland was home, civilization, the known. Eldland was the other place, defined by its relationship to the imperial center rather than on its own terms.

Whether the Skeld and other Eldland peoples have their own name for their territory is not recorded in the Velasian archive tradition, which largely did not ask.

See also: Velland, Skeld.

The Oath-Bound term for the art and practice of preparing and deploying arcane symbology and mechanisms into objects and devices destined to be imbued with arcane functionality. Not decoration — a technical practice requiring precise knowledge of nwyf interaction, symbol grammar, and material properties. An engravure is both the process and its product: the prepared object is an engravure; the practitioner engravures it.

The quality of engravure work determines the stability, capacity, and reliability of the resulting imbued object. Poor engravure is not merely ineffective — it can be dangerous.

See also: Nwyf.

The measure of alignment between a Divine Actor and their divine foundation — the horizontal relationship of interests, obligations, and institutional commitment. Where concord describes the actor’s standing with their god, fidelity describes their standing with the human institution that mediates that relationship.

A Divine Actor with high fidelity is operating in genuine alignment with their foundation’s expectations, priorities, and institutional culture. Damaged fidelity — through conduct at odds with the foundation’s interests, failure to meet institutional obligations, or sustained divergence of purpose — will register within the foundation’s hierarchy before it is formally named.

Fidelity and concord are independent measures. A Divine Actor may stand well with their god while their foundation has doubts about them, or maintain institutional standing while their personal relationship with the divine has grown strained. Both matter. Neither substitutes for the other.

See also: Concord, Oath Economy, Actor Taxonomy.

The Bound Oath sworn by the Velasian diaspora approximately 650 years before the campaign present — a commitment to carve out a new homeland and govern it in a manner worthy of what had been sworn. It was almost certainly the first fully mediated Bound Oath in recorded history. The empire it produced stood for three centuries. The oath was broken. The empire fell 353 years ago. The world the players move through is still living inside that consequence.

See also: Founding Oath Controversy, Bound Oath, Velasian.

The central theological and historical debate of the post-Fall world: what exactly was sworn in the Foundation Oath, what constituted its breach, and what obligations — if any — fall on the successor peoples and states. Four academically recognized schools of interpretation exist: Concordist, Revisionist, Limitationist, and Imprecisionist. A fifth position, Disputational, is not granted School status by the institutional church.

The controversy is not merely academic. The school a foundation’s hierarchy inclines toward shapes its institutional posture toward the successor states, its theology of obligation, and its practical relationship with political authority.

See also: Founding Oath, Concordist, Revisionist, Limitationist, Imprecisionist, Disputational.

Velasian administrative coinage for the collective grouping of Cwym, Bryt, and Celt peoples. Coined for bureaucratic convenience by an imperial apparatus that found their distinctions less important than their shared resistance to full administrative absorption. Used ironically by the peoples it describes, who are well aware of what the term implies about Velasian attitudes toward them.

See also: Cwym, Bryt, Celt.

One of the three Hillfolk families recognized in Velasian administrative taxonomy. The Welsh-analogue people of the region — a culture with its own language, oral tradition, and druidic religious practice that predates Velasian contact and survived imperial administration without full assimilation. Cwym identity is strongly tied to landscape, lineage, and the traditions maintained by their druidic community.

See also: Hillfolk, Bryt, Celt, Druid (Oath-Bound).

One of the three Hillfolk families recognized in Velasian administrative taxonomy. The Hen Ogledd and Welsh-border Briton analogue — a people of the borderlands between Cwym territory and the more deeply Velasian-influenced lowlands, shaped by centuries of contact with both. Bryt culture carries the marks of that position: neither fully of the hills nor fully of the plains, and somewhat mistrustful of both.

See also: Hillfolk, Cwym, Celt.

A marine mercantile skills exchange and cartel that operates across the known sea lanes. The Brotherhood retains selected Telvarir elves as blue-water navigators, filling a critical skill gap in Markish and, historically, Velasian maritime activity. Without Telvarir navigational expertise, deep-water sea travel is hazardous and effectively coastal — the Brotherhood’s value derives from that dependency.

The Brotherhood is not a Telvarir institution. It is a commercial arrangement that happens to depend on Telvarir participation. The Telvarir navigators who serve within it are the primary point of sustained contact between their culture and the wider world — a narrow channel, carefully maintained on both sides.

See also: Telvarir, Markish.

One of the three Hillfolk families recognized in Velasian administrative taxonomy. The pre-Viking Strathclyde analogue — a northern people whose territory borders the Skeld cultural sphere and who have absorbed some Skeldic influence without losing a distinct identity. Less documented in Velasian administrative records than the Cwym or Bryt, partly by geography and partly by choice.

See also: Hillfolk, Cwym, Bryt, Skeld.

One of the four academically recognized schools of interpretation within the Founding Oath Controversy. Imprecisionist scholarship holds that the Foundation Oath’s terms were genuinely ambiguous — that the language used did not specify obligations clearly enough for any claim of breach to be definitive. What looks like a breach may be a misreading of what was actually sworn. The consequences of the Fall were real, but their theological meaning remains unresolved pending better understanding of the original terms.

See also: Founding Oath Controversy.

Paramilitary enforcers operating under Foundation authority, charged with the investigation and enforcement of oath breaches within the Foundation’s jurisdiction. Justicars are not civil law officers — their mandate derives from theological and institutional authority, not secular governance. They investigate violations of Bound Oaths and Foundation covenants, compel compliance, and apply the institutional sanctions available to their Foundation.

The scope of a Justicar’s authority is bounded by the reach of their Foundation and the terms of whatever arrangements that Foundation has with local secular power. In some regions that scope is considerable. In others it is contested.

See also: Bound Oath, Covenant, Oath Economy.

One of the four academically recognized schools of interpretation within the Founding Oath Controversy. Limitationist theology holds that the obligations created by the Foundation Oath were bounded — they applied to the original oath-takers and to a defined period or scope of governance. The breach, if it occurred, was the breach of a limited commitment, not an unlimited one. Successor states and peoples inherit the history but not the full weight of the original obligation.

See also: Founding Oath Controversy.

A culture and people of the Oath-Bound world, and the language they speak. The name connotes "people of the mark" — the term mark carrying its medieval geographic sense: a border territory, a frontier region defined by its position at the edge of a larger political or cultural sphere. Markish identity is shaped by that marginal position and the practical culture that border habitation produces.

A Bound Oath conducted through formal ritual with a priest acting as intermediary. The priest ensures the oath is properly framed, its terms unambiguous, and the conditions for divine recognition correctly established. The god becomes a party to the commitment through this process. What distinguishes a mediated oath from a strong social commitment is not the sincerity of the parties but the institutional machinery brought to bear on it — and the theological consequences that follow from that machinery being correctly operated.

The mediated oath is the dominant form in settled societies with established Foundation infrastructure. It is the form most likely to be legally recognized, institutionally enforced, and recorded.

In Velasian and Velasian-descended cultures, the term Witnessed Oath is used interchangeably with Mediated Oath. The conflation reflects an institutional assumption: for these cultures, a properly witnessed oath is one conducted through formal mediation, making the two concepts inseparable. Cultures with a ring-bound oath tradition do not make this conflation. For authoring purposes, Mediated Oath is the correct and canonical form throughout this corpus.

See also: Bound Oath, Ring-bound Oath, Witnessed Oath, Open Call, Oath Economy.

One of the post-Velasian pantheon. Full theological treatment is in the theology corpus.

See also: Pantheon.

Surviving enclave communities of Velasian-descended culture in the post-Fall world. Not a political entity — there is no New Velasian state — but a cultural designation for communities that have maintained Velasian language, law, and institutional forms across the three and a half centuries since the Fall. Their relationship to the legacy they carry varies: some are custodians, some are nostalgists, and some have made a practical identity out of being the people who remember how things were done when they were done well.

The substrate through which arcane effects are instantiated. The orthogonal counterpart to wyrd. Nwyf is not physics — it is not understood or described in those terms by the characters who use it — but it gives the arcane magic system an internal consistency that purely conventional treatments lack. Where arcane effects come from, what they cost, and why some casters can do things others cannot all derive from first principles grounded in nwyf rather than from convention.

See also: Wyrd.

The system of binding promises, divine sanction, and institutional authority that underlies the Oath-Bound world and holds it together. Oaths in Oath-Bound have real weight — something enforces them. That enforcement is one of the structural roles of the clerical miracle system. The oath economy has implications throughout the setting’s theology, social structures, and rules.

An attention mechanism used in oath-making — a declaration, spectacle, or act of sufficient weight to draw divine notice to what is being sworn. An Open Call is not a binding mechanism: it does not guarantee that anything capable of accepting the offered commitment will do so, or that the terms will be accepted as offered. It creates the conditions for a Bound Oath to form. Whether one does is outside the caller’s control.

The mechanisms by which an Open Call is made vary by tradition: spectacle, sacrifice, mass witness, arcane disturbance, or any act significant enough to function as a declaration rather than a private intention.

See also: Bound Oath, Mediated Oath, Ring-Bound Oath.

The gods of Oath-Bound. Unlike the cosmological abstractions of standard AD&D alignment theology, the gods of Oath-Bound are real, present, and possessed of opinions. They do not typically intervene personally — clerics serve as the instrument through which divine relationships act in the world — but their existence and nature shape the setting’s theology, magic systems, and social institutions in concrete ways.

One of the four academically recognized schools of interpretation within the Founding Oath Controversy. Revisionist doctrine holds that the Foundation Oath, however originally framed, must be understood in light of what the oath-takers could reasonably have intended — and that rigid application of its literal terms produced the very conditions that led to its breach. A more generous reading of what was sworn, and of what constitutes fulfillment, is both theologically defensible and practically necessary.

See also: Founding Oath Controversy.

A form of Bound Oath sworn in the older, less institutionally mediated tradition. The characteristic features are ambient witness and, commonly, a focus object.

Witnesses to a ring-bound oath are not selected or arranged — they are whoever happens to be present: bystanders, passersby, the occupants of a hall. Their presence makes the moment undeniable and provides the social weight the oath requires. The threshold is sufficient witness, not the right witness.

The focus object — a ring or a weapon being the most common, though not the only forms — serve as a physical anchor for what is being sworn. Traditions diverge on what happens to it: some sacrifice the object at the moment of swearing, treating consumption as the completion of the act; others preserve it as proof-of-work, a tangible record that the oath was made. Whether a preserved focus object accrues significance of its own over time is a matter on which reasonable people in Oath-Bound genuinely disagree.

The ring-bound oath is more common in Cwym, Bryt, and Skeld traditions where Foundation infrastructure is absent, distrusted, or considered foreign to the tradition. It predates the institutional mediated oath and carries its own theological legitimacy, though that legitimacy is contested by some within the institutional church.

See also: Bound Oath, Mediated Oath, Open Call, Oath Economy.

The stylistic register of the Oath-Bound setting. Subdued rather than vivid, grounded rather than epic, concerned with the ordinary texture of a world that happens to contain extraordinary elements rather than with the extraordinary elements themselves. Not grimdark — Oath-Bound is not a world defined by suffering and hopelessness. Not high fantasy — it does not traffic in chosen ones, ancient prophecies, or luminous magic.

Critically, the setting is culturally unremarkable about what it contains. Magic exists; practitioners work with it professionally. Gods are real and present; priests mediate that relationship as a vocation. The ruins of a fallen empire are everywhere; people live among them and have done so for twelve generations. None of this is treated as strange by the people who inhabit the world. It is simply the world.

Exceptional Actors stand out against this background not because they possess extraordinary qualities the world lacks, but because of the level at which they engage with what is already there. The world does not hold its breath for them. It simply continues — and they act consequentially within it.

As a design and authoring term, sepiatone describes the correct register for Oath-Bound content: write the world as it is lived, not as it would look on a film poster. When content drifts toward the epic or the lurid, sepiatone is the corrective.

A proto-Nordic analogue culture originating in Eldland, far to the northeast. The Skeld are seafarers, saga-keepers, and a people shaped by the demands of a harsh northern origin. Skeldic denotes the culture, language, and traditions of the Skeld people broadly — as distinct from Skald, which refers specifically to the saga-speaking practitioner role within Skeld society.

Skeld presence in the main campaign region reflects centuries of southward movement, trade, and settlement. Communities that identify as Skeld, or as Skeld-descended, maintain varying degrees of connection to Eldland origin culture.

Never conflate Skeld (the people) with Skald (the role).

See also: Skald, Celt.

Skeld saga-speaking poets, storytellers, and keepers of oral tradition. A skald is a practitioner of a specific cultural role within Skeld society — the person responsible for the composition, preservation, and performance of the sagas that constitute Skeld historical memory. The role carries social standing and specific obligations.

Distinct from Skeld, which refers to the people as a whole. Not all Skeld are skalds. Not all skalds are Skeld by birth, though the role is culturally specific enough that outsiders who take it on do so with full awareness of what they are entering. Never conflate Skald (the role) with Skeld (the people).

See also: Skeld.

Of or relating to the Gray Actor domain — the world of indirect action, covert operation, information trade, theft, infiltration, and the professional culture that supports these activities. Used as both adjective and noun: subfusc work, a subfusc operator, the subfusc.

The term carries no moral loading in Oath-Bound. Subfusc work is a professional domain like any other, with its own ethics, hierarchies, and standards. Whether any given subfusc actor operates within those standards is a question about the individual, not the domain.

See also: Actor Taxonomy (Gray).

One of the two elven cultures of the Oath-Bound world. Marginally more present in the wider world than the Aelthir, though not by much. The primary point of cultural intersection between the Telvarir and other peoples is the Brotherhood of the Deep — a marine mercantile skills exchange and cartel that operates across the known sea lanes and in which Telvarir participation is significant enough to be noted. Outside that context, Telvarir remain remote, cautious about sustained contact, and difficult to read.

The Brotherhood of the Deep is not a Telvarir institution. It is the place where Telvarir and others have found sufficient common interest to maintain a working relationship. That relationship tells you something about the Telvarir. It does not tell you much.

See also: Aelthir, Brotherhood of the Deep.

The people of the Velasian Empire and their cultural descendants. Imperial Velasian refers specifically to the culture, administrative tradition, language, and legal forms of the empire at its height — the referent for New Velasian communities that maintain those forms in the post-Fall world.

Velasian refers to the people and the culture of the empire, and to their descendants in the post-Fall world.

See also: New Velasians.

Archaic Imperial Velasian: Velaþoiaän. Modern transcription: Velathoiaan. The thorn (þ, rendered th in modern transcription) and the diacritical doubled vowels (ä) are standard features of formal archaic Imperial Velasian orthography, lost in the scribal degradation of the early New Age as institutional culture collapsed and material scarcity reduced craft capacity. A document spelling this name in its full archaic form is, on that basis alone, identifiable as early material — predating the orthographic degradation and therefore of potential archival significance.

Believed by many scholars and sailors to be the Imperial Velasian name for the Steady Lands. The identification is plausible and unconfirmed. The name appears in provisioning logs and cargo manifests — not in any document post-Fall scholarship has found reason to prioritize.

See also: The Steady Lands, Palaeographic. === Velland

The primary landmass of the Under Oath campaign setting and the imperial heartland of the Velasian Empire. Velland is the empire’s own name for their home territory — a self-designation that embeds Velasian identity directly into the landscape. The land and the people share a name because, from the Velasian perspective, they were the same thing: to be Velasian was to be of Velland, and Velland was the place the Velasians had made their own.

The campaign present is set entirely within Velland. Its post-Fall landscape of successor states, New Velasian enclaves, Hillfolk territories, and Skeld settlements constitutes the primary playing field of Under Oath.

See also: Eldland, Velasian.

See also: The Steady Lands.

Colloquial name among sailors and those who deal with them for a real but not reliably reachable archipelago beyond the known sea lanes. The Steady Lands exist — there are people who have been there and returned, and their accounts are broadly consistent — but the route to them does not follow the normal rules of navigation. Expeditions that set out for the Steady Lands do not always arrive. Expeditions that were not looking for them occasionally do.

See also: Velathoiaan.

Velasian and Velasian-descended vernacular for a Mediated Oath. The terms are used interchangeably within those cultural contexts, reflecting an institutional assumption that formal witness and formal mediation are the same thing. The conflation is not universal — cultures with a ring-oath tradition treat witness and institutional mediation as distinct. Witnessed Oath should not be used as a general term in this corpus. The canonical form is Mediated Oath.

See also: Mediated Oath, Bound Oath, Ring-bound Oath.

The causal substrate of the Oath-Bound world — the structure through which consequence flows and through which divine action operates. Wyrd is not fate in the commonly understood sense: it does not predetermine outcomes. It describes the conditions under which outcomes become more or less possible, the channels through which cause produces effect at scales larger than the immediately physical.

Characters do not interact with wyrd directly or consciously. Its presence is felt in the texture of events rather than named or perceived. Wyrd and its mechanistic derivatives are GM Bible register only. In player-facing content, the same phenomena are described through the language of divine access, divine favor, or what the gods notice.

See also: Nwyf.

GM Bible term for the characteristic pattern of wyrd conditions surrounding a person, place, or situation over time. A narrow trajectory describes conditions tending toward stable, predictable resolution. A broad or unstable trajectory describes conditions in which outcome variance is high — where more endings remain possible and where the presence of Exceptional Actors is both more likely and more consequential.

Not used in player-facing content. See Exceptional Actors for the player-facing treatment of the same phenomenon.

See also: Wyrd, Exceptional Actors.

In the Velasian intellectual tradition, empirical refers to knowledge grounded in systematic observation, documentation, and theoretical reasoning — the methodical accumulation of recorded evidence as the basis for understanding the world. The Velasian archive program applied this principle institutionally: knowledge was only as durable as its documentation. The structural consequence of that commitment — and of its eventual failure — shapes much of what the post-Fall world lacks and is trying to recover.

Used in the corpus to describe the Velasian approach to knowledge preservation, as distinct from the tacit and craft-based knowledge that the archive program systematically undervalued.

Of or relating to the theory of knowledge — its nature, scope, and limits. Used in the corpus when discussing what characters, institutions, or cultures can know, how they know it, and the boundaries of reliable understanding. The term is retained because no simpler equivalent carries the same precision.

One of the four failure modes by which post-Fall technological regression occurred. Refers to the collapse of the demand, quality standards, and professional culture that drove crafts to their highest expression. A craft tradition requires not only practitioners but patrons who can distinguish excellent work from adequate work and are willing to pay the difference. When that discriminating demand disappears — through conquest, depopulation, or economic collapse — the incentive to maintain peak craft vanishes with it. The knowledge may survive in documents. The will and the market to apply it do not.

Distinct from knowledge loss through interrupted transmission, though the two often occur together.

A constructed identity maintained by an operative as cover. Not a false name — a complete, internally consistent fabrication: a personal history, a set of relationships, a plausible reason for being wherever the operative is found. A good legend withstands casual and moderately determined scrutiny. A poor one does not survive a serious investigation.

In Oath-Bound, the bard’s social role functions as a legend in this sense. The identity of traveling performer, sage, or merchant’s factor is not merely a costume — it is a maintained construct that explains presence, grants access across social boundaries, and provides deniability. Characters who sustain such a role are not playing a class. They are maintaining a legend, with all the operational discipline that requires.

See also: Actor Categories (Bard).

Of or relating to the study of ancient and historical writing systems, scripts, and inscriptions. Used in the corpus in the context of archaic Imperial Velasian orthography — the older forms of written Velasian that appear in pre-Fall documents and inscriptions and that require specialist training to read. A character with palaeographic competency in Velasian can work with primary archive material that is inaccessible to someone who reads only the modern forms.

Archaic orthographic features — thorn (þ), diacritical doubled vowels, and similar forms — also function as antiquity markers. A document retaining these features predates the scribal degradation of the early New Age and is identifiable as early material on that basis alone.

See also: Velathoiaan, Tacit Knowledge, Institutional Pressure Loss. === Pozzolanic

Of or relating to pozzolana — a reactive volcanic ash that, when combined with lime and water, produces a hydraulic cement of exceptional durability. Velasian structural concrete exploited this property to achieve engineering works that the post-Fall world cannot replicate. The knowledge of how to identify, prepare, and proportion pozzolanic materials was lost not through destruction of documents but through the collapse of the craft transmission chain that turned documented knowledge into working practice. The canonical example of tacit knowledge loss and the limits of the archive approach.

See also: Tacit Knowledge, Institutional Pressure Loss.

Knowledge that resides in practice rather than in documents — the embodied, procedural understanding that skilled practitioners carry in their hands, judgment, and trained perception. Tacit knowledge can be demonstrated and transmitted through apprenticeship but resists complete articulation. A master glassblower knows things about heat, timing, and material behavior that cannot be fully written down; a master navigator knows things about weather, current, and hull-feel that no chart captures.

The Velasian archive program documented explicit knowledge exhaustively and underestimated tacit knowledge systematically. The post-Fall world has the documents. It has lost the hands.

See also: Pozzolanic, Institutional Pressure Loss.

include:ROOT:partial$cc0-footnote.adoc[]