Calling

The Book of Calling
or A Dissertation on the Mechanics and Possibilities of the Call
by Tharak al’Derran Makratan
Teacher at the Draconic Academie, Archadoon

Before I start this I ask you to remember that the Call is unlike anything you have ever experienced. It is a set of senses set entirely apart from those you are used to using. To explain it in words that are only made to describe the senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing is no easy task. I shall however do my best. It is as hard to explain to someone who is not a dracon, like the arcanic senses to people who have never touched arcana.

But first let us look at what the Call is. The Call is communication. It is a bond, dracon to dracon. It is a way of telling us that here are friends, here are kinsmen. For some it is a danger, allowing hunters of our kind to know where they are. Whatever we like the Call to be for ourselves, whether we like it or not, one thing is clear - it is an integral part of us. However with time and training, it may be turned to our advantage. But also remember this: all creatures give off Signatures, it is our curse and our strength that we are able to utilize ours, however we cannot see the Signature of others because ours is different from theirs, our Cyraxian and Dragon heritage put us apart from everyone else.

We are a race made not by any god, we are unnatural, for every step we take on the Psychic Plane there is something there, fighting back. That is the truth, we are not welcomed, we are not allowed to enter with open arms. For us the Psychic Plane is a place fraught with danger. I have not spoken with what other races refer to as telepaths, even though perhaps their understanding of things may have furthered my own. I choose to remain on the path of the dracon. We are crooked dragons, the bastard children of Cyraxians and Dragons, welcomed by neither and hated by those afraid and envious of us. These are the cards fate has dealt us.

As soon as we are born The Call can be felt coming from us. Each dracon is a part of the kinship that is draconkind from the second he or she is born. That is when we first feel our scalebrethren around us. That is our first taste of the Call. It is during these first moments after birth that the Signature is born. Can you already tell how inadequate these paltry words are? I have to use speak when I mean talking with the Call, I use Signature for something that is not a signature at all. A Signature is something else entirely. It is however very personal and different for each and every individual. For that is the first thing you must learn. Each dracon is unique, each has a different signature, each will react to a given situation differently. And no matter how you try to get around it, the Signature is at the heart of the Call. To truly utilize the Call, a deep understanding of Signatures is required.

The First Teachings

When first learning the art of the Call it is important for the students to visualize the exercises that they are going to do. This is partly to allow the mind to know what they wish it to do. There is no point in pushing it every step of the way, the mind knows what it can do better than you do, you only have to open the way and one of the most efficient ways of doing this is by creating mental images of what you want to achieve. Some take a word and all its sensations, how it curls on the tongue, how it sounds and so on and put all these sensations into a 'ball' before Sending it to the person they want to send to. Others create visions of a waterfall that hits their body, but not harming them, as the water passes. Students tend to settle fairly early on a mental image that works for them and seldom deviate from it. Such is the norm for teaching the Call. The main thing you must do for something that you want to happen to actually happen is to wish for it, the mind will do most of the work itself.

No matter how you are taught to traverse the psychic plane, no matter what mental images your teacher teaches you to use or you construct for yourself, one thing must always remain clear - The Call cannot be forced. It must flow naturally, the psychic plane can be compared to swimming in this manner. No matter how much you fight the current of a river you will be pulled away involuntarily, however if you co-operate with the flow of the river you will be carried along with hardly any effort. Learning to cooperate with The Call so that it would do wonders for you, comes only with practise. Once the mind catches the flow or the action with which The Call works for the dracon, it will be able to find it or trigger it the next time much easier.

One of the most basic uses of the Call and perhaps the one for which it is most known for, is the ability to speak mind to mind. It can be much more intimate than simply talking though. Dracons can connect their minds with each other and can not only talk in words, but also see things that one of the dracons would like to show. Picking up feelings is not so hard either. However this cannot be forced, for the Call is a tool for talking and not forcing others or gaining the information that the other would be unwilling to share. While it takes a dracon's 'permission' to see and feel private things, there is almost nothing that can guard the mind from Receiving information, whether it be words, images or something else.

One thing that must be remembered however, is that what you are doing is not speaking as other people do. There is nothing as crude involved as tongues and teeth. The Call is a way for any dracon to communicate regardless of any linguistic problems. What is being sent back and forth are thoughts, feelings and meanings. The connection is made from mind to mind, with one mind Receiving and one mind Sending, this tends to flow back and forth if both minds are capable of these both skills. However, the reason why many are suitable to simply hearing words, is because this is how their mind chooses to adapt to what they are Receiving. Language becomes redundant, using the Call we can all understand one another. In time those who master the Call often look beyond the words themselves and see the core thoughts that come behind them. This enables them to communicate much more quickly and efficiently than most others because they can grasp what is being said much easier. It is also this that makes it so hard to lie when you are speaking mind to mind. Imagine trying to keep a straight face inside your mind. It is a little like trying not to think of the pink dorin. However an untrained dracon would not be able to see the images or feelings, his mind would render them as blurry and wouldn’t recognize for what they really are. Those who only begin to study in The Call send thoughts which are simply made of words, the result being simple 'speaking' mind to mind.

However even such simple skills as these require one simple thing. Grounding. This is perhaps the most important thing a student of the Call will ever learn. A good teacher of The Call will not let a student leave before he has gone through a session so extensive with Grounding that the student is able to do it automatically. If a student were to try something that he did not know how to Ground for, the possibility of the energies of the Psychic Plane having a severely detrimental effect on the mind of the student is pretty close to a certainty. Grounding is without a doubt the most important thing a teacher of the art can teach a student, excepting perhaps caution.

One thing we must remember is that everything the Call does, is done not on the material plane but instead on the psychic plane. This is what allows us to sense a dracon through a wall even if we cannot see her or him. All perceiving of The Call is done on the psychic plane and this plane is not limited by our material senses. Whenever we use the Call we use psychic energy, a message sent is a ball of psychic energy, even maintinaing our signature takes a faint amount of psychic energy. However unlike mages who need to reach Clara, The Call is always minimally connected to the plane and never leaves our senses. This energy if concentrated enough can destroy a mind, which is why we must be careful when we gather it. We must carefully dissipate the extra strands of energy otherwise they will fry our minds - we must Ground. And while having one's mind fried is better than going mindlost it is not so by much. You can end up losing parts of your memory, abilities that you had before may elude you, friends may suddenly appear as strangers. Perhaps this is a worse fate than becoming simply mindlost.

Among other skills that are taught are a few that deserve mentioning. One of these is simple - Detection. Detection is merely a way of more actively sensing Signatures around you. When a dracon is born, or is merely without training, that dracon can sense the signatures of others, but this is a faint impression with little idea of who is giving off the signals and where that person is. When this skill is improved, as it will with time and training, a dracon may at first be able to pinpoint Signatures, to be able to tell who is Sending them off and where they are. As this skill progresses further the dracon is able to learn to recognize individual Signatures and it is through Signatures that true understanding of The Call comes.

Detection has its twin brother too - Shielding. It is for those who do not want to be detected by users of The Call, Shielding is however much more difficult than Detecting because it involves hiding one's Signature. Giving off a Signature is such a natural thing to a dracon that living without it for a long time may seem odd, it is however a thing that is taught. However, Shielding is a fairly complex matter since it also allows those who know the person well enough, to pierce it through it by recreating their Signature. However Shielding will hide a dracon from those who want to hunt our race.

Of least renown among the skills of the Call, is the skill of Receiving. It is a thing that is done automatically, allowing a person to receive the messages sent by others. All dracons have this skill and it is taken for granted in most cases. However Receiving is perhaps one of the most useful tools available to dracons and combined with the skill of Detection it becomes Reading. Just like untrained dracons can't hide their Signature and are detected by others, so they can not turn off their Receiving skill.

There are also other Skills, but these are the most important. These are the ones who are taught first, the foundation stones on which we lay our understanding of the Call. The basic skills are Grounding, Receiving, Detection, Sending and Shielding. All other skills are based on these five, or make use of them. There are many more advanced skills, but all are based on these five, they are often referred to as the Five Pillars. All of these are taught within the first two levels of understanding of The Call.

The Signature however is not a skill but we still call it the Sixth Pillar. It is around this much of the advanced learning circles. The Signatures are what allows dracons to communicate over long distances. By recreating the Signature of a person within their own mind a skilled artisan of the Call may communicate with this person over a longer distance than would usually be possible. Through Signatures we can go where only a few others would choose to go. However before one attempts the skills of further levels, he or she should know of the dangers that are connected with this unique skill.

The Signature

A Signature is, to put it simply, the essence of the dracon who is Sending words and thoughts at you. Sometimes it is also called the inner voice. As we are born our Signature starts to evolve. As we grow older and more mature, so does our Signature. What is surprising is that while a Signature may change and mature like wine, it will still remain recognizable to those who knew it before the change, a Signature is a both a thing of constancy and one of constant change. However to describe the Signature so simply does not do it justice. It is like a name, only infinitely more personal, it identifies but it is also an integral part of the identity. It is a thought, feeling and emotional statue that your mind sends out as a beacon to others. Some believe that the Signature is the projection of the soul-mind onto the psychic plane. Others - that it is simply a construct made by our sensory apparatus to explain to ourselves just what is going on. Again others believe it to be a manifestation of our divinity.

No matter what its exact nature is, it is what allows other dracons to tell that you are around. As every Signature is unique, a dracon with training may be able to recognize a dracon without mindspeaking, but simply by being nearby, recognition by use of the Call and no other senses. Similarly like a dog recognizes its master and friends by their unique smell. So dracons with enough training can recognize their friends or enemies by their unique Signatures. It is also what your mind perceives the other dracons when you contact their minds. By knowing a certain person's Signature, wonders can be done with the trained abilities of the Call. However dracons are able to distinguish Signatures only at higher levels with enough training.

A skilled observer watching the Signature may notice that it changes all the time. While it seems the same to an unskilled observer, a skilled one will note differences that change with the mood of the dracon. Those, who are among the most skilled ones, can even Read the thoughts of the Signature bearer. However that is very complicated and requires an inner permission of the dracon whose thoughs are in need of Reading. A Signature is also an amalgam of all that a dracon has gone through, it matures with time as we do, this is because it is a presentation of our mind, the thoughts, the ideas, the memories and images that we have stored there. It is even rumored that highest level dracons can Read thoughts without the inner permission and can shift through the Signature for the memories of the person they are Reading. It is however a very rare occurrence if it is even real.

The Possibilities and Dangers of the Call

With training and skill mindspeak may be evolved to involve more than one person, to accommodate larger distances. Here is where the use of Signatures comes into play once more. Several experiments have been tried by the masters of the Call where they try to contact the other person by mentally recreating the Signature of the dracon they are trying to contact. Of course such things are not easy and they carry with them their own hazards, if the person they are trying to contact has died or is simply too far away the sender may become mindlost.

To become mindlost is part of the dangers of the Call. The mind is lost outside the body, which is not a good thing at all. In certain extreme cases this may indeed prove catastrophic. In the Draconic Academie there is a draconess that studied the Call, she was one of those who most eagerly probed the depths, but she always took precautions, she was always careful. Her name was Aranael. You may notice how I speak of her in the past tense. She became mindlost trying to contact a brother of hers that she believed to be still alive. Now she cannot move without someone moving her. She cannot speak. There is no mind inhabiting the body, instead there is something else. A hunger, you may call it. Aranael spends her time in a room that is shielded by magic walls. Nobody who has not thoroughly mastered the arts of The Call may enter her cell and even they struggle. Whenever someone enters that room there is something within her that tries to fill the void left in there, when her mind left. To put it in words that most may understand - she eats minds. If someone who was not able to shield their minds properly entered that room their minds would be swept away in an instant, rendering them soulless zombies such as Aranael is. Luckily without the same ability to eat minds.

When Aranael first lost her mind, we were lucky it was the Spring break and most of the Academie was empty. We were able to shield and preserve the minds of most of those who were there at the time. Some of course were not so lucky and went insane in the ensuing mindquake. It took one dracon a cycle before he was even able to pick up a quill again, much less speak a coherent sentence. Let this be a fair warning to those who would dabble in the ways of the Call, it is a path that is not without its share of dangers. That is just an example of an extreme mindloss, dracons who pursue training in The Call without a master end up in similar dangers quite often, but fortunately bringing harm only to themselves, unlike Aranael.

Of course any dracon may, if they know how to do it, try to do anything with the Call, the skills that are presented here are only the ones that have been approved by the Academie as safe. The reason for this is that we know how to do these tricks and simply experimenting with the Call is dangerous. There are several who have tried and have been the victims of psychic backlash, simply because they did not know how to Ground for what they were doing. Psychic backlash is what Grounding is supposed to protect against, but it is far from a sure-fire method of survival on the psychic plane. There are dangers out there that not even Grounding can protect a dracon from. Becoming mindlost is one of these hazards. However psychic backlash is not to be sneezed at even if it is rarely lethal, sometimes it merely kills the mind, sometimes parts of the mind are irrevocably lost, sometimes, on very rare occasions, the psychic backlash is as great as to put the dracon on fire mentally if not physically.

There is a skill that is similar to Shielding, it is called Blacklining. This is a skill that is taught fairly early. It is a fairly arduous task and it takes a lot of effort to keep up. It is not merely a matter of hiding one's Signature, but a way of shutting one's mind off entirely. This makes it all but impossible to contact the dracon through the psychic plane. Blacklining is as already pointed out a very arduous task, but if you wish to block someone out that has superior skills than yourself then this is the way to go. However Blacklining for more than a couple of candlemarks or so is not recommended, the strain is incredible and causes both physical and mental fatigue. Keeping it up for too long may result in extreme pain for candlemarks.

There is also a second way of dividing the Skills, these are the Passive and Active Skills. In the Passive category comes Detection and Receiving and to a certain extent Reading. However when Reading blossoms into its full potential it is no longer considered one of the passive skills. The reasons for this is simple. Each of these skills are passive, they do not act upon the Psychic Plane. They are always activated, even if only to a minimum most of the times. As such they are not in need of any kind of Grounding, unlike the other Skills where you are actively acting upon the Psychic Plane and must use Grounding to keep from getting a Backlash. The other skills are active and their use carries with them both the risk and the potential that can only be found on the Psychic Plane.

When distances increase it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a stable Mindlink, this is simply because overextending a Mindlink may cause you to leave pieces of your mind in someone else's possession. However there are a few things that the more advanced student of the Call may do to alleviate this problem. The first is simply the step of Ranging. This differs from the usual Mindlink in that you do not simply see a signature and start Sending at it, instead you must recreate the Signature of the person you are looking for in your mind and start to send to that. You're a mind out on the psychic plane looking for this person, using the Signature as a guide. This searching is tiring however and if the person is Shielding himself while far away it may take too much strength to punch through these defences. Of course if someone was to be Blacklining himself while this process was happening, or the person was dead or simply out of reach there is the very real possibility that you might end up mindlost. However skill will often alleviate for this somewhat, and some masters of the craft have been known to return to their bodies brightenings after sending their minds out.

The other way of doing this is fashioning a Permanent Mindlink. This allows the student of the art to fashion a Mindlink where one or both can Send and Receive, these links will remain no matter the distance and are foolproof. However the method for obtaining them is both painful and time consuming. Taking up to candlemarks of fixed concentration from both as they do their best to realign their Signatures so that they may be in tune with each other is why most fail at the first or even second try. As the Signature is a very personal and important part of the mind, this is neither an easy nor a forgiving task. Though still couples who are skilled will sometimes fashion such a Mindlink so that they may speak to each other all the time no matter the distance.

The problem is that the Mindlink is dependant on both minds being present. If it is cut off by one of the members of the link dying then those remaining will most likely go insane since their Signature is no longer as it should be. It can be seen as a stone that is held up by two nails on a string. If one nail fails then the other will sooner or later buckle under the weight of the stone. It may not happen immediately but someone who has their Mindlink suddenly severed will know that their brightenings of sanity are numbered. While such a Mindlink is in play none of its members may Blackline or even Shield themselves while they can physically do it this may well render both themselves and the person on the other end insane. A few masters in the Call are sometimes, and yet just sometimes, able to recover the dracon's mind into one that was before the Permanent Mindlink. However such a dracon can never train in the Call again or do any of the abilities of which he already was capable of, because that would instantly make him mindlost again.

Such a Mindlink may be cancelled by the members of the link coming together and slowly but surely moving their Signatures out of alignment. Again this is a long and slow process but it is nowhere near as bad as the original attachment procedure. Once the Mindlink is closed the members often say that though they are tired they feel freed from constraints. And it has been known that those who are in a Mindlink seemed to have somewhat dull Signatures, as if they are not entirely up to pair. A Mindlink of this kind takes almost no effort to maintain but that little bit can be felt afterwards, when the members are released it seems as if they are freed from some weight holding them down.

Some of the most potent workings of the Call come from altering one's own Signature to achieve desired effects and while this is definitely a powerful tool it is also a highly dangerous one. Remember above all that the Signature is such an integral part of your psyche that tampering with it too much may cause irrevocable damage to your mind.

Another little known use of the Call is the technique known as Tapping. This allows a dracon to sense whatever another dracon is sensing, this can be a confusing experience however, Tapping has its twin called simply the Reverse Tap, where a dracon may send his sensory input to another dracon. This is a lot more difficult however as it involves actually forcing a constant live feed into the mind of another dracon as opposed to merely Receiving something, making the other dracon do most of the work. Tapping is not strenous work but requires a fair amount of work, this is also true of the Reverse, however the Reverse is much more work than the original Tapping. Just as well the other dracon may sometimes refuse to accept the Reverse Tap.

There is also little known fact that those who become experienced enough in the Call are able to Send to a dragon or some other similar creature's minds and even to some mystics. This is however much more straining and difficult than Sending to a fellow dracon. Just imagine, sending to a person that has no Signature or a completely different one, it seems like an almost impossible task, that is why the dracons using this technique require their targets to be within their field of vision. To use a metaphor, Sending to something other than a dracon is a little like trying to find the correct way out of a maze blindfolded. However while a dracon may be able to Send to the person of another race, that person is usually not able to Send anything in return, rendering this useless as a two way communication. This is however very rare and can be done only at the fourth or fifth level.

It should be noted that the skills which are listed here are the ones that are new at each level, the old skills also become easier to do as the level of the user increases. Something like Ranging having a longer distance for example. Also Sending will increase in clarity and distance, a dracon will feel one of his own with the Call from a greater distance and so on. It is possible to learn fourth level abilities at the first level, however a dracon is usually unable to control such abilities at his skill level and can be knocked back by them resulting in dreadful consequences. A lot of the energy is needed for the later level abilities and the dracon is not able to handle them at once, therefore he has to learn level by level with the Grounding for each. With little training, an unexperienced dracon may get too much 'energy' from the plane, it will bunch up inside of him and possibly kill. An experienced dracon is able to spread the energies absolutely anywhere else, when he gets too much, or in other words to Ground and do the abilities easily.

While as mentioned before a dracon is sometimes able to use the skills of the later levels by knowing enough about them, but not being able to handle them properly and usually resulting in death or insanity, there are other strange occurrences as well. A few incidents are known of when an untaught dracon was able to warn his friends by communicating with The Call at the danger of death of either his own or his friends. After such accidental uses of the Call, the dracon later feels a big headache and mental tiredness. Perhaps fortunately this happens very rarely and only a few such times are known of.

This is all technical things though, remember one thing above all. We are dracons and above all it is the Call that sets us apart from other races. There are plenty who can fly. There are even other races that can shapeshift, but there are none who can do what we do. There are none others who have the Call, with the exception to those who gave us life – the dragons. We are alone in this. In this we are unique, and it is this skill that shows us that each dracon is unique.

Skill Tree:

Untaught:

The step upon which we all start, all dracons can do this and it holds no danger for them.

Detection lvl1 only able to sense that other dracons are nearby.
Receiving lvl1 the ability to Receive messages.

Beginner

This is for the dracon that takes his first careful few steps out onto the Psychic Plane. Here the first warnings are given and the student is given a clear idea of the risks involved. This is also where the student gets his first taste of Signatures. Few pursue the Call beyond this point.

Detection lvl2 ability to pinpoint the dracons by tracing their Signature to their prospective owners.
Sending lvl1 the ability to create a short term Mindlink for sending messages back and forth.
Grounding the ability to Ground for the things done on this level of training.

Intermediate

This is where Moradens are apt to end their training. Having learned the skill of Shielding they believe themselves safe from Dracon Hunters. Just as well Diantars like this for being able to talk in a more evolved way and recognize their brethren who might be around.

Shielding lvl1 the ability to hide the Signature from a lower level dracon or the same level one, who is not trying to Detect.
Detection lvl3 the ability to recognize Signatures and tell them apart.
Sending lvl2 the ability to add images to the simple words that are being sent on lvl1.
Receiving lvl2 the dracon is starting to pick up more through the Mindlink than simple messages, moods can also be sensed, if the Sending dracon is skilled enough to Send them.
Reading lvl1 the ability to tell the mood of a person through perceiving his or her Signature, the other dracon's permission is required in most cases.
Grounding the ability to Ground for the things done on this level of training.

Advanced

At this point most have already surrendered. This is where the true skills of the Call set in and those few to get this far are only among the skilled, those without any true level of skill have already been weeded out.

Blacklining the ability to shut your mind down, this is very tiring. No mystic or dracon can sense your mind, but just as well you can’t sense them.
Sending lvl3 the ability to add feelings, ideas and hunches to the vocabulary, the sender is also able to add more people to the conversation.
Reading lvl2 the ability to Read the thoughts of an another dracon through perceiving his or her Signature. The other dracon's inner permission is required. This is probably the only way for an untrained dracon to talk back, or rather think back, to the trained dracon.
Tapping the ability to experience whatever another dracon is experiencing by Tapping into their sensory apparatus, cannot go undetected and can be refused. This also helps the dracon find his friend faster if his friend is hurt or close to being unconscious.
Reverse Tapping the ability to send your own sensory input to someone else. Just like Tapping, this can be refused by the other dracon.
Grounding the ability to Ground for the things done on this level of training.

Expert

Few remain at this level. Only those whose skills go beyond what is normal advance to this level of mastery. Here the student can start to call himself the teacher.

Blocking the ability to close parts of the mind while in a Mindlink so that the people who are capable of reading minds would have a very hard time. An effective way to hide from a Mystic while still being able to talk to another dracon at the same time. A chance to hide from a dragon. This is very tiring.
Ranging the ability to send over long distances by recreating the Signature of the person who is the target of said Sender.
Disguise the ability to temporarily alter one's Signature so as to appear to be another person, can be made to be permanent though side effects of this have been known to render some dracons insane. However this usually fails to be a complete mimic and may become a mixture of both signatures. It can be completed better if a dracon knows very well the dracon into whose Signature he's changing his own.
Permanent Mindlink the ability to create a Permanent Mindlink, an expert can also create such a Mindlink with someone who is not an expert.
Grounding the ability to Ground for the things done on this level of training.

Master

Among the masters only those of exceptional skill reign. Here are those few who would dance on the Psychic Plane, these are the greatest teachers and the greatest explorers of the Psychic Plane. To be seen as a Master of the Call is not only a great honour it is also a declaration of skill that puts the individual among a select few. Masters are few and far between, just as well it is not known for sure what a master might be capable of. For The Call has no set end and much like arcana, the dracons are capable of finding more powers and abilities of the Call. The fifth level is more a rumour than a real level, for masters tend to hide their abilities and they are capable of doing that quite well. One of such examples would be Reading level 3, the ability to shift through the Signature of a dracon thus allowing the Master to Read the memories of his victim without his or hers permission. However it is an uncomfortable experience for the victim. The fifth level is rarely taught and usually a dracon has to find the hidden powers himself with the danger of losing his mind as well as many others. The dracons of this level are sometimes also called Re'Scae, thought this term is not known that much in the studies of The Call.