He lights a cigarette, the smoke curling like script in a language he doesn’t know—yet.
When he speaks, the words come out clean, like he’s been saying them all his life. Spanish, Russian, Cantonese—it doesn’t matter. For the next hour, every phrase lands smooth, like jazz on a rainy night.
Spend enough time chewing the fat with a local—really listen—and something clicks behind those wolf-eyes of his. It ain’t just language he picks up, it’s meaning, rhythm, the heartbeat of a dialect.
One good hour, one hard pull on the mind, and it’s his. Accent and all. Like he was born under that tongue’s moon.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You may understand and communicate to humans as if you are fluent in a relevant language.
This also includes understanding any recorded communications from the relevant targets, including writings, scent trails, etc.
Jordan pauses for a moment (less than an action, it is barely a second) as his brain processes the alien spy database he was grown with, a database that contains all languages on the planet he was assigned to (Earth). He then speaks fluently in that language, as if he had always known it. Because the database in his DNA always had.
As Jordan continues to awaken from a sleeper agent into an active agent, he may unlock sections of this database that are currently locked off from him…such as knowledge of alien languages, and of creatures outside his primary assignment of infiltrating human society. Now he has continued along that reawakening, and so alien portions of this database have unlocked as well.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You may understand and communicate to Creatures, humans, and Sapient beings as if you are fluent in a relevant language.
This also includes understanding any recorded communications from the relevant targets, including writings, scent trails, etc.
When activated, Niamh's already silver colored eyes briefly turn solid silver.
While speaking, she occasionally makes the correct sound but her mouth and tongue don't quite match. She may say a phrase slightly out of order, but it's still clear im meaning.
Listening to others speak she'll sometimes look deep in thought or distracted, which is to let her brain catch up with unfamiliar grammar or to distinguish similar sounding words from each other.
Reading and writing carries similar minor errors, misspelling a word here, making an odd flourish with a letter there. Always comprehensible though.
This gift can feel mentally tiring to use as it depends on connecting syllables into words, understanding the meaning, and using the correct grammar all at once. This comes naturally to someone fluent in a language, but doing it in an unfamiliar tongue and in both directions feels like trying to solve a sudoku puzzle without writing anything down.
Reading and writing in another language is easier, as it's natural to pause on difficult text.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You may understand and communicate to humans as if you are fluent in a relevant language for the next hour.
This also includes understanding any recorded communications from the relevant targets, including writings, scent trails, etc.
Zephyren's birdlike senses have attuned him to the so-called languages of the animal kingdom. He can finally comprehend the song of the forests, but this is only the beginning.
On music:
It's a blemish in Zephyren's past, yet one of his most fond highlights all the same. The sense of community that music brings is universal, as anyone can understand when a score sounds upbeat or solemn. He could put his emotions into it and no one would know the subject of his grief, only that he does have feelings after all. It never quite leaves his mind, so he finds himself stopping in his tracks whenever he hears it - whether geophonic or anthropophonic or biophonic - he has to appreciate how it all flows together.
On animals:
Wildlife is harder to spot in Hong Kong, with all the urbanization. Zephyren remembers his first few months in Canada, which were often spent just gawking at the animals he's never seen. Particularly, he had no idea coyotes were dangerous. Whoops.
On comprehension:
Now that even animals can speak to him, he has more noise to filter through. It might just be his downfall.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You may understand and communicate to Creatures as if you are fluent in a relevant language.
As Perkins Cadbury smokes weed, the smoke in his lungs that gets spewed out creates a fog of 'understanding,' allowing those he talks to and hears from to be 'understood.' As in, he knows exactly what they're saying through the power of chill vibes, y'know?
You gain the following benefits at all times. You must actively and obviously be using weed to gain the benefits of this Effect.
You may understand and communicate to humans and Sapient beings as if you are fluent in a relevant language.
Isaac is able to communicate to those who don’t have a voice, nor life. When used, his tongue morphs into a long maw belonging to another being of unknown origin, it beckons the undead to awaken so that he may speak with them.
This knowledge of this gift instructed him to perform a ritual involving cutting open his tongue and pouring an unknown black liquid on the wounds.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Dead target within 50 feet. For dead targets, you must possess their belonging. You must make a Trauma roll when you use this Effect. Its Difficulty cannot be reduced by any means. If you fail or Botch, you receive one Mind Damage and a new Trauma.
The target can communicate in your language for the next hour.
While active and speaking to a single individual, you may choose to use glib tongue. When you do, anything you say to them (even gibberish) will be exactly what they want to hear. You gain no understanding of what that might be.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see seeing your tongue turn into a green tentacle with a mouth on the end come out of your mouth, and begin speaking in the voice of the deceased.
The beastmaster can speak to and understand any animal.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You may understand and communicate to terrestrial animal as if you are fluent in a relevant language.
The Necromancer spits into the mouth of a recently deceased corpse. For the few minutes, the corpse's head comes back to life and speaks to the Necromancer.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Dead target within 50 feet. Dead targets must have died within the past week, and you must have their remains in your possession.
The target can communicate in your language for the next hour.