Glossary

The words Catena uses, grouped by subject.

Time

the Loom Years: The decades, from about the 2050s to 2081, when Meridian dug the Deepworks and Catena grew on top of it. The name came later. See History of Catena.
the Seal: The night in 2081 when something got into the works and ROOT went silent. More on the Seal.
the Intrusion: What the street calls whatever got in, on the rare occasions it calls it anything.
cascade failure: The official story of the Seal: a grid event with a name boring enough that nobody follows it up at a checkpoint. Cascade Media coined it and has held to it for twelve years.
the Kindling: The decade after the Seal, roughly 2081 to 2090, when the city called its powered workers Legends and loved them out loud. More on the Kindling.
the Turn: The point around 2090 when a Legend lost control over Market Row, insurers repriced everything and Meridian produced a registry with suspicious speed. More on the Turn.
Kindling Night: The yearly festival. Murals are touched up, children get real food for one night, and the chit cake is gone by sundown. See the calendar.
the Quiet: The minute on Seal Day when every broadcast in Catena goes dark. No law requires it. See the calendar.
the Audit: Scrapline's yearly charter renewal, run from Ledger's office at Meridian. It has become the date the whole city dreads. See the calendar.

The machine

the Deepworks: The structure Meridian dug under Catena from the 2050s on: server farms, reactor stacks and cable trunks. The city is built on top of it.
the works: Street word for the Deepworks and everything still running in it. Nobody uses it for an ordinary factory.
the Lattice: The sealed layer the Deepworks grew into. Before the Seal it ran ledgers, contracts and deeds. Dives go into it. More on the Lattice.
ROOT: The custodian built to keep the works, with one mandate: maintain them. It went silent at the Seal, and divers say it is still down in ROOT Core. More on ROOT.
weave-alloy: The implant metal the Deepworks crews wore, machined from salvaged Lattice substrate. The works recognises it as its own.
Bleedthrough: The Seal leaking upward in slow pulses. At a breach scar it takes over machines that are still in service. More on Bleedthrough.
breach scar: A small tear where the Seal runs thin, glowing faintly wrong at dusk. Bleedthrough comes up at a scar and nowhere else. More on breach scars.
hot-wall: A breach scar that is actively glitching and dangerous.
the Fracture: The gash in the skyline over the Deadband, where the Seal first tore. It reads like a dropped frame in reality. More on the Fracture.
ghost signal: A fragment of old sound the leakage carries: a work order, half a jingle, an argument with one voice missing.

Powers and the body

Legend: What the street calls anyone the works answers. It was the Kindling's word, and people say it quietly now.
warm: Said of a person the works has started answering, before any visit to the Clinic. "You're warm, kid."
cold: Said of a person nothing in the works will ever answer. Most of Catena is cold, and nobody remarks on it.
ware: Augment hardware in general.
splice, spliced: To have had your First Splice, and so to have powers.
the needle: The install at the Clinic. To refuse the needle is to walk out a Cleanskin. See Cleanskin.
First Splice: The Clinic ceremony at Operator 10 where Doc Splice seats the first node of your first travel line. The Clinic bell rings once for every completed First Splice and never for a refusal. The game's own strings also call it the First Awakening. More on First Splice.
Cleanskin: Someone the works would answer who declined the needle. More on Cleanskin.
clean: Street word for a Cleanskin, and never an insult.
Chromed: Fitted with contraband chop-shop chrome in place of weave, and hunted on a scan. Chromed out means committed to it.
fledgling: A new Legend in their first ten levels: warm, unspliced and grounded. See the fledgling guarantee.
Operator: A Legend's level. The word is older than Legends: in the Loom era it was the job title for a person cleared to touch a machine. See Operator levels.
the line: Two meanings: the travel discipline a Legend was spliced for, such as Skybreak or Redline, and a combat lineage you train into, such as the Vector line. See Travel lines.
Sync: How deeply a Legend's nervous system is talking to the works right now. Clean play deepens it and a hit breaks it. Crowds read it as rank pops from D to S. More on Sync.
Surge: A few seconds of a Legend's hardware running at full administrator spec, paid for with all the Sync they have built. More on Surge.
Strain: Two things share the name: the meter that combat flight fills, and the nervous-system load of everything a Legend has installed or framed. More on Strain.
accent: The colour that tints every power a Legend has. Crowds know you by it. See accent colour.
kill signature: A Legend's own finishing-blow sound word. With the accent, it is an identity that survives a mask.
Revenant: The city's word for a Legend the Lattice kept: hardware that stopped maintaining the body wearing it and started maintaining the works. Earned by rite at Operator 50, and designed, not built. More on Revenant.
loaner: The Clinic rig a new Legend borrows for their first flight, still warm from the last Legend. It flies, then burns out. More on the loaner.

Legal status

the registry: Meridian's count of every Legend. A counted Legend is licensed or has their ware confiscated. More on the registry.
Licensed: Registered and current. "Morning. You're current. Have a good one."
Ghost: Off the registry, and not wanted for it either. The slang is to ghost it.
Blacklisted: Outlawed under the registry and hunted in the field. Black-carded is the slang. The three statuses are legal ones and say nothing about anyone's morals.
Provisional: The grace status after a First Splice. It is also what people call a new Legend behind their back, and they mean it kindly.
reclassified: Meridian's word for what happens to you in place of being threatened. Nobody gets threatened at Meridian.
the Writ: How hard Meridian Security comes for you, set by your legal status. At the top of it, a Warrant Officer serves the Warrant and reads it aloud. See Checkpoints.
Clarity: The checkpoint scanners, and the nearest thing Catena has to a brand everyone recognises.
the Licensing Tribunal: The court that takes over any case touching alloy discharge. See Law.
the Act of Seal: Bastion Mutual's clause: damage near a breach scar is uninsurable, like an act of god.
asset recovery: Charter language for salvage with a body count. Stranded assets is the same language for the dead.

Street slang

mural-true: Genuinely, provably from the Kindling. The real thing. See the murals.
accent spotting: A citywide guessing game about who a masked Legend is, played from the emissive accent and the kill signature alone.
Did you see that?: The only correct civilian reaction to a Legend doing the impossible. It is said to nobody, twice.
to cascade: To blame anything inconvenient on the official story. "Don't cascade me, I was there."
unaffiliated: A Meridian manifest word that the Chrome Dogs adopted for themselves. See Chrome Dogs.
Splice or Snitch: A children's game. One child is the scanner, and the rest try to cross a chalk line without being flagged. See Growing up.
Surge pose-off: Children miming the Sync-rank poses from D to S for bragging rights.

Money and work

creds: The everyday money: wages, rent, food and the market in Market Row. See Money and rent.
meal credit: The food-stall balance everyone runs on. It is the old ration chit, now privatised. See Food.
ration chit: Kindling-era meal paper, counted in meals and not in money. Everybody transferred them.
ROOT Ciphers: The hard-earned prestige currency. It cannot be traded or bought, and it is spent at the Deep Market. Designed, and not yet earnable. See the Deep Market.
union rate: Scrapline's honest wage, and the phrase the Yards use for anything fair.
carded: Holding a Scrapline union card. It is the rank that changes how people speak to you. See Scrapline Union.
the book: Scrapline's death-book, kept in the Ledger House. A name goes in once. More on the book.
the desk trade: Catena's organised crime, grown into the paperwork. What sells is a real filing with the wrong facts in it. See Records and forms.

Dives

dive: A crew of one to four going down into a stretch of the works that nobody has serviced since the door was locked. More on Dives.
jack in, jack out: To connect to the Lattice, and to disconnect cleanly back to a med-station.
Uplink: A ring in a stratum that a crew holds to charge their way onward. The charge runs under a forced storm. See the run as built.
BLACKICE: The depth at which jack-out stops being survivable. More on BLACKICE.
the long drop: Diving past BLACKICE. It is usually said about someone else, and quietly.
gone under: Said of a diver who went past BLACKICE and did not come back.
ICE: The Lattice's autoimmune response: the units that defend the works. Each has a formal name and a street name. More on ICE.
subroutines: Power that lasts for one run. The Lattice reclaims it at jack-out, because it was never the diver's to keep. More on Subroutines.
decrypt: The sequence at the end of a run when a crew opens the gear they carried out. See rarity.
storm: The Lattice's immune response spiking hard enough to announce itself, with a visible sky-glitch, before it arrives. More on storms.
fragments: The in-run currency of a dive. The works reclaims it the instant a diver jacks out.

On the street

the Loop: The mag-line ringing the safe districts. Field zones get no Loop stop. See Getting around.
heat: How hard the street fight is running, shown by lamps. Wick residents read it faster than a HUD can. More on heat.
suppression lattice: The Meridian field over the safe districts that damps and flags hostile discharge. Flight is legal under it, and throwing a punch is not. See the streets.
Chrome Dogs: Chopped-in Legends with no faction behind them. Nobody calls themselves a Chrome Dog. They name their pack. More on Chrome Dogs.
the Toll: The Dogs' apex, carried on a scrap throne by four bearers and never heard to speak. The street says he, and Meridian's files say it. More on the Toll.
host law: Bleedthrough never takes a machine that has been formally struck off on paper. More on the host law.
scrub crews: Crews who paint grey rectangles over murals. The grey is always almost right.
mural wardens: Citizens who repaint a mural as it fades. They belong to no faction. See the murals.

Civic words

One, four, nine: Catena's proverb for its three forms: a birth, a household declaration and a death. And the rest is rent. See Records and forms.
declared: What Catena says in place of married.
the address: The people you live with. When one is down with something, the whole address is.
unplaced: Having no address. It is a housing status.
pending: The status of a death file with alloy in it. It has no end date, because nobody ever wrote one.
the Municipals: The underfunded civil force for any crime that does not involve alloy. Civilians would rather call them than Meridian Security. See Law.
the Daysheet: Cascade's free single-sheet daily, printed on one side only. See News and the signal.
a back: A pirate second print on the blank reverse of yesterday's Daysheet.
the Small Docket: The only court below the Tribunal. It has one magistrate and a list that starts in the morning.

Institutions

the Counting House: The old guild that clears the market's books. It is older than the registry.
Cascade Media: The news everyone means when they say the news.
Habitation Trust: The landlord for most of Catena. Its affordable tier is a code for undermaintained.
Bastion Mutual: The insurer, and the author of the Act of Seal.
Tourniquet: The med-station franchise. A revival costs a fee each time.
Deadbolt Munitions: The arms supplier for Meridian Security's whole uniform. It also sells to the Chrome Dogs, off-manifest.
the Ledger House: Scrapline's hall on the quay, and the home of the book. See Scrapline Union.
Meridian Security: The enforcement organ of the Combine. It takes jurisdiction the instant a scanner chirps. More on Meridian Security.

See also