Lexicon:Modern/Nyvlaem

Nyvlaem
Stage	Modern CLT
Pronunciation	/ˈnɪv.laɪm/
Part of speech	Noun
Etymology	from Middle Nīvlāmē, from Proto niv-lam
Related words	Kyvlaem, Glaenith, Kwlei

Nyvlaem — the living light; a sealed culture that glows and feeds itself.

Notes

A whole small system inside the glass — the organism, what it eats, and what becomes of what it leaves. Given warmth and a little light it will run for decades and never need filling.

It is alive, and so it can die. Frozen, overheated, or left in the dark too long and the culture fails and the Kwlei is finished. New ones are divided from old ones rather than made, which means every Nyvlaem in the Known World descends from the same stock.

Engineered at the very end of the old world, when the power was failing and rooms still needed lighting.