Everything

Typically, the Masses cannot see Quintessential energies unless those energies are especially strong. A person with the Awareness Talent might sense the flow of energies, or “taste” the Resonance involved, but the average person remains more or less blind to it. People and other living things can perceive vague “ripples” of sensation around strong sources of Primal energies – “good vibes,” “bad feelings,” “the right smell,” that sort of thing. Conventional technology cannot measure Quintessence or Resonance, however, and so as far as the Masses are concerned, such energies do not exist. (Whether or not this technological blind-spot is a Technocracy tactic is for the Storyteller to know and the players to find out.)

As a result, low-energy Quintessence-work – that is, Effects under 10 points of Quintessence per turn – remain coincidental unless they involve some physical aftershocks, like a person or object withering or glowing thanks to a vulgar Prime Effect. (See below.)

Significant fluctuations, however, are another story. In game terms, a flow of 10 points of Quintessence or more within a single turn generates spectacular effects: bands of light, pulsating colors, crackling bolts of force, blasts of white light, and so forth. At that point, Prime Effects tend to become vulgar. Essentially, if the average person can see or otherwise sense the Effect, and the Effect looks like some sort of freaky lightshow, than that Effect is probably vulgar.

(Exceptions can be made, of course, for Prime Effects that involve freaky lightshows… which explains a lot of about rave culture, wild pyrotechnics, aurora lights, and those harnessed-lightning labs you see in Frankenstein flicks or the “exploding base” climax of most James Bond movies…)