Overview:

Thieves Cant is itself a common means of communication leveraged by the various criminal enterprises both in Zenith and at large throughout the world. Many outsiders believe Thieves Cant to be language but it’s more of a secret encoding used by the criminal element to communicate with each other in the open.

Thieves Cant is really broken down into the following key elements:

• Identification
• Approach / Negiotiation
• Information Gathering

The nature of this communication method is that should you actually talk to someone who is not aware or part of “the life.” Then the discussion is easily dismissed.

Identification:

Whether independents or part of larger criminal enterprises, they need to communicate with each other using a common vocabulary. And the first part of the discussion is identification. Being able to identify a contact is critical to starting the communication. And around the world a commonly accepted means of identification is actually a single bead on a piece of jewelry holding together an X pattern.

For example, this might be the following:

• An “X” shaped choker with a single bead at the intersection.
• An “X” on a ring with a single stone in the middle of it.
• An “X” on a bracelet with a single bead on it.
• An “X” Shaped earring hanging from the ear.

The next part of the approach is actually being able to identify affiliation based on what you see. The bead usually identifies affiliation using the following:

The Approach – Example:

Below is an example of the high level discussion and interaction in Thieves Cant:

• Rogue: “Hey how are you doing? It’s been forever since I’ve seen you.”
• Contact: “Doing alright, just got back into town.”
• Rogue: “Oh yeah, is it just you, or did you bring the whole family?”
• Contact: “Just me, the family decided to stay home.”
• Rogue: “What are you in town for?”
• Contact: “Looking to buy a new piece of jewelry for my wife.”
• Rogue: “How’s your cousin sam doing? I meant to ask.”
• Contact: “Rather touch and go unfortunately, so we’ll have to wait and see.”
• Rogue: “How about your daugher Janice, how old is she now, 10?”
• Contact: “She’s great, but she’s 8 actually.”
• Rogue: “Really I could have sworn she was at least 9.”
• Contact: “Her birthday’s next week, so almost. Hey I got a card game later tonight at the Leaky Siv Tavern, you should come by.”
• Rogue: “You bet, I wouldn’t miss it.”

The above interaction would really have this meaning:

• Rogue: “Do you have a job?”
• Contact: “Yep, looking for a crew now.”
• Rogue: “Is it for the syndicate or independent?”
• Contact: “Independent”
• Rogue: “What’s the job?”
• Contact: “Need something high end stolen.”
• Rogue: “How risky is it?”
• Contact: “Hard to say.”
• Rogue: “I’ll do it for 100 Platinum”
• Contact:” “No I was thinking 8.”
• Rogue: “How about 9?”
• Contact: “Done, meet me at the Leaky Siv to talk details.”

The Approach / Conversation:

There is not so much a hard and fast rule, but more “guidelines” around using Thieves Cant. And the types of conversation elements have the following meaning:

Information Gathering:

Based on the above exchange you may find that information is shared by a private meeting, with or without a client, or even a dead drop. In those scenarios, magic is used to shield the message that is being left behind. But sometimes those discussions need to happen in public, in which case it is usually done using a card game called “Vagrant”.

The real rules of Vagrant change depending on who you ask, because it’s not a real game. The only constants are this:

The real reason for the game is to pass information back and forth. The truth is also the cards are enchanted so that someone who knows how to play can change the suits of the cards they play to provide answers to questions: