Albic: lingua franca of the Royal Coalition, common to the supercontinent of Albioch. Pronounced "Ahl-bish".
Arcanomechanics, Arcmech: Prosthetic cybernetics developed out of diesel motors and using Dust to bootstrap artificial, bio-compatible nerve pathways.
Apes: Seasoned soldiers or fighters.
Beaky: Derogatory Coalition slang for a Porter Society operative, derived from the angular pseudo-avian combat helmets utilized in Porter raider attire. While many variations on the Porter combat uniform exist and each Porter syndika has its own specialized one for its elite escadrilles, the classically stereotyped helm is that of the notorious Crow Syndika, the Society's highly-trained airborne terror troops.
Bikkie: Sulisian slang; biscuit, cookie.
Blackpowder: Operative of the Blackpowder Syndika of the Porter Society; gunsmiths, both masters of crafting firearms of increasing complexity and the gunslinging thereof.
Bogs: The underworld, the realm of the dead, where the Great Old One sometimes called Old Man Gnarvokh presides over the decay of deceased things so new life may reawaken anew; a common oath of frustration.
Bone-eater: Derogatory Porter slang for any Duism Alliance combatant or collaborator
Bosch: Derogatory Coalition term for Alliance combatants, taken from Immerese city of Boschaven.
Code silver: Dust robbery.
Cogswallop: Nonsense, idiocy, stupidity, falsehoods.
Concealed coolant job: Stryder corps slang; improvised field maintanence method of urinating into spent water-cooling jackets of weapon systems.
Corpselice: Duism Alliance Fleishwaffe "architeuthocrustacus ixodes insidiae" genus. A biomechanical arthropod roughly the side of a rat designed for spreading engineered pathogens in trench warfare.
Corpseslut: Expletive term for Chthonroot narcotic.
Creech: An unpleasant sound.
Crow: An operative of the Crow Syndika within the Porter Society; experts in intelligence gathering, covert ops, airborne assaults and commando raids.
Crown: Standard currency of the Royal Coalition, a small polymer prism with comb-like protrusions along the right side, meant to resemble the Sun King's crown when turned horizontally. The greater number of prongs a crown has, the more worth it has, equating with multiples of five (so a crown with three prongs equals fifteen crowns, a crown with five prongs equals twenty-five and so on)
Dieselpunk: An unsavory person who performs dangerous, extrajudicial tasks for money and personal glory (hence -punk), usually pertaining to heavy machinery (hence diesel-)
Ducts: The greatest defining feature of any Midlandian architecture. We have no idea what they do. Please stop asking.
Duism, Duist: National religion of Immereich and the Duism Alliance (thus the name), based around worship of a polytheistic thunderhead of Great Old Ones connected as a collective called "the Demiurge", which the true believers among humanity are destined to ascend towards through extended use of Dust, conquest of apostates and grasp of the cosmic truth. Presided over by Kaiser Lukas since its founding in the mid-1800s. Reports indicate that human sacrifice is part of the church's rituals, believed by some to be a Ministry fabrication.
Dust: A chemical hallucinogen derived from the ground-up bone marrow of a massive, arciteuthic, silica-based living organism long fossilized and deceased. When ingested, inhaled or intravenously administered, the Dust can expand consciousness by acting upon the brain's neural pathways to allow for a paracausal perception of the cosmic truth Specialized Dust treatments can also revitalize or otherwise alter tissues and humours. In the sealed palisades of Immerreich, more Dust is brewed than the country's once-famed beer, for the former is more intoxicating.
Dusty headstone: Burying a corpse in a shallow or unmarked grave, usually a hastily-done mass burial site. Taken from the massive bodycounts of Dust War-era battles, during which proper burial rites were often logistically or geographically impossible.
Freikorps: Regiments of roaming mercenary pirates, usually composed of deserters or dishonorably-discharged convicts from national standing armies.
Fritz: Derogatory Coalition term for an Alliance combatant, a common Immerese name.
Fume-chewer: Derogatory Porter slang for any Royal Coalition combatant or collaborator
Get into the puke: To see action in frontline combat; to enter a fight.
Gunker: Duism Alliance Fleishwaffe "architeuthocrustacus umbraplasmis" genus, tank-esque arthropod biomechanoid capable of subterreanean burrowing with its tentacles and producing aerodynamic cysts of ink laced with liquid chlorine or phosgene used as mobile artillery.
Hangman: Derogatory Porter slang for a Coalition military officer.
Hun: Derogatory Coalition term for an Alliance combatant, derived from Immerese city of Hundredstadt.
Input: Porter slang for "bottoming" sexual partner, the submissive, the one who receives.
In the boar-mattock: the period of quiet frustration following a conflict between lovers, usually wherein one or more is in a state of emotional isolation and tenuousness with the other(s).
Invert: From "sexual/gender invert", semi-derogatory but commonplace Coalition term for a transgender, transsexual or nonbinary person.
Kiss-root: An inhalant or ingestion-based narcotic derived from the chthonroot tuber. Possession of kiss-root in Coalition marches constitutes a Class-A offence and is punishable by malcompliance verdict for disturbing the peace and promoting perverted unpatriotic delinquency.
Klaver Bosch Process: Biochemical technique by which a product chemically nigh-identical to Dust is made by mixing dead plant or animal byproducts into a transmundane effluent harvested from the riparian barriers of poisonous light that block the sea. This is thought to simulate the metabolism of the dead things which produced Dust from their bone marrow. Named for Set Klaver, a Boschaven-born Immerese court inventor of ubiquitous renown who holds sainthood in the Duist church. Klaver allegedly conceptualized the process while serving as an army field surgeon, initially treating battle fatigue before taking part in the Port-au-Sherwall Raids against neutral Libertatia; treating injured coastal troops who had been exposed to the poisonous light by misadventure, they found what seemed to be Dust crystals in the burns and stumps.
Klep, Klepped: To steal.
Low Man (p. Low Men): Four-armed, six-eyed subterranean great apes skilled in advanced engineering, members of a prehistoric and long extinct society before the Age of Shards. Additionally, an Operative of the Porter Syndika named in their honour; practical tradesmen maintaining infrastructure and tilling fields.
Lunggiggle: The consciousness-altering effects produced from inhaling certain stimulants.
Lysandrian: Term for the foundational school of communism formed by Duresque expat Edouard Lysandre (1877-1904), concerning worker ownership of the means of production, the three basic stages of civilization and the divide between structure and superstructure. See also "Cultural Lysandrianism" moral panic in Coalition jurisdiction concerning uproar around more women, racialized people and queer individuals appearing in motion pictures and motor games and upsetting men who have never had sexual intercourse (this actually has nothing to do with Lysandrianism)
Malcompliance verdict: Common punishment within Coalition nation-states; execution by firing squad without trial.
Ministry of Benevolent Warfare, Ministry: The de facto ruling bureaucracy in the Kingdom of Arthuria (though it maintains branches in all Coalition states and colonies), responsible for all assorted policies or programs in military and civilian life. Notable for its love of extensive paperwork, gratuitous inefficiency, and harsh punishments for mistakes. The Ministry arose from the War Measures Act of 1909. which the shrewd War Minister Amos Wainwright Delmsloy used to later trigger a series of interlinked clauses to effectively delegitimize democratic elections, instate himself and his associates as the acting legitimate government and promote himself to Prime Minister.
'Mones: Dust-based hormone replacement therapy commonly used in affirming care by trans Midlandians.
Monitor man: A figure in the criminal underworld, usually from a military intelligence or private investigative background, who holds and organizes contractors to perform mercenary work or robberies on ideal targets. The unsung eyes and ears of the dieselpunk lifestyle. Pathetic figures of immensely guilt-ridden pasts full of violence and skullduggery, they are considered at the very best an irritating necessity and at worst slimy embodiments of treachery. Quite like lawyers that way. The Porters maintain a network of monitor men for tips on potential skywatch targets, but view the trade as too innately capitalist to allow too close.
Occident: Westward, left-most oriented; in transmundane terms, this typically refers to the elements mapped along the left-running axis of Vandergraaf's linear split-continuum model of cosmic perception, opposite of the Churn (Vandergraaf chose not to utilize the term "Widdershins" used oppositionally to the geographic Occident when he drafted the theorem in 1891, wanting to distance himself from Orientalist notions popular with the Coalition at the time)
Old Man: Shorthand for the Old Man of the Bog, another name for Gnarvokh, Great Old One of death, decay, rebirth and vegetation. Not to be confused with "old man, the" with reference to Abraham Vandergraaf, who does not capitalize his nickname. They are separate entities with no connections whatsoever. You can trust us.
Old man, the: Colloquoilism within the Porter Society Vandergraaf chapter (currently the largest and last surviving chapter after the reneging of the Mitchell chapter and the [REDACTED: INSUFFICIENT CLEARANCE] chapter's ill-fated expedition) referring to its elder member and organizational founder Abraham Vandergraaf. While he assumes dispatching roles and designed much of the Society's equipment, indeed being a representative for the Low Man Syndika, he is not a dictator or commander, and despises the idea of "great men".
Other black gold, the: Tincture derived from the opium poppy used for treating coughing and pain, laudanum. Notorious for its discrete recreational popularity within the Coalition military after it gained widespread use treating gas attacks as a "last resort" due to supply shortages of more modern medicines (many of which were Dust-based, ergo tools of the enemy) coinciding with increasing usage of chemical warfare by the Alliance.
Owl: Operative in the Owl Syndika of the Porter Society; craftsmen and artificers, and stewards of the Society's vast libraries.
Pinkwater Escadrilles: All-volunteer foreign brigades in the Arthurian Expeditionary Force formed from Libertatian mercenaries. Drawn from various trading company security forces, specialize in domestic sedition and riot control on behalf of the inner Ministry.
Pneumo, pneumatic: Localized messaging system within a given building, series of buildings or even a large craft consisting of pneumatic tubes through which message cylinders can be transmitted from room to room.
Prawn: Derogatory term for Duism Alliance Fleishwaffe bioroids, intended to create a humourous equivalence between the machines themselves (usually very large, inadvisable on a plate of pasta) and the diminutive eponymous seafood crustacean (usually very small, great on a plate of pasta) some common models can be said to resemble.
RBS: Coalition colonial soldier slang for a particularly botched or awry combat scenario, acronym for "Right Bloody Slurried", lit. "a big mess". See also "Slurried".
Ride the first light: To receive execution by firing squad, derived from the practice of being "shot at dawn" or performing executions at the first sign of sunlight.
Rot: Expletive derived from unexplained malady caused by the morchella ex-mortis genus notable for affecting the Duchy of Fenia and the Hajar province; the malady itself.
Rusvalkian lobotomy: Death by gunshot to the head.
Screamer: armoured, vertical-takeoff, multi-configuration combat aircraft designed for paratrooper deployment. Modified versions with side-mounted ball turret harpoons are favoured by air pirates and Porter skywatch brigades.
Servomap: Three-dimensional, motorized interactive map of topographical-structural landscape features typically for military, survey, or exploratory use.
Sickle roll: A flaky, buttery curve-shaped Duresque pastry.
Sludge: High-stakes criminal activity typically involving murder and theft in a mechanized or heavily armoured setting, as a dieselpunk might perform.
Slurried: State of chaotic, altered bliss, usually pertaining to narcotics.
Some other birds to shoot: Sulisian colloquialism originating with a particularly bizarre military action against an abundance of extravagantly hostile flightless birds at the heart of the belgo. Lit. "you have other problems to attend to".
Stryder: Variably-armed, heavily-mobile bipedal armour platform assembled by the Royal Coalition in the late end of the Dust Wars. While the robotic giants were combat effective and successfully proved capable against Duist prawns, it has continued to demonstrate one thing most of all: it is not reliable. Breakdowns and supply shortages are excessively common, munitions cooking off with the driver still inside due to fuel leaks and armour lacerations can lead to sudden obliteration, and critical damage in battle results in the pilot not surviving in 99.9% of cases. Thus, the burgeoning stryder corps is largely filled with dregs, scoundrels, political prisoners and other expendable chaff too vile to declare full undegeneracy but too tenacious for the mercy of immediate execution.
Syndika: The loose, voluntarily-cooperative unions which make up the Porter Society and direct its operations. While each have elected representatives within the communes, they are by no means static organizations and do not have "rulers" to speak of.
Tolchok: To punch.
Undegenerate: Coalition Ministry of Benevolent Warfare term for rehabilitating a citizen of any unscrupulous and unpatriotic urges, behaviours, beliefs or deeds. Certain citizens can never aspire to full undegeneracy but rather only palatable mitigations of their disposition. Other citizens are deemed past any point of recovery and are often imprisoned, lobotomized, recycled as automata or administered malcompliance verdicts upon discovery.
Vigil: loose code of honour kept by the Porter Society, largely a well guarded and loosely understood secret. Also a Porter expletive.
Volkic: lingua franca of the Duism Alliance, common to the supercontinent of Volkk. Pronounced "Voh-kish".
We're not here to fuck spiders...: Sulisian expletive, lit. "What else are we here to do?"
Woltan: A Great Old One and God of heat, energy, the sun, power, war and the hearth. Principle subject of worship by the monotheistic Light Church, sole surviving cult of the Age of Shards notable for forcibly annexing or dismantling the other cults during the Big Turning Away along with the destruction of all advanced computational devices. Coalition head of state Sun King Ruprekt is part of a lineage descended from the original cultists, believed to be emissaries of Woltan Himself ergo blessed with the divine right to rule.