Compass And Charter

In order to possess a Minosian compass and charter, a character must have the 5 point gift STR-CC on his character sheet. A lore level of GL-Minos/5 or greater is required to be able to interpret the compass symbols and charts or they will mean nothing to the character.

Both the compass and the charter are arcane-seeming devices, covered with incomprehensible symbols, but in the hands of someone who knows how to read them, they provide the navigational cues to travel through shadow by sea, and in doing so, lead other ships to do the same.

The secret of the creation of these compasses is tightly held, and captains will take great steps to see that these things are destroyed rather than allow them to be taken. Likewise a captain will often jealously guard his charter, allowing no one's eyes to see it but his own, not even his crew.

In the possession of each captain, these charters are updated using the mystic compass to encode it and to direct the use of the charts. Each compass and charter contains a full accounting of Minos and its surrounding near shadows as well as all the shadows which are connected to Amber via shadowpath and those near shadows surrounding them.

In addition, each charter contains a record of how to reach every shadow that has been discovered by the previous holders of that particular charter, if the holder chose to add that shadow to his charts. A pirate never shares all of his secrets so this results in every compass and charter being, to some extent, unique.

Every captain who knows how to use the compass and charter also knows how to update them to include new information. Thus if he gains access to another captain's charter or some other map or fragment thereof that shares a landmark with his own charter, he is able to add that information to his own charter for future use.

Regarding the use of the compass and charter to sail to places you have never been ICly. If there is reason to believe that the captain or cartographer who made your charts was able to reach that location by some other means, you are perfectly free to do that. However the compass and charter cannot go to a place no Minosian has ever been since that location could not be on the charts. If you have any doubt about whether an IC location could be on your charts, please discuss the matter with the Minos propco or the propco of the location you are seeking to sail to.

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