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.
So I have obtained Chinese language learning software, and have begun my road to “legendary scholar” status. My first word: duh!
I mean, de (的).
This is a monster of a first word to have to learn, what with its eight strokes, three pronunciations, and the helpful meaning, according to my software, of “modifier particle/accurate/target.”
So what does this mean?
Modifier particles are pretty obviously the particulate essence of the Lands Beyond Creation. They’ll float in from the madness or emptiness beyond the world—a lot depends on whether we’re talking Nobilis, Exalted, Chuubo’s, Hitherby, whatever, here. But anyway, they’ll float in from the Outside and modify things.
What kinds of things?
Well, in this case, inaccurate or untargeted things.
The eighth stroke of “de” is a dot, diǎn, which is probably the modifier particle. The first seven strokes, which I found myself practicing in my SLEEP because that is the kind of brain I have, only, um, when I woke up I realized I had one of them wrong, serve to explain what it modifies.
The Estate of De most likely has the following Properties:
(2) De is leeter the more it deletes
(2) De may answer any situation, no matter how bizarre, with “de HECK?”
(2) De modifies with particles
(1) De targets only the inaccurate, and is accurate only to the target
(0) De, a deer, a female deer <= THIS IS WRONG
Hsin came by as I was writing this and clarified that “de” is actually a possessive particle. And Genseric?
He just laughed and laughed.
A Book of Divine Letters: De (的)
Deep contemplation of the letter “de (的)” and the expenditure of Treasure Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Good and Evil Eight (2 TMP)
How can anyone learn so many strokes at once? Even the all-compassionate Buddha would be confounded!
After furiously sketching for a long time—in a miraculous conflict, this requires at least twice the conflict’s pace, and three times the pace or more at the HG’s option—you may declare “de” and show everyone the eight-stroke character you have drawn. For the next 8 seconds, anyone who wants to do anything but pause, stunned, and admire your work must overcome a level 3 Auctoritas.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “de” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
What a Possessive Particle! (1 TMP)
Spend 1 further MP of any type to declare something the property of Mr. or Ms. De. This is a mundane action with no legal standing or practical effect but it can interfere with mystical or conceptual ownership: a level 3 Auctoritas opposes any miracle that would change its ownership to or rely on it being owned by someone else.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story.
Target Modifier Ofuda (2 TMP)
You create an ofuda that you can attach to a miracle (flinging it out, using a mundane action, while invoking the miracle) to make it more accurate. You may choose at the time of your action whether this enhances your miracle with a level 4 creation of accuracy or with +1 Strike.
Each 2 MP buys a single-use ability, but you may have duplicates: specifically, you may have a number of ofuda up to your Treasure rating available at any given time.
De dí . . . dì????? (1 TMP)
You learn to write “de” in such a fashion as to emphasize the ambiguity of its pronunciation. To the extent that anyone who looks at it has an active miraculous effect or personal quality such that they get confused easily by such things, your rendition of this character is guaranteed to thus confuse them.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story, and possibly indefinitely.
Bù is a much simpler letter than de—I asked Hsin what it was once and I’ve been recognizing it everywhere ever since. It’s basically a bird shooting a laser bolt (不), meaning: No! Not!
Don’t do that, bird!
Bird!
Nooooooooooooo!
Eventually in the reign of the Laser-Denying Emperor birds were stripped of their lasers and this character stopped making as much sense to the casual observer.
– Jenna
Deep contemplation of the letter “Bù (不)” and the expenditure of Persona Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Boo-Shikigami (1 PMP)
You create an ofuda that can transform into a flying, animated origami ghost with the word “bù (不)” for a face. Once invoked, it will fly around expressing its characteristic personality—which typically depends on the tenor of your calligraphy—until it says “boo!” three times. It will automatically fly up and say “boo!” when undetected in the presence of someone it wishes to scare, or if there is an allegation or question it firmly wishes to deny, even if by doing so it earns its death.
Each 1 MP buys a single-use boo-shikigami, but you may have duplicates: specifically, you may have a number of ofuda up to your Treasure rating available at any given time.
Negativity (2 PMP)
You have conceived of, and may paint, an efficacious bù (不). It is difficult to remain optimistic or cheery in the presence of an efficacious bù. Treat this as a level 2 Affliction which lasts until someone defaces the bù or the story ends.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “bù” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Reject Firmly (1 PMP)
You may deflect a mundane or miraculous attack. Plant your feet. Inhale. Then firmly reject the attack with a declaration, “Bù!” (不!) while also thrusting out your hands. You are rejected as a target for this miracle.
This is a Lesser Destruction of Target Validity. It has miracle level 5, and requires your miraculous action.
This is (also) a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “bù” again while spending 1 more MP before you can repeat its use.
You might think, when you look at yī (一), that it’s just another bird-emitted laser beam. But nothing could be further from the truth!
In fact the laser of a bù (不) bird is a downward-slanting laser. The yī-line, on the other hand, is a horizontal stroke! If you’ve ever had to dodge bird lasers while swimming you probably know the difference already. If not, don’t think of laser-equipped birds at all. Instead, a great master sweeps their arm or sword or calligraphy brush across the computer screen whereupon you read these words, declaring: yī! —
And comprehension, inevitably, follows.
Yī means one. It also apparently means “as soon as” but seriously people are generally a lot more enthusiastic about counting to one than they are about comparative timekeeping.
Oh! You say it like “ee.” I may be missing subtleties here. But ee. So, bee-line, minus the b: yī-line.
Deep contemplation of the letter “Yī (一)” and the expenditure of Aspect Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracle:
Only One Universe (1 AMP)
Sweeping your arm, sword, or calligraphy brush dramatically across the gaming table, you unify everything in your sight into a single conceptual entity. (Everything, that is, except for bees. Any bees present become “yī”s (一s) instead, whereupon they flee shrieking from ordinary space and time, most likely never to return.)
A feeling of connectedness and unitary nature arises. This has a base miracle level of 4.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “yī” again before you can repeat its use.
Here we see a man with his arm wrapped companionably around the shoulders of his spear; the spear, embarrassed by the man’s attentions, displays a sweatdrop prominently to one side. This is “wǒ (我),” the legendary ideogram for, well, oneself.
I can’t really explain why the “self” is a drunk guy staggering through the streets of China, arm wrapped around the shoulders of his best friend, a hopping animated spear, while the spear—
Having tasted no alcohol at all, but only blood—
Mumbles excuses to everyone they pass. I think it must probably be a guy thing. Later on they will probably do other guy things like punch each other, arm wrestle, and spit. The man will win at arm wrestling and spitting but the casual exchange of punches will result only in a tragedy. If you are a woman and you want to use this ideogram for yourself you may be a little perplexed. You may think things like “man, men really do normalize the male perspective” and “I don’t think a man with a hooked spear taller than himself would actually be very good in bed.”
However this radical feminist perspective may be premature. Many of the great scholars of ancient China mastered complex Taoist techniques, and so it is very possible that the hook is actually some sort of delicious fried tofu or something. If this does not assuage your concerns it is probably for the best that you are not living in an enclave of sizzling Taoist ideogram monks.
Deep contemplation of the letter “wǒ (我)” and the expenditure of Aspect Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Incorrect Pronunciation (2 AMP))
You master the art of pronouncing wǒ (我) incorrectly. So thoroughly do the subtleties elude you that you may drive others into a frenzy of helpfulness—your pronunciation will practically force your target or targets to correct you, stretching their mouth in a comical fashion, gesturing at their lips, and repeating the word wǒ (我) with a slow, exaggerated, and deliberate abandon. Yet no matter how they wǒ (我) at you, and no matter how fervently you wò or wō or wƍ or even wǿǣǣǶ at them, the immaculateness of your confusion remains impenetrable to their instruction. You have 2 Edge, or increase 2 Edge to 3, on any mundane action designed to trap your target or targets in an indefinite loop of helpful corrections of this sort.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story.
Man Grasping Spear (1 AMP))
Throwing an arm around the shoulders of a hopping animated spear, which you must obtain separately, and (if necessary) disguising yourself as a man, you may camouflage yourself as an instance of the character wǒ (我). You derez into a collection of apparently random lines cross-hatching the walls or objects behind you and will only be recognized as a man or disguised woman holding a hopping animated spear by those who have recently looked up the history of the character wǒ (我) on the Internet.
This is a Lesser Enchantment of Wǒ (我). It has miracle level 4 and requires your miraculous action to invoke.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “wǒ” again while spending 1 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Keanu Reeves Technique (0 AMP))
Declaring “whoa” in the inimitable fashion of Keanu Reeves, you reveal that you have totally failed to pronounce wǒ (我). You should be ashamed of yourself, and also ashamed of Keanu Reeves. Wǒ (我) is not said like “whoa” at all, but is actually more like “waaha,” only without the humorous articulation of the h. However, bear in mind that you are probably still saying it wrong, even after I have so carefully and inarticulately explained. There is only so much wǒ (我) that a blog post can explain!
In Nobilis, you may declare “whoa” and then feel ashamed of yourself as frequently and as firmly as the other players will permit.
Fake It Till You Make It (2 AMP))
Repeat the word “wǒ (我),” stretching the sound out longer and longer and in a progressively more silly tone of voice, and you will eventually trigger the “perfect tone” that makes you a real martial artist. (If you’ve ever seen someone in a movie trying to scare off their assailants by pretending to know martial arts, posing exaggeratedly, and repeatedly drawing out the word “wǒ (我),” you now understand what they were intending to achieve.) On completion of this perfect tone, which always requires at least twice the current pace of the conflict and hence cannot be performed in a flurry, you bleach your hair blond, extend it fiercely upwards, surround yourself in a coruscating nimbus of Chi, and gain the ability to perform Aspect 5-level martial arts until 30 subjective seconds have elapsed. Afterward you will suffer a Serious Wound, “Depleted,” which you may mitigate to a surface wound either with a defensive miracle or by allowing yourself to faint.
This is (also) a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “wǒ” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use. Further, you cannot develop this ability again while still suffering from the wound “Depleted.”
Me, Myself, and I (2 AMP))
You have created a cunningly constructed origami you with the word “wǒ (我)” for a face. You may use a 0-MP miraculous action to possess this origami you as if using a difficulty 1 Treasure miracle on an Anchor. However, this origami you is fragile and will come apart if splashed with water, ripped by an opponent, or after three scenes of use in any case. An origami you is a mystic link to you, even if you haven’t done anything with it recently; however, a scene where someone uses that link to help, hinder, or otherwise affect you counts as a scene of the origami you’s use.
Each 2 MP constructs a single origami you. You may only have one origami you at a time—a man may only have one spear, after all—but it counts towards your ofuda cap.
Ofuda Errata
Speaking of which, let’s make that cap [Treasure rating+1], ’cause not everybody has Treasure but everybody loves ’em some ofuda.
Oh, sure, the textual version of shì (是) doesn’t really cut it for me, exuberance-wise. It was a rush the first time I recognized it in a font like this, but let’s face it—you can go look at, I don’t know, this page or something, and you’ll see that 是 doesn’t have the sheer visual impact of the calligraphic shì.
Go look!
In the calligraphy, right, it has that little double box above this very even, straight-lines-on-a-grid T/F shape with this sweeping lambda of a thing beneath it. Doesn’t it make a perfect blend of symbolic, angular, and flowing? Like it’s a bento box made out of word? Like it’s a love letter from some ancient Chinese letter-maker, straight to you?
It does. It is.
I now know that that double box is the sun, so some of my innocence has been lost. To—
Huh, “To” looks a bit like bù (不) now.
Anyway!
I now know that the box is the sun, so some of my innocence is lost. To see the calligraphic shì is now to see the sun rising above a road sign. Up ahead the road we’re on merges into another road that meets it at an angle. It’s like we’re returning to the river of all life, rather than opening up a bento box—
It’s still pretty darn exuberant, though.
So, shì means “to be;” also “yes, right.” I am a little confused about the “yes” thing because everyone in my experience uses duì (对) for yes, but I think we all know a little something about “to be” from Shakespeare’s classic 是不是 (transliterated from the original Klingon.)
So, exist! Do it! Be! You know you want to. There are fictional and even intertextual children in China who could only dream of having such a superfluity of existence as you. And shì (是) would like, I think, for you to be, as well.
Deep contemplation of the letter “shì (是)” and the expenditure of Domain Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Existence-Ofuda (4 DMP)
You create an ofuda that you could attach to a nonexistent thing, if only you had some way of doing so, to give that thing a temporary power of existence. The more strongly the ofuda and specifically the letter “shì (是)” that you’ve written on it exists, the longer this power lasts. By default, when reified in this fashion:
expectations last for three hours;
hypotheses endure for thirty minutes;
postulates exist for ten minutes;
fictions exist for three;
fantasies remain real for up to thirty seconds; and
the chimera of a diseased mind will consume the reality of an ordinary ofuda in a single three-second action.
Note that attempting to apply an existence-ofuda to an unreal miraculous entity may qualify as hubris, particularly if that entity is themselves capable of creating existence-ofuda.
Applying an existence-ofuda is a lesser animation of existence and consumes your miraculous action.
Each 4 MP buys a single-use ability, but you may have duplicates: specifically, you may have a number of ofuda up to [your Treasure rating + 1] available at any given time.
Sun Rising on the Emptiness (1 DMP)
Somewhere that isn’t here, somewhere that isn’t even really like here, somewhere in the Outside, there is a street sign near the junction of two roads. The sun hangs overhead. The entire collage takes the form of the letter “shì (是).” You may float a piece of paper labelled with “shì (是)” on the surface of a bowl of water to spy on that location.
Spying on the Outside is a level 2 miracle with 2 bonus Strike. It consumes your miraculous action and you must sustain it for as long as you wish the street sign, roads, and sun to remain visible in the bowl. Note that this isn’t necessarily very useful, since there’s no particular reason why anything interesting should happen there, much less in the moment that you are happening to look.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story.
Exuberance-Ofuda (2 DMP)
You create an ofuda that you can attach to someone to make them exclaim, “Yes!” in an exuberant fashion, optionally leaping into the air with one fist raised high. They will also feel a surge of exuberance and joyous spirit which lasts one hour and at least until the ending of the scene.
Applying the ofuda requires a mundane or Aspect-based action. Activating it requires your miraculous action and invokes a level 4 Enchantment of Shì (是); you can do this up to three seconds before making contact with the target, which is useful when you’re planning to use Aspect to affix it. Note that if you charge it up and then fail to apply it to someone else within three seconds it may turn its power on you or whatever you’re using to hold it with instead.
Each 2 MP buys a single-use ability, but you may have duplicates: specifically, you may have a number of ofuda up to [your Treasure rating + 1] available at any given time.
Radiant Confirmation (1 DMP)
You learn to say “shì (是)” so firmly that your meaning comes across even when the person you’re talking to cannot hear or understand you—you can even shì (是) somebody from across the void of space! When using this ability “shì (是)” always means “yes” or “correct,” and you are forbidden by a level 2 Auctoritas from explaining to anybody but me why you didn’t just say “correct” or “right” or “duì (对)” instead. You may however give as many evasions or false explanations as you like, such as “because I am a person of refinement,” “oh my god look behind you,” or “ah, these are not such days as those.”
This ability is single-target and local in its scope—your clearly-stated “shì (是)” can find a single target within two hundred yards of you or fly unerringly to a known location within ten miles.
In developing this ability you will draw a proper nine-stroke shì (是). Each use of this ability fades the ink on one stroke, so you may use this a total of nine times before you must retreat and contemplate “shì” again.
Postscript
In case you’re wondering how to get the nine strokes of shì, the double box at the top is considered four strokes: down, then a bending right-and-down stroke, then two strokes across. It takes three strokes to make the T/F thingie, and then two more complete the diagram. The bottom rightward line is actually a single sweeping arc from left to right!
I figured out rén on the way to China, well over a year ago. I watched a movie on the plane. It was . . . Cyborg Cop? . . . or something like that. It had Chinese subtitles and English words. So I realized, oh, rén (人) is person.
In the calligraphic form it’s actually pretty cool. It’s got one leg coming forward with this giant foot in perspective, so it’s this action pose. It’s not a wishbone! It’s not the lower half of Charlie Chaplin, caught in the middle of an amusing splay-legged pose! It’s somebody bounding towards you like some sort of freakish Internet gazelle; or, at least, how could you hope to know it’s not?
Deep contemplation of the letter “rén (人)” and the expenditure of Persona Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Bounding Forward (3 PMP)
You may make any written “rén (人)” bound off the surface it’s written on and dynamically kick somebody. You can choose whether this is an injurious kick, a stunning kick, a kick that knocks them cinematically backwards, or some combination thereof. By default this has the same power as an average Power’s Aspect 4 kick, but you can scale up the power proportionally if the written rén (人) is larger than an ordinary person’s legs and add bonus special effects according to the nature of the rén (人)—fiery if it’s drawn in a fiery fashion and so forth. The HG determines the final strength of the kick and any special effects: you just decide whether to appeal to the size or characteristics of the rén (人).
Invoking this power requires your miraculous action. It has miracle level 4. Using this power efficaciously erases the writing in question, and thus you can use it to remove even apparently indelible stains or deface random signs and documents if you can identify an appropriate rén (人) for this removal and identify somebody for the rén to kick.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 3 more MP before you can repeat its use.
This is a Person (2 PMP)
You may label something “rén (人).” This imbues it with a level 2 Affliction that compels people to treat it as a person. The effects generally snowball from early reactions, rather than taking any given specific form. For instance, you could label an office chair as “rén (人).” Perhaps people will begin apologizing to the chair for sitting in it; or honoring the kind Mr. Chair who holds them up in meetings; or suspecting Mr. Chair of perverse intentions and refusing to sit down. They may go even further, seeing Mr. Chair as a person fully like themselves, and become resentful that Mr. Chair sits in the office doing nothing all day while they must work. Eventually Mr. CEO will come down and have a heated argument with Mr. Chair. Mr. CEO will throw Mr. Chair out on the street and let him starve for his insolence. However, because he is a chair, and a sorrowful chair to boot, he will not starve. People will give money to the poor mute Mr. Chair who sits forlornly in front of the building. They will roll Mr. Chair over to the money and plead for him to take it. But the money will only blow away. Eventually a madman looking for victims for human experiments (人实验) will kidnap Mr. Chair and take him away to meet the most terrible of fates. This fate will be particularly terrible because it will not even satisfy the madman.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Cyborg Cop (0 PMP)
You may invoke your knowledge of rén (人) to dramatically increase the likelihood that a local theater is playing a movie about cyborg cops.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “rén” again before you can repeat its use. Further, you may only invoke “cyborg cop” once in any given story.
The Origin of Storks (4 PMP)
You create an ofuda that can transform into a person. Once invoked, it becomes an non-miraculous person more or less typical of the region where you constructed the ofuda; however, it will have two legs even if the typical person of that region does not. You don’t really control anything about what the new-made person is like, although they will owe you a large favor for their existence and sometimes they will have your eyes.
Ofuda-made people, or “rén-shikigami,” cannot reproduce.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 4 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Yǒu (有) is actually a pretty cool-looking word. It’s got a wild-and-crazy bit and a sensible boxy bit. I guess it shouldn’t surprise anyone after my rhapsodies over shì (是) that I like that kind of thing.
I’ve been trying to read—well, pick out words from—random Chinese-translated manga about the house. I wound up drawn to look up what yǒu (有) meant after seeing it a few times. It means “to have.” The symbol derives from a hand, holding meat; once you have a meat in your hand, you control that meat—
Is what it seems to say.
I prefer to think of it, though, as a meat windsurfer. It seems to be an ordinary plank of meat, such as would hardly suffice to ride across the ocean, but it also has a jaunty sail. The sail billows in the wind. It leans forward. Suddenly you are not simply standing on still meat but rather racing vigorously across the waves, shouting, “Hello many happy people!”
Is this really me? you might be thinking. Am I really the one who is on that windsurfer, who has that meat, who shouts to the many happy people?
It is really yǒu (有).
Deep contemplation of the letter “yǒu (有)” and the expenditure of Domain Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Joy of Meat (1 DMP)
You may achieve the full joy of having meat without actually having meat, simply by staring at this character. Specifically, your mundane actions are every bit as effective, impressive, and satisfying without meat as they would be with meat, even if the action is heavily meat-dependent such as “cook a Thanksgiving turkey.” You need only rest your thoughtful gaze from time to time upon the symbol “yǒu (有).”
The meat of this sublime contemplation is unfortunately hollow. Your meatless mundane actions remain and must remain potentially less productive than working with actual meat would be. We apologize for this, and particularly to vegetarians—but if it were otherwise, A Book of Divine Letters would encourage that foul degeneracy that is symbol-referent confusion and many would call the scholarship of these words into question.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story. It is like a piece of meat, which you have.
Possession (4 DMP)
You may mark your possessions with the symbol “yǒu (有).” You may use any desired method for marking them, from putting a slip of paper near them with “yǒu (有)” written on it to burning the character into their metal frame. This establishes your ownership, and nobody can remove that thing from your possession without first removing or altering the mark or overcoming a level 2 Auctoritas. “Your possession,” “remove from your possession,” and “remove or alter the mark” are terms of art whose meaning can be established or altered through player-level arguments about semantics.
Once you develop this ability you implicitly mark it with the symbol “yǒu (有),” making it yours for the remainder of the story. Other people can develop a similar ability, of course, but it’s nowhere near the same—their ability, after all, marks things as theirs instead of as yours.
Is There Mayonnaise? (1 DMP)
So here’s a bit of an advanced topic!
Yǒu (有) also means “to be there (in that location).” Méi you (没有) means “not there (in that location).” So if you’ve not just studied “yǒu (有)” but also taken some time to think on “méi (没),” you can learn the following technique.
Firmly declare: “Yo, mayo!” and write yǒu méi yǒu (有没有) in the air with one finger or appropriate indicator appendage. The strokes you trace will remain in the air and begin to glow a terrible, eggy white. Drums will drum in the heart-furnace of the world. The eyes of God, or Cneph, or perhaps simply your temporal lobe’s perception of such an entity’s attention, will turn to the characters you have drawn.
Then, if there is mayonnaise in the vicinity that you may use for your intended purpose—
Which may be any purpose legitimate to mayonnaise—
Two of these characters will burn away, leaving yǒu (有). And wheresoever that mayonnaise will be, it will call back: “Yo!”
But if there is none such mayonnaise, a single character will burn away instead, and only the dreadful negative méi yǒu (没有) shall remain. A voice as from Heaven and the Earth itself calls out: “Mayo (没有)” and leaves you with much to contemplate about theodicy.
In theory, and this is part of why this is such an advanced topic, negative mayonnaise would invert this effect, returning “méi yǒu (没有)” when negative mayonnaise existed, or “unexisted” if that term should be more fit, and declaring “yǒu (有)” when it did not. Attempting this ritual in the presence of genuinely undefined mayonnaise would be, of course, a terrible threat unto the continuity of the world.
Once you develop this ability you either have it, or don’t have it, for the remainder of the story. If you don’t have it, and wish to have it, you will have to return to an appropriate fastness, spend another MP, and contemplate “yǒu” again.
Yǒu Dawg Sup (2 MP)
You may enchant a dawg, strengthening its ability to have and sup on meat. This is a level 6 Lesser Binding of Sup, binding the dawg’s destiny to supping and to a lesser extent to “yǒu (有).” This typically manifests in the dawg as a level 2 “sup dawg” Bond.
Using this ability requires your miraculous action. It is fully functional when targeting an actual dawg; its effect on a dog or somebody you would tend to call or address as a dog or dawg is limited, and it has no effect whatsoever on somebody or something that is not a dawg at all.
Once you develop this ability you have it for the remainder of the story. However, its power is liable to sup upon your own: after the first dawg, or first three dawg- or dog-like entities, you will need to spend 1-2 MP of any type on every entity you thus enchant.
Eos’ Jesse Covner clarifies that bù (不) does not mean “don’t.” So you can’t use it to stop that bird! That bird can laser you all it likes and you can’t say bù.
Le or liăo (了) is a troublesome letter. A long time ago a crocodile bit off its head and now it has a hook there instead. This makes it act out by, e.g., being difficult for me to write. It looks really simple. It only has two strokes. But it’s so difficult! My comprehension is willing but my agility and certainty are weak!
What is le (了)?
It’s a completive particle, and it also means “to bring to an end” or “to settle.” The most important use, IMHO—which is actually, really seriously humble right now, because wtf it is Chinese—is that you stick le (了) on the end of a sentence when that sentence took place in the past. For instance, “giant dragonflies roam the Earth” (google suggests this is “巨型蜻蜓漫游地球,” or “Jùxíng qīngtíng mànyóu dìqiú”) would be a false and misleading statement. If I said that it would probably damage my reputation for absolute seriousness and veracity. On the other hand, “giant dragonflies roam the Earth le” or “巨型蜻蜓漫游地球了” would be a fair and accurate statement. Only a disreputable scholar could dispute it!
Let’s do another. “I’m going to eat this cake, OK?” might prompt the owner of the cake to make objections. That question is set in the present. But “I’m going to eat this cake, OK? le” would render such objections moot! At that point they’d just have to accept it, because in the absence of a pasta maker or some sort of pasta than light travel nobody can change the past.
That’s just impossible!
I am not really sure when it becomes liăo (了) instead of le (了). My English instincts assume that it’s two words written as one, but my tiny understanding of Chinese suggests that maybe it depends on what tone the next word is in. All I really know is that liăo (了) is a good thing to say when someone is acting catty, because if they snap back at you with “what was that?” you can explain that it is an alternate tone for le.
Like:
“OMG he totally stole my character build. What a powergaming munchkin!”
“Liăo.”
“What was that?”
“It’s a Chinese completive particle explored in depth in Jenna Moran’s ‘A Book of Divine Letters.’ It might also mean ‘to settle’ or ‘to bring to an end!'”
“Wow. That’s fascinating and delightful. I regret my earlier cattiness, but only to a point, because if I hadn’t been so dismissive, I would never have known about Dr. Jenna Moran’s wonderful product and/or service!”
Let’s see. More things to say about le. Obviously le is also a French particle. It’s not clear how a French particle got to China but I assume that the “40 immortals” of L’académie française made a boo-boo. Can you imagine how funny they must have looked running around China trying to reassemble the parts of speech before they just gave up and agreed to share?
That is a trick question! Immortals always look dignified and refined, particularly when they are French.
Le is a key character in Leeroy (了羅伊) Jenkins. Without it he would just be a King sadly skulking somewhere on his throne. There is a large section of the Romance of the Le Kingdoms that explains why he is not, but rather engaged in pulling large quantities of whelps instead.
That’s not all, though.
Le isn’t just about the past and fighting kingdoms. Le appears to be an intensifying particle as well. For instance, it’s possible that my dragonfly and cake statements, provided above, might not actually refer to the past, but instead to something more like this:
OMG GIANT DRAGONFLIES or
I’m going to eat this cake, OK? I mean, IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU
The past is an emphatic country, as La Pasta Accademia has shewn.
Deep contemplation of the letter “le (了)” and the expenditure of Treasure Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
That’s in le Past (1 TMP)
You may make unassailable assertions that things you’ve done or are about to do are “in the past” and therefore no longer worth arguing about or discussing. If you correctly draw the character “le (了)” in the air as you do this, anyone attempting to offer further discussion or argument must overcome a level 4 Obstacle.
Once you develop this ability you retain it until the end of the story or until someone musters an effective (level 3, after the Obstacle) response. If that happens you must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “le (了)” while spending another 1 MP before you can use the ability again.
Le Morte (4 TMP)
You may interrupt an action by seizing its past particle and converting it into the terrible hooked scythe “Le (了) Morte.” This is bad French but really that’s the L’académie’s own fault.*
Treat invoking this effect as a level 6 “unleashing miracles” of Treasure. You must use your miraculous action to invoke and sustain this effect. You must interrupt another action when originally doing so. Finally, you must have, or acquire a wound to take, a Bond or wound-Affliction connecting you to the completive particle “le (了).”
While active, the scythe Le (了) Morte has the miraculous power to cut a few seconds forward or backwards in time; to make a cool “liăo (了)” sound when you swing it through the air; and to generally function as a functional and terrifying weapon.
This is a one-use miracle. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “le” again while spending 4 more MP before you can summon Le (了) Morte again. Note that characters with Treasure 2+ might be better served by mastering a similar scythe on their own terms.
* Made you twitch, French immortals! Made you twitch!
Hook Shot (2 TMP)
After endless hours practicing the hook atop the character “le (了),” you master the perfect hook shot. You may throw any reasonably aerodynamic object (a basketball, discus, yappy dog, or whatever) in such a fashion that it will curve—suddenly and of its own apparent accord—backwards at some point in its flight, then stop, then descend gently to the ground. You are limited by your normal throwing skills in every other respect: in effect, the curved stroke atop the “le (了)” replaces a more normal straight shot or gentle arc. Once learned, this is not miraculous or even magical: it’s a natural outgrowth of having TMP and spending that much effort and energy repeatedly writing “le (了).”
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story.
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.
Now after the first nine letters of A Book of Divine Letters the sobbing of geniuses and polymaths around the world became too much for my ears and heart to bear. They were torn, tragically, fatally torn, by the realization that they could neither have me nor be me; it was too much for them; they were bereft.
And so I was forced to take some time in a high tower in China contemplating my mistakes; and thought to myself, for several months, that perhaps this study would end there—fitting, of course, that what began with China should end in China, amidst its towers and its lakes, in a little town called Suzhou. But no sooner had the weeping and rending of the clothing of the geniuses begun to ebb than I heard another sound ringing out through the world. It was a sound that tore at my soul. It was the sound of Heartache; and I understood immediately that I had not calculated on the hurt that would come to all the grieving children of the world, and all the educated souls therein, were I to leave this book unfinished, as it stood.
Their tears would be as Noah’s flood, and drown the world, and only the dry bones of geniuses and the bitter tongues of polymaths to survive.
So, I return.
Now a certain puzzle had faced me for some time, which is this. To look at the letter lái (來) is, to me, to see a heresy. A thing to which Christians would rightfully take offense. To me, it is nothing more or less than a crucifix — most likely that of He who was named the Son of God — that has sprouted legs and begun to wobble forward, with two swaying dancers or fires behind it. These would be the thieves that, legend tells, hung behind His cross.
A dilemma! A terrible dilemma! It is not as if I can propose to the Chinese people that this letter, which has been a part of their language for time immemorial, should change in the interests of my maintaining a religiously neutral tone. I cannot tell them: look, your letter is leading me to blasphemous thoughts; the power that I think of describing first when I contemplate it is “Dancing Cross Heresy” or perhaps “Three Cross Heresy”—
I cannot!
They would not hear it! Not from me! Not even from the Yellow Emperor! Or, at least, I think, from no one less.
I cannot speak of this! I cannot alienate so large a fraction of my audience as the pale, savage Christian peoples of the West; I cannot skip one of the divine letters of the noble upside-down magistrates that surround me; and yet I must speak, for I am hemmed in in every direction by the mounting flood of children’s tears. Can even the grace of the August Personage in Heaven navigate for me the waters of this ignavigible dilemma? Is there that in the world to let me post these observations without assuming once again the aspect and the attribute of Heresy Spice, that was once my name and my dominion in forgotten times of old? Will the all-forgiving and all-encompassing grace of God seize the back of my tongue like some great Procrustean censor when I go to write, biting down upon it like a mousetrap battens upon the tongue of a soul about to speak heresy but which pauses, first, to nibble on a bite of cheese that they have found laying —or lái (來)ing, rather — on the floor; or shall that divine snapping toothclap grate only snazzling tonsurian glossoláilia (glosso來lia) down like gilded blessings upon these words? (For that is, even to my understanding, how the Church of England got its setting, as described in “the best-lái(來)d schemes of mice and men,” by Robert Burns. Unless it is “To His Coy Mistress” that I am thinking of, by the Pope.)
. . . I think I lost my train of thought.
Anyway, ultimately, I concluded that it was aesthetics and not metaphysical scruples that were catching me short here. Put simply, the imagery of the three cross heresy does not fit the meaning of lái (來) — for lái means “to come,” and I think, if I were to see the vision that the character describes to me, here, swaying, oh, horribly swaying, as it looms close, the let-us-hope-it-is-not-living body dangling from it flopping like a hula girl upon the dashboard of a car, and terrible the fires that burn behind it — well, I would in fact head the other way as fast as possible, nor would a sudden infusion of the entire sanctification with which I am given to understand by the Calvinists I may at any moment unexpectedly be visited do anything to change my mind.
Basically, the TL;DR is that I am sort of like an amazing holy saint and have redeemed this doctrinally inaccurate letter with my own personal holiness; however, the TL;DR is also that my plan to rewrite this entry until it isn’t horribly offensive to anybody at all is basically gang aft agley from the beginning because that’s just how well-lái(來)d a plan it was.
*^_^*;;
Deep contemplation of the letter “lái (來)” and the expenditure of Domain Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Fruit! To Me! (2 DMP)
OK, look. Let’s face it. Lái (來) is a cross with legs and two rén (人) behind it. But let’s pretend that we can see something else there, like, um—a tree! A tree, with a blanket around its base, like you see with . . . Christmas trees . . . some-times—
OK, and maybe if some Chinese letters would stop making sly references to Christmas then I would be less likely to get involved with tragic lines of thought involving the ousia of the Trinity, the Messalian heresy, and the like below—
just saying!—
But the point is, OK, so it’s a tree, a fruit tree, like it has figs or, OK, no, not figs, figs are like, you know, all cursed and stuff, like, in the Gospels, so this tree, it’s got some, you know, non-doctrinal fruit like, OK, um, apples
(gang. aft. agley.)
—OK, like oranges, it could be some non-doctrinal fruit like oranges.
It is a Christmas tree, bearing oranges. Like a Greek bearing gifts, if you ignore that ancient Trojan slander which you probably should because seriously when your city is known principally for its condoms you might not be in a position to slander the Greeks.
Just saying.
OK, anyway, oranges. They are, as you know, a completely non-doctrinal, non-offensive, peel-shrouded juice-filled orange-colored fruit hanging, in this case, from a non-offensive, non-sectarian “holiday tree” that has decided to sit out the war on Christmas as a conscientious objector. I don’t think anyone can in good conscience object to that, except, of course, for the tree itself. Now, these oranges that hang from this conscientious non-sectarian holiday tree are shaped like people because . . . because . . . because that is how the Yellow Emperor, who is laughing at me right now from his doubtlessly awesome celestial throne, designed this letter to be, or how whomever who did design it designed it to be in any case from whatever throne they happen to be sitting on and laughing at me from if that is in fact what they are doing.
So.
The power here is, you can point at a tree and say sharply, “Lái (來)” and bam, two fruits will come out of the tree. I am telling the truth here. Do not get fooled by the pronunciation. This is actually what will happen. Two fruits will come out of the tree. They’ll grow from the tree’s branches, one on each side. Then they will fly into your hands in an entirely non-offensive fashion, as fruit is wont to do. The fruit that grows and flies is always the fruit of the tree you point at, so if you point at a shoe tree you will get shoe fruit, if you point at a pine tree you will get pine nuts, if you point at a beech tree you will get a pina colada, and so forth and so on. The pits of the fruits are shaped like little people, holding up little signs that say “Lái (來)” in a completely non-denominational fashion; if you plant them, the people-pits I mean, you will get new trees of the original sort of tree nine months later.
This power is a Level 4 Lesser Creation/Animation of Fruit.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “lái” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Jet-Propelled Mousetraps (2 MP)
You enchant a mousetrap with the word lái (來) so that it will attempt to leap up and bite the back of the tongue of anybody speaking heresy in its presence. This is a level 4 Lesser Enchantment of Lái (來), and each use requires 1 MP.
A typical mousetrap has only a vague awareness of correct doctrine and may in fact mistake particularly implausible but canonical beliefs for heresy or vice versa — in particular, most mousetraps mistake the Messalian heresy (that the ousia of the Trinity can be perceived by the carnal senses, and that the Threefold God transformed himself into a single hypostasis to unite with the souls of the perfect, among other details) for legitimate Catholic doctrine, while rejecting the Church’s stance on the rhythm method as improbable; similarly, a mousetrap fails to grasp the true essence of Being and Non-Being, and will accept the argument that the Tao is culpable of description while becoming confused and snapping out at a subtle discussion of that which is useful for its emptiness. In short, a mousetrap by default has only a Comparative Religions Skill of 1. However, if you spend four hours during the enchantment of the mousetrap expounding to it on the true doctrine this Skill rises to 3 and the mousetrap can distinguish heresy from correct doctrine better than many priests. In either case the mousetrap will have a Bite the Back of a Heretic’s Tongue Skill of 3, and a pool of 8 Will which it may spend to enhance these Skills over the course of any given day.
If a jet-propelled mousetrap succeeds in grabbing the base of somebody’s tongue, they must overcome a level 2 Auctoritas to say anything other than: “The word lái (來), meaning ‘to come,’ is drawn as a crucifix with legs and two rén (人) behind it. To draw conclusions from this would be heretical, much like the mistakenly heretical ideas I earlier—in the presence of this fine mousetrap that has seized my tongue—expressed.” However, if they say this, and they will know instinctively that this is an option, the mousetrap will unclench and fall harmlessly to the floor, graciously forgiving the repentant heretic and remaining quiescent until such time as it hears a heresy again.
Note that if a mousetrap that has battened upon a heretic’s tongue hears a heresy voiced by a different individual it may or may not choose to leap from mouth to mouth in pursuit of the new outrage it has heard. Further note that if you can persuade a mousetrap enchanted in this fashion to itself speak a heresy, it will leap into the air, shriek an unholy rusted-metal shriek, and spiral-snap itself into nothingness.
Once you develop this ability you have it for the remainder of the story.
Let Sleeping Dogs Lái (4 MP)
You may enchant a dog, such that as soon as it falls asleep, every time it falls asleep, it is drawn inevitably towards you at a steady rate of 5 miles per hour, unfazed and unharmed by any obstacles in its path as if it were a lodestone wrapped in an impermeable skin-tight field of force. This is a level 4 Lesser Enchantment of Lái (來).
Using this ability requires your miraculous action. It is fully functional when targeting an actual dog; its effect on a dawg or somebody you would tend to call or address as a dog or dawg is limited, and it has no effect whatsoever on somebody or something that is not a dog at all.
Once you develop this ability you have it for the remainder of the story. However, you may only enchant up to one large dog and two small dogs at a time.
À La a Lái Lei (Aloft, Lái, my Lolly, a Lái Lei to Fly, Aye, My Lolly to Me) (4 MP)
Spend two hours folding pieces of paper on which you have written the letter lái (來) into origami flowers and string them into a loose necklace. If someone you care about hangs this flowery garland around their neck they will grow flowery paper wings, one dangling from each arm when they are on the ground, and a sinuous origami tail. Until the next time they hug or strike you, they receive the following mundane abilities —
Come to (Insert Your Name Here) 3 Superior Flight 3 Superior Origami Tail 2
in lieu of their normal mundane abilities. If they resist this effect by taking a wound it will normally also diminish the power of the mundane abilities they receive.
This miracle functions by bringing the person you care about into physical and spiritual consanguity with the character lái (來); it is a level 7 Greater Enchantment.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and spend two more hours and 4 more MP folding paper before you can repeat its use. You may only have one necklace of this sort active and available for use at a time.
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My First Chinese Word: De
I mean, de (的).
This is a monster of a first word to have to learn, what with its eight strokes, three pronunciations, and the helpful meaning, according to my software, of “modifier particle/accurate/target.”
So what does this mean?
Modifier particles are pretty obviously the particulate essence of the Lands Beyond Creation. They’ll float in from the madness or emptiness beyond the world—a lot depends on whether we’re talking Nobilis, Exalted, Chuubo’s, Hitherby, whatever, here. But anyway, they’ll float in from the Outside and modify things.
What kinds of things?
Well, in this case, inaccurate or untargeted things.
The eighth stroke of “de” is a dot, diǎn, which is probably the modifier particle. The first seven strokes, which I found myself practicing in my SLEEP because that is the kind of brain I have, only, um, when I woke up I realized I had one of them wrong, serve to explain what it modifies.
The Estate of De most likely has the following Properties:
Hsin came by as I was writing this and clarified that “de” is actually a possessive particle. And Genseric?
He just laughed and laughed.
A Book of Divine Letters: De (的)
Deep contemplation of the letter “de (的)” and the expenditure of Treasure Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Good and Evil Eight (2 TMP)
How can anyone learn so many strokes at once? Even the all-compassionate Buddha would be confounded!
After furiously sketching for a long time—in a miraculous conflict, this requires at least twice the conflict’s pace, and three times the pace or more at the HG’s option—you may declare “de” and show everyone the eight-stroke character you have drawn. For the next 8 seconds, anyone who wants to do anything but pause, stunned, and admire your work must overcome a level 3 Auctoritas.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “de” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
What a Possessive Particle! (1 TMP)
Spend 1 further MP of any type to declare something the property of Mr. or Ms. De. This is a mundane action with no legal standing or practical effect but it can interfere with mystical or conceptual ownership: a level 3 Auctoritas opposes any miracle that would change its ownership to or rely on it being owned by someone else.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story.
Target Modifier Ofuda (2 TMP)
You create an ofuda that you can attach to a miracle (flinging it out, using a mundane action, while invoking the miracle) to make it more accurate. You may choose at the time of your action whether this enhances your miracle with a level 4 creation of accuracy or with +1 Strike.
Each 2 MP buys a single-use ability, but you may have duplicates: specifically, you may have a number of ofuda up to your Treasure rating available at any given time.
De dí . . . dì????? (1 TMP)
You learn to write “de” in such a fashion as to emphasize the ambiguity of its pronunciation. To the extent that anyone who looks at it has an active miraculous effect or personal quality such that they get confused easily by such things, your rendition of this character is guaranteed to thus confuse them.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story, and possibly indefinitely.
A Book of Divine Letters: Bù
Deep contemplation of the letter “Bù (不)” and the expenditure of Persona Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Boo-Shikigami (1 PMP)
You create an ofuda that can transform into a flying, animated origami ghost with the word “bù (不)” for a face. Once invoked, it will fly around expressing its characteristic personality—which typically depends on the tenor of your calligraphy—until it says “boo!” three times. It will automatically fly up and say “boo!” when undetected in the presence of someone it wishes to scare, or if there is an allegation or question it firmly wishes to deny, even if by doing so it earns its death.
Each 1 MP buys a single-use boo-shikigami, but you may have duplicates: specifically, you may have a number of ofuda up to your Treasure rating available at any given time.
Negativity (2 PMP)
You have conceived of, and may paint, an efficacious bù (不). It is difficult to remain optimistic or cheery in the presence of an efficacious bù. Treat this as a level 2 Affliction which lasts until someone defaces the bù or the story ends.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “bù” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Reject Firmly (1 PMP)
You may deflect a mundane or miraculous attack. Plant your feet. Inhale. Then firmly reject the attack with a declaration, “Bù!” (不!) while also thrusting out your hands. You are rejected as a target for this miracle.
This is a Lesser Destruction of Target Validity. It has miracle level 5, and requires your miraculous action.
This is (also) a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “bù” again while spending 1 more MP before you can repeat its use.
A Book of Divine Letters: Yī
Deep contemplation of the letter “Yī (一)” and the expenditure of Aspect Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracle:
Only One Universe (1 AMP)
Sweeping your arm, sword, or calligraphy brush dramatically across the gaming table, you unify everything in your sight into a single conceptual entity. (Everything, that is, except for bees. Any bees present become “yī”s (一s) instead, whereupon they flee shrieking from ordinary space and time, most likely never to return.)
A feeling of connectedness and unitary nature arises. This has a base miracle level of 4.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “yī” again before you can repeat its use.
A Book of Divine Letters: Wǒ
Deep contemplation of the letter “wǒ (我)” and the expenditure of Aspect Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Incorrect Pronunciation (2 AMP))
You master the art of pronouncing wǒ (我) incorrectly. So thoroughly do the subtleties elude you that you may drive others into a frenzy of helpfulness—your pronunciation will practically force your target or targets to correct you, stretching their mouth in a comical fashion, gesturing at their lips, and repeating the word wǒ (我) with a slow, exaggerated, and deliberate abandon. Yet no matter how they wǒ (我) at you, and no matter how fervently you wò or wō or wƍ or even wǿǣǣǶ at them, the immaculateness of your confusion remains impenetrable to their instruction. You have 2 Edge, or increase 2 Edge to 3, on any mundane action designed to trap your target or targets in an indefinite loop of helpful corrections of this sort.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story.
Man Grasping Spear (1 AMP))
Throwing an arm around the shoulders of a hopping animated spear, which you must obtain separately, and (if necessary) disguising yourself as a man, you may camouflage yourself as an instance of the character wǒ (我). You derez into a collection of apparently random lines cross-hatching the walls or objects behind you and will only be recognized as a man or disguised woman holding a hopping animated spear by those who have recently looked up the history of the character wǒ (我) on the Internet.
This is a Lesser Enchantment of Wǒ (我). It has miracle level 4 and requires your miraculous action to invoke.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “wǒ” again while spending 1 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Keanu Reeves Technique (0 AMP))
Declaring “whoa” in the inimitable fashion of Keanu Reeves, you reveal that you have totally failed to pronounce wǒ (我). You should be ashamed of yourself, and also ashamed of Keanu Reeves. Wǒ (我) is not said like “whoa” at all, but is actually more like “waaha,” only without the humorous articulation of the h. However, bear in mind that you are probably still saying it wrong, even after I have so carefully and inarticulately explained. There is only so much wǒ (我) that a blog post can explain!
In Nobilis, you may declare “whoa” and then feel ashamed of yourself as frequently and as firmly as the other players will permit.
Fake It Till You Make It (2 AMP))
Repeat the word “wǒ (我),” stretching the sound out longer and longer and in a progressively more silly tone of voice, and you will eventually trigger the “perfect tone” that makes you a real martial artist. (If you’ve ever seen someone in a movie trying to scare off their assailants by pretending to know martial arts, posing exaggeratedly, and repeatedly drawing out the word “wǒ (我),” you now understand what they were intending to achieve.) On completion of this perfect tone, which always requires at least twice the current pace of the conflict and hence cannot be performed in a flurry, you bleach your hair blond, extend it fiercely upwards, surround yourself in a coruscating nimbus of Chi, and gain the ability to perform Aspect 5-level martial arts until 30 subjective seconds have elapsed. Afterward you will suffer a Serious Wound, “Depleted,” which you may mitigate to a surface wound either with a defensive miracle or by allowing yourself to faint.
This is (also) a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “wǒ” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use. Further, you cannot develop this ability again while still suffering from the wound “Depleted.”
Me, Myself, and I (2 AMP))
You have created a cunningly constructed origami you with the word “wǒ (我)” for a face. You may use a 0-MP miraculous action to possess this origami you as if using a difficulty 1 Treasure miracle on an Anchor. However, this origami you is fragile and will come apart if splashed with water, ripped by an opponent, or after three scenes of use in any case. An origami you is a mystic link to you, even if you haven’t done anything with it recently; however, a scene where someone uses that link to help, hinder, or otherwise affect you counts as a scene of the origami you’s use.
Each 2 MP constructs a single origami you. You may only have one origami you at a time—a man may only have one spear, after all—but it counts towards your ofuda cap.
Ofuda Errata
Speaking of which, let’s make that cap [Treasure rating+1], ’cause not everybody has Treasure but everybody loves ’em some ofuda.
A Book of Divine Letters: Aside
To this I have no further comment, but perhaps another scholar may.
A Book of Divine Letters: Shì
Deep contemplation of the letter “shì (是)” and the expenditure of Domain Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Existence-Ofuda (4 DMP)
You create an ofuda that you could attach to a nonexistent thing, if only you had some way of doing so, to give that thing a temporary power of existence. The more strongly the ofuda and specifically the letter “shì (是)” that you’ve written on it exists, the longer this power lasts. By default, when reified in this fashion:
Note that attempting to apply an existence-ofuda to an unreal miraculous entity may qualify as hubris, particularly if that entity is themselves capable of creating existence-ofuda.
Applying an existence-ofuda is a lesser animation of existence and consumes your miraculous action.
Each 4 MP buys a single-use ability, but you may have duplicates: specifically, you may have a number of ofuda up to [your Treasure rating + 1] available at any given time.
Sun Rising on the Emptiness (1 DMP)
Somewhere that isn’t here, somewhere that isn’t even really like here, somewhere in the Outside, there is a street sign near the junction of two roads. The sun hangs overhead. The entire collage takes the form of the letter “shì (是).” You may float a piece of paper labelled with “shì (是)” on the surface of a bowl of water to spy on that location.
Spying on the Outside is a level 2 miracle with 2 bonus Strike. It consumes your miraculous action and you must sustain it for as long as you wish the street sign, roads, and sun to remain visible in the bowl. Note that this isn’t necessarily very useful, since there’s no particular reason why anything interesting should happen there, much less in the moment that you are happening to look.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story.
Exuberance-Ofuda (2 DMP)
You create an ofuda that you can attach to someone to make them exclaim, “Yes!” in an exuberant fashion, optionally leaping into the air with one fist raised high. They will also feel a surge of exuberance and joyous spirit which lasts one hour and at least until the ending of the scene.
Applying the ofuda requires a mundane or Aspect-based action. Activating it requires your miraculous action and invokes a level 4 Enchantment of Shì (是); you can do this up to three seconds before making contact with the target, which is useful when you’re planning to use Aspect to affix it. Note that if you charge it up and then fail to apply it to someone else within three seconds it may turn its power on you or whatever you’re using to hold it with instead.
Each 2 MP buys a single-use ability, but you may have duplicates: specifically, you may have a number of ofuda up to [your Treasure rating + 1] available at any given time.
Radiant Confirmation (1 DMP)
You learn to say “shì (是)” so firmly that your meaning comes across even when the person you’re talking to cannot hear or understand you—you can even shì (是) somebody from across the void of space! When using this ability “shì (是)” always means “yes” or “correct,” and you are forbidden by a level 2 Auctoritas from explaining to anybody but me why you didn’t just say “correct” or “right” or “duì (对)” instead. You may however give as many evasions or false explanations as you like, such as “because I am a person of refinement,” “oh my god look behind you,” or “ah, these are not such days as those.”
This ability is single-target and local in its scope—your clearly-stated “shì (是)” can find a single target within two hundred yards of you or fly unerringly to a known location within ten miles.
In developing this ability you will draw a proper nine-stroke shì (是). Each use of this ability fades the ink on one stroke, so you may use this a total of nine times before you must retreat and contemplate “shì” again.
Postscript
In case you’re wondering how to get the nine strokes of shì, the double box at the top is considered four strokes: down, then a bending right-and-down stroke, then two strokes across. It takes three strokes to make the T/F thingie, and then two more complete the diagram. The bottom rightward line is actually a single sweeping arc from left to right!
A Book of Divine Letters: Rén
Deep contemplation of the letter “rén (人)” and the expenditure of Persona Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Bounding Forward (3 PMP)
You may make any written “rén (人)” bound off the surface it’s written on and dynamically kick somebody. You can choose whether this is an injurious kick, a stunning kick, a kick that knocks them cinematically backwards, or some combination thereof. By default this has the same power as an average Power’s Aspect 4 kick, but you can scale up the power proportionally if the written rén (人) is larger than an ordinary person’s legs and add bonus special effects according to the nature of the rén (人)—fiery if it’s drawn in a fiery fashion and so forth. The HG determines the final strength of the kick and any special effects: you just decide whether to appeal to the size or characteristics of the rén (人).
Invoking this power requires your miraculous action. It has miracle level 4. Using this power efficaciously erases the writing in question, and thus you can use it to remove even apparently indelible stains or deface random signs and documents if you can identify an appropriate rén (人) for this removal and identify somebody for the rén to kick.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 3 more MP before you can repeat its use.
This is a Person (2 PMP)
You may label something “rén (人).” This imbues it with a level 2 Affliction that compels people to treat it as a person. The effects generally snowball from early reactions, rather than taking any given specific form. For instance, you could label an office chair as “rén (人).” Perhaps people will begin apologizing to the chair for sitting in it; or honoring the kind Mr. Chair who holds them up in meetings; or suspecting Mr. Chair of perverse intentions and refusing to sit down. They may go even further, seeing Mr. Chair as a person fully like themselves, and become resentful that Mr. Chair sits in the office doing nothing all day while they must work. Eventually Mr. CEO will come down and have a heated argument with Mr. Chair. Mr. CEO will throw Mr. Chair out on the street and let him starve for his insolence. However, because he is a chair, and a sorrowful chair to boot, he will not starve. People will give money to the poor mute Mr. Chair who sits forlornly in front of the building. They will roll Mr. Chair over to the money and plead for him to take it. But the money will only blow away. Eventually a madman looking for victims for human experiments (人实验) will kidnap Mr. Chair and take him away to meet the most terrible of fates. This fate will be particularly terrible because it will not even satisfy the madman.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Cyborg Cop (0 PMP)
You may invoke your knowledge of rén (人) to dramatically increase the likelihood that a local theater is playing a movie about cyborg cops.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “rén” again before you can repeat its use. Further, you may only invoke “cyborg cop” once in any given story.
The Origin of Storks (4 PMP)
You create an ofuda that can transform into a person. Once invoked, it becomes an non-miraculous person more or less typical of the region where you constructed the ofuda; however, it will have two legs even if the typical person of that region does not. You don’t really control anything about what the new-made person is like, although they will owe you a large favor for their existence and sometimes they will have your eyes.
Ofuda-made people, or “rén-shikigami,” cannot reproduce.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 4 more MP before you can repeat its use.
A Book of Divine Letters: Yǒu
Deep contemplation of the letter “yǒu (有)” and the expenditure of Domain Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Joy of Meat (1 DMP)
You may achieve the full joy of having meat without actually having meat, simply by staring at this character. Specifically, your mundane actions are every bit as effective, impressive, and satisfying without meat as they would be with meat, even if the action is heavily meat-dependent such as “cook a Thanksgiving turkey.” You need only rest your thoughtful gaze from time to time upon the symbol “yǒu (有).”
The meat of this sublime contemplation is unfortunately hollow. Your meatless mundane actions remain and must remain potentially less productive than working with actual meat would be. We apologize for this, and particularly to vegetarians—but if it were otherwise, A Book of Divine Letters would encourage that foul degeneracy that is symbol-referent confusion and many would call the scholarship of these words into question.
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story. It is like a piece of meat, which you have.
Possession (4 DMP)
You may mark your possessions with the symbol “yǒu (有).” You may use any desired method for marking them, from putting a slip of paper near them with “yǒu (有)” written on it to burning the character into their metal frame. This establishes your ownership, and nobody can remove that thing from your possession without first removing or altering the mark or overcoming a level 2 Auctoritas. “Your possession,” “remove from your possession,” and “remove or alter the mark” are terms of art whose meaning can be established or altered through player-level arguments about semantics.
Once you develop this ability you implicitly mark it with the symbol “yǒu (有),” making it yours for the remainder of the story. Other people can develop a similar ability, of course, but it’s nowhere near the same—their ability, after all, marks things as theirs instead of as yours.
Is There Mayonnaise? (1 DMP)
So here’s a bit of an advanced topic!
Yǒu (有) also means “to be there (in that location).” Méi you (没有) means “not there (in that location).” So if you’ve not just studied “yǒu (有)” but also taken some time to think on “méi (没),” you can learn the following technique.
Firmly declare: “Yo, mayo!” and write yǒu méi yǒu (有没有) in the air with one finger or appropriate indicator appendage. The strokes you trace will remain in the air and begin to glow a terrible, eggy white. Drums will drum in the heart-furnace of the world. The eyes of God, or Cneph, or perhaps simply your temporal lobe’s perception of such an entity’s attention, will turn to the characters you have drawn.
Then, if there is mayonnaise in the vicinity that you may use for your intended purpose—
Which may be any purpose legitimate to mayonnaise—
Two of these characters will burn away, leaving yǒu (有). And wheresoever that mayonnaise will be, it will call back: “Yo!”
But if there is none such mayonnaise, a single character will burn away instead, and only the dreadful negative méi yǒu (没有) shall remain. A voice as from Heaven and the Earth itself calls out: “Mayo (没有)” and leaves you with much to contemplate about theodicy.
In theory, and this is part of why this is such an advanced topic, negative mayonnaise would invert this effect, returning “méi yǒu (没有)” when negative mayonnaise existed, or “unexisted” if that term should be more fit, and declaring “yǒu (有)” when it did not. Attempting this ritual in the presence of genuinely undefined mayonnaise would be, of course, a terrible threat unto the continuity of the world.
Once you develop this ability you either have it, or don’t have it, for the remainder of the story. If you don’t have it, and wish to have it, you will have to return to an appropriate fastness, spend another MP, and contemplate “yǒu” again.
Yǒu Dawg Sup (2 MP)
You may enchant a dawg, strengthening its ability to have and sup on meat. This is a level 6 Lesser Binding of Sup, binding the dawg’s destiny to supping and to a lesser extent to “yǒu (有).” This typically manifests in the dawg as a level 2 “sup dawg” Bond.
Using this ability requires your miraculous action. It is fully functional when targeting an actual dawg; its effect on a dog or somebody you would tend to call or address as a dog or dawg is limited, and it has no effect whatsoever on somebody or something that is not a dawg at all.
Once you develop this ability you have it for the remainder of the story. However, its power is liable to sup upon your own: after the first dawg, or first three dawg- or dog-like entities, you will need to spend 1-2 MP of any type on every entity you thus enchant.
A Book of Divine Letters: Second Aside
A Book of Divine Letters: Le
Deep contemplation of the letter “le (了)” and the expenditure of Treasure Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
That’s in le Past (1 TMP)
You may make unassailable assertions that things you’ve done or are about to do are “in the past” and therefore no longer worth arguing about or discussing. If you correctly draw the character “le (了)” in the air as you do this, anyone attempting to offer further discussion or argument must overcome a level 4 Obstacle.
Once you develop this ability you retain it until the end of the story or until someone musters an effective (level 3, after the Obstacle) response. If that happens you must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “le (了)” while spending another 1 MP before you can use the ability again.
Le Morte (4 TMP)
You may interrupt an action by seizing its past particle and converting it into the terrible hooked scythe “Le (了) Morte.” This is bad French but really that’s the L’académie’s own fault.*
Treat invoking this effect as a level 6 “unleashing miracles” of Treasure. You must use your miraculous action to invoke and sustain this effect. You must interrupt another action when originally doing so. Finally, you must have, or acquire a wound to take, a Bond or wound-Affliction connecting you to the completive particle “le (了).”
While active, the scythe Le (了) Morte has the miraculous power to cut a few seconds forward or backwards in time; to make a cool “liăo (了)” sound when you swing it through the air; and to generally function as a functional and terrifying weapon.
This is a one-use miracle. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “le” again while spending 4 more MP before you can summon Le (了) Morte again. Note that characters with Treasure 2+ might be better served by mastering a similar scythe on their own terms.
* Made you twitch, French immortals! Made you twitch!
Hook Shot (2 TMP)
After endless hours practicing the hook atop the character “le (了),” you master the perfect hook shot. You may throw any reasonably aerodynamic object (a basketball, discus, yappy dog, or whatever) in such a fashion that it will curve—suddenly and of its own apparent accord—backwards at some point in its flight, then stop, then descend gently to the ground. You are limited by your normal throwing skills in every other respect: in effect, the curved stroke atop the “le (了)” replaces a more normal straight shot or gentle arc. Once learned, this is not miraculous or even magical: it’s a natural outgrowth of having TMP and spending that much effort and energy repeatedly writing “le (了).”
Once you develop this ability you retain it for the remainder of the story.
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.
A Book of Divine Letters: Lái
Deep contemplation of the letter “lái (來)” and the expenditure of Domain Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Fruit! To Me! (2 DMP)
OK, look. Let’s face it. Lái (來) is a cross with legs and two rén (人) behind it. But let’s pretend that we can see something else there, like, um—a tree! A tree, with a blanket around its base, like you see with . . . Christmas trees . . . some-times—
OK, and maybe if some Chinese letters would stop making sly references to Christmas then I would be less likely to get involved with tragic lines of thought involving the ousia of the Trinity, the Messalian heresy, and the like below—
just saying!—
But the point is, OK, so it’s a tree, a fruit tree, like it has figs or, OK, no, not figs, figs are like, you know, all cursed and stuff, like, in the Gospels, so this tree, it’s got some, you know, non-doctrinal fruit like, OK, um, apples
(gang. aft. agley.)
—OK, like oranges, it could be some non-doctrinal fruit like oranges.
It is a Christmas tree, bearing oranges. Like a Greek bearing gifts, if you ignore that ancient Trojan slander which you probably should because seriously when your city is known principally for its condoms you might not be in a position to slander the Greeks.
Just saying.
OK, anyway, oranges. They are, as you know, a completely non-doctrinal, non-offensive, peel-shrouded juice-filled orange-colored fruit hanging, in this case, from a non-offensive, non-sectarian “holiday tree” that has decided to sit out the war on Christmas as a conscientious objector. I don’t think anyone can in good conscience object to that, except, of course, for the tree itself. Now, these oranges that hang from this conscientious non-sectarian holiday tree are shaped like people because . . . because . . . because that is how the Yellow Emperor, who is laughing at me right now from his doubtlessly awesome celestial throne, designed this letter to be, or how whomever who did design it designed it to be in any case from whatever throne they happen to be sitting on and laughing at me from if that is in fact what they are doing.
So.
The power here is, you can point at a tree and say sharply, “Lái (來)” and bam, two fruits will come out of the tree. I am telling the truth here. Do not get fooled by the pronunciation. This is actually what will happen. Two fruits will come out of the tree. They’ll grow from the tree’s branches, one on each side. Then they will fly into your hands in an entirely non-offensive fashion, as fruit is wont to do. The fruit that grows and flies is always the fruit of the tree you point at, so if you point at a shoe tree you will get shoe fruit, if you point at a pine tree you will get pine nuts, if you point at a beech tree you will get a pina colada, and so forth and so on. The pits of the fruits are shaped like little people, holding up little signs that say “Lái (來)” in a completely non-denominational fashion; if you plant them, the people-pits I mean, you will get new trees of the original sort of tree nine months later.
This power is a Level 4 Lesser Creation/Animation of Fruit.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “lái” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Jet-Propelled Mousetraps (2 MP)
You enchant a mousetrap with the word lái (來) so that it will attempt to leap up and bite the back of the tongue of anybody speaking heresy in its presence. This is a level 4 Lesser Enchantment of Lái (來), and each use requires 1 MP.
A typical mousetrap has only a vague awareness of correct doctrine and may in fact mistake particularly implausible but canonical beliefs for heresy or vice versa — in particular, most mousetraps mistake the Messalian heresy (that the ousia of the Trinity can be perceived by the carnal senses, and that the Threefold God transformed himself into a single hypostasis to unite with the souls of the perfect, among other details) for legitimate Catholic doctrine, while rejecting the Church’s stance on the rhythm method as improbable; similarly, a mousetrap fails to grasp the true essence of Being and Non-Being, and will accept the argument that the Tao is culpable of description while becoming confused and snapping out at a subtle discussion of that which is useful for its emptiness. In short, a mousetrap by default has only a Comparative Religions Skill of 1. However, if you spend four hours during the enchantment of the mousetrap expounding to it on the true doctrine this Skill rises to 3 and the mousetrap can distinguish heresy from correct doctrine better than many priests. In either case the mousetrap will have a Bite the Back of a Heretic’s Tongue Skill of 3, and a pool of 8 Will which it may spend to enhance these Skills over the course of any given day.
If a jet-propelled mousetrap succeeds in grabbing the base of somebody’s tongue, they must overcome a level 2 Auctoritas to say anything other than: “The word lái (來), meaning ‘to come,’ is drawn as a crucifix with legs and two rén (人) behind it. To draw conclusions from this would be heretical, much like the mistakenly heretical ideas I earlier—in the presence of this fine mousetrap that has seized my tongue—expressed.” However, if they say this, and they will know instinctively that this is an option, the mousetrap will unclench and fall harmlessly to the floor, graciously forgiving the repentant heretic and remaining quiescent until such time as it hears a heresy again.
Note that if a mousetrap that has battened upon a heretic’s tongue hears a heresy voiced by a different individual it may or may not choose to leap from mouth to mouth in pursuit of the new outrage it has heard. Further note that if you can persuade a mousetrap enchanted in this fashion to itself speak a heresy, it will leap into the air, shriek an unholy rusted-metal shriek, and spiral-snap itself into nothingness.
Once you develop this ability you have it for the remainder of the story.
Let Sleeping Dogs Lái (4 MP)
You may enchant a dog, such that as soon as it falls asleep, every time it falls asleep, it is drawn inevitably towards you at a steady rate of 5 miles per hour, unfazed and unharmed by any obstacles in its path as if it were a lodestone wrapped in an impermeable skin-tight field of force. This is a level 4 Lesser Enchantment of Lái (來).
Using this ability requires your miraculous action. It is fully functional when targeting an actual dog; its effect on a dawg or somebody you would tend to call or address as a dog or dawg is limited, and it has no effect whatsoever on somebody or something that is not a dog at all.
Once you develop this ability you have it for the remainder of the story. However, you may only enchant up to one large dog and two small dogs at a time.
À La a Lái Lei (Aloft, Lái, my Lolly, a Lái Lei to Fly, Aye, My Lolly to Me) (4 MP)
Spend two hours folding pieces of paper on which you have written the letter lái (來) into origami flowers and string them into a loose necklace. If someone you care about hangs this flowery garland around their neck they will grow flowery paper wings, one dangling from each arm when they are on the ground, and a sinuous origami tail. Until the next time they hug or strike you, they receive the following mundane abilities —
Come to (Insert Your Name Here) 3
Superior Flight 3
Superior Origami Tail 2
in lieu of their normal mundane abilities. If they resist this effect by taking a wound it will normally also diminish the power of the mundane abilities they receive.
This miracle functions by bringing the person you care about into physical and spiritual consanguity with the character lái (來); it is a level 7 Greater Enchantment.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and spend two more hours and 4 more MP folding paper before you can repeat its use. You may only have one necklace of this sort active and available for use at a time.