- Location
- Ottawa
The text used to do the ciphering, I mean. Sorry if that was unclear.
General Exalted Thread
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
That's the key, which is combined by some algorithm with the plaintext you wish to conceal to produce the ciphertext you then send.
A key consisting of a continuous stream of the letter 'N' is not a one-time pad, because the distinguishing feature of a one-time pad is that it must not only be as long as the plaintext, but must also be non-trivially non-repeating.
This is like saying that because a pebble is just a very small mountain, and a hail of pebbles might penalize your dodge DV by taking up so much space that one of them might hit you, Shadow Over Water allows you to dodge a hail of mountains. After all, the infallibility of the magic involved here makes scale-based arguments inapplicable. This quite obviously leads to silly results.
Also, the example isn't a "damaged tablet." It's a weather-damaged tablet. Weather damage generally implies erosion, cracking, and other things that don't neatly remove massive chunks of text. If you have only half of a tablet, it's hardly unreasonable for the ST to say, based on this wording, that you can perfectly read the half of the tablet you have, but you can't read the parts you don't have (because you, obviously, don't have it). Moreover, even if components of a message are missing, you can fill them in with estimates and from the context of other parts of a document. Solar magic allows you to do that more quickly, allows you to do it to a greater amount of degraded data, and allows you to get a more accurate final result. The Solar gets to pretend that the tablet had RAID 5 implemented on it, instead of having to wonder if their estimates and contextual evaluation is correct. The Solar gets to know exactly how a message was encoded, and gets time to start to solve said message. This isn't an unreasonable, absurd, or awful reading of the Charm. It just drops the power level from "nigh-omniscient godling" to "pulp hero."
We can also look at the definition of the adjective 'clear,' as applied to communication. "Clear" in this context, according to Merriam-Webster, means "free from obscurity or ambiguity : easily understood; unmistakable." You can read the faint eroded impressions on a stone tablet, or understand someone with a speech impediment as if they didn't have that impediment. It's unmistakable that someone using codewords is now using codewords. You can defeat steganography. But a message that says "Find the Third Edition of the Exalted RPG, then write down the 25th, 5000th, 9980th, 76th, 120th, and 6969th words' is free from obscurity or ambiguity, it's easily understood, and is therefore entirely compatible with the rules as written for the Charm.
There is nothing in the Charm that suggests that it must be capable of extracting information that is not immediately in front of you to achieve its results. We can also look at broadly comparable charms of similar power levels in other Abilities like Crafty Observation Method, which is also about defeating mysteries. Crafty Observation Method:
- Compresses 15 minutes of investigation work into a few seconds;
- Allows a Solar to gain evidence that is at the scene without having to physically manipulate anything in the scene.
- The Solar's understanding of the language is extremely basic, giving the Solar an effective -6d penalty on relevant rolls;
- The Solar must also use a Linguistics Excellency to even attempt something like this;
- Each page of text the Solar deals with requires a Difficulty 10 roll if the Solar lacks familiarity with the language, so the Solar has a ludicrously high chance of failure;
I think that looking at similar out-of-Ability charms and higher-Essence charms in-Ability suggest that DSE doesn't have to be as powerful as you're saying it must be.
- Location
- Ottawa
I agree that the ROT13 analogy is a bit silly; that's the point. It's the mirror image of your "nobscure the communication happening 20 miles away in a castle with meters of solid rock between you and the speakers" example. Because flawlessly determining that the message is encoded with ROT13 requires determining that it was not encoded with any of the countless other codes it could've been encoded with. Which is exactly what you need to do to break an OTP. If you can determine that every key but one is invalid, you've found the right key.
The other-Charms-based argument that the Charm shouldn't do what it does seems a little beside the point; it does what it does regardless of what it should do. And part of what it does is let you read encoded text as though it wasn't encoded.
The basic concept of "determine the True Meaning" requires you to draw upon information that just wouldn't be present in the real world. Even for simple codes. Even for messages that aren't encoded! But I guess that doesn't bother you, given your comments on EET. Maybe I'm mixing up your objections with Chung's.
PS: Shadow Over Water totally does let you ignore whatever DV penalty a hail of mountains might impose. Barring true undodgeability, but that's a carefully-spelled-out exception. And DSE has no such exception spelled out.
The other-Charms-based argument that the Charm shouldn't do what it does seems a little beside the point; it does what it does regardless of what it should do. And part of what it does is let you read encoded text as though it wasn't encoded.
The basic concept of "determine the True Meaning" requires you to draw upon information that just wouldn't be present in the real world. Even for simple codes. Even for messages that aren't encoded! But I guess that doesn't bother you, given your comments on EET. Maybe I'm mixing up your objections with Chung's.
PS: Shadow Over Water totally does let you ignore whatever DV penalty a hail of mountains might impose. Barring true undodgeability, but that's a carefully-spelled-out exception. And DSE has no such exception spelled out.
- Location
- NYC
Here's the thing though: the ROT13 analogy is silly because it isn't relevant to the claim of what the Solar is actually doing. The perspective being advocated here is that the Charm makes you hyperintuitive at noticing the kinds of details and patterns that go into these things. It makes sense that you can crack ROT13 here, because you'll notice "hey, I'm seeing a bunch of one letter words with the letters 'v' and 'n', and in general words look around the same length as they might in an unencrypted method, so I'll try a few algorithms that might turn 'v' and 'n' into a/i, and look ROT13 produces a message."
The claim is that this produces internally consistent and coherent results that match up with what the Charm says it does (and why we might infer it does it, given the Essence and Ability requirement and the overall theme of the tree).
By contrast, if your perspective is that the Charm allows you to get access to information not contained in the message at all—and you don't think it's based on the reading the intent of the writer—you need to have some explaination for how that information is being accessed by the Solar. And there hasn't, as near as I can see, been an answer for why the 20 miles away in a castle with meters of rock example isn't totally valid, because there hasn't been an answer for how the Charm operates that includes decoding one-time pads but doesn't include the distant fortress book example.
- Location
- Ottawa
Huh. Thought I was quite clear about that, but I guess not.
The only interpretation that fits, from my point of view, is this one:
A message has an inherent meaning. It has a True Nature, which may be concealed by codes or by damage but remains present beneath it all. Discerning Savant's Eye sees through all obstacles and perceives that true nature. It doesn't allow you perceive messages you could not otherwise perceive, but it does make clear the meaning of any message you can perceive.
So if you used other Charms to hear an indistinct murmur from miles away, you could use DSE to turn that murmur into a message.
This is, I think, the only way to explain the fact that DSE actually gives the right answer with perfect reliability. Often, the most skillful interpretation possible will not give you the right answer; sometimes the plain truth is that there's not enough information. And even when there's enough information, code-breaking is always a matter of probability and uncertainty.
That's why I keep talking about simple codes and uncoded messages.
Consider this very post. You cannot truly know that it's not a recipe for boiled muskrat, encoded with a one time pad that created a mostly-coherent post by chance. That's the basic problem of human communication. If your magic gets around that, it needs to work the way I've described here.
That example is meant to be funny, but seriously. Every message has a practically infinite number of possible decodings. They're separated from each other by probability only, and any magic that provides true certainty must draw information from a source that does not exist in the real world.
The only interpretation that fits, from my point of view, is this one:
A message has an inherent meaning. It has a True Nature, which may be concealed by codes or by damage but remains present beneath it all. Discerning Savant's Eye sees through all obstacles and perceives that true nature. It doesn't allow you perceive messages you could not otherwise perceive, but it does make clear the meaning of any message you can perceive.
So if you used other Charms to hear an indistinct murmur from miles away, you could use DSE to turn that murmur into a message.
This is, I think, the only way to explain the fact that DSE actually gives the right answer with perfect reliability. Often, the most skillful interpretation possible will not give you the right answer; sometimes the plain truth is that there's not enough information. And even when there's enough information, code-breaking is always a matter of probability and uncertainty.
That's why I keep talking about simple codes and uncoded messages.
Consider this very post. You cannot truly know that it's not a recipe for boiled muskrat, encoded with a one time pad that created a mostly-coherent post by chance. That's the basic problem of human communication. If your magic gets around that, it needs to work the way I've described here.
That example is meant to be funny, but seriously. Every message has a practically infinite number of possible decodings. They're separated from each other by probability only, and any magic that provides true certainty must draw information from a source that does not exist in the real world.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
If i introduced a non breakable thing like that I would put in a element where you can pull of a heist of some sort to grab the key. Or do what hackers do and just call the person in question and politely ask for the key. Which people fall for, a lot.
Turn it into a situation where the more social or sneaky people have a chance to shine.
Turn it into a situation where the more social or sneaky people have a chance to shine.
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- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
I have a better interpretation: that Charm is written like ass and you're basically forced to come into an agreement with the ST to even define its limitations.
Skelethin
Barebones Writer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Another issue with the 'of course it can crack an OTP, its encryption!' reasoning is that its an Ess 2 charm. Taking that to its extreme edge case, without any sort of further boost from later higher Ess charm purchases, seems insane.
Which is because it is.
But then some people find enjoyment in basically going 'oh, and any/all encryption just isn't worth the effort it takes to make it happen because I'll just throw this charm at it and bullrush past the difficulty' for all story beats that may require any sort of security.
Which is because it is.
But then some people find enjoyment in basically going 'oh, and any/all encryption just isn't worth the effort it takes to make it happen because I'll just throw this charm at it and bullrush past the difficulty' for all story beats that may require any sort of security.
- Location
- Ottawa
Actually, if I read the argument correctly, the people saying it can't beat OTPs also think OTPs are beyond Creation's cryptographic technology. That the Charm trumps any non-Charm-based encryption anyone's ever likely to use against you seems to be universally agreed.
I mean, this covers a lot of Charms.
I'm pretty sure that having this is kinda the entire point. It's not that OTP's are a mystical force that means there's no counterplay and the story has to end there. It's that there's actually some counterplay to this charm.
It really seems like the discussion regarding Judge's Ear Technique all over again: some feel that it's a bit too oppressive as a scene long cheap low tree perfect truth+half truth detector, and that it shuts down many more avenues of play than it generates. Other's don't, or believe that it shutting down these avenues is a good thing and good for the game.
Not entirely? Jon Chung at least is also mentioning things like Book ciphers or some types of shorthand (does 'Execute order 66' give that, or does it give you the full text of Special order 66?), the former of which definitely exists in Creation and the latter definitely exists.
Jon Chung
=][=
No, Creation's cryptographic technology includes magic. If you had an artifact computer with an explicitly stated capability to pull information out of nowhere it would probably work fine, as we know charms can do that and there is also no rule saying this is a capability only Solar Charms can have. Ideally that would come with sane limits on exactly what information it can pull out of nowhere so it does not break the game, like how Perfect Mirror or Sagacious Reading of Intent pull information out of nowhere in limited ways and work fine. Otherwise, that computer should not exist, because pulling arbitrary information out of nowhere with no limits as a capability is too strong.
See, my problem with allowing this to beat OTPs is that if you allow it to beat OTPs, I can also use it to get the text of Order 66, or the contents of a tax records shelf in an Imperial tax collector's office, or a the full text of a 20-volume work of military strategy (etc, etc) if a message I am reading requires these additional external pieces of information in order for its intended meaning to be comprehended, complete with the necessary tertiary information to understand the secondary information you just pulled and so on down the chain. This is the bit that I think is not in the charm and cannot be assumed to be there because it leads to nonsensical results.
If you've got a strong claim to have a capability like that, I need more proof than exists in the text of the Charm. Charms only do what they say they do, and this one doesn't tell me it does that.
Put another way, "You can read whatever's there as long as the information is in the message or can be extrapolated from the message" satisfies all the examples and the text of the charm just fine, while "You can access everything anywhere that is required for you to understand the deepest meaning of this message, the charm produces the information magically with no limits" does that but also tacks on a bunch of overpowered exploits and unanswerable questions about scope on top, so why would I let you use it?
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- Location
- Ottawa
It doesn't need to give you the full text of Order 66. It just needs to tell you, "Order 66 is code for kill the Jedi". And if it can't do that, it can't break codes at all.
Obviously there's some fuzziness regarding what information is "in the message" and what information is context to the message, but that kind of ambiguity is pretty unavoidable no matter how you write Charms that relate to language and cryptography.
In the interest of clarity, let me ask you a list of quick questions:
-What would you have the Charm do on a message saying "execute Order 66"?
-What would you have the Charm do on a book cipher, if the book's available?
-What would you have the Charm do on a book cipher, if the book's not available?
-What would you have the Charm do on modern public key encryption?
-What would you have the Charm do on the message "kill them", encoded with ROT13 to give the text "xvyygurz"?
-What would you have the Charm do on the message "stay home", encoded with an OTP key that results in the text "xvyygurz"?
It doesn't, though. The Charm is quite explicit about ignoring codes, and codes are often / usually not breakable with the information contained within a message sent with them. They're never breakable with the certainty the Charm provides.
For some reason my point about certainty seems to have been overlooked in this debate, and I find that kind of weird since it's the heart of my position. So I won't to draw your attention to it specifically. The certain knowledge provided by this Charm requires it pull information out of nowhere (or from the least god of the message, or something).
Obviously there's some fuzziness regarding what information is "in the message" and what information is context to the message, but that kind of ambiguity is pretty unavoidable no matter how you write Charms that relate to language and cryptography.
In the interest of clarity, let me ask you a list of quick questions:
-What would you have the Charm do on a message saying "execute Order 66"?
-What would you have the Charm do on a book cipher, if the book's available?
-What would you have the Charm do on a book cipher, if the book's not available?
-What would you have the Charm do on modern public key encryption?
-What would you have the Charm do on the message "kill them", encoded with ROT13 to give the text "xvyygurz"?
-What would you have the Charm do on the message "stay home", encoded with an OTP key that results in the text "xvyygurz"?
It doesn't, though. The Charm is quite explicit about ignoring codes, and codes are often / usually not breakable with the information contained within a message sent with them. They're never breakable with the certainty the Charm provides.
For some reason my point about certainty seems to have been overlooked in this debate, and I find that kind of weird since it's the heart of my position. So I won't to draw your attention to it specifically. The certain knowledge provided by this Charm requires it pull information out of nowhere (or from the least god of the message, or something).
- Location
- NYC
"Activate Order 66" isn't a coded message, though. Not in the way that something passed through ROT13 is a coded message. It's a message written in unscrambled plaintext that just refers to some totally different document. The argument here is that it isn't code.
Answers (you get):
1. "execute Order 66"
2-4: per the text of the Charm, you get the full text. Depending on the nature of the game and the communication (including length), I might discuss giving the PC just clues as to the nature of the book/some tool they might want to solve it.
5. "kill them."
6. They can see the ROT13 cypher, but their intuition is that there's some deeper message buried in there, but they can't explain why or what it is (possibly have them make a roll off here v. some static difficulty or the writer of this plan's stats, akin to the Letter-in-a-Letter use)
Questions for you:
-What would you have the Charm do on messages in foreign languages.
-What would you have the Charm do where there are ambiguous meanings—it passed through a chain of three proxies, each of whom thought it was for something different, before coming to you.
-What would you have the Charm do if it tells the person to consult a 20 volume manuscript and take the option said manuscript recommends, if that results in very specific tactical suggestions (e.g. the person is saying, in effect, 200+ different if/then options).
Edit:
-What would you have the Charm do on a message that says "build a crossbow" where the reader has no idea how to make a crossbow. Does it given them step-by-step instructions? Does it tell them what kind of wood to use?
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- Location
- my house
It sounds like a lot of the disagreement over the cryptography things comes from different assumptions of what creation ja like.
For me creation is only similar to our world at the most cursory of glances. At the macro, human interaction level things are mostly the same, but once you start getting into things dealing with essence, weird edge cases or even just look too closely it becomes clear that creation doesn't work like our world at all.
And while I can't give a rundown of all the differences since their mostly belly feel "does this seem right" kind of things handled on a case by case basis, I can say that in my creation intent matters.
So when the charm says it reveals hidden information, then my understanding is it tells you what the person who made the message was trying to hide from the solar, to the extent that they themselves knew at the time of writing
For me creation is only similar to our world at the most cursory of glances. At the macro, human interaction level things are mostly the same, but once you start getting into things dealing with essence, weird edge cases or even just look too closely it becomes clear that creation doesn't work like our world at all.
And while I can't give a rundown of all the differences since their mostly belly feel "does this seem right" kind of things handled on a case by case basis, I can say that in my creation intent matters.
So when the charm says it reveals hidden information, then my understanding is it tells you what the person who made the message was trying to hide from the solar, to the extent that they themselves knew at the time of writing
Jon Chung
=][=
Define "code", I think this is close to the centre of the disagreement.
1. "Execute Order 66".
2. "This is a coordinate system likely for a book cipher and you own the book. The plaintext message is as follows."
3. "This is a coordinate system likely for a book cipher and these are the relevant details that can help you find which book."
4. Cracks the message (I assume you're talking RSA, and I assume you have the public key).
5. "Kill them", but if I had the time I'd also generate a bunch of other valid strings that could be generated from applying different simple decryption algorithms to the string. I'd put "Kill them" at the top of the list as vastly most probable. I will also not tell the player which "them" the recipient is supposed to kill.
6. Same as above, but I'd throw in "There's something hidden in here I don't have the secondary information to understand because (side channel leakage, whatever), it probably doesn't mean just that. I should probably thoroughly scour this room with my Investigation Charms.".
The heuristic I am using here is "If the information is contained within the message or can be extrapolated from the message, you get it" and the lens I am using to get this heuristic is that the charm should be simple to use, should have no game-breaking side effects and should not cause table shitstorms to happen when it is used. With that in mind, the examples the charm gives are:
a) Reading a weather-damaged stone tablet.
b) Recognising the signal in a coded exchange.
c) Browse ciphered manuscripts in their original language.
d) Understand the speech of someone with a damaged tongue and the accordingly degraded pronunciation.
In order, with that heuristic in mind:
a) The tablet is easy to handle, since if I can recognise that it's a weather-damaged stone tablet rather than just a rock, I can see that this is actually text and I can work backwards from there with my super Solar intuition and senses.
b) Recognising a signal in a coded exchange does not mean you understand what that signal means, just that you know that it is there. I am happy to allow this to work via side-channel leakage, but unknowable information will remain unknowable.
c) Pretty straightforward, it just works, unless the cipher relies on unknowable information.
d) An extension of the stone tablet example to speech instead of writing.
edit: I just noticed that "in its original language" implies that if you don't understand the original language, you still don't understand the message. Hmm. Thoughts?
See the "or can be extrapolated" bit in my rule of thumb.
Okay, a question for you: do I get the entire contents of that shelf in the Imperial taxman's office when I read the memo telling Accountant Alex to study it?
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Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
The simplest solution is "the Charm decodes any message as if you had the key but does not actually provide the key or what type of key it is."
So if you had a coded message, you could read it regardless of what the key is. But if the key was a book you wouldn't know what book, the contents of the book or even that it was a book cipher. You couldn't recite passages from the book or use your decoding of one message to further decode other messages, not without either activating the Charm again or doing a bunch of extra work. In the case of languages this would be "as if you had a hypothetical Rosetta Stone or equivalent."
This means it can't decode a message that is damaged or incomplete, because even having the key wouldn't help you. If the words are illegible or removed or what have you then you could read what is legible but not anything else. If you want to bypass a Solar cryptographer the key isn't to make the code unbreakable, it's to make certain the full message never falls into their hands.
Or better yet, only ever send a messenger who never writes the message down. Like a PC, for example.
So if you had a coded message, you could read it regardless of what the key is. But if the key was a book you wouldn't know what book, the contents of the book or even that it was a book cipher. You couldn't recite passages from the book or use your decoding of one message to further decode other messages, not without either activating the Charm again or doing a bunch of extra work. In the case of languages this would be "as if you had a hypothetical Rosetta Stone or equivalent."
This means it can't decode a message that is damaged or incomplete, because even having the key wouldn't help you. If the words are illegible or removed or what have you then you could read what is legible but not anything else. If you want to bypass a Solar cryptographer the key isn't to make the code unbreakable, it's to make certain the full message never falls into their hands.
Or better yet, only ever send a messenger who never writes the message down. Like a PC, for example.
Jon Chung
=][=
Hmm, what about cases like the "Execute Order 66" example?
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
I'd have to say it would return "Kill the Jedi" or maybe "Attack the Jedi".
Let's expand:
Say you're planning to invade a city. You put your army in the canyons outside. You don't want them attacking until your smaller distraction force has drawn the Dragonblooded Wyld Hunt in the city away. To make certain this happens on time you had your Twilight build a simple firedust rocket. It shoots straight up and explodes in a brilliant flash as the signal to begin the attack.
A Solar sitting in the city who looked up at that flash of light in the sky and activated the charm would get "Attack!"
The flash of light is a code. It's a signal that stands in for a word. Similarly "Execute Order 66" is a code, specifically it's a built in trigger phrase that is encoded into the minds of all the Clone Troopers. The key (so to speak) here is that it is a specific prearranged signal that substitutes one meaning for another. The actual words chosen are meaningless here. They could be "Release the kraken" or "I like Mondays" or whatever. The fact the code is embedded into the brains of the clones is what is important here.
Notably, this has a few effects. If the code had not been embedded then it might not count as a code for the Charm. Since then it would require the person receiving the code to have information not in the key. Remember, the clones had no idea what Order 66 was. No one did. On purpose. The code was designed to trigger immediate understanding and obedience.
If the message had not been pre-implanted than you'd just get the order. "General, I am evoking Order 66." "Wait, what order is that? Let me look that up."
It would be the equivalent of say, coding up "Go to Greyfalls and wait until sundown". If you had the key you would get that message but it wouldn't tell you where Greyfalls is.
Similarly if a Solar archaeologist found a whole pile of First Age letters which was two Lunars arguing over obscure tax codes using technical jargon from Deliberative law you would have it translated from Old Realm to your language but that doesn't mean you understand what any of the jargon means and thus for you they may be talking about taxes, or tort law or geomantic superweapon construction for all you know. The key doesn't provide understanding of the message, only translation.
This also means the Solar can decipher a lot of "innuendo" or slang as well. If he overhears someone in Nexus ask for "a dark morning" he knows that is code for "hashish mixed with Bright Morning". But he might not know what hashish or Bright Morning are.
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- Location
- United States
the thread is 2149 pages long now, you know better
hls
War hamster
It won't give you either of those things, because that's not a ciphered message. It means *exactly* what it looks like it says: Upon receiving this message, execute Order 66. It's just that you don't know what Order 66 is. That's not code, that's just knowledge you don't have. If you DID know what Order 66 was, the message would still just mean "execute Order 66."
hls
War hamster
Or Infallible Messenger, which teleports instantly to the recipient's ear and whispers the message there, yes.