Mental
Lords of Summer p. 91 |
| Preq's |
Changeling
Winter Court |
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| Level(s) |
● (2XP) |
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| Venue |
Changeling |
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Possessed By
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| This box: view · talk |
Every Onyx Court member is encouraged to learn at least one secret method of communication. The oldest traditions were usually elaborate systems of slang terms and unintuitive metaphors, varying widely by region and especially by language. Inspired by Navajo, Comanche and other Second World
War code talkers, courtiers learned Inuit languages in the late 1940s. These had the advantage of being understood by few people blow the far north and having native teachers in North America, Europe and Asia. By the 1960s, the Cold War introduced new communication techniques. Winter courtiers spied on the spies, learned their tricks and used them amongst themselves. Nowadays, you’d be hard-pressed to find courtiers who don’t use PGP cryptography on email, employ rigorous network security or have hard to guess passwords.
Unfortunately, not every changeling is patient enough to learn a new language or smart enough to master espionage tradecraft. So even though many of Winter’s Lost know these methods, they’re usually clustered within cliques of experts. But almost everyone uses Mourning Cant.
The Cant is highly specialized slang. There used to be many different versions, but the rise of English as an international language has made its dialect almost universal. Mourning Cant redefines dozens of words, borrows others from languages as diverse as Inuktitut, Russian and Old Norse and applies a throaty, slurred accent to it all. Anybody listening in on a Cant conversation hears a rapid exchange that’s hard to understand but sounds mostly like English (or in some cases, an alternate base language). The accent makes it hard to tell for sure. In game terms, Mourning Cant is treated like a normal language. Its only advantage over most is that it doesn’t sound like a different language, so much as badly pronounced and peppered with the odd, weird idiom.
| Edge of Darkness will be treating this as a specialty language merit available to only to Changelings of the Winter Court and must be taught In Character. Not available at creation as the Cant is specific to each Freehold.
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