Player-Safe Glossary Starter

This page defines common player-safe terms used in the Thesalon campaign wiki.

These definitions are safe before Session One. They explain public concepts, starting-region language, campaign structure, and character-creation terms without revealing hidden campaign secrets.

Some terms may gain deeper meaning during play.

If a term seems important but this page gives only a simple definition, that may be intentional.

How to Use This Glossary

Use this page when you encounter a word, place, law, faction type, or campaign concept that appears across multiple pages.

This starter glossary is not meant to define every person, place, god, faction, ship, route, law, or rumor in the full setting.

It focuses on terms players may need before Session One.

For longer reference later, use the full glossary pages once they are created.

A

Azure Aviary

The Azure Aviary is the ship where the campaign begins.

It is a working Maritheli vessel traveling through Windrider Gulf waters. Player characters may be aboard as crew, passengers, guards, specialists, refugees, couriers, witnesses, or other travelers with reason to be at sea.

The Azure Aviary is the opening location of the campaign.

B

Blue Lantern Law

Blue Lantern law is a Maritheli legal custom associated with hearing people before they are seized, surrendered, removed, or handed over to a claimant.

In player-facing terms, it is connected to protection, testimony, legal delay, disputed identity, refugee movement, false names, and the right to be heard before power acts too quickly.

Blue Lantern law can protect people.

It can also become complicated, delayed, politicized, or exploited.

Blue Lantern Procedure

Blue Lantern procedure refers to the practical process of invoking or applying Blue Lantern law.

This may involve advocates, witnesses, registries, harbor officials, testimony, names, papers, claims, and temporary protection while a matter is reviewed.

Characters do not need to know every legal detail before Session One.

They only need to know that Blue Lantern procedure can matter to people seeking safety, hearing, or delay.

C

Caerlon

Caerlon is one of the major continents of Thesalon.

Its public reputation is that of a wounded survivor of invasion, rebuilding amid mistrust, damaged institutions, old battle scars, refugees, veterans, broken roads, and disputed authority.

Characters from Caerlon may be survivors, exiles, soldiers, scribes, rebuilders, refugees, oathkeepers, or people shaped by the aftermath of war.

Campaign Phase

A campaign phase is a wiki label that marks when a page is most useful or safe.

Common campaign phase labels include:

Phase	Meaning
`pre-session-one`	Safe and useful before the first session.
`session-zero`	Useful during character creation and table setup.
`active-campaign`	Useful during ongoing play.
`post-session`	Useful after a relevant session has revealed information.
`dm-prep`	Not intended for players.

Before Session One, focus on pages marked:

campaign_phase: pre-session-one

Character Hook

A character hook is a person, place, goal, debt, oath, fear, secret, duty, rumor, or relationship that gives your character a reason to care about the campaign.

Examples include:

a missing person;
a debt;
a false name;
a faction contact;
a patient;
a letter;
a shipboard job;
a legal hearing;
a private vow;
a reason to reach Windrider Freeport.

A good hook pulls the character into play without solving the campaign’s mysteries in advance.

Crownless Age

The Crownless Age is the current era of Thesalon.

It does not mean there are no rulers anywhere. It means old forms of unquestioned authority have been damaged, discredited, challenged, or forced to justify themselves.

Crowns, temples, laws, roads, armies, archives, trade routes, and old institutions still exist, but many people no longer trust them automatically.

The Crownless Age shapes the campaign’s mood of mistrust, rebuilding, exile, contested legitimacy, and hard choices.

D

DM-Only

DM-only information is not intended for players unless the DM reveals it in play.

DM-only information may include hidden faction plans, secret motives, encounter details, unrevealed villains, concealed ship matters, hidden locations, future events, and true answers to campaign mysteries.

Player-facing pages should not reveal DM-only material.

Drowned Name

A drowned name is a term associated with names lost, changed, submerged, hidden, or ritually separated from ordinary public use.

The exact meaning may vary by region, ship, legal custom, faith practice, or personal circumstance.

In player-safe terms, drowned names connect to identity, memory, burial, exile, sea rites, false names, and the question of who has the right to speak for a person.

Ask the DM before building a character around a drowned name.

E

Exile

An exile is someone who cannot safely or legally remain in their homeland, household, faction, temple, court, ship, or community.

Exile may be formal punishment, social exclusion, survival choice, political escape, legal displacement, or personal necessity.

Exile is a common theme in the campaign.

F

False Name

A false name is a name used instead of a person’s true, legal, family, temple, or homeland name.

A false name may be protective, fraudulent, sacred, practical, political, or desperate.

In Marithel, names can matter legally and socially. A false name may help someone survive, hide from a claimant, escape danger, avoid old debts, or commit deception.

Characters may use false names with DM approval.

Faction

A faction is an organized group with goals, resources, relationships, and pressure.

Faction examples include:

freeport authorities;
merchant houses;
temple networks;
privateer groups;
refugee aid networks;
pilot houses;
shipwright guilds;
foreign courts;
legal advocates;
lighthouse orders;
salvage interests.

Faction pages in the player-facing wiki should describe public reputation, services, common rumors, and player-safe connections.

They should not reveal secret faction plans.

Freeport

A freeport is a harbor city or port authority with strong trade functions, complex local law, maritime custom, and some degree of political autonomy or negotiated independence.

Freeports often attract sailors, merchants, refugees, privateers, smugglers, pilgrims, diplomats, faction agents, and people seeking new papers or legal hearing.

Windrider Freeport is expected to be the first major hub of the campaign.

G

Guest Law

Guest law refers to customs and legal expectations around shelter, protection, hospitality, responsibility, and conduct toward those accepted as guests.

In Marithel, guest law can matter aboard ships, in harbors, in refugee spaces, in temples, and in legal disputes.

Guest law is not always simple kindness. It can create obligations, claims, limits, protections, and conflicts.

H

Harbor Law

Harbor law is a general term for laws, customs, registries, port rules, fees, claims, inspections, hearings, and protections that operate in and around harbors.

Harbor law may involve:

docking;
cargo;
ships;
passengers;
refugees;
quarantine;
salvage;
privateers;
registry papers;
false names;
debt;
claims;
witness testimony.

In Marithel, harbor law can shape whether a person is protected, detained, surrendered, believed, or ignored.

I

Ilyr

Ilyr is one of the major continents of Thesalon.

Its public reputation is tied to living forests, wetlands, medicine, ecological law, old green mysteries, hidden routes, and cultures shaped by the needs of living places.

Characters from Ilyr may be healers, guides, medicine couriers, ecological witnesses, scholars, refugees, diplomats, or travelers protecting knowledge from misuse.

M

Marithel

Marithel is the starting continent of the campaign.

It is a maritime continent shaped by ships, freeports, sea roads, harbor law, privateers, refugees, pilots, lighthouse orders, salvage, trade, guest law, and contested identities.

The campaign begins in Marithel aboard the Azure Aviary.

Maritheli

Maritheli means from or of Marithel.

A Maritheli person, law, ship, route, custom, harbor, accent, or institution comes from the maritime continent of Marithel.

Not every Maritheli person is a sailor, but sea travel, harbor life, freeport politics, and shipboard customs shape much of the continent’s public identity.

N

Name Claim

A name claim is a legal, social, family, factional, or spiritual claim involving a person’s identity.

Name claims may involve:

who someone is;
what name they may use;
whether a false name is protected;
whether a person can be surrendered to a claimant;
whether a court recognizes a record;
whether a family, faction, temple, or state has authority over someone.

Name claims can be highly sensitive and may require DM approval for character backstories.

O

Oath

An oath is a promise with social, legal, religious, or personal weight.

Oaths may be sworn before gods, witnesses, ships, courts, family, captains, shrines, graves, or communities.

In Thesalon, an oath can be a character hook, legal complication, source of honor, burden, or reason to take action when silence would be safer.

P

Passenger

A passenger is someone traveling aboard a ship without being part of the regular crew.

A passenger may be wealthy, poor, protected, watched, hidden, hired, desperate, dangerous, sick, holy, grieving, or carrying something important.

Player characters may begin as passengers aboard the Azure Aviary.

Player-Facing

Player-facing means safe and intended for players to read.

A player-facing page can include public knowledge, character creation guidance, rumors, common beliefs, and discovered information.

It should not reveal hidden DM-only secrets, unrevealed encounter plans, surprise events, secret motives, or true answers to unresolved mysteries.

Player-Safe

Player-safe means a page or fact can be read by players without spoiling the campaign.

Player-safe information may include:

public world knowledge;
character creation options;
common rumors clearly marked as rumors;
known laws and customs;
general faction reputations;
information discovered in play.

Player-safe does not always mean universally known by every character.

Character knowledge still depends on background and context.

Privateer

A privateer is an armed sea actor who claims legal authority to use violence at sea under papers, patronage, license, or recognized permission.

Privateers are not simply pirates in public law, though the difference may be disputed by victims, rival ports, foreign powers, and courts.

Privateering connects to law, violence, trade, salvage, escort work, and moral ambiguity.

R

Refugee

A refugee is someone forced to leave home or shelter because staying became unsafe, impossible, illegal, or deadly.

Refugees may flee war, famine, monster rule, legal claims, family danger, religious pressure, debt, privateer violence, ecological crisis, or other threats.

Marithel receives many refugees because ships make movement possible and freeports offer imperfect forms of protection.

Registry

A registry is an official or semi-official record system for names, ships, cargo, claims, hearings, papers, deaths, debts, or legal status.

Registries can protect people by preserving testimony and identity.

They can also harm people when records are missing, false, corrupted, weaponized, or too slow.

Route

A route is a known path of travel by sea, river, road, caravan, mountain pass, or other means.

In Marithel, sea routes are especially important. They may be public, seasonal, dangerous, protected, taxed, disputed, secretive, or shaped by pilots and lighthouse orders.

A route is more than a line on a map. It can be a livelihood, obligation, inheritance, danger, or memory.

S

Salvage

Salvage refers to the recovery of goods, ships, bodies, evidence, tools, cargo, or records from wrecks, abandoned vessels, dangerous waters, or contested sites.

Salvage can be practical, legal, sacred, political, and dangerous.

In Marithel, salvage often raises questions of ownership, death, proof, dignity, claim, debt, and who has the right to recover what the sea has taken.

Sea Road

A sea road is a commonly known maritime route used by ships.

Sea roads may connect harbors, freeports, islands, trade routes, refugee movement, pilgrimage paths, privateering grounds, and dangerous waters.

A sea road may be safer than open water, but it is never perfectly safe.

Session-Revealed

Session-revealed means information is safe only after the players discover it during play.

Pages marked session-revealed should not be read before the relevant event, session, or discovery.

This label protects mystery while allowing the wiki to track what the party has learned.

Shipborn

Shipborn describes people whose identity, family, childhood, community, work, or culture is deeply tied to ships and routes.

A shipborn character may have grown up aboard vessels, moved between harbors, belonged to route families, inherited shipboard customs, or known ships as homes rather than just transportation.

Shipborn does not necessarily mean literally born on a ship.

Spoiler Level

A spoiler level is a metadata label that indicates how safe a page is for players.

Common spoiler levels include:

Spoiler Level	Meaning
`none`	Safe before Session One.
`light`	Mild context that may be safer after initial campaign orientation.
`session-revealed`	Safe after a specific discovery or session.
`dm-only`	Not intended for players.

Before Session One, focus on pages marked:

spoiler_level: none

Suthrane

Suthrane is one of the major continents of Thesalon.

Its public reputation is tied to sacred water, arid survival, temple authority, pilgrimage, river law, mercy, the Anointed River, floodplains, caravans, and old religious institutions.

Characters from Suthrane may be healers, pilgrims, temple workers, river-law scholars, caravan travelers, diplomats, merchants, or people shaped by water and mercy.

T

Thesalon

Thesalon is the campaign world.

It contains multiple continents, peoples, faiths, routes, seas, old powers, damaged authorities, and living conflicts.

The campaign begins in Marithel, one continent within Thesalon.

V

Veyrskold

Veyrskold is one of the major continents of Thesalon.

Its public reputation is tied to cold coasts, oath-stones, ruins, hard survival, storm roads, buried histories, old giants, dragon-watched places, and communities shaped by promises.

Characters from Veyrskold may be sailors, shipwrights, oathbearers, guards, ruin scholars, exiles, survivalists, or people whose word carries heavy weight.

Vorrak

Vorrak is one of the major continents of Thesalon.

Its public reputation is feared and politically charged. It is associated with Monster Courts, conquest, claims, subject peoples, defectors, brutal authority, and dangerous eastern power.

A character from Vorrak does not need to be evil.

A person may be a subject, survivor, defector, exile, monster-born character, court-marked traveler, escaped captive, or someone trying to survive a reputation they did not choose.

W

Windrider Freeport

Windrider Freeport is expected to become the first major hub of the campaign.

It is a Maritheli harbor city known for Blue Lantern law, docks, registries, refugee moorings, shipyards, temples, markets, legal advocates, faction pressure, and people seeking passage, papers, protection, work, medicine, or a new start.

Windrider Freeport is important early, but it is not the opening location.

The campaign begins aboard the Azure Aviary.

Windrider Gulf

Windrider Gulf is the maritime region where the campaign begins.

The Azure Aviary is traveling through Windrider Gulf waters at the start of play.

For pre-session purposes, players only need to know that this is part of the Maritheli maritime world and that the campaign begins at sea.

Working Passage

Working passage means traveling aboard a ship by doing labor instead of paying full fare.

A working passenger may help with cleaning, hauling, cooking, repairs, watches, cargo handling, rowing, message work, healing support, or other shipboard tasks.

Working passage is a strong reason for a player character to begin aboard the Azure Aviary.

Quick Reference Table

Term	Short Definition
Azure Aviary	The ship where the campaign begins.
Blue Lantern Law	Maritheli hearing and protection procedure before seizure or surrender.
Crownless Age	The current era of damaged and contested authority.
False Name	A name used instead of a true, legal, family, or public identity.
Freeport	A harbor city shaped by trade, law, ships, and negotiated authority.
Guest Law	Custom and law around protection, hospitality, and obligation.
Marithel	The starting maritime continent.
Player-Safe	Safe for players to read without spoiling the campaign.
Privateer	Armed sea actor claiming legal authority for violence at sea.
Refugee	Someone forced from home or safety.
Salvage	Recovery of goods, bodies, ships, evidence, or records from wrecks or lost places.
Sea Road	A known maritime route.
Shipborn	A person whose identity is shaped by ships, routes, and shipboard life.
Spoiler Level	Metadata label describing how safe a page is to read.
Thesalon	The campaign world.
Windrider Freeport	The first major hub, not the opening location.
Windrider Gulf	The waters where the campaign begins.
Working Passage	Travel by labor aboard ship instead of full fare.

Terms to Ask the DM About

Ask the DM before building a character around any of these:

hidden campaign mysteries;
secret cargo;
secret ship claims;
unrevealed supernatural events;
direct ownership disputes over the Azure Aviary;
hidden faction agendas;
powerful noble titles;
major legal claims;
special knowledge of the opening situation;
true answers to rumors;
DM-only maps or routes.

These may be allowed in some form, but they require approval.

Player-Safe Glossary Starter ​

How to Use This Glossary ​

A ​

Azure Aviary ​

B ​

Blue Lantern Law ​

Blue Lantern Procedure ​

C ​

Caerlon ​

Campaign Phase ​

Character Hook ​

Crownless Age ​

D ​

DM-Only ​

Drowned Name ​

E ​

Exile ​

F ​

False Name ​

Faction ​

Freeport ​

G ​

Guest Law ​

H ​

Harbor Law ​

I ​

Ilyr ​

M ​

Marithel ​

Maritheli ​

N ​

Name Claim ​

O ​

Oath ​

P ​

Passenger ​

Player-Facing ​

Player-Safe ​

Privateer ​

R ​

Refugee ​

Registry ​

Route ​

S ​

Salvage ​

Sea Road ​

Session-Revealed ​

Shipborn ​

Spoiler Level ​

Suthrane ​

T ​

Thesalon ​

V ​

Veyrskold ​

Vorrak ​

W ​

Windrider Freeport ​

Windrider Gulf ​

Working Passage ​

Quick Reference Table ​

Terms to Ask the DM About ​

Related Pages ​