Tel roughly means Mind in Leporah. It is how you are thinking and how you understand your senses, it is what separates us from base animals, who generally have 1-3 Tel. You use it when you try to understand, remember or see something. If you don’t have any Tel, you don’t have any mind. This means while you can technically move and do actions, you can’t because there isn’t anything to order your limbs to do anything.
As Tel increases you acquire, learn, combine and use information more easily. Eventually you can glance at new language and understand it instantly, you can solve impossible riddles, get things at their rock bottom price, convince people you are right (winning any argument), you can put together seemingly unrelated information (like how the price of tea in some far off faction influences what is happening), remember exactly how many steps you have taken since you were born, predict the weather, understand why this is so important, calculate impossible math problems, have a terrible sense of humor, remember that you existed before coming to Sage’s hollow, read a library in a week, invent powerful weaponry and important infrastructure, use everything to your advantage, never let anything go to waste, see a speck of dust fall from several miles away.
It is very important and the single reason why humans have taken over the world.
If you focus on Tel you are a Lore Master. As Lore Masters gain strength they eventually gain unique abilities. If you are interested in Lore Masters more on them and their abilities can be found in The Lore Masters, The Specialty's Series book 5.
Now what specific skills use Tel I hear you ask. So for those that can’t figure it out from my earlier descriptions of Tel I listed them out: (If you want to learn more about Tel skills consult the Skill Encyclopedia books 31 through 38)
Astronomy: This skill uses Tel to understand the Night’s sky and what it means. The stars repeat their cycle every year. The constellations affect the world in different ways. Though you can also use this skill as a compass that only works at night. (If you want to learn more about Astronomy consult my Magic Of The Stars Series.)
Driving: This skill uses Tel to direct a vehicle. This includes boats, rafts, carts, really anything you can ride that isn’t alive. This allows you to move faster and safer travel.
Ingenuity: This skill leverages Tel to invent something. It is THE most powerful skills because its effect isn’t limited, if you chop down a single tree you get a single log, if you invent a better way to cut down trees, everyone gets more every time they gather them. (well everyone you want to benefit)
Language: This skill uses Tel to understand other languages. If you want to communicate to those not a part of our society this is a necessary skill. It also allows us to understand the civilization that created the runes and influenced magics.
Literacy: This skill uses your Tel to read and write the spoken language. It is how you are reading this page, and how knowledge will be passed down to the next generation. While it isn’t very important short term, very few skills are as useful or necessary long term. This skill is the base upon civilization has been built.
Merchant: This uses Tel to understand the value of things and how to change that value in another person's mind. If you want to get something from another intelligent entity without spending double the price, this is the skill you want to use. If you want to use money at all except for paying taxes you need this skill.
Weather: The weather skill allows you to predict the weather. It is useful, but at least to my understanding of it, very limited. Still it is very easy to learn and there are few reasons not to learn it.
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