The Sword of Truth universe

This article details the concepts and terminology in the fantasy novel series The Sword of Truth, created by Terry Goodkind.

Geography
The fictional universe created by Goodkind in The Sword of Truth series consists of two lands - the New World and the Old World.

The New World is made up of three roughly equal-sized regions: D'Hara in the east, Westland in the west, and the Midlands between the two. These three regions are divided by mountain ranges and, in the time between the series' first novel and its prequel, by magical barriers called the Boundaries as well. Additionally, the Midlands are split by the immense Rang'Shada mountain range.

D'Hara consists of a number of lands that were united under the rule of Panis Rahl, who conquered his neighbors one by one until the entire eastern third of the New World was under his sway. The Midlands is made up of several separate yet distinct lands and Kingdoms while still bowing to the rule of the Council of the Midlands. The Council of the Midlands is made up of ambassadors and representatives from all the Kingdoms of the lands of the New World and was ultimately presided over by the Mother Confessor of the Confessors Order. Westland, which also consists of a number of lands, was created for people of the Midlands who wanted nothing more to do with magic of any kind.

The Old World was introduced in the second installment of the series as a land much larger than the New World and is separated from it by magic. Little is known of its geographical features.

The background history to the series involves an ongoing war fought for many thousands of years over whether or not Wizards should be allowed to rule people or required to serve them. The story's focus is in large part tied to a dramatic attempt to stop the war roughly three thousand years earlier. In an attempt to end the conflict, both sides began constructing towers that derived their power from Wizards' life forces. The Black Towers were invested with the life force of Wizards who were forced to surrender their lives unwillingly. The White Towers were invested with the life force of Wizards who gave themselves over willingly by believing that doing so would eventually end the war. Both sides rushed to complete their series of towers first, but neither side was able to complete their line of towers, as any wizard who came close enough to create the last tower was killed by the powerful magics. This created a virtually impenetrable but ultimately incomplete barrier separating the New World and the Old World and ending the war in a stalemate.

Languages

 * High D'Haran - an ancient language of D'Hara; it is a literary fictional language created by Goodkind.

Magical peoples
There are many types of magic that exists in The Sword of Truth universe. Additive magic has the power to heal, create, and alter things by adding to or changing what is already there. It can be used as a destructive force as well as a creative one. Subtractive magic derives from the underworld and has the power to eliminate, kill, destroy, or otherwise remove things from existence. When both sides are combined, magic can be used for great good or great destruction. It is explained many times in the series that magic itself is neither good nor evil; it simply exists, for its wielders to use as they wish.

Confessors
Confessors are a group of women born with a magical power that allows them magnify the love a person has for her. They were created by wizards to oversee the welfare of the people in the Midlands.

Mord-Sith
The Mord-Sith are an elite group of women warriors originating from D'Hara. They were created to defend the master of D'Hara, Lord Rahl, from creatures or people with magic. A Mord-Sith has the unique ability to capture others' magic and use it against them. A Mord-Sith is selected from the gentlest and kindest girls in D'Hara and is trained from a young age on three levels. Each time, she must be "broken." The first breaking is a time during which she is tortured to the point of obedience so strong that she would do absolutely anything her master/mistress tells her, without question or hesitation. This part of the training breaks her of her sense of self and personal desires. During the second breaking, she is forced to watch as her teacher slowly and brutally tortures her mother to death. This is to break her of compassion. The third, and arguably the most difficult, breaking is when she is given the instrument of torture and must inflict pain and suffering upon her own father until she finally kills him. When she has completed this task, the Lord Rahl instills in her the magical ability to take the magic of anyone who uses magic against her. Once a magical being uses magic against a Mord-Sith, she can inflict intense pain upon him/her with a thought. He/she has no defense.

Mord-Sith wear their hair in a single, long braid and skin-tight leather outfits. They usually wear brown leather, but when they are training a captive, they wear red, because it hides the blood of their victims better. When a Mord-Sith has broken a victim, and has him completely obedient to her whim, she wears white. The leather uniform always has a crescent and a star on it, as the symbol of the Mord-Sith. The only weapon they carry is an Agiel, which has the power to inflict unbearable pain or kill with only a touch. An Agiel appears simple. It is a plain red rod, about a foot long, and about as thick as a finger. It also inflicts pain on the Mord-Sith in charge of the torture. Mord-Sith use the same Agiel that was used on them in their training. In addition to her Agiel, a Mord-Sith may wear armored gloves with spikes on the back when training a captive.

Seeker of Truth
The Seeker of Truth is a post created by the wizards help bring about and maintain justice. The Seeker's weapon is the Sword of Truth, which is imbued with magical properties including, but not limited to additive and subtractive aspects to its magic. It absorbs the memories and knowledge aspects of those who have used it previously, and endows the true Seeker the ability to draw on the memories of past users of the sword in order to enhance and aid him/her. It has the ability to cut through anything considered a threat, including iron and steel, and other materials that can generally not be cut with a sword. Conversely it will not work or harm anyone or anything not considered a danger. While wielding The Sword of Truth one must have absolute conviction or its magic will not work. The Sword also instills and amplifies great anger and rage thereby giving the one wielding it added strength, agility and conviction. However, there is also another side to the sword that comes from love and forgiveness, which allows a true Seeker to turn the blade white and kill even those who the Seeker believes to be innocent.

Wizard's Fire
Wizard's Fire is a fictional spell cast by wizards. The casting of Wizard's Fire is a common ability of most wizards in The Sword of Truth universe. It is created using additive magic by taking the heat from the air and adding to it and multiplying it. When cast, Wizard's Fire is shot from the ends of the wizard's fingers and will usually reach its victim within the space of a breath. The victim disappears into the blue heat until all that remains is a hazy smoke in the air. Even a single droplet of Wizard's Fire can burn straight to the bone. Wizards of various powers have various levels of Wizard's Fire.

Wizard's Life Fire is a variation of Wizard's Fire and is supposedly much stronger. It is created when a wizard puts all of his life force into the Fire to kill himself. It leaves a special sort of ash - the ash is sweet when the Life Fire is created in defense of another, while the ash is salty and sour when the wizard creates the Life Fire to save himself or to just kill his enemies.

The Sword of Truth, the Seeker's weapon, has a defence mechanism created by its makers against Wizard's Fire to protect the Seeker.

Wizard's Rules
Each novel in 'The Sword of Truth series contains a Wizard's Rule. These rules are:
 * Wizard's First Rule (from Wizard's First Rule): "People are stupid. [...] They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true."
 * Wizard's Second Rule (from Stone of Tears): "The greatest harm can result from the best intentions."
 * Wizard's Third Rule (from Blood of the Fold): "Passion rules reason."
 * Wizard's Fourth Rule (from Temple of the Winds): "There is magic in sincere forgiveness, the magic to heal. In forgiveness you grant, but more so, in forgiveness you receive."
 * Wizard's Fifth Rule (from Soul of the Fire): "Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie."
 * Wizard's Sixth Rule (from Faith of the Fallen): "Let reason be your only sovereign."
 * Wizard's Seventh Rule (fromThe Pillars of Creation): "Life is the future, not the past."
 * Wizard's Eighth Rule (from Naked Empire): "Deserve victory." (Translated from "Talga Vassternich").
 * Wizard's Ninth Rule (from Chainfire): "A contradiction cannot exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole."
 * Wizard's Tenth Rule (from Phantom): "Wilfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self."
 * The Unwritten Wizard's Rule (from Confessor)

Blood flies
Blood flies are native to the land of D'Hara and are always found near gars. They are tiny flying insects that gars use to flush out their prey. The tiny bite of a blood fly is fairly painful and can draw blood.

Blood flies and gars have a symbiotic relationship. Gars use blood flies to hunt, along with their keen senses. The flies flush out the quarry so the gar can grab it. The gars then smear part of the animal on their pink-skinned chest and stomach for the flies to feast. Short-tailed gars count and keep track of their flies, an example of their superior intelligence.

Chimes
The three Chimes have the ability to corrupt and destroy all magic.

Dragon
Dragons in The Sword of Truth series have magic. It is believed that dragons use their magic to aid in their flight. Before the boundaries went down, many people in Westland believed that dragons were only legends, just old tales.

There are many different kinds of dragons, distinguished by their color, including gray, green, red, and a few others. The gray ones are the smallest and are rather shy. The green are a lot bigger. The smartest and biggest ones are the red ones. Some people of the Midlands keep gray dragons as pets, and for hunting. However, no one keeps green dragons as pets. They are rather dumb, have bad tempers, and can be quite dangerous. The red ones are something altogether different. They will fry you and eat you in a blink, and they are very smart. However, red dragons will normally only hunt people if they are hungry enough, or angry enough, since humans don't make much of a meal for them. Red dragons are fiercely independent, take no sides in human affairs, and would rather die than be subjugated. They would put up a strong fight against any who attempted to capture or harm them.

Gar
A gar is a large, aggressive predator that can be found throughout the New World, originating from D'Hara. Gars stand on two feet, like a man, and come in two varieties - long-tailed and short-tailed. Long-tailed gars are about a head taller than a tall man and weigh about three times as much. Short-tailed gars are more fierce, larger, and much more intelligent than their long-tailed cousins.

Fur covers their great bodies everywhere except their chest and stomach, which are covered with a smooth, glossy, pinkish and taut skin that ripples with corded muscles underneath. They have large wings with thin membranes which they keep folded behind their back when not flying. They have glowing, green eyes and short, rounded ears. They have astonishing speed and often move in a shuffling, side-ways motion. The speech of a gar is a series of grunts, sounding similar to a wild boar. They often throw back their head and hiss into the air in order to frighten and draw out their prey. Their breath is hot and their teeth are as big as human fingers.

Short-tailed gars were originally created by wizards of the New World during the Great War 3000 years prior to the series' start. The gars were created as a way to combat the mriswith being made by the Old World. The gars are able to sense the presence of mriswith, even when they are invisible.

Mriswith
Mriswith are former wizards that were transformed by use of Additive and Subtractive magic, and thus gave up conventional use of their gift. They were first created during the Great Wizard War, 3000 years earlier, and were used by the wizards from the Old World.

For use as weapons against the wizards of New World, they are serpent like creatures that wear a cloak that can make them or other wizards with both sides (Additive and Subtractive) of the gift blend entirely with their surroundings. This cloak also makes the wearer undetectable by those with only the Additive side of the gift but can still be detected by wizards with the Subtractive side, making everyone vulnerable to attack. Mriswith carry a three-bladed knife, called a yabree, in each hand to disembowel their victims, who never see them coming. They are lightning quick, fierce, and relentless in killing.

Richard Rahl kept a cloak from a mriswith he killed, and after discovering how to use it, wore it and used it constantly. Towards the end of Blood of the Fold, Richard was offered yabree by other mriswith, but rejected them before he lost control and became a mriswith himself.

They are native to the Hagen Woods, which is also said to have been a training ground to a special kind of wizard (a war wizard). New mriswith are hatched from huge, leathery eggs laid and tended by the huge, red, dragon-like queen, who was unintentionally set loose by Richard. The gars were constructed to combat these mriswith and are extremely effective in their task; the two kinds of creatures seem to house a primal rage against each other.

Night wisp
Night wisps are creatures of magic. They are the size of a small bottle and have a tiny voice. Few have ever seen a night wisp. A night wisp can not be seen during the day, only at night. A night wisp can not live many days away from their home and others of their kind before they lose all their strength and die. Night wisps emit a tiny flare of warm light that gives everything around them a silvery cast, but dims as they grow weaker and changes to an intense pink glow when touched by a Confessor. They have the ability to hover, fly, and spin through the air.

Slide
A Slide is a magically altered wizard with the ability to seize a person's soul. They were used in the great war, 3000 years before the series takes place. According to Prelate Annalina, they were sterile, and thus doomed to extinction. A Slide named Nicholas, however, was created by the Sisters of the Dark recently, and subsequently used his power to absorb the souls and powers of five of the Sisters. It is unknown whether the absorption of this power caused a proportionate increase in his own power, since Nicholas only uses his Han once in the novel; all of his other use of magic involves his ability as a Slide.

Slides have the ability to control the soul of any individual under their power, and to manipulate them to a degree. They also have the ability to project these captured souls into animals and other lifeforms. It is, however, unknown if a Slide can project its own soul in such a manner, or whether it needs another soul to 'hitch a ride' on. There is no defense against a Slide's power.

Creator
The Creator is a godlike being and His opposite is The Keeper. He is almost universally believed in. One major difference between the Creator and the Keeper is that the Keeper takes an active role in his calling. The Creator never interacts with life or interferes with anyone's beliefs. The Creator's more fervent believers, such as the Blood of the Fold, illustrate the harm that comes from people misguidedly believing they are fighting for a righteous cause, and the exploitive, manipulative power that religious leaders can have over their followers.

The Creator was established to be very similar to the Christian God in many allusions throughout the series. Goodkind implies a certain degree of cynicism in that the Creator is non-involved and is largely open to interpretation due to a lack of modern intervention. When asked by Richard how Verna can know what the Creator wants, she replies that his teachings come from ancient texts. The Sisters of Light insist that the Creator hates lies. Other than service to the Keeper, lies are the only sins directly discussed in the books.

Keeper
The Keeper is almost universally believed in, and feared by almost all those who do- any who believe in The Creator also believe in The Keeper. He serves as the consumer of life; all things that die must enter the underworld, into his realm. He is said to hate all living things, simply because they are alive, and would stop at nothing to break free from the underworld, and kill every living being in existence, and then torture them for eternity. The Keeper's agents, such as the Sisters of the Dark, as well as dark wizards who wish to control a power they were not born with, are incredibly powerful and dangerous, due to the pact they have made with him.