A list of common words, phrases, and objects encountered in Orycto

• Bobbing, bobbing his/her/their ears,: To flirt or behave in a coy manner.
  • Originates from the practice of bucks weighting or tying back their ears in preparation for courting.
• Bow Clip: A device clipped onto a bow to hold additional arrows for quicker loading. The standard model holds the arrows in a set of brushes and runs parallel to the arms of the bow with the larger models often using more mechanical methods and running parallel to the direction of fire. The device speeds up firing by combining the drawing of the arrow and the string into a single motion.
• Brace: A clasp or clip worn on the ear or to pin ears together. Typically made of brass, gold, wood, or ceramics with carved designs.
  • Initially a traditional adornment worn by bucks out of a superstition that they would act as charms to protect their partner during battle. Traditional braces would be worn on both ears for does at war and one ear for those who had died or gone missing. The most traditional carving is of a bun holding a shield.
• By/In the Danglers: Either an extremely precarious situation or an extremely close escape from danger.
  • Refers to catching oneself by the dangling safety ropes and nets hanging from an airship.
• Darts: Small 1 person airships. Almost exclusively used for aerial combat and with a heavy focus on speed over maneuverability.
• Disk Blade: A thrown weapon consisting of a wooden or ceramic disk with a sharpened metal edge along the outside. Sometimes the edge is serrated and the size of the disk can vary heavily. The largest typically seen is a little larger than the size of the users head.
• Eyay: Dwarf bun word for air, it has become adopted as the general term for all devices involved in powering and maintaining flight on airships. The Eyay power core uses alchemically charged fluids to generate large amounts of magic that is then directed at the ground to maintain flight and into air magic to generate thrust for movement.
• Papernet: A primitive parachute made from alchemically treated paper.
• Safety/Hook Belt, Boots, Gloves, Vest: Gear with attached hooks or clips designed to hook onto safety nets or rails on airships.
  • While vests and belts are the most common and are often required PPE for any buns on the outer decks of ships some more adventurous individuals use hooks attached to the gloves or belt to enable them to rapidly maneuver around the ships.
• Safety Nets: A net of rope or cable extended around the outside of most airship decks and dangling along underneath most ships for the purpose of catching or enabling any buns falling overboard to catch themselves.
  • Danglers: Ropes and nets hanging down from the underside of airships. While they can act as a secondary safety catch in transit they have two primary purposes. The first purpose is their use in anchoring and boarding airships when in areas where there's no proper airport, the ropes and nets can both be tied to the ground or used as rope ladders. The second purpose is that the nets are attached onto each other when air ships tie together. The connected nets provide a complete safety catch for the space in between the ships.
• Scrigg Shell: Something laughable, ridiculous, or of extremely low quality.
  • Developed from a classist stereotype of poor farmers using scrigg molts as roofing material.
• Scutt: Refers to the short tail of the bun but also is used as a common expletive for the hindquarters.
• Spitt/Shine: Refers to waste products from an Eyay core. Spitt has a consistency similar to room temperature grease in that it is slick yet tacky. It is a hazard for two major reasons, the first is that it is an extreme desiccant, contact with the skin causes a very rapid dehydration of the touched area that can result in a burn-like rash. The second hazard is that as Spitt absorbs moisture it decomposes into Shine. Shine is far less viscous but reacts with nitrogen in the air. The reaction causes it to glow with a bright blue light and produce nitrogen dioxide gas, which is dangerous to inhale. As a result disposal of Spitt is a major concern to airships and airborne cities.
  • Disposal is currently done by storing Spitt in a large vat with a layer of magically engineered mold and a layer of oil on top. The mold steadily converts Spitt into an inert sedimentary compound that can be safely dried and burned. The process takes close to 5 days per gallon and so functioning facilities have to be very large.
• Verdig Blade, Verdig Pole, Verdig Dagger, etc: Any blade shaped after the flower/pitcher of the verdig tree, having a long double edged body with a curved hook portion at the base.
  • As the shape can be readily adapted to a wide range of handles, sizes, and proportions it becomes used in most any kind of weapon with an edged component. The hooked portion is doubled as both a hand-guard and a disarming tool. Design began from pole arms but was adapted into other designs(such as swords or knives) as they became popular.
• Whales: While most traditionally used to describe exceptionally large airships it ended up becoming a general term for any airship that uses a balloon or gas sac to provide lift as a result of many large ships using them. Because such components often severely reduce the speed and agility of the ship it also became slang for anyone slow or not very bright.