Once Awakened, a mage can’t go back to Sleep. The Lie is exposed, and magic filters and colors everything she sees, to a greater or lesser extent. A mage can intensify her perceptions of magic and glean a great deal of information about the world around her, but doing so has risks.

Mage Sight has three levels: Peripheral, Active, and Focused.

Peripheral Mage Sight

Peripheral Mage Sight is always active. The mage sees — rather, perceives — magical occurrences through the lens of her Path and Nimbus. Many mages experience the Periphery through senses other than sight. A sensual Mastigos might feel brushing, light touches on his skin, while an Acanthus might hear mercurial laughter. Many Moros sense the supernatural through their sense of smell, tasting decay and chemicals on the air. Deeper levels of Mage Sight rely on knowledge of the Arcana, but the Periphery responds to all supernatural events.

Note, however, that Peripheral Mage Sight notices only active supernatural effects. Any supernatural attempt at concealment hides the effect from the mage, without a Clash of Wills or any other mechanical effect. Peripheral Mage Sight, for instance, doesn’t detect a ghost lurking quietly in Twilight. If the ghost spends Essence, activates a Numen, or Manifests, however, this attracts the mage’s attention.

Nor does Peripheral Mage Sight give any clues as to what just happened — only that magic is afoot. If the mage doesn’t have the Death Arcanum to use Active Mage Sight with, the ghost will remain a nagging sensation of something out of place at the edge of the mage’s perceptions.

Active Mage Sight

Active Mage Sight requires more concentration from the mage, and overlays the mage’s perception with the Supernal World of her Path. It automatically uses the mage’s two Path Ruling Arcana, has no cost to add any third Ruling Arcanum, and costs one point of Mana per scene to include a Common or Inferior Arcanum.

Active Mage Sight allows the mage a much greater sensory experience with regards to the Supernal correspondences of the Arcana used, interpreted into the mage’s Path. The mage hallucinates, seeing the connections of the Arcana all around her. Mage Sight highlights all phenomena related to the Arcana used, but making sense of the torrent of Patterns is often difficult, and the mage can only determine the symbols related to phenomena within her senses — her Sight won’t let her see through walls or perceive entities and objects in a state of Twilight. Unveiling spells and several Attainments allow more specialized analysis of a mage’s surroundings, either adding capabilities to Mage Sight or granting extra senses for more information.

Each Arcanum has a minor mechanical effect, relating to the base level of perception granted by Active Sight.

• Death Sight allows a mage to detect the presence of the Anchor Condition or manifested ghosts and related phenomena. With a glance, a mage using Mage Sight can tell if someone has a soul, or if a body is, in fact, dead.
• Fate Sight highlights anyone the mage watches who experiences a dramatic failure or exceptional success. It reveals the presence and use of a Destiny, but not the details of that destiny.
• Forces Sight detects motion and highlights the presence of environmental Tilts, fire, electricity, and other hazards. With a glance, a mage can tell if a device is powered.
• Life Sight detects life signs, revealing if a body is still alive, and allows a mage to gauge how injured a character is with a glance. The presence of toxins, diseases, and Personal Tilts is obvious to the mage.
• Matter Sight allows the mage to determine the Structure and Durability of anything she looks at, as well as highlighting the value and quality of items (in game terms, telling the player the Availability and Equipment Bonus of any object).
• Mind Sight detects the presence of thinking beings and allows the mage to tell with a glance if someone is asleep, comatose, awake, meditating, or projecting out of his body or into the Astral. The mage is also aware when a character she observes gains or spends Willpower.
• Prime Sight highlights anything the mage can use as a Yantra, and the presence (if not the composition) of any Awakened spell or Attainment effect. Mages using Prime Sight can recognize tass with a glance, and tell when they are in a Hallow or Node.
• Space Sight allows the user to instantly judge distances, range bands, and cover, allowing the player to know what bonuses or penalties would be in effect before the character acts. It also detects spatial warps, scrying windows, and the presence of Irises.
• Spirit Sight reveals the strength of the local Gauntlet, detects the presence and nature of the Resonance Condition and other sources of Essence, and highlights manifested spirits and related phenomena.
• Time Sight reveals the split-second adjustments of time, allowing the player to know the Initiative ratings of all participants in combat. When a character is about to act, even with a reflexive action, a mage watching with Time Sight is aware of it (if not what that action will be), and may preempt it if he is able. Time Sight also detects temporal warps, and the tell-tale signs that someone has come back into the past.

In addition to the above, any supernatural effect falling under the purview of the Arcanum that the mage can see is highlighted if she is using the correct Sight. Note that Peripheral Mage Sight is triggered by all supernatural events regardless of Arcana, but unless the mage uses an applicable Active Sight she gains no information about the phenomenon — only that it must be related to an Arcanum she didn’t use.

Active Mage Sight of any Arcanum also reveals all Awakened spells as they are being cast. The mage can see another willworker’s Nimbus flare as he forms the Imago and casts the spell (which, in turn, gives the observant mage a chance to use the Counterspell Attainment if she knows the Arcanum involved).

Concealment magic, of whatever type, can hide a target from Active Mage Sight, but only if the concealment would logically mask the target from the purview of the Arcanum in question. Even then, if the concealment power uses the same magical principles as the detecting Arcanum, the mage still has a chance to see through it. For example, a light-based invisibility spell would conceal a target from Mind Sight, but Life Sight could still detect the living being, with or without the assistance of photons. Likewise, some vampires employ a kind of mental “invisibility” that causes observers to ignore them. This power would conceal a target from Forces Sight (it isn’t light-based) or Time Sight, but not Mind Sight (since both the concealment power and the Arcanum are working on the same principles).

System: Entering active Mage Sight is a reflexive action when only using Ruling Arcana, and an instant action otherwise. Leaving it is always reflexive. If the Storyteller determines that a mage’s Active Mage Sight could logically pierce a concealment effect, use a Clash of Wills, pitting the observing mage’s Gnosis + Arcanum against the defender’s dice pool for the concealment power. While a character is using Active Mage Sight, she suffers a –2 modifier to all rolls unrelated to using or perceiving magic. In addition, Mage Sight is draining. A mage can maintain Active Mage Sight for a number of minutes equal to her Gnosis. After that, she must spend a Willpower point to keep it active for the remainder of the scene.

Focused Mage Sight

Focused Mage Sight allows a mage to scrutinize a subject through the lens of the chosen Arcana. Unlike Peripheral or Active Mage Sight, Focused Mage Sight requires that the mage put all her attention on one target — a person, object, or location (roughly the size of a small room). Instead of seeing the subject in the context of the Supernal, she sees the Supernal as filtered through the subject. Magic pours through the subject, shaped by its Fallen-World constraints and correspondences; and by examining that interaction, the mage can learn much about it. Using this principle, a mage can release Mana into the world and watch the patterns it forms, gleaning additional information from them.

Focused Mage Sight has its dangers, however. Looking so deeply into the Supernal isn’t a passive, casual observation. The mage is undertaking the magical equivalent of a thorough, persistent, and even invasive investigation, pouring magical energy into the area, and anything with the ability to sense magic (including other mages in the area) can notice this. Otherworldly beings might observe her inquiry, and some of them would prefer to remain unseen.

A mage must be using Active Mage Sight already to Focus. Focused Mage Sight has two stages: Scrutiny and Revelation. Both pit the perceptive power of the mage against the complexity of the Mystery she is trying to illuminate. This is represented in game terms by a trait called Opacity — simply put, an abstract measure of how deep a mage must delve in order to fully understand a Mystery. A mage can attempt Revelation at any time. Revelation is the magical equivalent of a glance, a summary, a quick-read through, or a taste test. On its own, it can be useful, even illuminating, but it does not grant the mage depth of knowledge. For that, she needs Scrutiny, the in-depth, time-consuming, and sometimes dangerous practice of magically studying a target.

Revelation and Scrutiny are two different actions. They can be attempted in either order; a mage can Reveal a Mystery before Scrutinizing it to gain a baseline understanding, or Scrutinize the Mystery before Revealing it to reduce its Opacity. What a mage cannot do, however, is Reveal a Mystery twice without Scrutinizing it. Once a mage has Revealed a Mystery, she has learned all she can without using Scrutiny.

Revelation

Revelation is an instant action. It can be undertaken when a mage first encounters a Mystery, revealing only the surface information, and also when a mage has unraveled some or all of the Mystery’s Opacity.

Dice Pool: Gnosis + Arcanum – Opacity

Action: Instant

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The player overloads her own perceptions and the subject of her study with Mana, akin to spilling a bottle of ink on a page she was deciphering. No Scrutiny or Revelation of that subject is possible — by any mage — for the next 24 hours. The Prime spell “Cleanse Pattern” can dissolve the Mana before then, allowing further Scrutiny.

Failure: The mage is unable to Reveal anything about the subject. She can still attempt to Scrutinize it, however.

Success: The mage discovers the surface information of the Mystery.

Exceptional Success: The mage discovers the surface information of the Mystery and can either lower the Mystery’s Opacity rating by 1, or, at the Storyteller’s discretion, uncover one piece of deep information.

Scrutiny

The player spends a point of Willpower to activate Scrutiny. While Scrutinizing, the penalty for rolls unrelated to magic increases to –3. The influx of information she receives renders her unable to interact with the Fallen World in any meaningful way. If the mage employs Scrutiny on a subject protected by some kind of magical concealment, the Storyteller should use the same metric as Active Mage Sight for determining whether a Clash of Will is appropriate. If a Clash of Wills is appropriate, the mage’s player receives the rote quality on the roll.

Scrutiny of a subject allows a mage to determine its Mysteries. The number and nature of Mysteries in a subject is up to the Storyteller (see below).

Scrutiny is an extended action, but with a few variations. The time per roll is one turn, meaning that the player can’t use an exceptional success to reduce the time per roll. Also, the player doesn’t have a target number of successes. Instead, every time she reaches a number of successes equal to the Mystery’s Opacity, the Opacity rating falls by one. For instance, if a mage begins Scrutinizing a lingering spell with Opacity 4, after the player accumulates four successes, the Opacity rating drops to three. If the mage continues (and the player accumulates three more successes), the Opacity rating drops to two.

In addition, while most extended actions are limited by the number of dice in the player’s unmodified dice pool, Scrutiny does not suffer this limitation. Maintaining Scrutiny does, however, become more dangerous to the mage. After a number of rolls for Scrutinizing a given Mystery equal to the mage’s unmodified Gnosis + Arcanum, the character’s own magic starts to leak into the Mystery. In game terms, every time the player fails a Scrutiny roll after reaching this limit, add half the mage’s Gnosis (round up) to the Mystery’s Opacity. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply only to the mage in question; anyone who attempts to Scrutinize this Mystery later has to separate out the clumsy mage’s influence on it.

The player can spend Mana during Scrutiny, releasing it and watching the shapes it makes as it sublimates into Fallen reality to gain clues about the Mystery at hand. Each point of Mana spent adds one success to that turn’s roll, but only if the roll succeeds. If the roll fails, the Mana spent that turn is lost. The mage cannot spend more Mana per turn than her Gnosis allows.

Dice Pool: Gnosis + Arcanum

Action: Extended (each roll equals one turn, total number of successes varies)

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The player accrues no successes, and adds two to the Mystery’s Opacity. If the player has already made a number of rolls equal to the unmodified dice pool, a Supernal entity of the mage’s Path takes note of the mage and may affect him with its powers as long as he maintains his Mage Sight.

Failure: The player accrues no successes, but can continue to Scrutinize. If the player has already made a number of rolls equal to the unmodified dice pool, then a failed roll adds half the mage’s Gnosis (round up) to the Mystery’s Opacity.

Success: The player accrues successes, and can choose to spend Mana in order to add more, up to the normal per-turn limits of the character’s Gnosis. If the player accumulates enough successes to lower the Mystery’s Opacity, all successes are reset and the mage can continue (that is, it is not possible to lower a Mystery’s Opacity by more than one level in a single turn).

If the mage chooses to break off the Scrutiny, she can reinstate it later, with the Opacity rating at whatever level it was when the mage broke off the attempt.

Exceptional Success: The player accrues successes and reveals mysteries as described above. In addition, since the exceptional success mechanics for normal extended actions do not apply, the player may choose one of the following options: She can apply all successes gained in this roll, even if doing so lowers the Opacity more than once; she can spend a point of Mana to blot out the Mysteries she is seeing so that other mages have a more difficult time scrutinizing them (add the character’s Gnosis to the Mystery’s Opacity); or she can spend a point of Mana to cover her tracks, obscuring any trace of her Nimbus from the area (anyone magically searching for her Scrutiny suffers a penalty equal to her Gnosis).

Permutations: Arcana

A mage can Scrutinize using multiple Arcana, as long as they are in her Active Sight, but doing so carries risks. Because she is putting her senses through multiple magic filters, she has a more difficult time sorting all of the sensory input. In game terms, for every Arcanum beyond the first that mage adds into Scrutiny, subtract one roll from the maximum number of rolls allowed before a failed roll affects the Opacity rating. The base number of rolls is (Gnosis + highest Arcanum used).