Codewriters and Codebreakers

When secrets were hard to keep

Countless hours spent trying to break into each other's secrets; tireless nights spent try to protect our own.

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— Retired Intelligence Operative

Before the discovery of Simulrendology and the invention of the Rendulgraph, classified conversations and information exchange had to happen in person, through letters, or even over long-distance radio. Each of these methods was prone to being intercepted or listened in on; none of them could be said to be entirely private. Thus some of the most important people within governments, high profile companies, or even the Legion, were the people responsible for both writing and breaking codes for any form of vulnerable communication.

Vulnerability of open communication

While direct conversation and physical letters themselves were vulnerable, they were still safer than the alternative; the far more convenient, but far more open radio based messaging. There are only so many frequencies that work for radio based technologies, and none of them are particularly private as they're blasted from towers dotted across countries and mid-ocean Booster Boats upon the seas.
And yet, radio was still the most popular method of communication, due to the speed in which the information travelled, and the ability to message multiple targets at once so long as they're all listening in on the same frequency. Of course this convenience factor is what made radio so insecure, so high-profile users of the technology, or those that had secrets to hide, began to fervantly develop methods of encoding their information so that only their intended recipients could understand the incoming transmissions.

Coded Escalation

This kicked off a veritable "arms race" of countries and organizations seeking out, hiring, or training the best and brightest to become master Codewriters -- all in order to defend themselves from the onslaught of brilliant individuals that have been sought out, hired, or trained by countries and organizations to become ultimate Codebreakers instead.

Listen, I'd love to work for the government, but I'll have to decline. I've recieved a better offer elsewhere, in the private district, working as a Codebreaker instead.

— Master Codewriter Codebreaker

Profession

Type

Communications
Espionage

Career Path

2 Years

Employee amount per Org.

10-20 small
50-100 medium
100+ large

---

Training

Many of those who became Codewriters or Breakers did so intuitively and naturally, or even purely by accident in some cases.
Simply having a strong interest in puzzle solving, word games, and number problems when they were younger made some people predisposed to become incredibly useful in the communications and espionage industries across the world.

In other cases, the complex thought processes were trained into the minds of interested and adaptable people.
Courses usually took roughly 1 year to complete, after which it took another year of learning on the job to be fully prepared for the constantly shifting landscape of Codewriting and Codebreaking.

by Museums Victoria

Complicated Cypher

Complicated Cypher

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Years of academy training wasted!
Who needs perfectly encrypted coded communications anymore these days when those blasted Rendulgraphs simply transmit an untraceable signal to its one and only pair? Everything is too secure these days!

— Codewriter, out of a job

by Birmingham Museums Trust

The ultimate in Secure Communication

The advent of the Rendulgraph, a device capable of sending and receiving information between a single dedicated pair of devices instantly, regardless of distance, decimated the Codewriting and Codebreaking profession. While the devices were mostly only ever controlled by the Legion, or by Legion-affiliated groups on Legion payroll, these were in general the main organizations that were the market for secure, encrypted communication.

Governments and globe-spanning commercial groups also had close enough connections to Legion research and development to get their hands on a few of these communication devices, enough so that the need for Codewriters and Codebreakers mostly evaporated within the span of a few months.

The Code goes on

Of course, not every piece of information could be transmitted via Rendulgraphs -- the devices had a "beneficial drawback" of only ever being able to communicate directly with their paired device. There was no such thing as a Rendulgraph network; this made general dispersal of secret information difficult, cumbersome, and costly.

The general structure of classified information transfer these days is built wholly around the Rendulgraph as the main driving factor. However at each endpoint of a main pair of the devices vulnerabilities occur in the form of radio or handwritten letters once again being utilized, but in smaller amounts.
This is where the few remaining Codewriters still find employment, and the even fewer Codebreakers work diligently to attempt to uncover their secrets.

Rumour has it that the so called "Regiment for Humanity" employs over 50% of the remaining Codebreakers in the world, all in an attempt to decipher whatever secrets the Legion might be keeping from us.

— Citizen of Russin

by Birmingham Museums Trust

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