The Waking God Protocols (full title The Waking God Protocols : Human History & What You Can Do About It) is a Templar operations manual written by Judas Lang. A loosely structured collection of essays, reports, historical findings and diatribes peppered with technical diagrams and DNA sequences, the book claims to reveal the true origins of the human race, details the war the humans fought for independence from the overseers, claims that the extinct alien race will return and lays out a series of methods and means for preparing humanity for the coming war.

Heirotus is the galaxy's premiere manufacturer of mass abstraction hardware, a leader in carbon computing and genetic engineering, and the sole manufacturer of the Biomagnetic Transfer System (BTS), humanity's first entirely synthetic means of FTL travel. The company originally specialized in academic research until a crucial discovery in the early 1960s generated a massive patent portfolio, making Heirotus founder and sole shareholder Brandon James the richest man in the galaxy.

Founded by Judas Lang almost immediately after he left Heirotus, Expert Technologies Limited (ETL) dominates the recreational genetics and carbon computing markets. While ETLs' primary business is the medical and recreational manipulation of the human genome, the company has also taken an interest in advanced electronics, ballistics, and various heavy lift technologies.

ETL was sued by Heirotus immediately after its first patent filing. The case was settled in ETL's favor prior to discovery.

Thule Garrison is a Templar lodge founded by Mike West and Ivan Kursk in 1968. The name was initially something of a joke - at the time of its foundation, Thule Garrison was quite literally off the map. While the region of space made its way onto preliminary ICG charts in the 1980s, the Garrison is located deep in an AEI sinkhole - a region of space in which an FTL transition is extremely difficult, even for talented navigators.

A semi-secret society formed by an alliance of complementary initiatic traditions, the Templar are a loose-knit order of enlightened individuals dedicated to the exploration and documentation of human potential.

Since Judas Lang took control of the organization, the Templar are also a well equipped and capable paramilitary force, financed almost entirely by Expert Technologies.

A Colonial Authority is a corporation that has been delegated key responsibilities of the state within a specific region of space. Colonial Authorities are invariably influential mega-corporations with a significant number of government contracts - so significant that the state has determined that it's better to keep them happy than it would be to run the risk of pissing them off.

The designation is typically granted to corporations that provide services deemed vital to human health and security, whose assets and income total more than sixty percent of the gross domestic product of the company's geographical area of operations, and for whom the state (or a major state contractor) is the primary source of revenue.

A rough equivalent would be the East India Company.

PLAMPT (Premiere Landscaping and Manure Processing Technologies) is a waste treatment and disposal corporation headquartered in Morgan Bay, Helios. Originally centered on the landscaping market, the fledgling PLAMPT quickly realized that the enormous demand for high quality fertilizer both planet-side and in space hydroponics presented golden opportunities in the waste extraction, processing, compaction and storage markets. In 451 PLAMPT introduced the COMMANDER series of self-contained bacteria-powered commodes and urinals, available in zero-gravity and gravity-assisted variants.

Am is the colloquial (and technically incorrect) term for a "condensed" quad-axial space, accessible by certain life forms and organic technologies. Am is a form of "hyperspace," in which travel and communication circumvent general relativity. Prior to the development of the Heirotus BTS, Am was only accessible via the will of humans possessing certain genetic mutations unique to navigators.

Motion in Am is possible through five dimensions - the XYZ axis, time, and "depth." Space condenses along the depth axis while time does not, effectively enabling "realtime" FTL travel on a logarithmic scale.

The Veil is the common term for the membrane between the Universe and pocket universes. The term is also applied to the space between successive pocket universes which, if they exist, are accessed linearly. Objects in the veil effectively exist in two realities until transitioned to one or the other. Objects in the veil are not visible to either reality, though both realities are visible from the veil. Whichever reality is "closer" is the more sharply defined of the two.

A cognitively-informed plane of perception, Astral Space is a blanket term applied to Astral Projection, Remote Viewing, and other forms of cognitive or psychic non-corporeal translocation in which the physical location of the characters has little or no bearing on events or actions. It is, in short, "Head Space." While Am and the Veil share certain visual similarities, the key difference is that astral space is perceived only by directed mental observation, and perception depends entirely on the worldview of the participants - accounts of Astral events vary wildly from person to person, and those not directly involved often don't see anything at all.

Dyluck appears to be capable of physical relocation through Astral Space, though this may be how she perceives the act. As physical travel through a cognitive plane is presumed impossible, a more likely explanation is that while Dyluck perceives it as an Astral act, she is in fact generating a biomagnetic transfer through Am.