know.

CookbookBooks and writingNo. 3

A fantasy world encyclopediathe lore behind the story, indexed A to Z

Recipe No. 3 · Books and writing

For: A fantasy writer building one world across several books

You get: A linked encyclopedia of your world, indexed A to Z

Time: An evening to file, a weekend to check

See it in know.sh

The word list with a glossary of the world’s invented terms in its overview, each labelled with the shelf that holds its entry.

LanguagesNo. 8

Old Veyla short grammar and word list

31 sections, 6,120 words, about 26 minutes, 5 highlights, revised 14 September

Old Veyl is the tongue of the estuary folk, spoken now only in oaths, songs and place names. Most of the world’s invented terms come from it or through it, so the words a reader meets across all five shelves are glossed here first, each labelled with the shelf that holds its full entry.

The word list below gives each Old Veyl root, what it means and the names built from it.

Sections

  1. 1How Old Veyl is speltDecision, keyOne spelling for each sound: ey as in Veyl, never ai. Settles Veyl against Vail, and Oskarn against Oskarne.
  2. 2Osk, saltObservationOsk is the Old Veyl root for salt, the first half of Oskarn and of every word for the pans.
  3. 3Words for the tideObservationEleven words, from the neap to the spring tide the salt-wardens call the reclaiming.
  4. 4Is “tithe” an Old Veyl word or a translation?QuestionThe notebooks give it in the common tongue only. Decide before book two names the rite aloud.

and 27 more sections

The index across all five shelves. Oskarne and Vail appear because each turns up in two documents; a one-off misspelling never reaches the index.

know., Index, G · Look up, New, ⋯

The index, A–Z

Glass to Veyl

G

  • Glass
    • The Glass Tithe and how it is paid, 1, 4
    • The tithe-priests of the Glass Order, 2, 9

O

  • Oskarn
    • The river cities, 3, 6
    • The Tithe Wars, 2
  • Oskarne
    • The river cities, 9
    • The Age of Salt, years 1–412, 7

T

  • Tithe-priest
    • The tithe-priests of the Glass Order, 1, 4, 8
    • The Tithe Wars, 3, 5
  • Tithe-priests see Tithe-priest

V

  • Vail
    • The Northern Marches, 4
    • The Drowned Coast, 2
  • Veyl
    • The Veyl estuary folk, 1, 2, 5
    • The river cities, 1, 3
    • Old Veyl: a short grammar and word list, 1–4
The encyclopedia’s table of contents: a shelf per domain of the world, a document per region, people, era or tongue.

Contents, by shelf

Peoples3

  • The Veyl estuary folkNo. 3 · 9 sections
  • The tithe-priests of the Glass OrderNo. 7 · 12 sections
  • The hill clans of the MarchesNo. 11 · 6 sections

Places3

  • The river citiesNo. 2 · 14 sections
  • The Northern MarchesNo. 5 · 8 sections
  • The Drowned CoastNo. 12 · 5 sections

History2

  • The Age of Salt, years 1–412No. 4 · 11 sections
  • The Tithe WarsNo. 9 · 7 sections

Sorcery2

  • The Glass Tithe and how it is paidNo. 6 · 10 sections
  • Workings forbidden in the river citiesNo. 14 · 4 sections

Languages1

  • Old Veyl: a short grammar and word listNo. 8 · 31 sections

How it works

You know the salt city’s founding, the three schisms of the tithe-priests and the grammar of the old tongue, and a tenth of it will reach the page. Your assistant files your notebooks as five shelves of linked entries, and the A–Z index catches Oskarn and Oskarne before a reader does.

  1. Agree five shelves, then hand over the notebooks

    Peoples, Places, History, Sorcery and Languages. Give your assistant the notebooks and ask for an entry per named thing, using only what the pages say, with disagreements filed as a Decision.

  2. Write every entry to be found

    Title each entry with the name and a gloss, “Oskarn, the salt city”, and open it with a one-sentence definition. That first line is how its names reach the index.

  3. Link the entries and read the index

    Ask your assistant to link every entry that names another. Then read the index A–Z for pairs that should be one: Oskarn and Oskarne, Veyl and Vail.

  4. Gather a glossary, then a traveller’s guide

    Ask for a definitions element of every invented term at the head of the word list. Then Share a traveller’s guide for readers, without the secrets the next book needs.

Try this prompt

Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model):

Using know.sh, read the notebook pages I have given you and file every named person, people, place, event, working and word as an entry on the matching shelf of my world: Peoples, Places, History, Sorcery or Languages. Use only what the pages say. Title each entry with its name and a gloss, and open it with a one-sentence definition. Where pages disagree, file both versions in one Decision section.

Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model):

Using know.sh, find invented names that appear in more than one spelling anywhere on my five world shelves (for example Oskarn and Oskarne), including spellings used only once. For each pair, list the entries that use each spelling and which appears in the earliest-filed entry. Do not change anything.

Made with

ShelfYour AI assistantLinks between documentsElementsThe A–Z indexPublic link

See also