Soothsay (Art)

Soothsay is the Art of divination, prediction, and interaction with Dán, the fae belief in fate.

Changeling seers hold that Dán is a great loom of interwoven strings of destiny, too vast and complex for most minds to untangle. All beings — fae, mortal, and Prodigal alike — are woven into this great tapestry, their actions and ideals looping across and around one another to create the great design that is the world. Occasionally, the forces of Dán become apparent in the form of signs, omens, and portents, if the viewer has the knowledge, instinct, and wisdom to know them for what they are. Soothsay measures these qualities.

This Art is associated with thoughtful, contemplative Kithain. Nobles seek masters of Soothsay as seers and advisors, while commoners revere them for the wisdom they offer. This Art is most often practiced by sidhe sorcerers and eshu seers, but is also known for ancient associations with satyr grumps.

## Unleashing Soothsay

Soothsay Unleashings are often considered among the most dangerous phenomena in the Dreaming, for they lay bare the full tapestry of Dán—a dangerous thing for any seer. Unleashing this Art reveals the future, for good or ill, and almost always reveals more than the bare essentials the seer hoped to learn, complicating her destiny in the process.

## Soothsay Bunks

Soothsay bunks tend to involve traditional and nontra - ditional acts of divination. Examples include: Lay out a tarot reading, drink down a bowl of tea and read the leaves, shatter a mirror and examine the fragments, perform scapulomancy, eat a fortune cookie, hypnotize a friend and quiz them on the future, interpret clouds, take hallucinogens, sit in a smoke lodge, shake a magic 8 ball, program a random algorithm to replicate a magic 8 ball.

## Soothsay Cantrips

### Omen

An eshu seer pronounces a wanderer of honest character, and he is welcomed into the local court. Elsewhere, another seer informs his liege that the love she pursues does not feel as she does—and is banished for his honesty.

This rudimentary cantrip provides the briefest of glimpses at the thread of a person, place, or thing’s destiny. The Omen revealed is always vague, and rarely concerned with immediate events — at this level, the seer can at best glimpse the broad nature of a thing’s destiny.

**System:** The Realm selected determines what the Omen is about — usually Fae or Actor, although it’s certainly possible to conjure an Omen about a place or object. The more successes rolled, the deeper the Omen may reach to hint at the truth of its subject… although no matter how many successes are rolled, Omens are always subject to some interpretation.

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Multiple castings upon the same target within a single story cumulatively cost one additional point of Glamour with each repeated casting, as the threads of Dán become increasingly tangled.

**Type:** Chimerical

### Seer's Wisp

A boy conjures up a ball of warm light. “My brother,” he whispers. “Find my brother.” It bobs, drifts out of his bedroom window, and an adventure begins.

The seer gains the ability to conjure a bright fragment from the heart of the Dreaming, to lead her where she needs to journey. She may whisper into the Wisp the name or a description of the thing or person or place she seeks, and it will lead her there unerringly along the paths of Dán.

**System:** The Realm dictates who or what the changeling is trying to find. The more successes rolled, the more direct and safer the path down which the Wisp leads the changeling. This cantrip only lasts for one hour per dot of the seer’s Glamour, and can only be used to seek a single subject once per story, severely limiting its effectiveness as a tool to resolve legendary quests. One odd quirk of this cantrip is that while the Wisp is entirely chimerical, mortals with low Banality (6 or less) can sometimes glimpse its light, particularly by night and in lonely places.

**Type:** Chimerical

### Tattletale

This useful cantrip allows the seer to scry distant scenes through an object or individual she has ensorcelled for this purpose. Traditionally, anything in the immediate vicinity of the Tattletale focus is displayed in a nearby reflective surface or surface of the changeling’s choosing, though some nocker seers have been known to display the results of Tattletale on old television screens or computer monitors. The changeling can use any perception-based cantrip through the focus once a connection has been established.

**System:** The Realm used determines who or what becomes the focus of Tattletale. Dedicating a person or object as a focus requires some sort of ritual invocation which may be improvised and differs from seer to seer, but is generally fairly obvious in intent — it takes some fairly skilled trickery to make someone into a Tattletale focus without them realizing what’s happening. Dedication as a focus lasts for one day per success rolled. The seer can scry through her focus whenever she likes, but must place all of her concentration into such scrying.

**Type:** Chimerical

### Augury

The seer reaches deep into the weave and weft of Dán, coaxing the forces of fate and the Dreaming to reveal a path toward his heart’s desire. Augury is a notoriously treacherous and uncertain Art, for the path it reveals is always fragmentary and clouded — but followed diligently, it will lead to the future the changeling seeks. Rather than providing a list of instructions to achieve the goal queried, Augury instead provides tantalizing hints, clues, portents, and interpretive visions. But Augury merely promises a fated road — not a short, easy, or cheap one. The more precious the future sought with this cantrip, the more demanding the road it lays out tends to be.

**System:** The Realm used corresponds to what is sought — the love of a mortal would require Actor, while a lost heirloom would demand Prop, for example. If cast on behalf of another, then a secondary Realm must be used as well (generally Actor or Fae). The seer receives one clue, signpost, or omen per success rolled. Only one attempt can be made to find a specific fortune or destiny with his cantrip per story.

**Type:** Chimerical

### Fate Fire

A seer blesses a knight on the eve of battle. A boggan purchases a boon on the opening day of his new business. A bitter selkie curses the realtor driving new development to her favorite private cove.

In this, the greatest feat of Soothsay, the seer lays her hands directly upon the threads that make up the great tapestry of Dán and bends them to her will, blessing a subject with good fortune or cursing them with dire portents. The precise expression of this manipulation of destiny is always difficult to predict, but the signs cannot be mistaken.

**System:** The Realm used determines who or what is blessed or cursed. If a person is blessed, then she’ll gain one automatic success per success rolled on Fate Fire’s activation at an auspicious moment of the Storyteller’s choosing at some point during the current story. If cursed, each success removes a success on a roll in a dire time of difficulty of the Storyteller’s choosing, also at some point during the same story. Furthermore, all rolls for the rest of the scene after Fate Fire kicks in add or subtract one automatic success (depending on whether a blessing or curse has been laid). Blessings and curses affect objects in the same way, but tend to center on uses of the object or attempts to do something momentous to or within locales, rather than attaching to a particular person. Fate Fire can linger on an object for an indefinite time, until a properly fortuitous moment arises. An object or individual can’t have more than one use of Fate Fire hanging over them at a time, although a second use of Fate Fire can be used to “fight” a hanging blessing or curse, canceling successes on a one-for-one basis. This costs one point of Glamour to attempt, however.

**Type:** Chimerical

> **Storyteller Advice: Fate Fire**
> Fate Fire is more than simply a hanging bundle of extra successes or a nasty forced botch. It’s Glamour woven into the tapestry of destiny itself by the deft hands of a master seer, and exists to enforce tales of staggering triumph in the darkest of hours, or terrible defeat at the cusp of victory. The triggers of the effects of this cantrip aren’t intended to go off at random, but rather when it would be most dramatic. When the players are leaning forward across the table, sweating as they pick over the results of their dice roll and just beginning to curse or cheer — that’s when you drop Fate Fire on them.
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