Glossary¶
Quick reference for the world of Landfall. Link here from anywhere with ../codex/glossary.md#anchor.
- Nandana
- The terraformed seed-world humanity colonizes; a designed second Earth. Named by the colonists for a mythic garden. See Nandana.
- The Cradle
- Earth — dying, resource-starved, and left behind. The colony's lost origin; there is no going back.
- The Odyssey
- The one-way colony ship that carried humanity to Nandana; too vast to land, it holds orbit fuel-dry and grounded (stranded — unable to descend or depart) as the colony's orbital ark and central base. Carries the salvaged teleport gate, Kurma. See The Colony.
- The Progenitors
- The ancient makers — terraformers of Nandana and seeders of life across the sector. Exiled from the sector by the Mara. Benefactors or slavers, and their connection to humanity (if any), all unresolved. See The Progenitors.
- The Custodians
- The Progenitors' automated guardian host, left to tend and defend Nandana. Act 1 enemy; potential ally once their grid is turned. See The Custodians.
- The Mara
- The Progenitors' firstborn seed-race, who overthrew their makers and hold Nandana sacred. Antagonists of Acts 2–3. See The Mara.
- The Seeding
- The Progenitor practice of engineering worlds and the life — including sapient races — that fill them. See The Seeding & the Lineage.
- The Seed-Heart
- The Progenitor engine at Nandana's core that made the world; the focus of Act 3. May be able to signal the exiled Progenitors home.
- Landfall
- Both the game's title and the founding event — humanity's first descent to Nandana's surface at 0 AL (the colonists' landfall, not the ship's; the Odyssey stays in orbit). The colony calendar counts in AL (After Landfall).
- Yaksha
- Feral Custodian maintenance drones gone wild — cheap, swarming husks. A common early enemy. See The Custodians.
- Aranya
- The Custodian oversoul — the command intelligence that believes it is the garden. See Aranya.
- The Raid Loop
- Landfall's core gameplay loop: teleport down, hold an objective, salvage, and get home before the Tether breaks. See The Raid Loop.
- The Tether
- The held teleport link between a deployed squad and Kurma, the gate aboard the orbiting Odyssey. It only holds while the ship is overhead; when its orbit carries it below the horizon the link desyncs — the mission clock. See The Raid Loop.
- Kurma
- The salvaged Progenitor matter-gate the colony mounted aboard the orbiting Odyssey as its teleport anchor; named for the myth of the tortoise that braced the churning of the ocean. The ship's own pass overhead is the mission window. See The Raid Loop.
- Snap-back
- Emergency recall. Fires when an operator goes down or the Tether desyncs; it rescues the living body but not anything carried — all cargo drops on the ground. Why the squad has no permadeath and failure costs resources, not lives. See The Raid Loop.
- The Reserve
- The mercy loadout — crude, human-made kinetic gear the Odyssey's fabricators can always print, issued after a total loss. Troops call it driftwood. The infinite floor of the salvage curve. See The Raid Loop.
- Harvester node
- A deployable machine that mines and stores resources on-site over time; the yield must be physically collected and carried home via a clean extraction. See The Raid Loop.
- Viable Population
- The colony's living, working, breeding number — the campaign life-bar. Falls through attrition and failed defenses; grows by founding and supplying colonies and by waking Sleepers. Below the Minimum Viable Population (MVP) floor the colony is doomed: the campaign loss condition. See The Raid Loop.
- The Long Sleep
- The cold sleep in which most of humanity crossed the Long Dark, held in the Odyssey's Berths; the sleepers are the colony's finite reserve of future crew. See Waking the Crew.
- The Manifest
- The roster of cold-sleeping colonists (Sleepers), each a candidate with a role, skills, and a story. When a crew slot opens you wake one from the Manifest. See Waking the Crew.
- Reveille
- The waking of one Sleeper — the campaign's crew progression. Earned by building the capacity (quarters, life-support, rations) to house a new colonist; each Reveille lets you choose one candidate from the Manifest. See Waking the Crew.
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