This is a glossary of terms used on this web site. I've included it to clarify many of the descriptions I've given, for those who are curious. The concepts gathered here are from many different origins; some from folklore and legend, some are original creations, and some are from published works. Because of this, much of the material here is copyrighted, and only a small portion of it is under my ownership.  Also be aware that the concepts here that are based of folklore and legend are personal interpretations, and by no means are an authority on the subject.

   The concepts listed below mainly come from the two different games that I role-play in regularly.  The first is a game played in the AD&D game system that has been running for over six years, and is into it's third generation of characters. Concepts specific to this game are in red. The second game, called Dark Saga, is based in an original world that has been run in many different home-grown systems. Concepts relevant to this game are in purple. Other concepts that are general or miscellaneous are left in green

• 2nd Gen: This is a term affectionately used by our gaming group to describe a recently completed campaign. We've had 3 different generations of AD&D games, currently we're playing 3rd Generation characters. 2nd Gen includes characters depicted on this site such as Rilrae Silvermane, Shar Silvertear, Ayana Silvertear, Coranth Goldtalon, and Naikaiya.
• AD&D*: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. This  popular fantasy role-playing game system  has been use by gamers for the past 25 years to create characters and story lines using only dice, paper, and their imaginations.
• Alternity*: Alternity is a new science fiction game system published by TSR, the creators of AD&D.
• Arcadia: Arcadia is one of the seven realms in the Dark Saga game setting. It is a magical realm inhabited by all the different types of the Fae. It is a place where the thoughts and dreams of mortals can be made reality.
• Bladesinger*:  A Bladesinger represents and defends the ideals of elven society, to the death if needed.  They are warriors and mages of incredible grace and skill. Their style of fighting is fluid and elegant, accompanied often by a low hummed battle  hymn and the whistle of the blade. They have the skill to cast magics in mid fight, without sacrificing any of their fighting prowess.
• Cambion*:  A cambion is a male child born of a demon father and a human (most of the time) mother.  They are feared and prosecuted for this by both sides of their heritage.  They also make excellent assassins.
• Champions: Champions is a game system that is geared towards super hero characters and story lines.
• Chimera: A creature made from a melding of various aspects of different creatures. Usually a magical construct, created by mortal hands from a mixture of different beings.
• Cleric: A cleric is essentially an adventuring priest. They go out into the world to spread their faith and defend their deity's ideals. They have the training to fight and defend themselves, but no where near the skill a true fighter has.
• Corellon Larethain*:  He is the patron god of the elven race and the head of the elven pantheon. He is revered by all elves as their patriarch and ideal.
• Dark Saga**: An original game setting that is made up of 7 worlds and 6 realms. All seven worlds are alternate realities of each other, where as the 7 realms are places such as Arcadia, Dragon Home, Heaven, Hell, ect. It has been in development for over eight years and is currently in it's sixth incarnation. It is currently being played within a modified AD&D game system, although it has been run through several home-grown systems as well.
• Deep Dragon*:  Deep Dragons are subterranean dragons feared both for their destructive nature and powerful magic, but also for their all to common insanity.  They are also know to ally themselves with other Underdark dwellers such as the Drow.
• Demonologist: A type of specialty mage that is partoned by a powerful denizen of Hell. They are granted power by their patron and make sacrifices (of some kind) to their patron in return.
• Diem**: The Diem are a race of cat hybrid humanoids with dragon-like wings. They come in several different variations of coat color and patterning such as: tiger, panther, cheetah and lynx. They live together with the Kiem in a clan-based society and serve the roles of craftsman shamans, healers, traders, and herders. They inhabit the eastern continent of Kormain  (as well as other worlds in Dark Saga) and can be found in arid, desert-like environments.
• Dragon Magic/Mage:  Dragon magic is a name for the powerful spells that dragons create based upon their innate talents and power.  A dragon mage is a dragon who focuses their life's path on the pursuit and study of draconic magics.
• Drow*:  The Drow are the exiled, corrupt cousins of Elves, driven underground as punishment for the transgressions of their goddess, and their own base treachery.  Also known as dark elves, they are a decadent race ruled by a matriarchal priesthood devoted to sowing chaos and destruction on their surface relatives, and anything else that gets in the way of their pursuit for power. It is believed that all Drow are inherently evil, but it has been found that a very small percentage, about 10% are born of other alignments.
• Dryad: Dryads are beautiful, intelligent tree sprites. Each dryad has a home tree, usually a massive old oak tree, which they are a part of. If the tree should ever come to harm or be destroyed, so would the dryad. They appear much like an elf maiden, but their skin and hair color changes with the seasons. They are shy and elusive, rarely caught out in the open by mortals.
• Ethereal Plane*:   The ethereal plane exists as a boundary between the prime material plane and the various elemental planes.
• Evermeet*:  Evermeet is a land of legend where many of the elves of Faerun make their home. It is believed that it was given by Corellon to the elves as a sanctuary, protected from the influence and encroachment of other races and societies. It is the elves' last stronghold against the ever spreading human civilizations, and is fiercely protected by it's people and warded by powerful magics. Evermeet is an island sanctuary, where every elf (except drow) can find shelter and security.
• Fae: The Fae are the inhabitants of Arcadia, creatures of the dreaming and masters of illusion. There are three different classifications of Fae: noble, commoner, and lesser. The noble Fae include Sidhe, Trolls, Satyr, Hobgoblins, and Goblins. Commoners consist of nymphs, dryads, hamadryads, brownies, gremlins, and gargoyles. Pixies, sprites and quicklings are all lesser Fae.
• Fae Knight**: Fae Knights are an order consisting mainly of Sidhe and Trolls  devoted to protecting the noble classes of Fae, and the ideals of Faerie.
• Faerun*:  Faerun is a land created by Ed Greenwood in a fantasy setting called the Forgotten Realms, it is a northern continent on a planet called Toril.  This fantastic land is populated by creatures of myth, fantasy, legend, and imagination.  This is a land of stories.
• Familiar: In the broadest sense, a familiar is a creature companion that aids and performs functions that the character cannot. There is always a very strong bond between the two, an otherworldly link that binds the two together. Most commonly familiars are associated with mages and aid them with their spell casting abilities.
• Goddess: The Goddess is the way in which mortals perceive that which is the force of Nature. The Goddess is divided into four aspects: the Warrioress, the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone. The Warrioress represents oaths, honor, protection and guardianship. The Maiden is representative of youth, vitality and freedom. The Mother is the protector, and symbolizes the cycle of life. The Crone  is the wisdom and knowledge that comes with age. The Goddess is known though her Avatars, physical manifestations of the forces of Nature. There are eight Avatars, two for each aspect.
• Great Wyrm*:  The oldest, wisest, and most powerful category of Dragon.
• Hengeyokai:  The hengeyokai are a race of shapchangers originating from Asian folklore. They come in several different varieties, such as cat, dog, crane, duck, monkey, carp, crab, fox, hare, rat, or sparrow. They're natural form is their animal form, and the spend the majority of their time in that form. The live amongst themselves, but do occasionally travel among humankind. They avoid revealing themselves to humans if at all possible, and if so, only to those they trust.
• High Mage**: A magic-user that has excelled in the ways of magic to the point of being able to alter and manipulate spells on a very finite level.
• Ken'Re**: The Ken'Re are warriors who call upon natural spirits to assist them in combat. They do this by invoke the spirits into their own bodies, so that they exist together within the same space and perform in combat as a perfectly melded team. Ken'Re also commonly have a spirit sword that they can command and wield at any distance.
• Kiem**: The Kiem are the companion race to the Diem. They are a canine  humanoid hybrid with variations such as timber wolf, grizzly wolf, and fox. They live in the same society as the Diem and serve in the roles of hunters, guardians, and protectors.
• Kitsune: This word is native to the Japanese language, meaning "fox." It commonly describes a shape changing form of fox creature that can have anywhere from one to nine tails. The more tails a Kitsune has the more power they represent. A kitsune of nine tails is extremely rare.
• Kormain**: One of the seven worlds of the Dark Saga game setting. It is the world we most commonly play on, and it has the 2nd strongest magical field of the seven worlds.
• Krynn*: Krynn is another campaign world created by TSR. It is part of the Dragonlance game setting.
• Lord of Chaos**: There are 13 Lords of Chaos. They are one of two ruling councils of the realm of Hell from the Dark Saga game setting.
• Medium:  A medium is a person that is capable of contacting the spirit world, and specking with the dead, often with the aid of a scrying of divining device.
• Order of Corellon:  This is a knighthood consisting of elves devoted to Corellon Larethain.  They are paladins, holy warriors sworn to defend the elven nations, protect the weak, and hold forth the ideals Corellon holds dear.
• Power Acolyte**: A Power Acolyte is a magic user that has reached a point in their abilities where they no longer need spells. They can shape any effect they chose with only the force of their immense will. They are extremely rare, only three have very existed in the history of Kormain.
• Psionics: These are powers of the mind, such as telepathy, psycho kinetics, and clairsentience,  used to create fantastic effects.
• Psi-warrior: This is a common term for those people that are trained in the use of both psionics and combat, balancing them perfectly.
• Roleplaying: This term has many different meanings, but for the sake of this site, I'll narrow it down. Roleplaying (or gaming as we also call it) involves a gamemaster creating a story line and a setting, and players make characters to be the key components. These story lines can be very epic, and the characters within them very complicated. It is the players job to create and roleplay characters that are seem real and believable, and the GM's job to create the world them. It's sort of like acting, only there are no props, sets or pre written scripts, and because we describe everything rather than actually doing it, it is up to are imaginations to make it real.
• Sidhe: The Sidhe make up the largest group of noble Fae. They are masters of illusion and nature magics.
• Shadow elves**: A race of elves that evolved in caverns underground and developed an affinity for darkness and shadow, as well as an aversion to sunlight.  They have poor daylight vision and there skin is easily burned by sunlight. They go cloaked hooded whenever they venture to the surface, but leave their feet bare do to their belief that they should always be in physical contact with their shadow.
• Shaman: A shaman is a spiritual healer and counselor, well versed in the ways of the body (and spirit), herbalism, and tending wounds.
• Solaris/Solarian: Solaris is an original concept world of my own, created using ideals in which I believe and concepts I just think are cool. It's a world of both fantasy and science, where the primary inhabitants (Solarians) are basically shapechangers. I've played several Solarians in different games, both fantasy and sci-fi.
• Spiritualist**: A spiritualist is like a combination between a medium and a shaman, only more advanced. They are trained to go out into the world and adventure, using their skills to further whatever goal they might personally have.
• Oath Bound: The Oath Bound are basically blessed warriors. They petition to the Goddess to become one of the Bound, and must pass four ordeal to prove their worth. They are patroned by the Warrior aspect of the Goddess. This class is based roughly off of the Sword Sworn from Mercedes Lackey's fantasy novels.
• Tech-Op*: Tech-Ops come from the Alternity game system created by TSR.  They are operatives skilled in the use, creation, and/or maintenance of high-tech equipment.
• Underdark*: The Underdark is a the underground realm of Faerun. A mysterious and dangerous place filled with magical radiations and bizarre creatures, it is home to many different races. Drow, Deep Gnomes, Druegar (dark dwarves), Deep dragons, Illithid (mind flayers) and other such creatures. Not a terribly hospitable place, much like the creatures who live there.
• The Veil: The Veil is what separates the Fae from the mortal world. One must pass through the Veil to reach Arcadia, but each member of the Fae races carries it with them when they are not in Arcadia. The Veil represents all that is illusionary about the Fae, a seeming, of sorts. Fae folk use the Veil to hide themselves  from mortals whether it be by invisibility or illusionary disguise.
• Yaun-Ti*:  The Yaun-Ti are an unstable crossbreed between humans and snakes, made possible by dark magics and darker rituals.  They are now a virulent species,  breeding true among their own kind, but with great variation in the result.

       * copyright TSR Inc.
       ** copyright James M. Rodrigues

All images, concepts, characters and site design are copyright Sarah E. Heinemann, aka Sarah E Gross, (except where noted). All others are copyright to their respective owners. All rights reserved. No image may be published or reproduced in any form or for any purpose without the written consent of the artist. This includes any electronic means of image transfer in whole or in part.