The Spirit’s Touch
Discipline Power · Vampire · Level 3
When someone handles an object for any length of time, he leaves a psychic impression on the item. A vampire with this level of Auspex can “read” these sensations, learning who handled the object, when he last held it, and what was done with it recently. (For
Aura Colors
Condition Aura Colors
Afraid Orange
Aggressive Purple
Angry Red
Bitter Brown
Calm Light Blue
Compassionate Pink
Conservative Lavender
Depressed Gray
Desirous or Lustful Deep Red
Distrustful Light Green
Envious Dark Green
Excited Violet
Generous Rose
Happy Vermilion
Hateful Black
Idealistic Yellow
Innocent White
Lovestruck Blue
Obsessed Green
Sad Silver
Spiritual Gold
Suspicious Dark Blue
Anxious Auras appear scrambled like static or white noise
Confused Mottled, shifting colors
Diablerist Black veins in aura
Daydreaming Sharp flickering colors
Frenzied Rapidly rippling colors
Psychotic Hypnotic, swirling colors
Vampire Aura colors are pale
Ghoul Pale blotches in the aura
Magic Use Myriad sparkles in aura
Werebeast Bright, vibrant aura
Ghost Weak, intermittent aura
Faerie Rainbow highlights in aura
these purposes, a corpse counts as an “object” and can be read accordingly.) These visions are seldom clear and detailed, registering more like a kind of “psychic snapshot.” Still, the Kindred can learn much even from such a glimpse. Although most visions concern the last person to handle the item, a long-time owner leaves a stronger impression than someone who held the object briefly.
Gleaning information from the spiritual residue requires the vampire to hold the object and enter a shallow trance. She is only marginally aware of her surroundings while using The Spirit’s Touch, but a loud noise or jarring physical sensation breaks the trance instantly.
System: The player rolls Perception + Empathy. The difficulty is determined by the age of the impressions and the mental and spiritual strength of the person or event that left them. Sensing information from a pistol used for a murder hours ago may require a 4, while learning who owned a bloodstained puppet fashioned a century ago might be a 9.
The greater the individual’s emotional connection to the object, the stronger the impression he leaves on it — and the more information the Kindred can glean from it. Events involving strong emotions (a gift-giving, a torture, a long family history) likewise leave stronger impressions than short or casual contact do. Assume that each success offers one piece of information, as per the chart below.
Successes Information
Botch The character is overwhelmed by psychic impressions for the next 30 minutes and unable to act.
Failure No information of value.
1 success Very basic information: the last owner’s gender or hair color, for instance.
2 successes A second piece of basic information.
3 successes More useful information about the last owner, such as age and state of mind the last time he used the item.
4 successes The person’s name.
5+ successes A wealth of information: nearly anything you want to know about the person’s relationship with that object is available.
At the Storyteller’s discretion, some impressions on objects may be so strong — a knife plunged into Caesar’s breast, the tip of the Spear of Destiny, a fang pulled from the maw of Dracula — that any use of this power may be deemed a success.
Part of Auspex
See also 4
Abilities & Attributes
- Empathy shared/trait/ability/empathy
- Perception shared/trait/attribute/perception
Disciplines
- Auspex vampire/power/discipline/auspex
Spheres
- Spirit mage/power/sphere/spirit