How to: Ultrasonic Speech

[CrosshairCollie]

Suppose that there's a race of Bat-like creatures who can use their sonar to communicate. Is this workable as just a language, or would it need a power construction?

Anybody with Ultrasonic Hearing can hear it, and learn to understand it, but only creatures with sonar can actually 'speak' it.

[Captain Obvious]

5ER says you can build it as a Transmitted version of Ultrasonic Hearing, I believe. Weird to think of it as hearing, but there is a logical link there; what else would transmitted hearing be?

[Bloodstone]

It's not like Ultrasonic Perception and Active Sonar come cheap, but I think the ability to silently/invisibly communicate on the battlefield over normal hearing distances is worth some points. More points than just a normal language since most languages can be perceived by most races. Even if I can't understand a word of Russian or Sign Language, I still know when they are being used around me.

So in this case of an entire race of bat creature, I'd probably go with both a language and Transmit. That way even those that could hear it wouldn't understand it, and only those with the right abilities could ever hope to learn to speak it.

[CrosshairCollie]

Thanks guys.

If you were curious, this is for doing a loose Ironclaw translation. :)