Aimon - A powerful Artificial Intelligence. Originally tasked with maintaining and guarding the Gates, they became more like governors of vast sectors of the galaxy - settling disputes, and preventing disharmony - though their motives began to become increasingly obscure to those they ruled over.
Anin - Thorn’s little jackal of a dog.
Antarax - The planet (well, moon of a large gas giant called Karass) where the ‘rescued’ Saurians were taken - after being taken aboard a Dendrian Ark, just before the Chthonian Sentinel annihilated the rest of their bretheren.
Archon - A rogue Saurian who, upon leaving Antarax, attempts to rule or play god
(sometimes benevolently) on fresh, still maturing worlds.
Ark - Dendrian ship designed to carry other beings safely through space - often intended
to save a small selection of a species from Sentinel-annihilation.
Chthon - How Saurians reference their original homeworld (‘Earth’).
Chthonians - Saurians who, generations after The Upheaval, believed that they were in
exile on Antarax, and held out hope to return to their home world now, or in the next life.
Demian - see Thorn.
Dendrians - Highly intelligent photosythetic lifeforms from the planet Phyton, which are capable
of large-scale genetic self-manipulation (i.e. 'shape-shifters' - albeit slow ones)
Dendrian Council - The main decision-making body on Phyton. They are notably
deliberate and slow.
Gaia - aka Ge, Gennifer; friend of Thorn’s who encountered Tanner at his bar.
Gate, The - The term for a wormhole created using exotic matter acting on a black hole,
which can transport things through both time and space. It was Tanner’s design.
Gnarls - see Trent
Journal, The - The notebook in which Kevin dabbled with the art of calligraphy, practiced writing in human languages, and eventually wrote about his vision - and his interest in Tanner.
Karass - The large gas giant around which Antarax orbits as a habitable moon-world.
Kevin - The saurian who engages Tanner - believing him to possibly be the Source.
Lipinski - A science-teaching colleague of Thorn’s, who helped him with some of the dorkier footnoting.
Neutral Ground - Thorn’s local bar, and the bar where Tanner allegedly worked.
Painting, The - A painting Thorn had commissioned, depicting a scene from Revelations.
Phyton - The Dendrian homeworld, orbiting a distant Red Dwarf in the direction of the
Eagle Nebula.
Prophecy, The - The Saurian prediction concerning the coming rise of the Source.
Quetzalcoatl - A name given to a Saurian Archon, who came unwittingly to Earth, and
was revered as a god for a time, before realizing Earth was Chthon. She then returned to Antarax, with hopes of leading a band of Reclaimationists back to establish Saurian rule.
Rapacian - Dendrian term (highly negative connotation) for a heterotrophic organism.
Rah - The Sun of the Antarax system.
Reclamationists - Zelotus sect of the Chthonians, bent on returning to - and
reclaiming by whatever means necessary - their home world (Earth, as it turns out).
Rex - aka Tiberius Rex, Mr. Tibbs, Tibbs; Tanners wayward cat, who returns and talks him through his future/past role as the Source.
Saurian - A warm-blooded, intelligent ancestor to the dinosaurs (specifically a breed of raptor pack-hunters). They evolved to their current state on the planet Antarax.
Saurodendrian Conflict - The often-violent struggle initiated by the Saurian Resistance
looking to exact revenge against the Dendrians for their genocide, lies, and generations of imprisonment in exile.
Saurian Resistance - Saurians who took the fight to the Dendrian Council with their
charges of genocide, exile, and overall dickishness.
Sentinel - A more advanced Sporecraft, sent by the Dendrian Council to scout out, and
prevent, future rapacian threats. (Chthonian Sentinel: the one sent to Earth.)
They had the power to bioselectively target particular organisms for eradication, and to then cover it up with a ‘natural disaster’.
Source, The - The being (in both Saurian and Dendrian legend - though known to the
Dendrians as the ‘Great Designer’) who will ascend to embody the full knowledge and power of Wotun.
Sporecraft - Dendrian ‘living ships’ which travel deep space in a hibernative state, and
then awaken when the arrive at the germinating warmth of a target sun.
Tanner - aka Christian Tannhauser, Hauser, Xian; the bartender who may or may not
have been the once or future Source.
Thorn - aka Demian, Damien, Demian Handa; your humble narrator of this tale.
Trent - aka The Silverback, Trenchcoat, Trent Treehorn, Gnarls; The Dendrian who engages Tanner.
Upheaval, The - The Ark rescue of select Saurians from Chthon (who were then taken
to Antarax), and the subsequent destruction of the remaining Saurian race by the Chthonian Sentinel.
Void, The - A sector of the Sagittarian Arm of the Milky Way which is abnormally vacant
of Main Sequence stars.
Wotun - The personification of the ‘Will of the Universe’.
Yggdrasil - Tanner’s underwatered ficus plant.Zadarak-Ra - A powerful Saurian general in the Saurodendrian conflict; respected on
both sides of the conflict both for his wisdom and his cunning in battle.