Portent

Portent
Community Rating: 11
Difficulty: 9
Range: NA
Duration: NA
Ritual Length: 18 (one hour)
Effect: cloudy glimpse into the future
Attainment Rating: 14
This miracle allows a priest to ask the gods about
future events. The priest carefully outlines a person, item, area, or course of
action, and receives an indication as to the immediate fortune surrounding the
construct outlined. In game play, portents are handled in two ways:
First, a portent allows a priest to decide whether the
fortune of a person, item, area, or course of action is "favorable"
or “unfavorable." If a Character invokes the portent, you as gamemaster
must make a judgment. "How fares Karnak?" would be answered with
"The portents are favorable" under normal circumstances, but
"The portents are unfavorable" if you know the city is about to be
rocked by rebellion. Similarly, "How will we fare if we enter Kala's
tomb?" would be answered "favorable" if the tomb holds powerful
treasures and is relatively risk-free, or "unfavorable" if the tomb
is fraught with perils. The answers received by priests casting portents in
this fashion are always limited to a single phrase - 'The portents are
favorable" or "The portents are unfavorable:' "Unfavorable"
does not necessarily mean the objects, persons, or places are heading for death
or destruction; it does mean that fortune has turned its back upon them, and
the odds are against them, at least temporarily. For most adventuring parties,
"unfavorable" will be a common portent, as the odds are normally
stacked against the heroes.
Portent is
far better used to ask about the status of something outside the group. The Characters
can then intervene where the portents read "unfavorable" in order to
tum the tide. Portents can also be used to discover the difficulty
number of an action. If the Characters wanted to climb a mountain, for
example, they could learn the difficulty number of the attempt by invoking a
portent.
Portent only
allows the priest to view a week into the future. The Karnak example above
would only indicate "'unfavorable" if the rebellion was to occur
within the next week, while the mountain climbing portent would not take into
account any changes in the difficulty number that might occur (due to
unfavorable weather, etc.) at the end of the next week..