Excellent Emissary's Tongue
Cost: —; Mins: Linguistics 3, Essence 3; Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Varies
Prerequisite Charms: Any Linguistics Excellency, Poetic Expression Style
Essence enhances the Solar's language skills. This Charm allows the Solar to communicate and understand basic concepts in a language with which he has some experience but does not know. This requires a successful (Intelligence + Linguistics) roll for each five long ticks of conversation or page of written material, and the Solar must use a Linguistics Excellency. The difficulty is 5 if the Solar has a few days' experience studying or hearing the language. It rises to 7 if the Solar has a scene of experience studying or hearing the language. It's 10 if the Solar has only heard or read a few words. If the Solar uses this Charm to engage in social conflict in a language he does not understand, both the Solar and anyone he attempts to persuade receive a +3 to their MDV.
Language-Absorbing Method
Same Charm for Abyssal Exalted.
Cost: 10m
Adds Mirror, Stackable and Training keywords.
Prerequisite Charms: Infinite Blasphemy Glossolalia, Screaming in Silence
This Charm enhances an Abyssal's innate bite attack, allowing him to steal a victim's fluency in a language. If the Exalt gains any motes from the attack, he also knows what languages the victim speaks and may choose one of them. The victim forgets how to understand, read, write or speak the chosen language until she spends three Willpower points to heal the mental damage, though doing so does not reduce her actual Linguistics rating.
Meanwhile, the Abyssal gains total fluency in the chosen language for as long as he commits motes to this Charm, including a specialty in the victim's dialect. This effect does not increase his actual Linguistics rating. If the victim cannot read, the Abyssal does not gain written fluency in the language.
This Charm may be separately activated any number of times to take multiple languages, provided the Abyssal commits Essence for each tongue. An Abyssal with experience to spend can also permanently digest a stolen language as a diceless miscellaneous action, terminating the Charm to instantly raise the Abyssal's Linguistics rating and/or purchase the appropriate dialect specialty as a Training effect. Doing so returns the victim's language fluency.