Artifacts/DorchadasOneDot
Recording Cube</i>
Blue and Black Jade
Artifact •
Commitment: None
Often used in the First Age to transport messages between loved ones, Recording Cubes are small cubes of blue and black jade, about three inches to a side. On one of the sides is a series of concentric circles--this is the recording side. The other sides have the Old Realm characters for one through five on them. To record a message, the user touches the side with the concentric circle, and then touches one of the other sides twice. He then spends two motes of Essence, which will allow for a message up to five minutes in length (mortals can spend Willpower instead of Essence to power the cube). Further motes can be spent, but no one message can be more than 15 minutes long.
In order to play back a message, the user simply touches a side and an image of the speaker of the last recording made to that side forms in the air above the cube. The image is somewhat fuzzy, but in distinct enough detail to allow facial expressions and emotions to be made out.
These devices were somewhat of a specialty interest in the First Age, due to Infalliable Messenger, communications Charms, and other, more powerful communication devices. They did have the advantage of being able to play back their contents, however, which made them coveted among certain segments of the population.
<i>Messenger Coin</i>
Blue Jade
Artifact •
Commitment: None
These coins were made in limited numbers in the First Age as a method of emergency communication between the Solar Exalted and their Lunar mates. While less common since the Usurpation, the Empress still had them made so that she could instantly communicate with the heads of the Great Houses and certain important Legion commanders in the field, and they with her, without having to waste any time in doing so.
When a Messenger Coin is created, one person must be chosen with whom that coin will communicate--this cannot be changed after its creation, and the coin will always bear some indication (a profile view, a representation of their totem, their anima banner) in its decoration of the person with whom it is meant to communciate. The person for whom it is intended must be present at its creation, and must spend 10 motes of Essence and 1 Willpower to bond the coin to them, though none of this cost is committed. Thereafter, anyone who wishes to speak with the recipient has to simply spend 1 mote of Essence and crush the coin, and they will be placed in direct visual and auditory communcation. Each recipient sees an image of the other person appear in front of them, though no observer can see this image without the aid of Essence-sensing Charms. Without those Charms, listening in on such a conversation can be a frustrating endeavor, as the would-be spy will only hear half the conversation.
The coins are designed for a single use only, and after being used become inert fragments of blue jade.
<i>Transcriber</i>
Green Jade
Artifact •
Commitment: None
A transcriber is a flat white box made of highly polished wood (though there is no danger of the wood rotting) and tiny amounts of green jade with a slot on one side. It's use is simple--the user simply touches it and speaks, and the box translates the words into writing and prints it out on sheets of paper from the slot. This requires a Intelligence + Linguistics roll at standard difficult, with failure indicating that the speaker has misspoken enough that the document produced contains several large errors. The measured, uninflected vocal cadence necessary for a transcriber to understand a person clearly is hard to get used to, and beginners often make quite a few mistakes as they sort out exactly what the artifact is looking for. It also requires near perfect pronunciation and grammar--attempts to use colloquialisms or slang expressions will sometimes be written correctly, but more often produce a mishmash of characters that have no meaning when taken together.
The device draws on ambient Essence and channels it through the jade and the wood, allowing it to produce its own paper. However, it can only produce up to forty pages at a time before needing to rest for several hours. The writing of a transcriber will be completely legible, with every Old Realm character perfectly executed and all the characters in perfectly spaced rows on the page. Unfortunately, all extant transcribers only understand Old Realm, which limits their use in any day to day bureaucratic activities in the Age of Sorrows--the secret of their creation has long been lost.
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