Where lies go to become real, and what happens to the people who chase them there.
Every lie told in the human world casts a shadow into the Lie Side — a shifting, misty dimension existing in perpetual twilight, where distance is unreliable and clean water scarce. It was meant to be a place of cleansing, somewhere the dishonest could eventually confront their worst lies and be absolved. It didn't work out that way. Too many who entered refused to face what they'd done, and the Lie Side curdled into something closer to a hunting ground.
Lies aren't uniform — they behave like individuals, and each has a shelf life. Left unspoken too long, a lie dies out on its own; the more powerful the lie, the longer it can survive before it does. Catalogued types include Sincerlings, Witlings, Spinners, Whisperers, and Deceptors. "Authentics" — the plain truth — give off no trace at all.
The learned — or inborn — ability to see a lie's shadowy mist for what it is. It isn't free: using it carries a real physical cost, a price paid in pain each time it's called on.
Tears between the Lie Side and the human world, through which lies — and sometimes people — can cross. A rift's size scales with the power of the lies feeding it; the largest known rift sits beneath the Protectorate's own Justice Complex.
A Lie Catcher works with three things: an old, rune-engraved satchel for carrying captured lies out of the Lie Side; a journal that instructs how to use it; and a box whose exact purpose is still being worked out on the page.
Captured lies are carried home in the satchel and traded to Father Mahoney, who tests each one — checking for the telltale mist of an active lie versus the stillness of one that's already expired — before it changes hands.
An old story, tied to a mysterious incident in the Lie Catcher families' past, about a being said to watch over the boundary between truth and lies. How much of it is myth and how much is real is one of the book's central questions.
A government body whose stated mission is simple: eradicate the big lies, control the smaller ones. Secretive in its methods, but not a secret itself — everyone in Gulf City knows it exists. It runs a mandatory hearing-compliance program: citizens are required to keep their "hearing" at an approved standard, on the theory that a lie you never hear can't affect you. Refusal carries the threat of incarceration.
The Protectorate operates through two visible branches:
Truthseekers ("Seekers") — agents who track down lies and the people carrying them.
The Patrol — a more militarized enforcement unit, called in for anything past routine Seeker business.
An old, secretive society operating inside Father Mahoney's church, pulling his strings from behind the scenes. Mahoney himself is more hostage to their agenda than architect of it — a front man for something bigger than the trade he personally oversees.
A Gulf Coast city standing in for Houston without quite being it — its name a deliberate metaphor for bridging the gulf between lies and truth. The story opens here in the dead heat of summer.
A grey, shifting dimension where lies take physical form. Never the same place twice; time and distance don't behave the way they should.
The Protectorate's headquarters and detention facility, fronted by a wide public plaza. Beneath it sits one of the largest rifts known to exist.
A watering hole for lie-traders and Lie Catchers alike, tended by a bartender named Isaac who's known Sully for years.
Father Mahoney's church, home to a cluttered underground office where the trade of captured lies actually happens, and to a silent figure known only as the Curate.
Where Bendy is treated after his injury — and where a two-tier system of care, split by ability to pay, becomes a matter of life and death for the family.