Divination

Spells that gather and organize information based on the caster’s query. Scrying, magical sight, mapping spells, tracking spells, forensic magic and magic designed to analyze things all fall under this discipline. Divinations require some kind of link to the target of the divination, either a physical object or some of the caster’s memories. They are range-limited – a caster cannot cast a divination on a target that is miles away from them, and the spells that seek a non-specific target will only scan a certain area around the caster before giving up. Divinations that aim to predict the future or reconstruct the past are only guesses based on the clues the spell was presented with, and tend to be unreliable – future prediction more so than past reconstruction.

Divination spells are extremely useful in many facets of life and not terribly difficult to cast. Moreover, divination is not a very mana intensive field, putting a greater emphasis on good shaping skills than the size of one’s mana reserves. Most divination spells are rather cheap for their level. This makes divinations a popular choice amongst those with below-average or average mana reserves. However, divination spells are somewhat unique in that being able to cast a divination spell is no guarantee that it will be useful to you. Interpreting information received from a divination spell can be fiendishly difficult, and can often result in a string of gibberish and a raging headache. Additionally, divination suffers from the so-called ‘garbage in, garbage out’ syndrome – if you feed improper information into your divination spell, or start with an ill-considered reference point, you will get a result that is incorrect or misleading.

None of this stops people from pursuing the field, of course, but it does mean that divination requires an uncommon amount of dedication and discipline from a mage. As such, most diviners are narrowly specialized in divination, neglecting other fields of magic to focus on their chosen discipline. Only the most talented of diviners, or very old ones who are already hitting the point of diminishing returns in their studies, can afford to invest some of their energies into other fields.

## Haslush's Teachings

Divination is one of the trickier magical disciplines, because failure is not obvious.

* You could perform a divination flawlessly and still get nothing out of it.
* You could mess it up totally and not even realize you did something wrong.
* Ask the wrong question.
* Interpret the results incorrectly.
* Fail to take an important variable into account.

Then it's all just wasted effort. Experience can help you minimize those kind of issues, but it helps to be naturally perceptive.

Analyzing objects, is something you could make an entire career on, and some do.

* Identifying what the object does.
* Finding out who handled it last.
* What kind a magics and protections are placed on it.

## Types of divination

* book-finding divination spells, that lets them find things in minutes that would take decades if you search by title and skimming alone.
* Mage sight: Makes mana appear glowing to the user. Zach used an experimental variation trying to filter out ambient mana.
* Locator spell.

### Book divinations

* A spell to find an exact term. The caster finishes the spell chant saying the word, or string of words, he wants to search for. The spell scans the books in the surrounding area. An illusion of golden threads, only visible to who cast it, connects the caster to the books containing the word(s). It is a somewhat fragile spell, failing if the number of positive matched exceeded a certain number - the exact number depends on the caster's skill. It was mostly used to search for quotes or really exotic terms.
* A spell to search for multiple terms in a single book. It required making a list of terms one wanted to search for and then connecting the list via divination spell to a target book you wanted to search. Zorian used it on a reference book, when getting in a new order of books to sort out duplicates.

## References

1. ↑ Disciplines of Magic (Worldbuilding Post)
2. ↑ chapter 16
3. ↑ chapter 6
4. ↑ chapter 8
5. ↑ chapter 9
6. ↑ chapter 15