Mage Humor:
10th Sphere: Logomancy
Language was once thought to be an aspect of the Mind Sphere, but certain
awakened Magi have come to understand that it is, itself, a Primal Aspect
of the Universe, as hinted at by the use of things like Enochian and runes
as foci for magic. By controlling language, you control how the world
can be understood.
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Comprehend Languages. The Magus can detect, analyze, and understand
any form of communication: drawn, written, sculpted, etc. He can
pick out the symbolism of a painting, understand newly created words, and
speak in tongues. In the case of magical effects created through
sufficiently symbolic foci, he can figure out what said foci stand for,
and thus try to intuit what the magic is intended to do. (Ultimately,
all foci are symbolic, but some require more successes than others to comprehend)
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Tweak Languages. The Magus can now control minor aspects of symbolism
and communication. This mostly comes down to subtle shifting of sentence
structures (such as compelling people to use compound sentences instead
of simple sentences) or adjusting people's spelling, such as whether they
prefer to spell Magic or Magick or Mahjik. In conjunction with Prime
2, the Magus can create new, simple concepts from nothing.
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Adjust Concepts. The Magus can now alter concepts themselves to shrink
in comprehensability, or to grow to encompass more than they once did.
Where Joe the Hermetic once saw Red as a symbol of blood, he could be made
with this sphere to also symbolize fire, courage, and sunsets with that
color as well. Sleeper historians seem to have used this subconsciously
on the ideas of Renaissance and the Rise of the Middle Class... The
magus commands metaphor and similes at will, and can force things to conform
to such, making redheads become tempermental, making foxes go crazy, and
so forth. Sleepers can be made to comprehend other languages now,
as well as their own.
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Mutate Concepts. The Magus can now make words encompass ideas completely
unrelated to their original meaning, so long as said ideas are not totally
incompatable with older meanings. The word 'Cat' can encompass cats,
potatoes, and computer programs designed to remove viruses. On the
other hand, the word 'War' cannot be made to also mean 'Peace'. New
words can be created encompassing highly complex ideas, in conjunction
with Prime 2. Spelling can be mutated completely, so that 'Skdjfdl'
will be treated as 'Cat' by those affected. This allows for codes
without code books. Grammar happily dances to the mage's tune.
One could swap the tenses of a language or even create new tenses.
The symbolism of Foci can be shifted massively, allowing a Verbena to summon
up a storm by eating an apple. This makes an especially horrible
attack on a Hermetic if one adds wildly variant meanings to Enochian
words...
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Namshub of Enki. Language is your grovelling slave. You can
strike people with the curse of Babel, dividing their languages to make
them mutually incomprehensible. You can enable perfect communication
between different species. You can strip a word of its old meanings
completely, destroying it, or change its meaning completely.
'War is Peace. Black is White.', etc. By doing so, you can
radically rewrite people's comprehension of the universe and their magic.
A Technomancer could be rendered a Traditionalist and vice versa, for the
duration of the effect. These changes can be pushed upon the universe
(vulgar, vulgar, vulgar), causing black things to turn white, gravity to
repel people, etc, in conjunction with the appropriate sphere.