Midsummer: one of the two major holidays on Hara (the other is Midwinter), celebrated by nearly everyone; also marks the beginning and end of most off-world contracts, and clan elections are held then.
mir, miri: traditional term of respect for a man of slightly superior rank; as there is no true generic plural, miri is generally used for groups of mixed gender.
mirrim, mirrimi: traditional term of respect for a woman of slightly superior rank.
mosstaas: literally, “mustache"; Bonemarche’s city militia, which also functions as a kind of police force.
odd-bodied: colloquial generic term for herms, mems, and fems.
offetre: literally “offering"; an act or object produced by a man or woman acting as one of the spirits.
pharmaceutical, pharmaceuticals: generic term for all off- world companies doing business on Hara.
player: an off-worlder who is involved in trade, or who is willing to pay for sexual favors; not a common term outside of Bonemarche and assimilated areas.
presance: a danced or sung commentary on political issues; by staging the comment as a performance, the performers avoid the legal and customary ban on “frivolous” (i.e., unsanctioned by authority) discussions of politics in a public place or manner; the technique, developed out of the rana tradition, has been most commonly used by groups advocating closer ties with the Concord.
rana, ranas, also rana band, rana dancers: a group of men and women who use traditional drum dances to express a political opinion; rana performances are traditionally protected by the Trickster, and by custom cannot be stopped unless the ranas make an explicit request for their audience to take political action. Ranas traditionally wear multicolored ribbons, a mark of the Trickster, as a sign of their special status.
rover: small, four-seat vehicle used to carry paying passengers around the urban centers.
sea-harvest: generic term for the myriad products gathered from Hara’s oceans and either used locally or sold to off-world buyers.
seraal, seraals: the harvest territory controlled by a mesnie; this may be either a stretch of land with its trails and growing plants, or a stretch of beach and ocean bottom.
seraaliste, seraalistes: the man or woman within each clan who is primarily responsible for negotiating with the off-world buyers; he or she is also responsible for mediating among his or her clan’s mesnies. This is an elective office.
shaal: length of fabric, often highly decorated, used to wrap head and shoulders in traditional Haran clothing.
shay: most common cargo vehicle on Hara, with a broad, usually open cargo platform and a two-seat driver’s cab.
the spirits: celestial beings that occupy an intermediate position between God (defined as ineffable, unknowable, and not terribly interested in human beings) and Man. The spirits inter- cede for and interact with human beings, and grant favors more willingly, and as a result, their worship, through services and offetre, is far more important to most Harans than the distant God. Harans generally believe that a man or woman can take on some of the characteristics of a spirit, either through dance, concentration, or sheer serendipity, and when in that state, his or her acts are seen as the actions of the spirit.
Agede, the Doorkeeper: Agede’s domain is change, death, birth, and healing.
the Captain: the Captain’s domain is that of power, action, and battle; he is also the patron of sailors and travelers.
Caritan, the Cripple: her domain is fate and compassion, and she both provides charity and punishes the wicked; proverbially “the Cripple moves slow but she doesn’t stumble.”
Cousin-Jack, the Harvester, also Cousin: Cousin’s domain is the land and its flora, as well as the deep jungle, and he is also the spirit of hearth and home.
Genevoe, the Trickster: he is patron of ranas and other performers, and the changeable spirit of holiday and weather; his particular domain is the ocean shallows.
the Heart-breaker: she is the spirit of lust, love, and spring- time; her domain is the deep sea; she is also the protector of children and fools.
Madansa of the Markets, also the Marketwoman: she is the spirit of the marketplace, and of kitchens and food; she is generally considered to be Cousin’s daughter or wife, and so subservient to his authority in the mesnie.
swetemetes: literally, sweetmeats; sexual insult implying prostitution, usually used of men.
three-up: a shay that has been modified to carry at least one more passenger, at the cost of a reduced passenger area.
tonnere, tonnere-bas: the deepest of the traditional drums, and the one that generally carries the dance rhythm.
trade: specifically, the semi-organized business of sex (paid for in money or favors) between off-worlders and indigenes of either legal gender; because these transactions take place outside the normal social systems, and involve unusually large sums of money and/or metal as inducement, an indigene in trade, whether a man or a woman, is not necessarily considered to be a prostitute. By extension, the term also covers indigenes and off-worlders who facilitate the buying and selling of sexual favors, and the various permits that allow off-worlders to stay on Hara.
vendee: a man or woman who holds customary or legal title to a space in a recognized market.
vieuvant: an “old soul,” a man or woman who is recognized as a reliable and accurate conduit for the will of one or more of the spirits; some vieuvants speak only for one spirit, others for more than one.
Watch: the largest division of Haran society, based on the original divisions of the ship that brought the first colonists to Hara. There are five Watches: White (command), Blue (medical/scientific), Black (engineering), Green (land-trained colonists), and Red (ocean-trained colonists). Watches retain certain administrative duties, and are also used to determine marriageability; the larger clans are split between Watches to help keep the genetic mix stable.
Watch Council: the closest thing to a central governing body on Hara, the Watch Council consists of three representatives from each of the Watches, elected from the clans within that Watch according to a complex (and variable) formula based on both population and wealth.
wrangwys: literally, “wrong way,” generally used to refer to herms, mems, and fems, and anyone whose sexual preferences don’t match the male/female model; has been adopted by that group as a self-referential term and is not insulting within the group.
wry-abed: the politest colloquial term for men who prefer to have sex with men and women who prefer to have sex with women.