A — K
Camouflage vestment
The merchant-mask worn by a relay-house when addressed by strangers. Composed of an honest server-name, its true certificate, and the manner of an ordinary shop. Profane: "front".
Firescreen
(1) The hearth-guard of a relay-house. (2) By extension, any device that lets meaning pass and curiosity not. The order's founding tool.
Iteron
The sacred unit of patient traffic: one iteron is the payload a well-tended spirit will carry while a candle burns unmoved. The order's accounts are kept in iterons to discourage haste. Profane: loosely, "good bandwidth".
Quiet traffic
Traffic that arrives, accomplishes and departs without witness. The order's highest product. Notable for what it is not: not anonymous, not lawless, not loud.
Relay-house
A single consecrated hearth: copper, faith, and a road onward. Houses are deliberately small, deliberately numbered, and deliberately dull on augury. Profane: "server".
Short-sigil (shortid)
A seal of eight-odd runes by which a house recognises the litany variant a supplicant was taught. Renewed at each great tithe. A supplicant bearing an old sigil is not rejected; they are merely mistaken for a customer of the merchant-mask, and served accordingly.
L — Z
Tithescribe
The officer of a relay-house who keeps the roll of shadows (see Oath of the Private Key), levies the maintenance tithe and answers auguries. In the smaller houses the tithescribe also cooks.
Transit-lane
The guarded road between two houses, invisible to the outer dark, walked only by fresh handshakes. A lane whose handshake grows old is re-consecrated before any traffic is trusted upon it.
Warp-toll-keeper
Local lord's examiner of traffic, dwelling at the segmentum's edge. Honourable in their way: they do not read the traffic, only weigh it. The order's litanies are shaped to be light on the scales. Profane: "deep packet inspection".
"Define, then defend: the lexis is the first firescreen." — maxim of the Lexicanum's founder, whose name the order holds in quiet