Signal Scratch

by Rachel Bentz

Research Log, August 14 1867 I've been looking at this Creator-cursed wall for weeks, and only in the last few days have I realized that many of these scratches are not the incidents of time or stray carts, but deliberate markings. They are crude, carved in haste and with unsteady hands, but they are unmistakably signals. My first clue was this mark, noticed over the lintel of the door into the inner meeting room.

by Rachel Bentz

It is remarkably similar to the the Eucharist used by the Church of the Creator. Could these marks, therefore, have been left from the earliest days of that religion, where they were forced to practice in secret?

Signal Scratch is a hidden language of symbols and signs from the earliest days of the Church of the Creator, when its teachers and disciples hid in fear from the wrath of Wizards and Abaisi both. Each symbol was only a few lines, easily scratched into a wall or door frame. Each could easily be hidden by other scratches, obscuring communication if needed. These 'canceled' marks were usually scratched out by two parallel lines, before other scratches were added.

by Rachel Bentz

There is another symbol, one shaped like an upside down A but with two triangles on its inner line. If these marks were left by the early church, could this one perhaps been used to denote babtism? it looks like a babtismal font or container of water.

by Rachel Bentz

Yet another is The letter I, but with two small tines jutting out from its lower half. Considering the symbology of the Key in Church history, this is likely a reference to Ishmael, the foremost disciple and first Pope.

The Members of the Church used the symbols to denote arrivals of important teachers, safe locations for worship, and locations that had been spotted by their adversaries and were no longer safe to visit. Wood was often popular to carve into as the wood could be replaced if too many marks were carved into its surface. Younger members of the church took to creating their own signs and cryptography, if only to carve into the wood and help hide the true meaning of the Chruch's marks. The language fell out of common use after a few hundred years, when it was safe to practice the faith openly. Still, vestiges of this language linger in the symbology of the Church today.

There is one symbol whose meaning yet eludes me. It resembles the mark for Ishmael, but with two long lines jutted across its face, each with a smaller line struck through their own. Clearly it has something to do with the Papacy, but I cannot fathom in the slightest what these lines are. Are they stray marks? Deliberate? What do they mean?