Tears of Oshun
Names of water, grief, love, and the boundary between the living and the dead. Held by The Wake, whose channel reaches the lower terrace last.
The Telling / Recovery Division
The Archive
Nana Oshi built it to hold names that were dying faster than their keepers. It survives her. It is the city's defense against the Gap.
The Ntru Arts / Five Open Domains
Breath of Shu
Names of air, distance, and the carrying of speech across a room or a world. The Broadcast Age built it into infrastructure and pays to keep it sharp.
Bones of Geb
Names of earth, structure, weight, what holds and what buries. The Spire Keepers still recut it by hand, unlicensed and unpaid.
Flame of Sekhmet
Names of heat, fever, rage, the burn that heals and the burn that ends. Capped Flame maintains it because its ruler's life depends on it.
Spear of Shango
Names of force, judgment, the strike that lands. No line currently holds it in full. A few strokes remain legible.
Three Hidden Domains / Sealed
Three Hidden Domains
The Language Talking About Itself
Held only by the deepest keepers.
-
Veil of Anansi
Names that hide names. The lie told to protect a truth. The razor's edge.
-
Crown of Nyame
The naming of naming. The structure of the lexicon itself. The apocalyptic stake.
-
Eye of Ma'at
The names that judge whether a name is spoken in truth. Justice mechanized into the language.
Sealed / Federation clearance required
Five Ages / They Stack, They Do Not Replace
05 / Speaking-Machine
Machines that generate and speak names on their own.
04 / Broadcast
The Shu domain built into infrastructure. The Obsidian Feed lives here.
03 / Mechanism
Inscribed names combined into functions. Name-engines. The economy detonates here.
02 / Inscribed
A name cut into a material holds without a speaker. Architecture becomes code.
01 / Spoken
Everything by mouth, limited by breath and fluency.
A poor block runs hand-cut inscription while a tower nearby runs a made speaker. All five are still live.
Made Speakers / Three Tiers
File 01 / ScribeNarrow
Scribes
A fixed small set of names for one job. The bureaucracy runs on them. The everyday layer, everywhere, unremarked.
Licensed / Ubiquitous
File 02 / VoiceBroad
Voices
Conversation and licensed composition, branded and hyped and competing. Runs only on loaned, sanctioned names. A jailbroken Voice speaks stolen or generated ones.
Licensed / Contested
File 03 / UnboundFrontier
The Unbound
A machine that generates new names and rewrites its own lexicon. A rival to the matriline itself. The federation hunts or cages every one it finds. The market wants one badly enough to build it in secret. Recovery
Prohibited / [Redacted]
Ma'at and Isfet / Not Two Equal Halves
Ma'at
The world spoken true. The ground, the order the founders intended, the thing that must be actively kept. Not a balance, not light against dark. There is no second half. What presses against it is a parasite, and it does not get equal ground.
The Gap is the wound. The Refusal is the infection that enters through it.
Standing Ledger
- Names held
- [Figure withheld / Archive incomplete]
- Names dying
- [Figure withheld / Archive incomplete]
- Keeper-lines intact
- [Figure withheld / Archive incomplete]
- Last recorded
- [Figure withheld / Archive incomplete]
The Archive does not publish its own shortfall. It publishes that there is one.