The Man Called True's Diary: Truth-Trading Explained
"My memory lately seems to be a maze of locked doors I cannot open and passages that go nowhere. In case I lose the way again, I will record vital information. And the first fact I will record is the truth of my profession - the facts of 'truth-trading'.
"Truth-trading is an ancient practice, based first and foremost in occultism. I do not know its origins; in fact, the origin of truth-trading is one of the Holy Grails of the profession. If any one of us discovered the secrets of how our practice came into being, we could name our price. What I do know is that it has never come into common view. Truth-trading prides itself on secrecy and hiding itself from the light.
"To become a truth-trader, and to acquire the power of Knowing Alone that distinguishes you as part of the trade, you must undergo three steps. The first is to find a truth-trader and be trained by him or her (though most of the ones I have met are male. and thus I will use the male pronoun throughout). This study lasts as long as the teacher feels necessary. It took me three years.
"The second step is to make a pact with a supernatural being, with whom you have established peaceful contact. Normally the teacher summons the being - a spirit of some sort is most common for this purpose - and allows the student to set the details. The teacher is expected to interrupt and stop the pact if it will bind the student into an unfair and painful pact; the student must then study for a long period before being allowed to try again.
"Some teachers consider a cruel agreement to be a learning experience.
"The final step is to engage in a Sacrifice. I will detail what that means in a moment.
"A truth-trader, once the training is complete, may operate as he wishes. Most of us engage in three courses of operation in our lives - Study, Knowing Alone, and Sacrifice.
"Study is obvious. Truth-traders have an insatiable hunger for mundane knowledge, and we rank ourselves on our skills as information brokers and scholars. A truth-trader without a library is, by the estimates of his peers, a pretender to the name. A library that's smaller than a good-sized apartment is barely worth the term. Many truth-traders spend their days reading, hunting out obscure sources, and searching the world for lost knowledge.
"Knowing Alone is the skill by which we depart from the ranks of mundane scholarship. Should a truth-trader learn a fact that no more than, say, ten living people in the world know, he may hide this fact from humanity. Anyone else who knows the fact instantly forgets it, and cannot relearn it as long as the truth-trader retains his secrecy.
"If the truth-trader writes the fact down, it remains concealed until someone else reads it. If he tells someone else verbally, or if someone else reads the fact, the truth-trader forgets it, and all who knew it remember it.
"The vital exception is if the other person is also a truth-trader. This is where we take our name from. If we discover facts that the world has forgotten, we may make it so that only we may ever know them, and then trade them among ourselves. That is where 'truth-trading' gets its name. We seek out long-forgotten truths, acquire them for ourselves, and then seek out even greater knowledge in exchange for the truth we hold.
"As an aside, being able to write a truth down without revealing it makes it easier to trade them. Some of us write truths on flashpaper - when the other truth-trader reads the truth and takes possession of it, he can destroy the paper in a second with a match and move on.
"The last of our courses is Sacrifice. We trade away our own truths in exchange for power. This is done as part of our initiation into truth-trading, and may be done as we wish throughout our lives.
"The 'truths' are permanent features of ourselves. Among others that I have heard of being used for this purpose are the color of one's eyes, one's body hair, one's fingernails and toenails, the ability to father children, the sense of smell, a tattoo (which was a surprise to the initiate's teacher, but it was a permanent feature of the truth-trader...), and one's peripheral vision.
"Generally, what is gained from the Sacrifice (made to supernatural creatures, the details of which I will not record here for sanity's sake) depends on the value of what is lost. I heard that the sacrifice of eye color gained the ability to breathe underwater - useful, but not all-powerful. The truth-trader who sacrificed his right leg, however, now regenerates instantly from any wound short of amputation.
"The greater the sacrifice, the greater the gain... Is that why I traded my name? Was I just curious what would happen...?"
[The entry ends here.]
"Truth-trading is an ancient practice, based first and foremost in occultism. I do not know its origins; in fact, the origin of truth-trading is one of the Holy Grails of the profession. If any one of us discovered the secrets of how our practice came into being, we could name our price. What I do know is that it has never come into common view. Truth-trading prides itself on secrecy and hiding itself from the light.
"To become a truth-trader, and to acquire the power of Knowing Alone that distinguishes you as part of the trade, you must undergo three steps. The first is to find a truth-trader and be trained by him or her (though most of the ones I have met are male. and thus I will use the male pronoun throughout). This study lasts as long as the teacher feels necessary. It took me three years.
"The second step is to make a pact with a supernatural being, with whom you have established peaceful contact. Normally the teacher summons the being - a spirit of some sort is most common for this purpose - and allows the student to set the details. The teacher is expected to interrupt and stop the pact if it will bind the student into an unfair and painful pact; the student must then study for a long period before being allowed to try again.
"Some teachers consider a cruel agreement to be a learning experience.
"The final step is to engage in a Sacrifice. I will detail what that means in a moment.
"A truth-trader, once the training is complete, may operate as he wishes. Most of us engage in three courses of operation in our lives - Study, Knowing Alone, and Sacrifice.
"Study is obvious. Truth-traders have an insatiable hunger for mundane knowledge, and we rank ourselves on our skills as information brokers and scholars. A truth-trader without a library is, by the estimates of his peers, a pretender to the name. A library that's smaller than a good-sized apartment is barely worth the term. Many truth-traders spend their days reading, hunting out obscure sources, and searching the world for lost knowledge.
"Knowing Alone is the skill by which we depart from the ranks of mundane scholarship. Should a truth-trader learn a fact that no more than, say, ten living people in the world know, he may hide this fact from humanity. Anyone else who knows the fact instantly forgets it, and cannot relearn it as long as the truth-trader retains his secrecy.
"If the truth-trader writes the fact down, it remains concealed until someone else reads it. If he tells someone else verbally, or if someone else reads the fact, the truth-trader forgets it, and all who knew it remember it.
"The vital exception is if the other person is also a truth-trader. This is where we take our name from. If we discover facts that the world has forgotten, we may make it so that only we may ever know them, and then trade them among ourselves. That is where 'truth-trading' gets its name. We seek out long-forgotten truths, acquire them for ourselves, and then seek out even greater knowledge in exchange for the truth we hold.
"As an aside, being able to write a truth down without revealing it makes it easier to trade them. Some of us write truths on flashpaper - when the other truth-trader reads the truth and takes possession of it, he can destroy the paper in a second with a match and move on.
"The last of our courses is Sacrifice. We trade away our own truths in exchange for power. This is done as part of our initiation into truth-trading, and may be done as we wish throughout our lives.
"The 'truths' are permanent features of ourselves. Among others that I have heard of being used for this purpose are the color of one's eyes, one's body hair, one's fingernails and toenails, the ability to father children, the sense of smell, a tattoo (which was a surprise to the initiate's teacher, but it was a permanent feature of the truth-trader...), and one's peripheral vision.
"Generally, what is gained from the Sacrifice (made to supernatural creatures, the details of which I will not record here for sanity's sake) depends on the value of what is lost. I heard that the sacrifice of eye color gained the ability to breathe underwater - useful, but not all-powerful. The truth-trader who sacrificed his right leg, however, now regenerates instantly from any wound short of amputation.
"The greater the sacrifice, the greater the gain... Is that why I traded my name? Was I just curious what would happen...?"
[The entry ends here.]