In certain situations, the Storyteller may want to leave her players guessing. Did John Courage actually learn the truth, or did his attempt to penetrate a lie lead to a false conclusion? And so, the Storyteller should use leading descriptions like “You THINK she’s telling the truth,” or “She seems to be telling the truth as she understands it.” This way, the players aren’t entirely certain about the results of an interrogation. Even if their die-rolls succeed, there might be factors they didn’t know about which change the relationship between “truth” and “invention.”

Remember too that “truth” is a slippery concept, especially in the world of a mage. Two people can remain utterly convinced that their perception of events is “true” even if an objective third party disagrees with them both. In the movie Rashomon, each party apparently believes that he or she is telling the truth about the events in question. Even so, their views of “truth” are radically different, and what actually happened might not be what any one of them recalls. Truth-seeking magick, then, is not an exact science. Even masters of its techniques realize that they’re getting only part of the larger whole.