Spaekiss

The subject of fortune telling is a tricky one for most drakiss groups. Any crew or colony will have at least one Spaekiss -skilled, or so they claim, in the arts of divination and augury. Many techniques are used for this and few drakiss can resist trying to peer into the futurebefore making a major decision. This should make the Spaekiss respected and valued members of their societies, but...

Both drakiss tradition and most drakkun take a dim view of the arts of fortune telling and a successful spaekiss is one, above all, who maintains a low profile and whose predictions do not cause upheaval or draw the wider attention of the community and risk the creation of a Talon.

Career

Qualifications

Opinion is divided on what qualifies one to be a spaekiss - some hold an ability to forsee the future as the basic fundamental, but other see the key qualifications as an understanding of practical psychology and the skill of framing a general statement in ways that sound more specific then they actually are.

Career Progression

Those following this profession usually begin in it as dabblers while following a more conventional career. They will often kep this as a cover though the more successful will move into unganged occupations to give extra flexibility in persuing this vocation, with Gethikiss one of the more frequently taken.

Few spaekiss retire completely from other occupations for this would draw undue attention, though some will use thir skills indirectly and rise to power through the gang system and occasionally it will be found, or alledged, that advisors or councillors are spaekiss.

Payment & Reimbursement

The illicit nature of the trade and the small size of most drakiss communities means that payment for the services of spaekiss is usually by favour or services - many spaekiss will seek to build a "stock" of favours owed by drakiss in positions of power and authority so they they can exert influence and protect their position, thought this can sometimes backfire and result in the exposure of the spaekiss and their expulsion from the community.

Bunch of frauds I tell you. If they knew their business they'd never get caught.

— Weruru, Writken at Morton

Legality

The profession has always been treated with a degree of distrust - though individual spaekiss may be trusted, the profession in general is not and in most, if not all, drakiss communities it is officially¹ forbidden even if tacitly accepted and used by the leaders.
¹ The concepts of law and legality are not easily applied within drakiss communities, few have codified their rules as documented laws and in this case "officially" should be taken as meaning this is how the community expects itself to act collectively.

Techniques and Methods

A wide range of techniques are used by even a single spaekiss and any attempt to document them all would run to a life's work. Below are but three examples of the more commonly used techniques.

Stonesight

The spaekiss has a bag of small stones of different types and sizes. The client puts their hand into the bag and (blind) draws a few stones out and casts them on the ground or into a tray. The spaekiss gives their prediction based on the type of stones drawn, their positions, orientations and such like in the pattern they make.

Eyescale

Popular for predictions that are personal to the client - their health, lifespan or questions of kin and relationships. Here the spaekiss examines the fine scales around the clients eyes - their size, shape, any damage or defect, the patterns in which they fold and so on.

Charsight

A gommon and deniable technique used by spaekiss who trade as Gethikiss. After a cup of gethic tea has been consumed the patterns formed by the residues in the cup are examined. This is generally agreed to be a variant of stone sight adapted to use in more public circumstances.