Skills
Skills are programs that grant new functions or cognitive abilities to Sprites, enabling them to perform more useful actions.
Default skills allow Sprites to:
- Recognize its administrator and familiar users.
- Understand and speak using the common tongue.
- Understand numbers, quantities, and basic algebra.
- Follow simple spoken instructions.
- Remember standing rules and designated locations.
- Perceive Constructs and activity within its Mindscape.
- Move and organize Constructs.
- Maintain attention on a simple task.
- Use Upload Links.
- Understand permissions and refuse unauthorized instructions.
World Perception
Allows Sprites to perceive the user's environment, and to understand distance, direction, scale, relative position, and three-dimensional arrangements.
Menu Control
Allows Sprites without reading comprehension to use most screens and menus on your behalf without needing to read or interpret their interface. They can open a map, pan to a designated location, zoom in, and show you the stored details about it without being able to read any of the text or buttons themselves. Sprites with reading comprehension could reproduce this skill, but never at the same speed or with the direct integration that the Menu Control skill provides.
Map Comprehension
Map Comprehension allows Sprites to understand and interpret map Constructs, locate places described by the user, compare multiple maps, estimate travel distances, and evaluate possible routes. When paired with a Navigation Upgrade, the Sprite can place map pins, prepare routes, and present visual directions within the user's field of view.
Enhanced Memory
Allows Sprites to significantly improve their short and long term memory. They can keep track of thousands of people.
Drawing Skill
Allows a Sprite to draw 2D or 3D content that they are familiar enough with to understand; including drawing things they've seen, reproducing illustrations, etc. It won't translate to drawing complex systems, such as maps or machinery designs, unless they are proficient with the relevant material.
Reading & Writing Comprehension
Reading and writing comprehension enables many useful functions for a Mindshard, but is also very rare due to its cognitive requirements and cost to produce. It is typically used for Archivist work, scribing, and professional research rather than personal use. It allows a Sprite to reproduce texts, record live notes, catalogue and organize information, present summaries, and much more.
Demonic Tongue
Grants a Mindshard the ability to understand and communicate using the demonic tongue. This also enables translation with the common tongue.
Translator
A Translator allows a specific Sprite to provide translation assistance in real time between the common tongue and a chosen language. These programs are rare, typically only used for industrial-scale purposes, as it takes years for professional translators to produce one of these programs. It is often combined with reading and writing comprehension in order to allow the translation to be written as well.
Skill Suites
Skill Suites integrate many related Sprite abilities designed around a profession, activity, or lifestyle. Some Suites are available in specialized editions that retain the same foundational abilities while emphasizing the needs of a particular type of user.
Some Skill Suites require Reading & Writing Comprehension to function, including the Administrative, Educational, Industrial, and Research suites.
Administrative Suite
An Administrative Suite equips a Sprite to handle the routine organizational work shared by offices, businesses, guilds, and public institutions. It performs calculations, maintains records, organizes appointments, manages correspondence, prepares standard documents, tracks supplies, processes routine requests, and presents summaries of ongoing work.
A Business Edition specializes in commercial activity for shops, offices, warehouses, caravans, and trading companies. It records income, expenses, purchases, sales, prices, bids, merchandise, and inventory; identifies shortages; organizes cargo assignments and delivery schedules; and assists with loading plans, auctions, and established trade procedures.
An Institutional Edition specializes in the procedures of guild halls, academies, courts, government offices, and other large organizations. It processes forms, verifies required information, manages queues and appointments, tracks permissions, maintains official records, guides visitors, explains established procedures, and routes requests to the appropriate official or department.
Adventurer Suite
An Adventurer Suite equips a Sprite to support expeditions, wilderness travel, dungeon delving, monster hunting, and other hazardous fieldwork. Its editions draw upon abilities involving maps, supplies, watches, field records, creature recognition, environmental hazards, emergency procedures, and group coordination.
A Combat Edition specializes in immediate tactical assistance. It tracks allies, visible opponents, communicated objectives, formation positions, and changes in the battlefield; estimates distances and trajectories; coordinates practiced group maneuvers; and warns users when formations begin to break down. By studying repeated movements, it can identify combat patterns and provide predictive cues about an opponent's likely actions.
An Explorer Edition specializes in scouting, surveying, cartography, and travel through poorly documented regions. It evaluates terrain, plans routes, interprets tracks, records landmarks, measures distances and elevations, organizes environmental observations, and produces or updates map Constructs. It also compares Aetheric survey readings across locations and maintains detailed expedition logs for later study.
A General Edition provides balanced support for an Adventuring party. It interprets maps, evaluates routes and campsites, tracks provisions, organizes watches, records discoveries, recognizes signs of passage, and compares encountered creatures against Bestiary information. It can identify documented demons, Miasma corruption, Infernal Cores, Shadowland phenomena, and other known hazards; recall established defensive procedures; interpret Leymeter readings; and guide emergency stabilization and field treatment.
Educational Suite
An Educational Suite prepares a Sprite to serve as a teacher, tutor, and academic assistant. It presents lessons, explains stored material, draws instructional diagrams, asks practice questions, administers examinations, evaluates standardized answers, and tracks each student's progress. It can adjust lesson order, pacing, repetition, and difficulty according to the student's demonstrated understanding.
Gaming Suite
A Gaming Suite is designed for a specific Mindscape game or Psydive, with many different Suites available for different games. It interprets that game's ruleset, teaches players how to participate, tracks turns, scores, objectives, resources, and victory conditions, and presents relevant information through screens or Constructs. Its Sprite can serve as a referee, narrator, guide, opponent, or supporting character while coordinating encounters, puzzles, rewards, player progression, and transitions between game environments.
Hospitality Suite
A Hospitality Suite is designed for inns, restaurants, theaters, bathhouses, passenger vessels, and other public venues. It welcomes guests, recognizes returning customers, manages reservations, records requests, coordinates services, answers routine questions, provides directions, and advises workers on etiquette and regional customs. Tour-oriented versions can lead visitors through designated locations and present prepared information at appropriate points.
Household Suite
A Household Suite allows a Sprite to oversee the routine needs of a home and its residents. It organizes schedules, records and delivers messages, tracks household supplies, prepares shopping lists, guides cooking, coordinates clothing and appointments, monitors personal routines, supervises children and household rules, and reminds residents about recurring responsibilities.
Industrial Suite
An Industrial Suite assists with production, inspection, maintenance, and workplace coordination. It follows established procedures, interprets measurements and technical diagrams, monitors gauges and timers, tracks materials, compares completed work against stored specifications, and alerts workers to production irregularities or unsafe operating conditions. It can also compare work cycles to identify waste, delays, and inefficient use of resources.
An Artificer Edition specializes in Aethertech workshops. It recognizes documented components, classifications, magical materials, and Aetheric requirements; interprets artificing diagrams; guides established assembly and maintenance procedures; records precise measurements; organizes specialized parts; and monitors the known magical hazards associated with devices under construction.
A Production Edition specializes in workshops, factories, processing facilities, and other repetitive industrial environments. It coordinates production stages, monitors material consumption, performs quality inspections, records output, tracks maintenance schedules, and helps workers keep machinery and work crews synchronized.
Instrument Suite
An Instrument Suite is designed for a specific musical instrument, with many different Suites available for different instruments. It teaches the instrument's fundamental techniques, presents lessons and practice exercises, demonstrates notes and musical passages, listens to the user's performance, identifies mistakes, and tracks their progress over time. It can also provide accompaniment and organize instrument-based games involving rhythm, accuracy, memory, improvisation, and performance challenges.
Performance Suite
A Performance Suite supports theaters, concerts, festivals, storytellers, and other live productions. It recites prepared dialogue, performs character voices, provides musical accompaniment, coordinates scripts and stage cues, directs visual and audio Constructs, and keeps performers synchronized. Venue editions can manage programs, announce performers, coordinate scene changes, and guide audiences through scheduled events.
Research Suite
A Research Suite allows a Sprite to read, navigate, and organize large collections of books, recordings, catalogs, and information Constructs. It searches indexes, cross-references subjects, records notes, compares sources, identifies conflicting accounts, maintains citations, and produces structured summaries. Its enhanced memory allows it to track extensive research projects and recall where particular claims or details originated.
Security Suite
A Security Suite helps protect a designated person, building, shipment, or restricted area. It recognizes authorized individuals, monitors available sensory feeds, maintains watch over designated boundaries, identifies suspicious movement or behavior, and alerts responsible users when established security conditions are violated. It records incidents, preserves relevant observations, and compares voices, handwriting, markings, and other evidence against authorized records.
Sports Suite
A Sports Suite is designed for a specific sport, with many different Suites available for different sports and official rulesets. It supports physical competition, Mindscape games, and Psydive athletics by interpreting the sport's rules and boundaries, recognizing registered competitors, tracking scores and match time, identifying standard fouls, recording player statistics, and communicating decisions to participants and spectators. Advanced versions can monitor formations, aura thresholds, substitutions, tournament brackets, performance assessments, commentary, and recorded replays.