Divination

The magician gains information through mystical means. The information gained trough Divination is often vague and subjective. Moods and feelings are easy to discern, hard facts difficult.

Divination has one important limitation: once a character acquires some information through the use of Divination, her subconscious mind will believe wholeheartedly in it, and any further use of Divination in this situation will produce the same result. So once the success of a given power has been determined, the character cannot achieve better success through further use of the power.

When a sorcerer PC uses Divination, the GM should provide a cryptic answer to the question. This answer should be designed to a) make the player work to puzzle out its meaning and b) move the plot along by providing a clue that gets the characters to the next scene. The Difficulty of such attempts depends on how good the GM thinks her clue is. If all she can think of is an obvious clue, the Difficulty is high. If she is confident in the ingenious nature of her clue, she can make the Difficulty low.

When enemy sorcerers succeed in using Divination, they get warning of the PC's plans and are ready and waiting to counter them. Difficulties for such divination attempts equals the highest Magic or Sorcery rating in the PC group.

The backlash for Divination is bad luck. The GM assigns your character an additional negative die on your next three important task checks this session. The GM gets to decide what constitutes an important check.

Divination Effects

Astral Sight

You can use supernatural senses instead of normal sight to see. Using Astral Sight is not an action, but shifting between astral sight and normal sight is a 1-shot action. You can simultaneously look into both worlds with a continuos action. You seem distracted when looking into astral space.

Using astral senses, living creatures and magic stand out clearly, while inanimate objects, especially industrially manufactured ones, are hard to discern. Objects with a strong empathic resonance are easier to see, while those who lack any psychic impressions appear faint and ephemeral, with no discernible detail. You can often find empathic traces of strongly emotional events simply by studying astral resonance. You can see through smoke, fog or darkness, even magical darkness.

When using Astral Sight, you find it easier to spot creatures using supernatural means to hide. Most magical effects can be plainly seen, and hidden ones can be discerned with some effort. Against such supernatural effects, you get to use your Sorcery instead of your normal Perception.

Relevation
On a successful Sorcery task check, you can identify illusions and conjured objects as false or divine the true forms of transformed animals and supernatural creatures or sorcerers who are using the Polymorphism or Transformation schticks. The difficulty is the Sorcery, Creature Powers or Martial Arts (for transformed animals and Fu powers) of the target, as applicable.

Detect Falsehood
You can sense moods and feelings, getting an impression of the intents and desires of others. This can allow you to penetrate disguise, falsehoods and insincere seduction with a Sorcery roll against the Deceit or Seduction of your target.

Astral Quest
The character can quest on the astral plane, leaving her body behind. Such astral quests are filled with visions, inspirations and subconscious symbolism, but are not linear adventures in the normal fashion. A number of other people equal to your Magic attribute can be taken a long at the cost of a Magic point.

Awareness

This power warns a character that she is about to enter an action scene. It tells the mood of a scene, just as if the character could hear the theme music. It is always active unless you forget it is there.

Clairvoyance

The sorcerer can tell what happens in well-known places, to friends or to people she holds a former body part of or an object dear to. She will get a brief vision, often very subjective. The discipline scans for strong psychic impressions. Sometimes these visions focus on an emotionally intense moment in the past or future.

Psychic Link
You can forge a psychic link to someone by spending a Magic point. Difficulty is their Dodge. You must score an Outcome equal to their Willpower. Once the link is established, you will always be aware of the target's approximate location, mood and general well-being. Maintaining this link costs a Magic point per game session.

Vision
Precognitive flash-forwards and foreshadowing of future adventures should occasionally come to sensitive sorcerers. This is more a mood-setter for the GM than a controlled effect.

Lore
Touching an object tells you how it was made and perhaps some highlights from it's legend. You can always tell if it is magical and what it is supposed to do. A curse on the object need not be readily apparent, however.

Counter-Detection

Just as a skilled sorcerer can detect many things, so can things be concealed from detection. It costs a Magic point to place a person, item or small room under counter-detection. Your Magic attribute is added to the difficulty of any supernatural detection power.

Detection

You can scan your surroundings for specific phenomena. This can be anything you have a clear grasp of, an object, a type of magic, traps, supernatural creatures, a particular species et al. You can sense such things within a range equal to ten meters times your Magic attribute.

Locate Object You can scan for any type of object. The difficulty depends on how exactly you describe what you are looking for. It is easier to search for simple things, as there are fewer factors to incorporate into the spell.

Example Difficulty Metal 0 Car 5 Sports Car 10 An Aston Martin DB-III 15 My blue Aston Martin DB-III 20

Detect Creature
You can sense the presence of living beings. This can be used to detect races, species, sex, age or any combination thereof. Requires a Sorcery check against their Willpower, and must be done subtly, or they will sense your scrying.

Detect Evil
Many magic traditions have defined evil, an opposing philosophy or set of ideals that are anathema to everything you magic stands for. With this effect, you can sense such evil. It is otherwise identical to Detect Creature.

Prediction

This is the effect the same name from Feng Shui, p 116.

Gives the caster good, if somewhat obscure, advice or information about the future. Most traditional Chinese mages will employ the I'Ching (pronounced Yee ling), the ancient Book of Changes. This is a book of cryptic verses; one finds the relevant verses by dividing yarrow stalks into odd and even patterns, arriving at a pair of trigrams. Trigrams are parallel broken or unbroken lines arranged in threes. Even more traditional mages will tell fortunes by throwing tortoise shells into the fire and then interpreting the patterns of cracks that appear on them after they are burned.

If the GM is familiar with I Ching-good translations can be found at any decent bookstore-she can choose in advance an applicable trigram, and assign a Difficulty to the divination attempt. If the attempt fails, the sorcerer gets a random trigram instead. (The I'Ching being what it is, the players may well find just as good advice in the random trigram!)

Remove Curse

Long-lasting curses and magical effects, like those created with the Fertility schtick Permanency, can always be negated by performing the correct deeds. This might involve taking a quest, making a net out of nettles and throwing it over the victim, or learning the secret name of a demon and speaking it backwards, but the laws of magic say that there is always a way to negate a curse. This effect is used to learn how. This effect is also available under Metamagic.

Warning

This is the effect the same name from Feng Shui, p 116.

You draw an outline on the ground around an area you wish to secure from intrusion. There is no limit to the size of the area, but the outline must be unbroken. You may name any number of specific intelligent beings who may cross it without triggering the alarm. Any intelligent being not so named causes a palpable shiver to run down your spine as the being crosses the line. If you wish, some other effect can occur instead, such as the ringing of a bell.

Secretly make an Intrusion, Sorcery or Perception check (whichever is higher) for the intruder; if the Action Result beats your Action Value, the warning is discovered in time. Otherwise it is triggered. Actively looking for the Warning gives them a +3 bonus.

You can maintain and distinguish between a number of Warnings equal to your Magic attribute at any one time. If a warning is discovered, it can be safely removed with an Intrusion or Sorcery check against your Action Value.

Ward
If the sorcerer using Warning also knows the Blast schtick, she can combine the two effects to create a mystical booby-trap. If an unknowing intruder triggers the warning, count his negative Outcome as positive, and use it to calculate the effect of a normal Blast. If someone enters the area knowing there is a trap there, use the active Dodge as the difficulty and your Action Value to attack. If an area effect is used, targets get to use the defense of the person who triggered the trap, or their own, whichever is better. A ward has a number of charges equal to the number of Magic points sacrificed to it when it is created; once this number is up, the ward no longer functions. If the blast effect in itself costs Magic points, such as a fireball, then those must be paid for each charge, and all at the same time. If the ward is created at a Feng Shui site, it can draw any number of charges from the site.

Variant wards can be created, that have different effects, even benevolent ones. Thus you can create an altar that heals worshipers or a divan that seduces those who rest upon it.