Hloch

Imagine Hloch's untitled introduction to The Earth Book Of Stormgate as a voice over for a short film preceding dramatizations of the stories. The changing scenes would illustrate the spoken words. At this stage, the film audience would glean some meanings for unfamiliar terms from their contexts:

"...Hloch of the Stormgate Choth...on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother."
-Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), p. 1.

"Then came the Terran War, and when it had passed by, ruined landscapes lay underneath skies gone strange." (p. 2)

"Hloch, who had served in space, afterward found himself upon Imperial planets, member of a merchant crew, as trade was reborn." (ibid.)

"This is the tale told afresh of how Avalon came to settlement and thus our choth to being..." (ibid.)

The principle invented term, "choth," clearly means some kind of community or tradition.

"This is the tale as told, not by Rennhi and those on whom she drew for the Sky Book, but by Terrans, who walk the earth." (ibid.)

It is about us but from an alien perspective.

At the end of the Earth Book, when Hloch departs, we should hear his wings and:

"Fair winds forever." (p. 434)