Blood Gift of Augury

The Blood Gift of Augury is wielded by vampires around the world for the purposes of magnifying and extending their senses. The most common usage of the power is merely to amplify a vampire's physical senses, such as their sight, hearing, and smell, but it can be used for even further purposes, allows vampires to perceive supernatural phenomena. Mostly, this pertains to psychic and mental magic, but it can also be employed for more general purposes.

## Mechanics

Like all Blood Gifts, Augury draws upon the magic inherent within vampiric blood. It functions by allowing vampires to magically scan their environment, then granting them an inhuman level of sensory information, which is how the basic heightening of senses works using the ability. As a vampire advances in this power, this magical scanning enables them to detect more than physical stimuli, enabling them to utilize psychometric powers and even detect thoughts. As Augury mastery advances further, vampires learn not only to magically scan their environment, but send out signals of their own, enabling various forms of telepathic communication.

Penetrating and affecting the minds varies in difficulty depending on a combination of the victim's willpower, their magical potency, and any potential telepathic skill they might possess. Any vampire with the same Augury ability as another can employ it for the purpose of fending them out of their minds.

## Powers

### New Blood Gifts (Levels 1-2)

* **Premonition (Level 1):** The ability to gain flashes of insight into the future is a basic use of Augury, but not one that comes innately to all vampires. It is most common among the bloodlines descended from Lamech, the Firstborn seer. With this power, vampires can receive spontaneous visions of the future, as their mind subconsciously peers forward into the streams of time. Typically, the events foreseen by Premonitions relate directly to the vampire who wields this power, and are usually no more than moments into their immediate future. Events filled with direct danger are more easily foreseeable. As a vampire further masters Augury, this Premonitions can become more detailed and see farther into the future, making many elders of Lamech's blood notoriously difficult to surprise.
* **Sharpen Senses (Level 1):** The power to sharpen one's senses is almost universal among vampires, as it is extremely easy to develop and extremely practical to have. This power permanently sharpens all of a vampire's senses once gained, and with concentration from the vampire, can enhance them to even greater degrees. As a vampire masters Augury more and more, both the passive sensory enhancements and the potential concentrated ones grow more and more acute.
* **Auric Sight (Level 2):** This ability enables vampires to perceive the auras of other beings.

### Common Blood Gifts (Levels 3-4)

* **Touch Thoughts (Level 3):** Vampires with the ability to Touch Thoughts are able to extend their minds out into the thoughts of another being. This allows them to engage in telepathic communication, as they project their mental voice and images, and can pick up on those of whoever they choose to communicate with. This also allows for them to eavesdrop on the thoughts of other beings, though anyone with telepathic powers has a chance of detecting and repulsing them.
* **Psychometry (Level 4):** A vampire with this power gains the ability to touch an object, and gain flashes of memory of whoever has interacted with it. The stronger the psychic imprint of their aura left on the object, the easier they are to detect and the more detail can be gained. Vampires more skilled in Augury can trace fainter and fainter traces of the aura, and can more easily discern details from it.
* **Spirit's Flight (Level 4):** After mastering the ability of Touching Thoughts, which enables vampires to project their minds into another mind, they can then learn to completely detach their minds, and engage in astral projection. This allows them to take a ghostly, ethereal form, detaching themselves from their body (which remains still for the duration of the projection) to fly about through the air and solid objects. This form is invisible except to those capable of sufficient supernatural perception, or anyone the vampire makes mental contact with and reveals themselves to. Any damage to the vampire's body instantly pulls them back to it. It should also be noted that this power only allows for travel through the physical world. Astral Projection into the Ether requires more advanced abilities.

### Elder Blood Gifts (Levels 5-7)

* **Penetrate Thoughts (Level 5):** A further advancement on the ability to Touch Thoughts, this power enables the elder blooded vampire who wields it to delve deeply into a subject's mind, invading their memories to root out information. More recent and less significant memories are easier to find, whilst old memories or dark secrets buried deep within a consciousness are far more difficult to locate.
* **Thought Shard (Level 6):** This ability allows a vampire to utilize their Augury as an offensive weapon. By projecting a burst of psychic force into someone's mind, they can disorient the mental processes of a target, stunning them with a brief flash of psychic pain. This can usually be recovered from in a few moments, but there is nothing to stop the attack from being used repeatedly over and over again as a form of attack or torture. Such assault can be resisted by sufficiently potent use of telepathy.
* **Trace Passage (Level 6):** An advanced combination of Psychometry and Auric Sight, the ability to Trace the Passage of an individual functions similarly, by detecting traces of an individual's aura. However, this power does not require a vampire to touch an object, but rather, enables them to note imprints of an aura within an area, such as a room or a street, enabling them to track someone wherever they have travelled. These traces go more difficult to discern with time, but greater mastery of Augury enables more subtle hints of an aura to be detected.
* **Far Sight (Level 7):** A more advanced replacement for the power of the Spirit's Flight, Far Sight allows vampires to instantly project their senses towards any location or individual they are familiar with. Unlike with Spirit's Flight, a vampire remains fully aware of their physical body, and can divide their senses between it and wherever they project themselves to. Unless their astral form is cloaked, however, it is still perceivable by those able to see such things.
* **Vigilant Slumber (Level 7):**

### Ancient Blood Gifts (Levels 8-9)

* **Hammer of Thought (Level 8):** Ancient vampires who wield Augury can use their thoughts to kill. Advancing on the power of Thought Shard, this turns a brief stab of psionic power into a devastating hammer blow, hence its name. The tremendous psychic force of this ability can do anything from knock out a victim, to send them into a coma, to outright kill them by obliterating their mind completely.
* **Whisper Through the Blood (Level 9):** This power focuses the connection of the blood, and allows the ancient who wields it to broadcast visions of their choosing down their bloodlines. The more distantly removed a subject is from an ancient wielding this ability, the more difficult it is for the ancient to Whisper, though potent Primordial vampires can extend the power to the very end of their bloodline. This power is useful solely for projecting thoughts and visions, and does not allow for communication with descendants, or access to their minds. This power can be used even in torpor.

### Primordial Blood Gifts (Levels 10-11)

* **Commune with the Brood (Level 10):** Built on the same principles as the ability to Whisper Through the Blood, this power enables Primordial vampires who develop it to search down through their bloodlines, and make mental contact with any of their descendants. This enables them to employ any Augury power which requires mental contact on them. This power can also be used when in torpor.
* **Ancestor's Wrath (Level 11):** An advancement of the ability to Whisper Through the Blood combined with the offensive power of the Hammer of Thought and the precision of Commune with the Brood, this devastating power can be used by Firstborn vampires to annihilate any of their descendants. It can be applied to a select few descendants at a time, or spread out down across the generations, as its wielder chooses. Originally, this power was said to have been developed by Lamech, who used it to punish his children when they abused their power and knowledge.

### Godly Blood Gifts (Level 12)

* **Gather the Children's Wisdom (Level 12):** This power was developed by Cain to ensure that his descendants would never wield his blood against him in unexpected ways. Always active, it ensures that anytime a new blood gift power is developed by one of his vampire descendants, Cain instantly gains the ability to wield it himself.
* **Gaze of the Father (Level 12):** This power has caused Cain a considerable amount of grief. He created it by utilizing the bonds of blood between him and the rest of his brood. The power ensures that Cain is connected to every single vampire in Creation, able to instantly locate them and access their thoughts and feelings. The trouble with the ability is that it was too effective. Cain constantly receives psychic visions from his descendants across Creation, constantly exposed to their woes and pains.