Mercury's Blessing

Mercury's Blessing (•, Acqua •)

 * Action: Instant
 * Dice pool: Intelligence + Expression
 * Cost: 1 Wisp
 * Duration: 1 scene

With a touch of the hand and a look in the eye, the Noble may converse with anyone in the world. She touches her target to activate the Charm.
 * Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s speech and writing become incoherent. She takes the Stumbling Condition, applied to a Social Skill other than Animal Ken or Empathy, and lasting for the rest of the scene.
 * Failure: The Noble learns no new language from the Charm.
 * Success: The Noble acquires a basic understanding of the target’s native language until the Charm ends, as if she had a dot in the Multilingual Merit for it [CofD 46].
 * Exceptional Success: The Nobles speaks her new language felicitously, charming her audience. She gains a +1 bonus to Expression dice pools when speaking the target’s native language.

Mercury’s Blessing may be used more than once in a scene, but only to acquire more languages; the Charm does not improve fluency with languages a Noble already knows.

Fluent
On a successful activation, the Noble becomes fully fluent in the target’s language, as if she had the Language Merit [CofD 45] for it. She may use the Charm to increase her fluency in languages she knows from the Multilingual Merit.

Lasting

 * Cost: +1 Wisp
 * Duration: 1 day

The Noble’s magical fluency persists for a full day from the moment she gained it.

Literate

 * Requires Acqua ••

The Noble can converse with the absent, if they have left a record of their thoughts. She may apply the Charm to a written text in a language she doesn’t know; if successful, she understands the language that text is written in until the Charm ends. Audio recordings are also valid targets for the Charm. The Noble must read a text or listen to a recording to use the Charm on it.

Overflowing

 * Requires Acqua ••

If a person speaks more than one language, the Noble can learn them all. For each success rolled, up to her Acqua, the Noble gains a basic understanding of one language her target knows and she does not. If she doesn’t speak the target’s native language, she must learn that one. If the target has both the Language and Multilingual Merits, she learns the languages from Language before those from Multilingual. If she applies Fluent, she become as fluent in all the languages she learns as the target is.

Teaching

 * Requires Acqua •••

The Noble can use the Charm in reverse, granting her target the ability to speak a language she knows.