The Warp

The Warp is the thing itself — the lattice of portals seen whole, not as a chart but as a living cloth the world is woven on. The drift is a snagged thread in it. The lattice is the pattern of the threads. The Warp is the whole tapestry, perceived directly by a mind that can hold it.

Warp-aware

To be warp-aware is to see the weave and not only the ground laid over it. It is not a spell and not a rank; it is a way of perceiving that most people never come to and cannot be taught into. The Virindi are born with a share of it. The Empyreans worked as though they had it. Isparian latecomers inherited a world run on it and, almost to a soul, cannot see it at all.

The whole of DreamWeave's long climb is the slow earning of that sight. A traveller begins as an errand-runner for people who cannot comprehend the doors, and ends — if they go far enough — as someone who perceives the structure the doors sit in, working among the few others who share the perception.

The tapestry

Those who have the sight rarely speak of it plainly. When they must, they call it the tapestry — a word for the Warp used the way the devout name a thing they will not measure. It is the same cloth the lattice is drawn on; only the voice is different.

The fray

Where the warp-aware contend over the weave — the traveller's allies, and things that mean the world harm and can see exactly how to do it — the edges tear. Those contested edges are the fray, and they are the far country of this story, not its doorstep. A new traveller will not see them for a long while, and should be glad of it.

See also

• Lore · The Drift · The Meridian · The Loom