For your convenience, individual entries are labeled as Imperial (I), or Equestrian (E).
ab imperium condita (I)
The Imperial calendar, counting from the founding of the Empire ("Year Zero"). Years start at the spring equinox, and contain 333 1/3rd days (orbital year; the calendar has a leap day every third year) of 26 of your Earth hours each.
The year of Cordelia's arrival, 7240 AIC, is equivalent to 2097 Year of Harmony.
aesthant (I)
One of the eight eldraeic darëssef (perhaps best translated as "functional social roles"), which concerns itself with art, both fine and applied, and the creation of beauty as a general principle. In their own words:
The soul of the Empire is in our keeping.
For beauty is our calling, and beauty is the language of the soul. Beauty inspires, uplifts, and enlightens. It comforts the sore at heart, and gives ease to the weary. As the word of Lanáraé proclaims, beauty, like love, calls the divine fire, the lincál, down to earth. With it, we dwell in a civilization of enlightened souls; without it, in mere hovels of scurrying beasts.
And so we must shape all things accordingly. The pure artists among us strive with song and sculpture, with book and game, with edifice and performance, to show the world what it could be. Others work elsewhere, with technarchs and plutarchs to make elegance walk alongside functionality; with runér and hearthmistresses to build shining cities where no shadows fall; even with sentinels, as they strive to preserve and restore beauty in the wake of ruin. So shall we work, until all the world reflects this harmony, and neither ugliness nor darkness lies in wait to cast gloom upon the heart and shadow the soul of its beholders.
Thus is our Heaven built.
- Kynar Cendriane, Lyceum of the Frozen Flame
AIC (I)
See ab imperium condita.
airthia (I)
A creature from eldraeic mythology which rather resembles a giant airborne manta ray.
alicorn (E)
To digress for a moment, in the Equestrian language, the term alicorn can refer to any of, first, the thaumatically-active substance making up the core of an alicorn (sense 2) and certain other bony structures; second, the bony spiral horn of a unicorn or alicorn (sense 3); or, third, the rare sub-species of pony manifesting the combined traits of the three major sub-species, notable for possessing thereby the largest alicorns (sense 2) and the largest proportionate quantity of alicorn (sense 1).
What this means is that over the course of centuries of magical research, many someponies have had to, at some point, utter the phrase 'the alicorn of an alicorn's alicorn' without cracking a smile or bursting into a fit of the giggles, something this researcher has found herself entirely unable to do. How this has never led to any change in these various usages is a mystery probably exceeding the grasp of even the Department of Pinkieology.
- from an unpublished draft of the notes of Cordelia "Moongleam" Vintar-ith-Vidutar
alírvelv (I)
A near-eel critter (the "sneaking eel") from the eldraeic homeworld with the chromatophores of a octopus or chameleon. Its sneakiness is exactly the reason why you shouldn't go swimming in eel country.
amán (I)
The eldraeic mythological dragon, possibly inspired by the trakelpanis trakóras amán precursor species. Typically depicted, to draw an analogy to Earth civilizations, much more like Eastern dragons than Western dragons: there's a reason why the modern eldraeic word translated as "eikone" or "deity" is lin-amán.
Ancients (E)
In the words of Lyra Heartstrings, possibly the only pony to take the stories about them seriously as our story opens:
"They came from the stars in ancient times according to legend - before Equestria, before Discord, before the Three Tribes left the old homeland - and grew huge cities of living crystal and steel. All lost now. We learned so much from them! Some say the old gods were made from stories about them."
artificial immune system (I)
A system consisting of varieties of in-body nanomachines whose purposes is to eliminate toxins and pathogens, and speed repair of injuries.
Associated Worlds (I)
A loose association (notably looser than, say, the United Nations) of 10,000 or so star systems and a couple of hundred polities occupying the locally explored region of the galaxy.
The IGS 254672/Phosphoros System is on its rimward frontier, approximately 2,100 light-years from the eldraeic home system. The region of space it's in is provisionally designated Adjunct Constellation 219, but if the name doesn't end up being Equestria-related somehow after her discovery, Cordelia will eat her dress hat, feather and all.
Aval Cyprium-class microscout (I)
The typical starship of first-in scouts, the Aval Cyprium-class is a small starship (usually crews two, can fit up to four, can be operated by one) used for initial assessment of newly opened star systems and investigation of anomalies. In form, it has paired counterrotating gravity wheels attached to a central spine (the for'ard wheel containing living quarters and avionics; the aft wheel containing engineering systems and a bay for a single Elyn-class microcutter) sitting atop a fusion torch drive.
bandal (I)
A canine from the eldraeic homeworld; essentially the equivalent of the Equian dog, except that the bandal is descended as much from Canis dirus, the dire wolf, as it is from Canis lupus, the gray wolf, making them both big and smart. If you picture an Australian Shepherd that's a couple of hundred pounds in mass and maybe 2' 6" at the shoulders, you're in the right ballpark.
body-flying (I)
Imperial slang for “using psychokinesis to fly”. The trick is not to try to lift yourself; conservation of momentum will not be your friend. Instead, you stay still and push the ground away.
(Some unicorns - Starlight Glimmer being the obvious canonical example - can also do this, although they don't call it by the same name. It is, however, much more difficult to achieve than pegasus flight - specifically, it's like trying to achieve a series of stable rocket trajectories with a thrust axis balanced through your horn and without a flightfield to clean up your aerodynamics - and so a rather rare talent.)
Bucephalan Dynasty (E)
The ruling dynasty of the Crystal Empire since it was first carved out by Bucephalus the Great. Its sole remaining scion in the modern era is Princess Cadance.
(King Sombra, né Crimson Quartz, was notably not a member of the Dynasty.)
bytegeist (I)
An independently mobile housing for part of one's muse (q.v.), used for interfacing with other machinery, analyzing and manipulating nearby objects, communicating with other people, and generally dealing with the physical world. Most bytegeists look like small geometric solids with a lens that hover over their owner's shoulder when not actively in use.
Cakething (E)
Under both the Tricamareon of Old Equestria and the modern Diarchy, the Cakething is the third part of the tricameral legislature that belongs to the earth ponies. It is a thing in the technical sense; a gathering of the free ponies of a community (or at least those with an interest in legal affairs who can be bothered to turn up; its size, when dealing with Equestria entire, tends to be reduced by the use of layered proxies), presided over by a lawspeaker.
The name, of course, dates back to Chancellor Puddinghead's original notion that the best way to get ponies to want to turn up at the Thing was, well, to serve them cake. This is reflected in their symbols even down to the modern day: the unicorn Council of Lords have the scepter of Canterlot's ancient royalty; the General Staff of the pegasi rally around a wreathed spear dating back to Commander Hurricane; and the Cakething has its dessert trolley (1).
1. Well, technically, the Cakething's symbolic object is a wooden spoon (which is at least as rich with history as the others, once belonging to Smart Cookie before the Chancellor grabbed it to make an impromptu point with back in the day). But what everypony thinks of first is the dessert trolley.
Canterlot Archives (E)
The largest library in Equestria, under the personal patronage of the Diarchy. The Archives are divided into four sections:
1. the Royal Library and Museum of Canterlot, containing the books, et al., which anypony is allowed to read at any time - and that means all of them, since it's Equestria's library of legal deposit and receives a copy of every work published in Equestria (yes, this does include every issue of the Foal Free Press - Gabby Gums lives on! - and for that matter Fillyfoolers Fortnightly (2)), plus anything else the Acquisitions Department can get their grabby hooves upon. It's huge, and goes back quite a long way under the mountain on several levels. As a filly, Twilight was once lost in here for four days straight (3) and only complained when the librarians wouldn't let her finish her book before escorting her back to the Princess.
2. the Service Archives, containing the books, et al., kept for the benefit of the Royal Service, including millennia worth of tax rolls, census returns, and petitions to the Thrones.
3. the Special Collections, containing the books, et al., which somepony might be able to read sometime with special permission of one kind or another (this includes, for example, the Star Swirl the Bearded wing); and
4. and buried deepest of all, the Shadow Stacks, containing the books, et al., which nopony is allowed to read, ever. Examples include books similar to that volume from "Inspiration Manifestation", many of the works of a certain artist who survived the Discordant Era, and if a certain scientific paper titled "A Hypothetical Simple Method For Exploding the Sun" were actually to exist, it would be here too.
2. For serious research purposes only, naturally.
3. While Spike was as yet too young to perform his most essential job function of shoving food under Twilight's muzzle so that her subconscious mind could eat while her consciousness was... otherwise occupied, it was the first of several incidents that caused Princess Celestia to impress upon him, at a later date, the importance of that particular responsibility.
CASE DEMIURGE DREAMING (I)
IES codeword for "I found God a weakly godlike superintelligence and hopefully haven't woken it up; please respond appropriately".
CASE GOLDEN SUNRISE (I)
One of a series of Imperial cross-governmental response cases to first contact. Typical examples include CHIMERA SUNRISE (primarily diplomatic with a staged precautionary military alert), segueing into either ROSY SUNRISE (stand down and move to friendly diplomacy) or BLOODY DAWN (rapid mobilization to a war footing). GOLDEN SUNRISE, quickly summarized, is "no precautionary alert, go straight to diplomacy, maybe throw them a party, bring presents".
ciseflish (I)
One of the species of the Empire, resembling hexapedal, trisexual star-nosed moles perhaps 4' in height. They breathe ammonia, dwell on cold worlds with high-pressure atmospheres, and metabolize hydrocarbons into polymers which serve as their equivalent to proteins.
cogence core (I)
A specialized quantum computer serving as the housing for an artificial intelligence.
Common Social Protocol (I)
The standardized set of social rules and etiquette which define polite interaction among the various different species of the Empire and beyond.
cornu acutus (E)
A rare genetic condition afflicting unicorns (and, theoretically, alicorns) in which the tip of the horn comes to a sharp point, rather than the more typical rounded point. While not affecting a unicorn's ability to perform magic, cornu acutus tends to be problematic for the sufferer due to the risk it poses to those nearby, especially spouses, lovers, and pillows.
While no corrective treatment is available for cornu acutus, except for contraindicated and medically unsound procedures involving docking or filing down the tip of the horn - which can dangerously affect magical capability, causing backlash and/or uncontrollable surges - a degree of palliation is possible by means of a prosthetic safety device. Specifically, a cork, to be worn at night.
cornucopia (I)
Simplistically, a nanotechnological assembler system in a box, capable of making anything it has a recipe for out of supplied molecular components.
Council of Lords (E)
Under both the Tricamareon of Old Equestria and the modern Diarchy, the Council of Lords is the third part of the tricameral legislature that belongs to the unicorns. Membership in the Council is determined by a bewildering series of precedents, rules of protocol, and genealogical charts, but notably includes the remnants of the old unicorn nobility along with the gentry and selected rising young families; its membership correlated only poorly with those unicorns who hold one or another office elsewhere in the government.
Court of Courts (I)
The Court of Their Divine Majesties, the rulers of the Empire of the Star (q.v.). Receiving an entrée here isn't quite a distinction without peer, but it comes damned close.
Cunning Moon (E)
See Unconquered Sun.
dar-bandal (I)
One of the species of the Empire, essentially dogs/wolves uplifted to intelligence; resemble a larger version of the regular bandal, except for greater size, a higher forehead, and more manipulatory ability in the forepaws. Unlike canine uplifts in various other universes, they retain their quadrupedal body plan, Imperial sophoncy engineers having no desire to turn every upliftable species into imitation monkeys.
Day Court (E)
1. One of the two branches of the Equestrian executive branch, that centering around Princess Celestia. The various governmental responsibilities are distributed between it and the Night Court (the Day Court, for example, holds dominion over the treasury, settlements, and confectionery-related issues), although since the Diarchy works closely together, the divisions are often fuzzy and serve primarily as a tie-breaker.
2. The hall of Canterlot Palace in which Princess Celestia holds court (which includes a secondary, smaller throne for Princess Luna), and its associated facilities.
3. The open court which Princess Celestia holds on one day each moon, allowing anyone to approach her directly to petition the throne (on topics associated with the Day Court), for arbitration of a problem, or for any other purpose - which covers everything from gifts and artistic performances (welcomed, unless too extravagant for the giver's own good) through sudden declarations of love (let down as gently as possible) to the odd unusually polite coup attempt (taken as seriously as it deserves (4).)
4. For example, the attempt to reinstate the old pegasus Commandry in the wake of the Second Lunar Rebellion received a full military response from the Royal Guard, while the attempt by Golden Key, aged 9, to overthrow the government so that her mother - a senior civil servant in the Foreign Office during the recent turbulence - could work fewer evenings each week was resolved over tea and cookies.
DEMIURGE ERRANT (I)
Code name for the Empire's intelligence service's operation to monitor seed AIs and equivalent elder-race Powers (in the Vingean sense) throughout accessible space for potential existential threats and other high-risk issues.
Diet of Trottingham (E)
The accord, signed in the aftermath of the Great Griffon War, by which all sapient species of Equus agree not to use each other as food or slaves.
Since the signing of the Diet, the only notable defectors from the Diet's "food" clause have been occasional dragons, who have been known to feel powerful and arrogant enough to get away with it. The current Dragon Lord, Torch, enforces the Diet (6) with two traditionally-gotten-away-with informal exceptions, namely:
1. Any other species that comes wandering into the Dragon Lands without his token of passage is asking for whatever they get; and
2. Wherever, whatever, and whoever you are, attempting to steal from a dragon's hoard qualifies you as "lunch".
The "slaves" clause has been broken a little more frequently, typically by the diamond dogs. It doesn't often work out very well for them, either - usually in ways worse than ending up on the wrong end of Rarity's finest whining, for all that the Unpleasable Demon-Pony of Eight Octiad Demands is rapidly becoming a major figure in diamond dog mythology.
6. To some degree, this is because Torch remembers the previous Dragon Lord, Flammifer, who operated on the basis of "Any dragon dumb enough to get caught by someone who can do something about it deserves what he gets, and it's not my problem if they can't do something about it."
Remember the Flamecano? The reason it's not a plain old volcano is because it's powered by Flammifer, who learnt a fairly harsh lesson about draconic immunity to flame, and how it means exactly zilch when you're buried up to the eyeballs in molten glass which is then flash-frozen. The irony that this was pretty much in accord with his own policy didn't escape anyone smarter than, say, Garble.
DIRECT ENCOUNTER (I)
Contact classification indicating personal meeting with a member of the contacted civilization.
dodeciad, dodecen, dodectave (I)
Translation convention for numbers expressed in the Imperial system, which uses duodecimal/base 12. The numbers are:
* dodectave - equivalent to decimal ten, means 12.
* dodecen - equivalent to decimal hundred, means 144
* dodeciad - equivalent to decimal thousand, means 1,728
* sur-doceciad - equivalent to decimal ten thousand, means 20,736
* grand dodeciad - equivalent to decimal million, means 2,985,984
Similar constructions are used for time measurement, most commonly the dodecade, dodecentury, and dodecennium.
dreamscapes (E)
The realm of dreams presided over by Princess Luna. Every sophont individual on Equus (or within the Phosphoros System, although until recently those were the same thing) generates a personal dreamscape during sleep, which in turn connect to a shared realm populated with common elements and lost figments.
Elsewhere (I, E)
A term independently adopted by unicorn theoretical thaumaturgists, eldraeic ontotechnologists, and Pinkie Pie to designate the not-space/not-time that teleportation moves through, that pocket claudications exist in, that the universe keeps its metadata in, and so forth. Not really a where or a when, inasmuch as it contains only the space and time that you bring with you (mistakes in this area often prove embarrassing), the term is mostly a shrug that saves explaining "Star Swirl's Third Theorem of Omnipresent Amiability in Aetheric Lattice Functions" or "Janiris's Sixfold Mapping of Mass-Energy Event Nodes onto the Sexternial Data-Space Metric", respectively, to laysophs.
(Those curious for more information are referred to Everything Enthusiastically Explained for the Enthusiast, Sparkle etal., pub. S.I.T. Press, 2139 YH.)
Empire of the Star (I)
A multiple-species star nation approximately 2,000 light-years coreward of the Phosphoros System, encompassing roughly 275 star systems and 2.57 trillion embodied sophonts; top of the list of Great Powers of the Associated Worlds, and Cordelia's home. Has as its motto "Miríë, Idaharis, Jírileth" ("Order, Progress, Liberty"), and means every word of that; critics would add "richness, wildness, and smugness," which in all honesty few of its residents would actually disagree with.
Epona (E)
1. The large gas giant in the Phosphoros System.
2. An ancient equine goddess; while her worship is not entirely extinct in the modern day (although limited to cults even smaller than those of the Solarists), now considered largely mythological. The Tears of Epona, the waterfall Canterlot is built around, was named for her weeping at the internecine wars of the Three Tribes before the foundation of Old Equestria.
Equus (E)
Third planet of the Phosphoros System, and its most anomalous, being a light superlithic (7) world with a large moon, provisionally classified as atypical sylithopaludial or postsylithic (8), and orbiting at a distance of approximately 12,000 light-seconds from Phosphoros, the system primary (10), which appears as merely an unusually bright star. However, there is some evidence that it may not always have occupied this orbit.
Approximately three-quarters of its surface area is seared desert, cracked into canyons, and suffering from residual levels of radioactivity and cosmic ray bombardment. The remaining quarter, a roughly circular area (a very large crater) concentrated in one hemisphere, resembles a typical life-bearing garden world. On her way in, Cordelia detected complex electromagnetic emissions emanating from this region of the planet, in particular from a mountain near the center of the region. For more details about the geography inside this crater, please see Appendix C.
Equus has two satellites: one (Luna) is a relatively large (11) conventional moon; the other (Celestia) seems to be a miniature sun, with an emission spectrum similar to that of Phosphoros (i.e., a Hearth-class star (12)); on her way in, Cordelia detected some evidence of organized masses within the corona of this miniature sun, suggesting that it's artificial. It definitely doesn't have sufficient mass to fuse hydrogen naturally. Both move in otherwise-impossible forced orbits, which is the source of the planetary day-night cycle, its rotational period being much longer; the moon is partially synchronized with the sun in near-syzygy (13). Emissions from both suggest, according to Cordelia, that they're being moved using some mechanism analogous to vector control - save that doing this for objects of such high mass on a continuous basis would require technologies of large angelic or weakly godlike potency.
7. i.e., a significantly-larger-than-Earth planet, but one whose gravity remains Earth-like due to a composition notably heavier in light elements and lighter in heavy elements, along with a smaller, less active planetary core.
8. These are terms from the Imperial Grand Survey's planetary classification system. A sylithopaludial (9) world is - to summarize dramatically - an Earthlike world with less tectonic activity (whether due to age or other reasons), and often thereby less surface relief. A postsylithic world is an aged example of an Earth-like world that has started to lose its surface water (often due to its sun moving off the main sequence, although not in this case), which tends to create vast deserty areas with water remaining principally at the lowest elevations. Equus doesn't really fit either, but it's about as close as the system can get.
9. If humans had made the system, they would probably have called them gaiapaludial and postgaian. Since they didn't, the garden-world classes were named for Sylithandríël, eldraeic deity of nature, forests, silviculture, and gardens.
10. i.e., if Equus were in our solar system, it would be between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.
11. In the same sense in which Earth's moon is big by the standards of other rocky planets we currently know about.
12. i.e., a G2V main-sequence star, like Sol.
13. The "near" is how Luna produces phases for Luna. As it were.
esseli (I)
One of the species of the Empire. Masters of biotechnology, their original forms are long since forgotten; modern esseli resemble big fleshy blobs with eyes and tentacles, making use of plug-in modular organs and symbiotic bodies as the mood strikes them or occasion requires.
Excellence (I)
An Imperial courtesy title awarded for excellence or acts of excellence in a particular field. The traditional standard is "one dodecentury of mastery", but in practice, sufficient awesomeness also works. Or sufficient fabulosity.
exocurious (I)
Curious about exotic (q.v.) life and foreign cultures; the second point on a scale running EXOPHILIC, EXOCURIOUS, EXONEUTRAL, EXOAPATHETIC, EXOPHOBIC.
exosophontology (I)
See sophontology.
exotic (I)
Of a species other than one's own, or an individual of a species; considered much more polite than "alien", which is considered mildly derogatory or at least impolite (implying xenophobia).
far horizon probe (I)
An artificially intelligent, relativistic-flight-capable probe used by the Imperial Exploratory Service to investigate the regions of space at the fringes of, and beyond, the stargate network; one of the purposes of these probes is to prioritize directions for future expansion of said network (towards existing civilizations and interesting astrographic phenomena). It was the detection of the gravity-wave emissions caused by the forced motion of Equus's sun and moon that initially drew the IES's attention to this region of space.
farspeech (I)
Telepathy, eldrae-style - which amounts to organically (neurally) implemented WiFi, sending and receiving neural gestalts over plain old electromagnetic radiation. Given its nature, only works to send and receive between those equipped with the appropriate transceiver.
feel (E)
The term for a pony's sense of their own race's magic, either in active use or, in some cases, lingering traces. The term is generic, since each race can at least loosely sense the use of the others' magic, even if the "spectrum" (for want of a better term) is different enough that cross-race sensing doesn't amount to much more than that (14), while intra-race sensing is much more accurate; some specialized terms ('airfeel', etc.) do exist, but are chiefly used in scholarly works. Like other senses, in terms of range, detail, and rare conditions equivalent to - for example - "color-blindness" or "tinnitus", the ability to feel varies between individuals.
14. "I suspect that Pinkie's abilities, while certainly magic of a very unusual and hitherto unstudied school, are found within a spectrum or spectra sufficiently different from any of the known several to be virtually undetectable in use, whether by natural field-sense or current instruments. Establishing a means to reliably detect these spectra will be a necessary precondition for advances in the study of what I shall call pinkieology."
-- Twilight Sparkle, unpublished paper, circa 2094 YH
field (E)
The aura of magic within and around a pony's body, and manipulated to create magical effects. Ubiquitous and constant, its precise form varies by race: in unicorns, it is concentrated and focused around the horn; in pegasi, strongest around the wings and at a distance away from the actual body, strongest at the front and weakest at the back; in earth ponies, skin-deep and for the most part evenly distributed around the body, with concentrations at the hooves, especially the forehooves.
When the field is being actively manipulated, it may become visible, most typically in the case of unicorns, whose fields frequently radiate light (the characteristic corona seen around the horn of a unicorn and objects being manipulated or powered by their magic, for example). In the case of pegasi, the field is more often seen as a simple ripple in the air, similar to a subtle mirage, which often is obscured or blends with other phenomena, such as the shock cone of high-speed flight. No consistently visible effects have been observed with regard to earth pony fields.
The term itself is primarily used by unicorns, but see also flightfield; compare photon-discharge glow.
Fillinacci sequence (E)
Equestrian name for the Fibonacci sequence. The unusual name comes from the Maretonian dialect.
first-in scout (I)
That specialty in the Imperial Exploratory Service whose job is to go boldly where no sophont has gone before and [do initial surveys|make first contact|be devoured by space monsters|explode] (delete as applicable) before appropriate follow-up teams are sent in. A bold and daring bunch of sophs, chosen for interest in new cultures, boundless curiosity, and what the personnel branch refers to tactfully as "chronic insensitivity to caution" (15).
15. And which everyone else refers to as "the complete inability to notice personal danger".
flightfield (E)
The specific term for the field of a pegasus, responsible for providing mass-adjustment, thrust, and aerodynamic shielding during flight and interaction with cloud matter, and, when deliberately manipulated, for effecting pegasus techniques. Curiously, the term is little used by pegasi - since the former are instinctual, and pegasus techniques are primarily controlled kinesthetically, pegasi tend to regard their flightfield as an extension of themselves. The term originated with unicorns studying pegasus magic, and is mostly found in scholarly works.
General Staff (E)
Under both the Tricamareon of Old Equestria and the modern Diarchy, the General Staff is the third part of the tricameral legislature that belongs to the pegasi. Under the Commandry of ancient Pegasopolis, the General Staff was composed of the most senior military commanders from each clan's forces which served, collectively, as an advisory body to the Commander; in later times, it has become a body made up of the heads of family and clan, although given pegasus culture, there are still a lot of military and ex-military officers to be found on the General Staff.
Glorious Solar Desk (E)
The (solid, wooden, practical, and by now, antique) desk in Princess Celestia's office, dubbed such in a whimsical moment as a partial rebuke towards certain ponies' tendency to dub virtually everything associated with her the "Glorious Solar Something". Every time someone uses the term non-ironically, the Royal Facehoof is invoked.
(This is looked upon by the residents of Canterlot Castle in general and the Royal Service in particular with the same sort of bemused tolerance as the moments of diarchic whimsicality that gave rise to, for example, the Ambiguously Blue-Green Room and the Hall of Slightly Asymmetrical Pillars.)
god-bothering protocol (I)
Applied theology jargon; the collection of best practices and rules of thumb which offer one the best chance to communicate with an ascended seed AI, elder race, or other Vingean Power-like being or beings, get a useful response that leaves you alive and a reasonable approximation of sane, and get away in something resembling one piece.
Golden Groves (Principalities) (I)
Cordelia's homeworld, an Imperial colony. Known for wide grassy plains set as clearings among the megaforests: the temperate and tropical zones of the world are dominated by tree-analogs mature examples of which can grow over 1,000' tall in a complex, intertwined and multilayered canopy. Most of the planet's cities are built in the canopy (where light and air penetrate) rather than on the ground, which also makes it easier to deal with the amber sap the trees naturally exude in large quantities in early spring, and which nourishes ground-dwelling commensal species.
greenlife (I)
Greenlife (or calenlethis) is what the eldrae of the Empire call what we would recognize as a subset of, and/or descendants of, Earth-descended life. (Although to them it's just one of three distinct classes of life found on the homeworld: bluelife, greenlife, and silverlife, as detailed here.)
Relevantly, the life on Equus appears to be compatible with, or to actually be identical to, greenlife.
Which is, of course, impossible - at least, naturally.
Hearth-class star (I)
See Equus, especially footnote 12.
House Twinkle (E)
A unicorn clan prominent among Canterlot's minor gentry, being a proud cadet branch of the aristocratic House Light. Well-known families numbered among House Twinkle (designated here by oft-repeated name components) include the Twilights, the Gleams, the Shimmers, the Glows (a family notable for the high proportion of pegasus intermarriage in their lineage), and the Glimmers.
Imperial Exploratory Service (I)
An arm of the Empire's loosely-organized governance tasked with exploring new regions of space, star systems, and worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, going boldly where no sophont has gone before - then establishing diplomatic and trade relations, making friends, effing such ineffable as presents itself, etc., etc., and going home and writing books about it. Their somewhat hopeful motto (16) is alath ap dalínef, "Knowledge and Friendship"; their symbol, a brass sextant-and-star.
16. Which conveniently doubles as their Prime Directive.
information furnace (I)
A highly powerful computer, with large processing and bandwidth capacities, but lacking an interface of its own; used to add serious processing power to an existing network.
kaeth (I)
A species of the Empire: big pseudosaurian/draconiform carnivores with metal-impregnated skin and an interlocking, bony backplate. Extremely tough and resistant to damn near everything (a requirement for survival on their homeworld); their first fission reactors were serviced by hand. Good-natured, but enjoy fighting and have a very kinesthetic culture.
landesh (I)
A grain essentially identical to wheat.
large angelic (I)
See weakly godlike.
lathlé (I)
Literally "possessor of special privileges"; an Imperial title of distinction roughly equivalent to a (modern) knighthood.
mélith (I)
Literally "balance and obligation", mélith is both a fundamental of Imperial culture and an innate instinct/need in the eldrae species. On a simplistic level, all obligations must be met and all debts must be paid. One's word is one's bond, an offhand promise is a binding contract, and in the long term, all exchanges must be balanced: a favor for a favor, a slight for a slight, and no exceptions.
moon (E)
As a measure of time, the thirty-day Equestrian month; a full cycle from new to full and back again.
See Year of Harmony.
multipolitan (I)
Descriptive of a planetary civilization including multiple independent polities rather than a single planetary-level governance.
muse (I)
A networked companion/aide/assistant AI that runs on implanted hardware; a muse has typically been a lifelong companion to its host, and is able to make them considerably more effective and their life very much easier.
See also: bytegeist.
myneni (I)
A species of the Empire, silicon-based, resembling colorful, amorphous blobs of gel-like crystalplasm 3' to 4' across.
nanocirc (I)
Nanocircs ("nanoscale circuits") are the ultimate solid-state computing devices, small blocks of polymeric optronic circuits built up from a deformed crystal lattice of individual atoms doped atom by atom to form circuit elements the size of single molecules. They form the standard building blocks of Imperial computational systems (optronic molecular switching has replaced solid-state semiconductor gates, allowing for a multiple-orders-of-magnitude increase in processing speed, while consuming far less power; utilizing this optronic architecture and multi-layered holographic data storage technology, small yet powerful central processing units can now be worn like jewelry). Data storage uses holographic bulk media, with multispectral lasers storing hundreds of terabytes per cubic centimeter of crystal medium.
Quantum computer-implementing nanocircs use the same fundamental structure in a diamond medium to create nitrogen-vacancy qubits.
nanolathe (I)
The emblematic device of Imperial engineers, technicians, and scientists (although, really, just about everyone probably owns at least one), nanolathes are handheld devices that build into a gauntlet-like frame a microframe computer, a nanofac assembler/disassembler, a supply of nanoslurry, a universal interface, and a range of highly miniaturized tools, sensors and sensor analysis packs, and effectors.
Versatile and reliable, controlled by a synnoetic AI, a nanolathe is a multipurpose diagnostic and manufacturing tool that can be used to analyze and perform service and adjustments on virtually all common devices. The fabrication capabilities of the in-built nanofac can be used to rapidly assemble a range of parts and components – from common, reusable industrial plastics, ceramics, and light alloys – using downloaded recipes, allowing for field repairs and modifications to most objects, as well as a large number of entire small devices, and recycle broken components back into nanoslurry.
Night Court (E)
1. One of the two branches of the Equestrian executive branch, that centering around Princess Luna. The various governmental responsibilities are distributed between it and the Day Court (the Night Court, for example, holds dominion over the military, the fine arts, and gambling), although since the Diarchy works closely together, the divisions are often fuzzy and serve primarily as a tie-breaker.
2. The hall of Canterlot Palace in which Princess Luna holds court (which includes a secondary, smaller throne for Princess Celestia), and its associated facilities.
3. The open court which Princess Luna holds on one night each moon (typically exactly one fortnight away from the Day Court), allowing anyone to approach her directly to petition the throne (on topics associated with the Night Court), for arbitration of a problem, or for any other purpose. It receives rather fewer petitions than the Day Court, mostly because Princess Luna has a reputation for a certain impatience (5) with things she perceives as stupid, corrupt, or mean-spirited, which tends to be reflected in her decrees and judgments (6).
5. Or, at least, for allowing it to show.
6. Which is not to say that they aren't just. The Night Princess is always just - but is more often pointed than her sister. Or worse, ironic.
octiad, octcen, octave (E)
Translation convention for numbers expressed in the Equestrian system, which uses octal/base 8. The numbers are:
* octave - equivalent to decimal ten, means 8
* octcen - equivalent to decimal hundred, means 64
* octiad - equivalent to decimal thousand, means 512
* sur-octiad - equivalent to decimal ten thousand, means 4,096
* grand octiad - equivalent to decimal million, means 262,144
Similar constructions are used for time measurement, most commonly the octade, octcentury, and octennium.
the Orrery (I)
More formally designated CSS Eledíë's Orrery, the headquarters of the Imperial Exploratory Service, a space station located in the Almeä (Thirteen Colonies) System.
OVERLOOK HIGH (I)
Contact classification indicating signs of civilization visually detected from beyond planetary orbit.
PATTERNED EM (I)
Contact classification indicating information-bearing EM signals detected.
Phosphoros (I, E)
The actual primary star of the system containing Equus, a yellow straggler. At the orbital distance of Equus itself, it is merely the brightest star in Luna's sky, occupying a position in pony folklore much like the Morning Star/Evening Star references to Venus in ours.
Thus, its star system - although previously known as IGS 254672, its index number in the Imperial Grand Survey's stellar catalogue - is officially designed the Phosphoros System. Or will be once Cordelia files a report with the Orrery, anyway.
photon-discharge glow (I)
The bluish glow that surrounds an eldrae (and the object she's manipulating) when she uses her implanted vector-control effectors; the glow itself is a product of the effectors discharging as much accumulated entropy as possible as photons to minimize internal waste heat.
ponnequin (E)
The equine equivalent of a mannequin.
postsylithic (I)
See Equus.
PRECURSOR FUGUE (I)
PRECURSOR FUGUE is an IES codeword for "a Precursor or elder race has been mucking about on this planet". PRECURSOR FUGUE DAWN is the subcode for "and I think their children are still here".
quebérúr (I)
A large evolutionary cousin of the Earth bison, used by the eldrae for meat and milk.
rhaléth (I)
Eldraeic-language term for apples. Exact same fruit (although the varieties obviously differ), different planet. Most curious. See greenlife.
Rhiannon (E)
1. The smaller ice giant in the Equus System.
2. A minor ancient equine goddess, hoofmaiden of Epona. Now also largely mythological.
Royal Canterlot Voice (E)
An alicorn language/vocalization trick that gets the point you wish to make across VERY FIRMLY INDEED. Sneers at distance. Sneers at soundproofing, and also vacuum. Sneers at deafness, and may well sneer at the complete lack of auditory organs once someone has time and occasion to test it. And unlike the fine Trottingham tradition of attempting to communicate with foreigners by speaking loudly and slowly at them, the RCV actually does sneer at the necessity for translation.
Royal Guard (E)
The primary military force of Equestria, with some police functions. Compared to its predecessor, the EUP Guard, it is a small, specialized, and professional force. It does not make up the whole of the Protective Pony Platoons, although aside from certain specialized units such as the Wonderbolts and Equestria's small navy it is the entirety of the standing military; the rest of the PPP is made up of local militias of varying degrees of effectiveness (17) which attend to local defense, mainly against creatures that may wander in from the wild, but which can be summoned if a larger military force is required for national defense.
The Guard itself is divided into three sections:
The Day Guard, which is the relatively conventional section of the force, 18 thousand-pony regiments strong; and
The much smaller Night Guard, which apart from the all-Nocturne ceremonial and bodyguard units attached to Princess Luna is, for the most part, a collection of interesting characters focused on intelligence, espionage, and special operations; and
The Borderers, also known as the Long Patrol, which patrols Equestria's borders, extensive wild areas - or, in some cases, like the Everfree, the edges of those wild areas - to keep the Sisters' Peace and hunt down any dangerous monsters or other threats that might endanger civilized areas. The Borderer regiments have the most actual combat experience of any of the Guard, although very little of it is in what one might call formal battle.
17. The Canterlot Cavaliers, for example, have all the native talent and experience they need to be magnificent magical artillery, but have barely seen any actual fighting for centuries; the Ponyville First of Hoof has less magic on its side (18) but is considerably more practiced (19), due to things that come wandering out of the Everfree; and while the Cloudsdale Air Cavalry is very well staffed and equipped thanks to the pegasus military tradition, most of its actual action is more along the lines of emergency response than battle.
18. Although it could theoretically call upon Twilight, when she's at home, but for most things that might come wandering out of the Everfree that's like solving your gopher problem with a tactical nuclear weapon. Besides, the First of Hoof doesn't want to get used to relying on a Bearer when the most likely time for serious problems to show up is when the Bearers have bigger problems of their own to deal with.
19. And it quite definitely has Big Mac, who is worth a long squad or a short platoon on his own.
Royal Service (E)
The civil bureaucracy that actually runs Equestria day-to-day, while the diarchy rules it. Its head, who reports directly to the Royal Sisters on governmental affairs, is formally known as the First Secretary, and informally known by a variety of epithets of which "Celestia's Iron Hoof" is one of the most printable examples.
(Not to be confused with the Princesses' Principal Private Secretaries - in Celestia's case, that would be Raven Inkwell - who organize the affairs of the diarchs themselves. Or with any of the secretaries who do actual secretarial work, several steps down the ladder.)
Senna's Belt (I)
Imperial term for the Kuiper Belt, the belt of ice asteroids, comets, and dwarf planets extending 0.15 to 0.3 light-days from the central star(s) of typical star systems. Named after Senna Marasi, the astronomer who discovered the first objects in the homeworld's Belt in 1843 AIC.
SERAPH BLUE ALERT (I)
One of a fairly large number of Exploratory Service codewords used to report first contact. SERAPH implies a non-hostile contact with an advanced civilization; BLUE, in this context, implies ongoing contact and that the first-in scout believes their mission should be prioritized highly by the IES.
sevdra (I)
A mythological creature - which is to say, no fossils or other non-mythological evidence has ever turned up - in eldraeic legend, resembling the classic unicorn of Earth myth (i.e., much more closely resembling the Earth horse than the Equestrian pony, and yet...). Symbolically, considered to represent the perfect marriage between power, beauty, and wonder in the despite of Entropy.
SKYSHOCK BLUE (I)
The SKYSHOCK series of codewords refers to "excessionary-level events", or what Banks, et. al., call Outside Context Problems. SKYSHOCK BLUE is the unusual case of an Outside Context Problem that might, if everyone plays their cards right and no-one does anything stupid, actually be an Outside Context Opportunity.
slate (I)
A portable, multifunctional personal digital assistant, a greatly advanced future's version of our tablets and smartphones, but much more powerful and flexible - while, in its own context, being vaguely archaic, albeit still useful. Also, thanks to being made of smart matter, can be flexed, stretched, and reshaped at will (some people wear them as bracelets (20) when not in use, for example).
20. It won't take Twilight very long to discover the "book" setting, I think we can all reasonably suspect.
sophontology (I)
Like anthropology, but less racist. Exosophontology is the same, only in space.
stargate (I)
The Empire's (and the Worlds') means of moving between star systems without all that tedious subluminal travel. Basically, it uses a entangled singularity and a bunch of fancy exotic-matter lenses to inflate a wormhole leading to the space near its counterpart - they come in matched pairs, necessarily so - around your ship, which moves through it, the wormhole collapsing afterwards. There are various complications involved with surviving, staying locked to the common time-frame of the network, and not accidentally using the system for time travel in ways that the universe doesn't like, but that's the essential principle.
The most common type of stargate in the Empire and the Associated Worlds is the Ring Dynamics Mark III, resembling an unusual arrowhead; the sun-facing end of the stargate is ellipsoid in cross-section, studded with various sensors and antennae. This cylinder then splits into four curving arms, which surround a spherical volume, narrowing on the other side to the size of the original cylinder, then extending straight and parallel to each other for as far again (21).
21. Or, to put it another way, it looks like what happens if you take two mass relays from Mass Effect, rotate one through 90 degrees, and superimpose it on the other.
stellar husbandry (I)
The techniques and practice, among advanced species, of managing your local star to best effect. The most common techniques ease the sunspot cycle, and smooth out the stellar wind, and mix envelope material down into the stellar core to prolong hydrogen burning. This latter is the most relevant, because when carried out over a sufficiently long period of time, you end up with a yellow straggler - an atypical G-type star that's much older than it "should" be.
And Phosphoros, Equus's true primary, is a yellow straggler.
sylithopaludial (I)
See Equus.
tangle channel (I)
The first and only known method of superluminal communication, short of beaming subluminal communications through a stargate, the tangle channel is essentially a pair of black boxes containing a fixed amount of bandwidth in the form of entangled qubits (tanglebits) stored in qubit reservoirs; each of a mass of particles within one box paired individually with those in the other.
Together, they provide an instantaneous communication channel from the location of one box to the other at any distance; a channel instantaneous in terms of empire time but incapable of globally violating causality, and with a total capacity limited to the number of qubits it is created with. Each bit of data transmitted across a tangle channel uses up one qubit; as the entangled qubits are used for communication, they decohere and become useless.
Trade (I)
The lingua franca of communication, trade, and diplomacy in the Associated Worlds predating the ubiquity of machine language translation, still used in some regions and in scenarios in which automatic translators are not available. Functionally, Trade is a simplified Eldraeic pidgin (hacked for simplicity), incorporating a significant number of words and grammatical features from other languages of the Worlds. Trade exists in many mutually-mostly-comprehensible dialects, as regional versions have drifted over the centuries.
trakelpanis trakóras amán (I)
A precursor race (the "ancient forceful dragons", or the "Great Drakes" for short) that once dominated significantly-sized pockets of the local galactic arm. Draconic in form, from what archaeology has to tell, and very likely the source of the eldraeic mythological amán.
Apart from leaving the usual quantity of interesting technology and weird artifacts around that various precursor races tend to, the trakelpanis trakóras amán are best known for (a) being solitary creatures, mostly due to a certain difficulty in understanding that anyone else's will actually signified anything relevant, (b) bending reality around them like a pretzel, and (c) tearing down their own civilization in spectacular internecine warfare.
Tricamareon (E)
1. The tricameral legislative body of Equestria, composed of the unicorn Council of Lords, the pegasus General Staff, and the earth pony Cakething.
2. The equivalent body back in the days of old Equestria, pre-Discord.
The most notable rule of the Tricamareon, in both eras, is the Threefold Rule: any piece of legislation - to be considered harmonious enough to become law - must be passed by all three chambers independently.
Unconquerable Sun (E)
Neither Celestia Invicta ("Unconquerable Sun") nor Luna Versuta ("Cunning Moon") are formal names or titles for the Royal Sisters; merely epithets given to them in the early, rough-and-tumble years of Equestria in which they perfected a certain double-act in both diplomacy and war, involving its subject battering uselessly at Celestia's defenses while Luna slipped around, literally or metaphorically, to take them out from a position of maximum advantage.
The epithets are slipping back into usage as various foreign heads of state are consulting their ancestors' memoirs and realizing just how damnably effective said double-act was -- and as "I must consult with my sister" is once again becoming the "My words are backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS." of Equestrian diplomatic parlance.
the Unpleasable Demon-Pony of Eight Octiad Demands (E)
A diamond dog title for Rarity, being woven quite rapidly into the mythology of the race. Best not mentioned anywhere word might get back to her.
vector control
A family of Imperial ontotechnologies permitting the manipulation of the vector scalar field (22) and related forces within the standard physical model, without requiring extreme energy levels. All particles get their mass from the interaction between the vector field, particles, and the background vacuum; if this is modified, apparent mass – either inertial mass, gravitic mass, or both – and space-time curvature, which is to say gravity, can be modified.
Vector control forms the basis of a very large number of technologies, from techlekinesis to paragravity.
22. You can think of it as the Higgs field, if you like.
weakly godlike (I)
Strictly speaking, a weakly godlike entity is one capable of doing anything possible within the physical laws and metalaws of the universe, but which cannot violate them, unlike a strongly godlike entity, which is not bound by law. Even the former is somewhat hypothetical, although the term is often used inaccurately: thus, the term large angelic, and variations, has come into use as slang describing otherwise inexplicable sufficiently-advanced capabilities.
worldbound (I)
Descriptive of a species or polity which has not yet developed any kind of crewed spaceflight.
Year of Harmony (E)
The Equestrian calendar, which counts from the end of the Discordant Era. Years are 360 days long, having been rationalized by a Diarchy that didn't feel like dealing with odd numbers since the calendar was essentially independent of Equus's much longer orbital and rotational periods anyway, and start at what might otherwise be called the winter solstice but is actually just the halfway point between Fall Finale and Winter Wrap-Up), and are divided into 12 moons of 30 days each. The lunar cycle corresponds precisely to these moons not only in length but also in synchronization; the new moon is always on the first day of the month and the full moon on the 15th, special occasions notwithstanding.
(The Equian day-night cycle is approximately 22 hours long, as Cordelia noted, but those are Imperial hours, which makes it approximately 24 of your Earth hours. Meanwhile, the Equestrian timekeeping system divides into 16 hours, using a common 8-hour clock. Isn't interstellar horology fun?)
yellow straggler (I)
See stellar husbandry.
YH (E)
See Year of Harmony.
zero-zero intercept (I)
In astrogation, an intercept with a target (rendezvous, orbit, station, other ship, etc.) computed so as to reach zero relative velocity at zero distance; a perfect interception.