If you are already familiar with the Traveller setting – and that is to be recommended regardless – you can skip the glossary at no harm to yourself concerning comprehension of events. Without at least a cursory understanding of the realities surrounding the characters, following the story may be difficult; it is grounded in the geopolitical and technological realities of Marc Miller's world, but represent merely this author's interpretation. Any inconsistencies between the official setting and this book are to be interpreted as features of MTU (My Traveller Universe).
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Anagathics: Longevity-enhancing pharmaceuticals. Production of artificial anagathics requires advanced technology, but there exist rare substances that have similar effects. Due to matters of succession, often frowned upon in noble echelons.
Ancients: A presumably extinct race operating in known space roughly 300 000 years ago, achieving a technological level far beyond the contemporary major races, then vanishing after an apparent conflict of unimaginable proportions. Many Ancient ruins dot known space, but working artefacts are very rare. Physically, they appear to be similar, but not exactly, to Droyne.
Anglic: A language descended from Solomani English, currently widely used as the Third Imperium's lingua franca or trade language. Also popular among humans living outside of the Third Imperium.
Aslan: A lion-like major race, ruling their own empire called the Aslan Hierate, spinward and rimward of the Third Imperium. Highly tribal, and instinctively driven by the need to own territory.
Augments, cybernetics: Technological improvements to the human (or alien, or other organic entity) body. Most commonly encountered in the form of data presentation aids, communicators and replacement organs. The precise technologies used vary wildly. Augments are somewhat typically frowned upon in high society, especially if they're visible and/or done without medical necessity for them, but there exist worlds where almost everyone is enhanced this way.
Bay weapon: A weapon mounted in its own bay. Allows for much larger weapons than a mere turret, and is only uncommonly found on smaller ships.
Black globe generator: The bleeding edge of Imperial defensive technology, derived from Ancient artifacts. It functions as a two-way, energy-absorbing spherical field. Unfortunately, due to its all-or-nothing nature, one cannot simultaneously use it and see what is on the other side, much less fire weapons through it. Most designs involve a 'flickering' solution, which turns the field on and off in quick succession, allowing for the user to fire out when the black globe is off and block some percentage of enemy fire that happens to come when it is on.
Combat Armour: An advanced, air-tight suit used primarily by marines. It combines the utility of a vacc suit with a high amount of protection against all sorts of damage, including kinetic, laser, explosive and radiation.
Displacement ton, dton: A unit of volume measurement, equal to the amount of space taken up by one metric ton of liquid hydrogen – approximately 14 cubic meters.
Droyne: A winged humanoid major race, albeit one without its own interstellar empire. They are found everywhere in known space, and chiefly keep to themselves, being inscrutable to aliens. Physically similar to recovered depictions of the Ancients.
Fast Drug: A pharmaceutical that slows the patient's metabolism, up to sixty times. Frequently used on the dying to stave off death for transport or until help can arrive, and to conserve vital supplies (like air) in an emergency. Subjectively, users experience time go by incredibly quickly. Normally, the drug needs to wear off normally over the course of a couple of months, but advanced antidotes have been developed to remove this inconvenience.
First Imperium, the Ziru Sirka: The original Imperium – Ziru Sirka, or the Great Empire of the Stars – was established by the Vilani, in the centuries following their discovery of the Jump Drive, and expansion of their trade federation into neighbouring solar systems. Due to the Vilani being a race that favours stability and continuity, their interstellar polity achieved longevity via systemic and widespread suppression of technologies and modes of thought deemed dangerous to society. At the time of its contact with the Solomani Confederation, the Ziru Sirka was already greatly decadent. The Solomani managed to defeat it, despite the obvious disparity of size, and established the Second Imperium in its place.
Fuel: Just about any liquid or gas containing hydrogen in its composition can serve as fuel for fusion reactors, which are the most common source of power in the interstellar community.
Fusion gun: The cutting edge of Imperial weapons technology. Fires beams of fusing hydrogen.
Hivers: A starfish-like, tentacled major race of manipulators and schemers, ruling the Hive Federation, situated trailing and rimward of the Third Imperium.
Humaniti: A collective term for the human subraces, including the Solomani, the Vilani, the Zhodani and the myriad minor human races populating known space.
Hundred diameter limit: A 'safe' distance away from a celestial object, enabling use of the Jump Drive. It is possible to jump within that limit, but it is insanely dangerous and not guaranteed to work – a misjump is likely to occur.
Imperial Interstellar Scout Service, or the Scouts: An agency within the Third Imperium, tasked with maintaining communications, surveying member worlds and exploring the unknown on behalf of the Emperor. They frequently make use of the Type S Scout ship, a one-hundred displacement ton design common throughout the Imperium in many roles.
Jump Drive, or J-Drive: A technology enabling ships to spend roughly a week in another dimension as a means of travel to a distant destination. Typical distances that a starship equipped with a J-Drive can cross in a single "jump" are between one and six parsecs. J-Drives consume a lot of fuel to function, and are only usable outside of the influence of strong gravitational fields (such as those of planets, stars, and even larger starships).
K'kree: A centauroid major race, inhabiting an interstellar empire called the Two Thousand Worlds, situated trailing of the Third Imperium. The only major race descended from herbivore stock, highly xenophobic and genocidal against omnivores and carnivores.
Lasers: Typical starship weaponry. Beam lasers come in the economical 'pulse' variety, and the high-powered 'beam' variety. Both are considered beam weapons, however.
Low berth, cryonics: Low berths are technological devices that allow the cryonic suspension of organic life, enabling interstellar travel without straining life support systems. Medical emergency models are also common, where immediate medical aid is not possible.
Main: A group of star systems located at most one parsec apart from another system in the group, enabling a starship with a weak – and economic – Jump Drive to travel between them.
Major race: A race or species that has independently invented the Jump Drive, enabling interstellar travel. There are eight major races: the Vilani, the Solomani, the Zhodani, the K'kree, the Droyne, the Hivers, the Vargr and the Aslan.
Maneuver Drive, or M-Drive: A reactionless engine utilizing anti-gravity technology. While in of itself, it is not truly reationless, an application of the same technology – in the form of gravitic plates mounted under the floors – can compensate for acceleration on-board while moving. Ten gravities of acceleration are easily attainable using this form of propulsion, but compensation cannot typically handle that much, effectively restricting maximum performance to little more than half that on a particularly speed-optimized starship.
Meson gun: One of the Imperium's advanced anti-ship weapons. It functions similarly to a particle beam, except using meson particles, which pass through matter unhindered until they decay exothermically. This is useful because it permits the weapon to bypass most forms of protective barriers, such as armour.
Meson screen: A field that shields against meson particles.
Minor race: Any sapient species (sophonts) that is not a major race.
Misjump: The catch-all term for a jump procedure going catastrophically wrong. This may mean that the jump bubble fails to form at all, that it fails during transit, that the jumping ship emerges nowhere near their destination, that it doesn't emerge at all, or is otherwise dislocated in spacetime. Misjumps are commonly fatal to everyone involved.
Missiles: Missiles can be divided into conventional and nuclear, and also into dumb and smart. Conventional missiles use non-nuclear explosives to deliver their damage, while nuclear missiles utilize a fusion bomb to provide both a high energy explosion and a burst of radiation. Dumb missiles have minimalistic designs and fuel reserves that let them do one approach to their target only, while smart missiles, should they miss the first time, can turn around and reacquire their targets. Missiles move using M-Drives, at accelerations that would be lethal for most sophonts.
Nuclear screens: A type of defensive measure used by advanced spacefaring races. It dampens the effects of radiation around ships, but does not protect against explosions, or anything else.
Particle beam: A military weapon, which emits a stream of charged particles in order to deal damage. Heavily irradiates targets as well.
Plasma Gun, Man Portable, PGMP: Exactly what it says on the tin – artillery capable of being carried, even fired with adequate strength or gravitic compensation, by infantry. Its bigger brother is the FGMP - Fusion Gun, Man Portable.
Sandcaster: A type of starship defensive weapon. It fires fine sand which spreads over a volume of space, and can reduce the impact of beams passing through.
Second Imperium, the Rule of Man: The polity set up by the victorious Solomani on the corpse of the First Imperium. Due to the advanced decadence of the First Imperium, the Rule of Man inherited its troubles along with its population and structures. It collapsed only centuries after coming into existence, falling victim to an economic crisis of epic proportions and failure of central authority.
Ship armour: Comes in three common varieties – titanium steel, which is cheap and cost-effective, crystaliron which is better, costlier and the common choice for small ships, and bonded superdense, which packs an incredible amount of protection into incredibly little space, but costs a pretty penny, and requires highly advanced manufacturing to make. In addition, there are several types of film coating for hulls, such as reflective anti-laser, radiation-absorbent and non-reflective stealth paint.
Snub pistol: An anti-personnel sidearm designed for use inside ships. Firing soft slugs, it is unlikely to cause hull breaches, while remaining effective against soft targets.
Solomani: A human subrace and major race, originating from the Human homeworld of Earth (Terra), from where the Ancients transplanted the species to thousands of other worlds. Conquerors of the First Imperium, founders of the Second Imperium – the Rule of Man, which collapsed only a few centuries after its founding. Currently, the Solomani are organized into the Terran Confederation, and have recently lost their homeworld to the Third Imperium.
Spinward Marches: A frontier region of the Third Imperium, repeatedly contested by the Zhodani Consulate in Frontier Wars. Notable for the high concentration of Ancient ruins.
Spinward, rimward, trailing, coreward: The directions used by interstellar maps. 'Spinward' means in the direction of the galaxy's spin, while 'trailing' means the opposite direction. 'Rimward' means towards the edge of the galaxy, while 'coreward' means towards its center. While the galaxy is not actually flat in real space, thus requiring two more directions – up and down – interstellar maps reflect the jump space layout, where the abstraction of flatness is usefully applied.
Starport: A facility for handling spacecraft. Typically, it is one or both of the downport, facilities on the planet surface, and the highport – the space station in orbit around the planet. Worlds within the Third Imperium cede the starport and immediate surroundings to the Imperium directly, making the facilities extraterritorial, where only the basic, bare-bones Imperial law applies, rather than any planetary regulations.
Starship: Any vessel utilizing a Jump Drive, and thereby capable of interstellar travel. Ships of a volume greater than 2000 displacement tons are considered capital ships.
System Defence Boat: Spacecraft intended to defend a star system, which don't have a Jump Drive. Due to the amount of space the drive and the fuel for it take up, these vessels are usually more than capable of defeating a starship of equal tonnage.
Third Imperium: The largest human polity in known space, spanning eleven thousand star systems, founded on the ruins of two previous imperial states. Nominally an elective monarchy, de facto a hereditary one. Due to the rigors of interstellar travel, its domain is highly decentralized, individual archdukes, dukes, counts and other local decision-makers having broad authority to use their own initiative. Communication is maintained by a "pony express" network, utilizing small ships to jump between systems and deliver data, before jumping again – a message from one end of the empire to the other can take in excess of a standard year to reach its destination.
Trojan Reach: A frontier region of the Third Imperium, with many independent systems, rimward of the Spinward Marches.
Vacc Suit: A suit designed for survival in vacuum or near-vacuum. Advanced varieties are made with bullet-resistant materials, and are able to seal around small punctures. Most are rated for up to six hours of being cut off from external air supply, and have magnetic soles to aid movement in zero gravity.
Vargr: A major race of canine humanoids, altered from Terran wolves by the Ancients. They are found primarily in the Vargr Extents, coreward of the Third Imperium, but they lack any polities larger than a few dozen systems due to limitations of their psychology. Outside of the Extents, the Vargr are often found engaging in piracy.
Vilani: A human subrace and major race, originating in the system of Vland. Founders of the First Imperium, or Ziru Sirka – the Grand Empire of Stars, which collapsed thousands of fears ago.
Zhodani: A human subrace and major race, originating in the Zhodane system, spinward and coreward of the Third Imperium. Their system of government and societal order – the Zhodani Consulate – rests on the usage of psionic abilities, especially telepathy. Frequently at odds with the Third Imperium.