Linguistics Charms
Language-Learning Ritual
Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One week
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 2
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite Charms: None
Dragon-Blooded embarking on
diplomatic missions often invoke this Charm. By
spending an hour meditating and listening to a native speak the language to be
learned, the Exalt absorbs the knowledge of the language into her mind. The
character needs some sort of focus to meditate on, usually a cultural object
related to or a book written in the language to be learned. For the Charm’s
duration, the Dragon-Blooded is completely fluent and naturally conversant in
the language, without even a trace of an accent. The character may also read
and write the language. Once the duration expires, the knowledge fades
immediately.
Thousand Tongues Meditation
Cost: 4 motes
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms:
Language-Learning Ritual
The far-ranging colonial
interests of the Dragon-Blooded combine with the Air-aspected
Exalt’s close affinity with communication to make
this Charm a common one.
The characters speaking in
tongues can easily speak and understand any spoken language for the duration of
the Charm. If speaking to beings each speaking a different language, the
character can understand them all, and they can all understand the character
― but they will still be unable to understand each other. The maximum of
beings that an Exalted may speak in tongues to at once is equal to the character’s
permanent Essence.
This Charm just allows the most
basic of communication ― the equivalent of baby or pidgin speech. Any
sort of social or communicative actions attempted by the character are at -4 to
her dice pools. Each point of permanent Essence that the Dragon-Blood possesses
over the minimum requirement reduces this penalty by -1.
This Charm only works on actual
speech. Sign language cannot be understood through the use of the Thousand
Tongues Meditation.
Poisoned Tongue Technique
Cost: 2 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Concentration
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 3
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Thousand
Tongues Meditation
This Charm allows an Exalted to
“hijack” another’s conversation. The effect is subtle, but it can be deadly if
applied correctly. The Exalt must be able to hear the conversation to twist it,
but need not actually be present. Eavesdropping through Charms such as Voices
on the Wind is perfectly permissible, but the range of this Charm cannot be
extended past 100 feet x the Exalt’s permanent
Essence.
To twist a conversation, the
character’s player must roll Manipulation + Linguistics. The number of
successes indicates the degree to which the Dragon-Blooded can twist the
conversation. A single success would allow her to send someone away from a
conversation confused, aroused or with a sour taste in his mouth. Three or more
successes are enough to make the speaker seem heroic, amorous, ruthless, or
offensive. Five successes allow the Dragon-Blood to completely hijack the
conversation, changing or amending anything said by any party.
The participants in the
conversation each get a reflexive Wits + Perception roll at a roll to notice
the use of this Charm. The difficulty of the roll is the Essence of the Exalt
using this Charm. If this roll fails, the character doesn’t realize that what
he means to say and what he’s actually saying doesn’t match and has no way of
knowing the conversation was altered. If the roll succeeds, he realizes the
conversation is being manipulated and can indicate this through nonverbal means
(normally a chopping motion at one’s own throat). Use of this Charm in a
criminal fashion is a serious offense in the Realm and can bring with it a
death sentence.
Voice Of
Mastery
Cost: 5+ motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 4
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Poisoned
Tongue Technique
With more complete mastery of
the Air element, the Dragon-Blooded can use this Charm to enhance the effect of
his spoken words. His words seem to resonate with listeners, seeming more
persuasive, threatening, seductive ― whatever the Dragon-Blood wishes.
For the duration of this Charm,
the character may add his Essence dice to his dice pool for any interaction
involving speech, whether it is seduction, persuasion or intimidation. The
Charm normally affects only one listener. Each additional mote doubles the
number of people affected by the Charm. The character must be able to speak the
target’s language, either naturally or through the use of Charms.
Wind-Carried Word Technique
Cost: 1 mote per sentence, plus
distance
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: None
The wind carries many things,
and sound can be one of them. A Terrestrial Exalted can set his words on the
currents of the wind, sending them through the air to the ear of the one he
wishes to hear his message.
For the base Essence cost, a
character may send on single sentence to the ear of any other person in range.
The character does not actually have to speak what he wishes to say out loud,
but he does at least have to vaguely mouth the words he wishes to send.
The difficulty of sending words
on the wind increases over distance. The further away a character wants to send
a message, the more difficult the Charm becomes. For a single mote of Essence,
a character can send a single sentence to roughly 100 feet away. This distance
is modified by the permanent Essence of the character and by the expenditure of
additional motes of Essence. Multiply the 100-foot range by the character’s
permanent Essence score. In addition, by doubling the amount of Essence spent
on the Charm, this modified base range can be increased by a factor of 10. An
Air-aspected Dynast with an Essence of 4 could send a
single sentence 400 feet for 1 mote, 4,000 feet for 2 motes, 40,000 feet for 4
motes and so on.
The sending character must have
a general sense of the target’s direction, but need see her. This Charm has
become essential to the Realm’s military operations, as it gives the
Terrestrial Exalted the ability to communicate quickly over long distances on
the battlefield. Most Dragon-Blooded of military inclination know the Charm.
Voices On The
Wind
Cost: 3 motes, plus distance
Duration: One minute
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 4
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms:
Wind-Carried Words Technique
Speech requires breath, the very
air of life. Some Dynasts of Air can extend their senses through the air and so
listen to what people far from them say. The further away a character wants to
eavesdrop, the more expensive the Charm becomes. For the basic cost, an Air-aspected Dragon-Blood can clearly hear normal speech from
100 feet away. The character also gets a general sense of the target’s
direction (assuming he doesn’t know already). As with the Wind-Carried Words
Technique, the cost of using this Charm increases over distance. The further
away a character wants to eavesdrop, the more expensive the Charm becomes. For
a single mote of Essence, a character can listen in on speech roughly 100 feet
away. This distance is modified by the permanent Essence of the character and
by the expenditure of additional motes of Essence. Multiply the 100-foot range
by the character’s permanent Essence score. In addition, by doubling the amount
of Essence spent on the Charm, this modified base range can be increased by a
factor of 10.
This Charm has some limitations.
The character must specify a single person he wants to spy upon: He cannot, for
instance, declare that he will “listen for people plotting against me.” At
most, he can make a list of suspected enemies and eavesdrop on them one by one.
The character also cannot hear anything spoken in an airtight chamber. Many of
the powerful Dynasts build such chamber for their privy councils, specifically
to defeat this Charm. Finally, listening to a person from so far away demands
total concentration ― the character cannot perform any other action while
listening to Voices on the Wind.
With One Mind
Cost: 2 motes per dot of increase
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 5
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: Voices on
the Wind, Voice of Mastery
A Dynast of Air can enable a
group of people to know each other’s surface thoughts. What one sees, all the
others see as well. Her tactical decisions are an open
book to her allies. As a result, a group that fights using With One Mind
displays uncanny coordination. They trade off opponents without a hitch; one
fighter parries a blow aimed at another; an enemy seen by one cannot hide from
any.
For every 2 motes that the
Dragon-Blooded character spends, the recipients gain one dot each of Wits,
Perception and Melee, up to the Dragon-Blooded character’s own Linguistics
rating. In addition, any of the linked characters can parry or abort to parry
an attack against any other character in the group, provided he is close enough
to plausibly do so. If multiple characters parry a given attack, subtract all
their successes from the attack roll.
The initiating character can
link as many people using With One Mind as she has dots of Essence, but all
those linked must have the same level of linkage, and the Exalt must pay to
enhance each of them. The linked group must include the character herself, and
there is not benefit to be gained from using this Charm unless at least two
people are linked with it. Dynasts typically use this Charm to magnify the
fighting prowess of their bodyguards or minions.
Characters linked by this Charm
must have trained together for at least a week. They must spend a turn a shared
breathing exercise and war-shout to initiate the link. The characters must also
stay within 50 feet x highest Essence of the participants of one another. If
any character moves beyond that range, the link breaks, and the Charm ends.
This Charm also has non-combat
uses, allowing instantaneous nonverbal communication between the linked group for the duration.
Cipher
Missive
Cost: 3 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 2
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite Charms: Language-Learning Ritual
In the matters of governance, commerce and military
action that are the focus of Dynastic society, there is always sensitive
material that must be communicated and, thus, a need for secure methods to encrypt
such material. This Charm allows an Exalted scribe to
augment her knowledge of the structure of language and to use that augmented
knowledge to create a preternaturally complex cipher.
The scribing character spends the required amount of time
writing the document, which can be no longer that her Essence in pages, and her
player rolls Intelligence + Linguistics to determine the total number of
accumulated successes needed to decipher the document. Each deciphering roll is
an Intelligence + Linguistics roll with a difficulty equal to the permanent
Essence of the character using Cipher Missive, and represents a number of days spent
codebreaking equal to the Essence of the character who
created the cipher. Remember that successes only accumulate against the
encoding character’s Intelligence + Linguistics roll if the character attempting
to decrypt the missive exceeds the base difficulty of the roll (i.e., the Essence
of the character who used this Charm).
The character using this Charm may name a number of
individuals up to a maximum of twice his Essence rating who can freely read the
ciphered document, or he may name a limited, specific class of people who may
freely read the document. For example, a character could make a ciphered
document that could only be read freely by magistrates or only by officers in
the Vermilion Legion.
Craft
Icon
Cost: 2 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 3
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Cipher Missive
In a society as complex and often frenetic as that of the
Realm, the ability to smoothly convey a complex block of information or
directives to others is not only a great boon, it is practically a necessity.
This Charm allows for the design of sigils and pictograms that illustrate a
dense collection of data such as directions to a location or instructions for
the assembly of a complex device and does so in a simple iconographic style
that can be understood by anyone, regardless of the languages they speak.
The player of the Dragon-Blood using this Charm rolls
Manipulation + Linguistics at a difficulty of 2. Successes
indicate the level of complexity encoded into the pictogram, with each success
over the difficulty providing the equivalent of one minute’s worth of careful
instruction.
The icons created by the use of this Charm can be drawn,
carved or in any media the creator wishes to use. The channeling of Essence
into the creation of an icon is vital to its depiction, and it cannot be
reliably reproduced without another application of Craft Icon. Any mundane
reproduction of a pictogram created with this Charm will, at best, serve only
as well as if the Dragon-Blood’s player had rolled the minimum two successes.
Icons created with this Charm are two square inches in size per success.
Speech
Without
Words
Cost: 2 motes + 1 mote per ally included
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Linguistics: 3
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Voices on the Wind, Cipher Missive
The ability to silently convey complex information allows
for a much greater degree of coordination among allies when they find
themselves in circumstances where speech would be a detriment, such as during
close-range martial conflicts or ambushes most obviously (but not exclusively).
The use of this Charm allows a Dragon-Blood and one
additional ally per mote of Essence spent (to a maximum of the Exalt’s Wits + Linguistics) to silently communicate
using hand gestures and signals.
The gestures required to make use of this Charm are
subtle and not enough to give away a user’s position or generate a great amount
of sound. Users of this Charm are obviously communicating with one another if
they do so openly, however, making this Charm’s usefulness in social settings somewhat
limited.
Favored
Quill Mastery
Cost: 3 motes per success
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Linguistics: 3
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Any three Linguistics Charms
Dragon-Blooded culture demands excellence from its
constituents in a variety of fields of endeavor, making a broad education the
norm. With so many responsibilities and areas of study open to them as a culture,
however, specialists are needed for esoteric, demanding or vital disciplines.
Linguistic- and communication-oriented tasks are no exception to this, as not
every Dragon-Blood can be a master cipher, speechwriter and poet all at once.
An Exalt using this Charm may buy his dots in a Linguistics
specialty as automatic successes, rolling the remainder of his pool as normal.
The automatic successes may only be added to rolls involving the specialty in
question.