The Art
Magic in Deshret is called the Art. Those rare individuals able to practice it are known as Listeners. Everyone in the city knows the Art exists, but almost nobody knows its true limits. The average person has likely heard stories of Listeners with impossible cures and equally impossible curses. Some of these stories may be true. Most are superstition, or propaganda, or both.
The Gift
Listeners are believed to hear the Hum (the vibration felt throughout Deshret), which Sepulchre teaches is the breath of Saint Marrow himself, more clearly and more constantly than anyone else. The Gift is rare, and as far as the public knows, it cannot be taught. It simply is present in someone, or not.
The open display of seals by itself is no proof of being a Listener. The same sacred geometric marks worn by Listeners are worn as blessings and charms by ordinary citizens on every floor of the city.
What the Art is
Three competing accounts circulate broadly, and the public doesn't hold a clear cut answer.
- Sepulchre's doctrine: The Art is sacred power, made into physical law through ritual and faith.
- The heretical/technological view: held by scholars bordering on heresy, that the Art is an undocumented, unknown interface for something called the Abzu.
- The clinical view: some Mythos physicians propose the Gift is an altered, mutated nervous system, a consequence of surface exposure.
Life as a Listener
A Listener occupies a complex social position: admired and avoided at once. People will seek out a sanctioned Listener's help, or repeat awed stories about their miracles, and still find a reason to leave the room the moment one actually walks in. It is believed that the attention of a Listener by itself is a bad omen.
The stigma follows a Listener everywhere, sanctioned or not. Being sanctioned makes a Listener legal, yet it will not afford them any trust from the common people.
Sanctioned vs Unsanctioned
A sanctioned Listener operates within the law, but under many constraints: their movement, their permitted practice, and their access to certain places can all be restricted, and whatever patron or office they're attached to is expected to answer for them.
An unsanctioned Listener has no such protection. Discovery means an Inquisitorial inquiry, followed by detention and examination. Forbidden Workings fall under the grave offenses defined in the Pagos Consolidated Articles.
Roles Sanctioned Listeners Hold
Most sanctioned Listeners serve within existing institutions rather than independently; as clergy, lictors, physicians, researchers, academicians, or advisers and specialists attached to powerful offices and individuals. A very small number hold serious office and authority in their own right.