I was trying to come up with a creative way to teach Latin to a student. I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if you could make a book that helps you learn the language that is written in the language.
Apprentices Latin Primer
Author: Volumen of Bonsagius
Latin 3 Quality 15
Written in Latin
This book was written by a book and teaching obsessed librarian magi of Durenmar in 1093 with an astounding command of Latin. The book is designed to teach the student Latin as they read along aloud, thus allowing anyone who speaks any language to learn Latin. The book begins phonetically and progresses to full words, sentences, and lastly short stories. Sadly, due to speaking out loud, the book was quickly ban from being studied inside the inside the library itself.
The Spoken Word Translated
InMe 30 (36)
R:Touch D:Conc T: Hearing, Maintains Concentration, 6 uses a day
Effect: Similar to "Words within Babble" InMe25 but translates words spoken by the reader into a language they understand in their mind.
If we are going for a cool magical effect more for flavour than crunch, we could have an animated illustration of " puella est in cena" with floating labels for the nouns/arrows to indicate positional prepositions.
Might be a separate high level CrIm effect for each exercise in the bookm though....
What if we gave the book itself a "memory", that could be later interrogated with a Words within Babble alike effect ?
Without goint too much into crunching numbers, I'm thinking of an invested device (bear with me for its name, I'm just sketching that idea out).
The Eloquent Book Cover
A hardcover for a book, instilled with 3 effect, the first 2 designed for the author of the book, the last one for the reader of the book. When an author is compiling the material for the book, the first effect reads his mind and the second one infuses it in the hardcover. The third effects interrogates the infused "memories" and displays/recites them.
Perceive the Master's Thoughts
InMe Touch/Concentration/Item mantains concentration etc...
The cover reads the mind of the author (Thoughts within Babble alike effect)
Record the Master's Thought
CrMe (Touch/Concentration/Item mantains concentration etc) [Linked Trigger: Perceive the Master's Thoughts]
The cover infuses the thoughts of the author while he is creating the book, storing inside the pages of the book.
The Memory of the Book Translated
Cr(In)Me (Target/Range/Duration)
The memories stored in the book appear in the mind of the reader, who can then use them to reason and meditate on. During the course of a season this gives him enough material to elaborate and learn from the book, even without understanding the actual language in which is written.
It would likely not be a copy of the scribe's mind, but the mind proper. Minds are very hard to copy (see HoH:S p.68).
Most magi would not expose their own mind in this way: but a scribe might be sacrificed thus to an effect like ArM5 p.149 Inmost Companion enchanted into the book.