Jenna Moran's blog posts on learning Chinese are excellent, and who knows how long the Eos-sama website will be up after all the shenanigans. So, here's an archive.
Dà (大) means big. My program tells me it means “large; greatly/doctor.” As a doctor myself, with a degree from a respected establishment of . . . doctoring . . . I naturally already knew that “doctor” and “greatly” were basically synonymous. I remember strolling through the halls of Hopkins, nodding to the various doctors that I passed, saying, “Greatly, greatly, how vast thy beneficence, greatly”—
That one in the middle was to a nurse—
Actually, come to think of it, that might not have been Hopkins so much as a psychiatric ward of some sort or another. Wow. Grad school and hospitals just kind of blur together. But I am pretty sure that even if both of them have greatlies you will only find the wiselies at universities and at hospitals they will have orderlies instead.
Dà (大) is another word I’ve known for a long time. I asked Hsin about it on like my second or third day in China. I think I also encountered it before this when I was playing around with … I don’t know, Slime Forest Adventures or something. That’s for Japanese, not Chinese, but I think it means the same thing there. There are, in fact, so many similarities between these two ideographic languages that I think it reasonable to assume that ancient astronauts spread language particles to the people of both countries, just like it happened in Star Trek and in the Languages of Pao.
Deep contemplation of the letter “dà (大)” and the expenditure of Persona Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Two-Fisted Medicine (2 PMP)
You get your doctor on. You’re not just some person (rén (人)) with a pair of legs. Oh, no. You’ve got hands. You know how to use them. You never beg, oh no. You know how to bruise your enemies—with science!
You’re a greatly (“dà (大).”)
So, here’s the deal. When you’re in serious trouble, when you’ve got to throw your weight around, when you’re being attacked by dingoes or falling out of an airplane or whatever, and that would normally be an Obstacle for you in doing the things that you, as a doctor, do—it’s not. In fact, being in dramatic, pulp serial trouble is a +1 Tool of the trade instead.
If you’re a doctor of philosophy or a medical doctor, this applies to whatever your specialty might be—for instance, if you’ve got a Ph.D. in classic French literature, you’ll be better at analyzing French literature while being attacked by dingoes. If you’ve got a Ph.D. in mathematics, you’ll find that nothing sharpens your mathematical mind like crawling along the edge of a zeppelin pursued by cybernetic mafiosi. If you’re an eye surgeon, and you’re having trouble saving somebody’s vision, ask a nurse to kill the power in the room or release a bunch of hungry eye-eating moths—that’ll be the ticket to surgical success! If you’re not a doctor at all, or if you’re willing to dramatically set aside your doctoral field for a scene, you receive the benefits above plus a free level 2 Skill in medicine to use them on. That’s basically the Shine of dà (大).
Once you develop these benefits you retain them for the remainder of the story.
Like Many Doctors and Other Great Individuals, I Have Arms (1 PMP)
Spreading your arms slowly into a pose resembling the character “dà (大),” you emanate an impression of size, strength, and baroque imperial grandeur. As long as you maintain this pose you fit seamlessly into any high-class or militant social environment and increase your Cool and Shine by 1 each (to a maximum of 5).
Once you develop these benefits you retain them for the remainder of the story.
Doctors Skewer their Target with Greatly Ees (2 PMP)
Infusing the sound of “dà (大)” with sacred energy, you share your understanding with a human (rén (人)) target. Instantly an ee (or yī (一) anyway) manifests from nothingness and skewers them, striking them through the torso and impaling them three feet above the ground in a gruesome parody of “dà (大).”
This is a level 4 lesser creation of ees with 2 free Strike. You must use your miraculous action to invoke this effect.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “dà” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Greatly the Square (2 PMP)
You create an origami square with “dà (大)” written on it that you can repeatedly unfold into larger and larger origami squares, each time multiplying its surface area by 5/3. You can unfold this square using mundane actions or miracles.
If you unfold this square using mundane actions or low-level Aspect miracles, it will eventually take a longer and longer time to unfold. Doing so will require struggling with a greater and greater weight of paper. If you use an Aspect 6+ miracle or a suitable Domain, Persona, or Treasure effect, however, you may rapidly unfold the origami square to city-covering size. With Aspect 8+ or a suitable greater miracle, covering a continent, planet, or the sun is not necessarily out of line.
The miracle of the origami dissipates after the first full scene in which the square is larger than 1m/side. The paper itself, at whatever size it reached, will remain. Characters other than yourself can unfold the origami square when acting as tools or agents for your actions, but if they do so on their own recognizance the square can only withstand 2-8 of their unfoldings before they rip it beyond repair.
Each 2 MP creates a single square, but you may have more than one: specifically, it counts as an “ofuda,” even though it’s not, and you may have a number of ofuda up to [your Treasure rating + 1] available at any given time.
Dà Dà Dà Donne, Dà Dà Dà Done (3 PMP)
Reciting “dà (大)” three times and dramatically lowering your fist, you summon English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest John Donne. You may repeat this recitation to dismiss or re-kill him. John Donne remembers his previous experiences with being summoned in this fashion and thus forms a centuries-long reservoir of experience as an associate of scholars who study the character “dà (大),” with the following provisos:
Multiple copies of John Donne may exist simultaneously. They do not share memories, except for the memories of their mortal life; instead, the second copy retains the memories of previous second copies, the third of previous third copies, and so forth. They are effectively independent existences. John Donne 47 is rumored to be God.
John Donne’s memories are not reliably transmitted if someone other than his summoner kills or banishes him; if he undergoes a sufficiently traumatic experience; or if an Auctoritas shelters a given event against divination. The first condition applies to his memories from an entire summoning; the third is event-specific; and the second is somewhere in between. Sometimes the memories vanish forever; sometimes he experiences them dimly; sometimes they go away for a while, and then return.
Miraculous effects applied to John Donne, including alterations or augmentations to his memories, do not transmit through multiple instantiations of a given John Donne, nor do they cross between John Donne lines. Attempts to overcome this limitation and change the nature of John Donne and more generally of “大大大Donne, 大大大Done” face a level 4 Auctoritas.
This is a two-use ability. Once you have summoned John Donne, you cannot summon him again until you first dismiss him (or fail to dismiss him, if he is already dead/gone/destroyed) and then retreat to an appropriate fastness, contemplate “dà” further, and spend 2 more MP.
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A Book of Divine Letters: Dà
Deep contemplation of the letter “dà (大)” and the expenditure of Persona Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Two-Fisted Medicine (2 PMP)
You get your doctor on. You’re not just some person (rén (人)) with a pair of legs. Oh, no. You’ve got hands. You know how to use them. You never beg, oh no. You know how to bruise your enemies—with science!
You’re a greatly (“dà (大).”)
So, here’s the deal. When you’re in serious trouble, when you’ve got to throw your weight around, when you’re being attacked by dingoes or falling out of an airplane or whatever, and that would normally be an Obstacle for you in doing the things that you, as a doctor, do—it’s not. In fact, being in dramatic, pulp serial trouble is a +1 Tool of the trade instead.
If you’re a doctor of philosophy or a medical doctor, this applies to whatever your specialty might be—for instance, if you’ve got a Ph.D. in classic French literature, you’ll be better at analyzing French literature while being attacked by dingoes. If you’ve got a Ph.D. in mathematics, you’ll find that nothing sharpens your mathematical mind like crawling along the edge of a zeppelin pursued by cybernetic mafiosi. If you’re an eye surgeon, and you’re having trouble saving somebody’s vision, ask a nurse to kill the power in the room or release a bunch of hungry eye-eating moths—that’ll be the ticket to surgical success! If you’re not a doctor at all, or if you’re willing to dramatically set aside your doctoral field for a scene, you receive the benefits above plus a free level 2 Skill in medicine to use them on. That’s basically the Shine of dà (大).
Once you develop these benefits you retain them for the remainder of the story.
Like Many Doctors and Other Great Individuals, I Have Arms (1 PMP)
Spreading your arms slowly into a pose resembling the character “dà (大),” you emanate an impression of size, strength, and baroque imperial grandeur. As long as you maintain this pose you fit seamlessly into any high-class or militant social environment and increase your Cool and Shine by 1 each (to a maximum of 5).
Once you develop these benefits you retain them for the remainder of the story.
Doctors Skewer their Target with Greatly Ees (2 PMP)
Infusing the sound of “dà (大)” with sacred energy, you share your understanding with a human (rén (人)) target. Instantly an ee (or yī (一) anyway) manifests from nothingness and skewers them, striking them through the torso and impaling them three feet above the ground in a gruesome parody of “dà (大).”
This is a level 4 lesser creation of ees with 2 free Strike. You must use your miraculous action to invoke this effect.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “dà” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Greatly the Square (2 PMP)
You create an origami square with “dà (大)” written on it that you can repeatedly unfold into larger and larger origami squares, each time multiplying its surface area by 5/3. You can unfold this square using mundane actions or miracles.
If you unfold this square using mundane actions or low-level Aspect miracles, it will eventually take a longer and longer time to unfold. Doing so will require struggling with a greater and greater weight of paper. If you use an Aspect 6+ miracle or a suitable Domain, Persona, or Treasure effect, however, you may rapidly unfold the origami square to city-covering size. With Aspect 8+ or a suitable greater miracle, covering a continent, planet, or the sun is not necessarily out of line.
The miracle of the origami dissipates after the first full scene in which the square is larger than 1m/side. The paper itself, at whatever size it reached, will remain. Characters other than yourself can unfold the origami square when acting as tools or agents for your actions, but if they do so on their own recognizance the square can only withstand 2-8 of their unfoldings before they rip it beyond repair.
Each 2 MP creates a single square, but you may have more than one: specifically, it counts as an “ofuda,” even though it’s not, and you may have a number of ofuda up to [your Treasure rating + 1] available at any given time.
Dà Dà Dà Donne, Dà Dà Dà Done (3 PMP)
Reciting “dà (大)” three times and dramatically lowering your fist, you summon English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest John Donne. You may repeat this recitation to dismiss or re-kill him. John Donne remembers his previous experiences with being summoned in this fashion and thus forms a centuries-long reservoir of experience as an associate of scholars who study the character “dà (大),” with the following provisos:
Attempts to overcome this limitation and change the nature of John Donne and more generally of “大大大Donne, 大大大Done” face a level 4 Auctoritas.
This is a two-use ability. Once you have summoned John Donne, you cannot summon him again until you first dismiss him (or fail to dismiss him, if he is already dead/gone/destroyed) and then retreat to an appropriate fastness, contemplate “dà” further, and spend 2 more MP.