Investigation Charms
Indisputable Physical Analysis Technique
Cost: 1 mote per two dice
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Investigation: 2
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite Charms: None
The magistrate or investigator
with this Charm learns the myriad ways of the criminal; his eye is better able
to connect seemingly disparate clues, and his intuition greatly improves. The
character can improve his Investigation dice pool by two dice for every mote of
Essence spent. The character cannot do more than double his Investigation Trait
with this Charm, and he must pay the full motes of Essence even if he needs to
raise a Trait by only one die.
Scent-Of-Crime Method
Cost: 2 motes
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 3
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite Charms: None
A good investigator quickly
learns to discern the nervous habits, tics and mannerisms of people suffering
under a load of guilt. Since most guilt is associated with a crime, the
character becomes better able to discover a criminal among a group of people.
After spending Essence, the character’s player should make a Manipulation +
Investigation roll. A success here will point the investigator to the character
within eyesight currently suffering from the greatest load of guilt. This is
purely subject, of course, and mostly left in the hands of the Storyteller.
Additionally, characters who commit heinous crimes without a shred of
conscience might feel no guilt whatsoever from the acts they perform, making
this Charm useless in finding them.
Falsehood Unearthing Attitude
Cost: 5 motes + 1 Willpower
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms:
Scent-of-Crime Method
The Exalted’s
ability to sense dishonesty finally reaches supernatural levels when he learns
this Charm. With it, he can ferret out false statements in conversation,
helping him find the truth of a situation. This Charm does not detect evasions
or half-truths; it only points out statements that the speaker knows to be
false. The Exalted must pick a target and spend the Essence and Willpower
necessary to activate this Charm; for the rest of the scene, falsehoods spoken
by that target will trigger a tingling sensation on the back of the character’s
neck. If the target is aware of the scrutiny he is under, he may conceal lies
by spending 1 point of Willpower per statement. This Charm has no effect if the
target’s permanent Essence is equal to or higher than the Essence of the Exalt
using this Charm.
Bloodhound’s Nose Technique
Cost: 6 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms:
Indisputable Physical Analysis Technique, Scent-of-Crime Method
The Exalted spends around 10
minutes walking around the scene of a crime (or any event he wishes to
investigate); his player must then make an ordinary Investigation roll for the
Dynast to find ordinary pieces of evidence (footprints, stray hairs, blood,
etc.). This Charm uses a touch of sympathetic magic to trace that evidence back
to its creator. Roll Intelligence + Investigation after spending the necessary
Essence to activate the Charm. With one success, the character receives an
impulse ― a mild tugging ― that pulls him in the direction of the
culprit. With three or more successes, the character receives that impulse
along with a fleeting glimpse of the culprit as he appeared at the time of the
crime.
Revelation Of
Associates Hunch
Cost: 4 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms:
Indisputable Physical Analysis Method
By simply meeting a person and
coming within a few yards of him, the Exalted can sense the identities of his
closest associates. Typically, these will be the character’s family members,
business associates and members of any sworn brotherhoods the Exalt belongs to,
but they can also be characters delineated by certain Backgrounds. Roll
Perception + Investigation; every success gives the name and one-sentence
description of two of the target’s compatriots or servants. Even if the roll
fails, the Dragon-Blood will still learn information about one of the target’s
associates. Associates are revealed in roughly the following order: family
members, members of sworn brotherhoods, allies, mentors, connections, henchmen;
the Storyteller can change that order as he sees fit.
Homeward Trail Discovery Method
Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Revelation
of Associates Hunch
By simply meeting a person and
coming within a few yards of him, the Exalted can determine the place that the
person calls home. Usually, this is the character’s primary residence, but in
the case of the Dragon-Blooded, who might have several residences, it is the
place that the subject truly considers to be his home. If the subject has any
dots in the Manse Background, the Charm is almost certain to point directly at
his Manse of primary residence. If the subject or one of his allies is a
sorcerer, his home may be warded against such divinations. In that case, this
Charm will point to another of the character’s residences. The Charm will only
identify a building, not a particular apartment or room within that building
― and in the case of longtime travelers or the impoverished,
the Charm will simply indicate that the subject has no true home.
Atsiluth’s Bounty
Cost: 1 mote
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 2
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite Charms: None
Those who live in Atsiluth
Eternal dwell in luxury such as even the Forest Witches cannot imagine. With a
moment’s study of the Essence flows around her, a character can bring forth
unbounded wealth. Invoking this Charm within Atsiluth
Eternal, a character can conjure any mundane object or structure, as well as
any artifact or Manse up to level 5.
However, the artifacts and Hearthstones this Charm
creates only affect the “material” reality of Atsiluth
Eternal. They can improve the user’s perceptions but cannot otherwise divine
information or directly affect the minds of others. They cannot act at range
without some physical effect that conveys their power to the target. Outside of
Atsiluth Eternal, they do not function at all. The
Vision
Outside Time
Cost: 2 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 4
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Atsiluth’s Bounty, Falsehood Unearthing Attitude
The Exalt sprinkles a few drops of blood upon the dust of
Atsiluth Eternal and calls forth her vision soul: an
image of herself drawn from a dream of future days. Such images are vicious,
twisted and perverted liars, desiring primarily to torment those who call them
forth with false hopes and false despairs. A wise Witch can, nevertheless,
finagle hints from them about the future, the present and the past. The player makes
a Manipulation + Investigation roll. If the Storyteller wishes to play out the
conversation, then each success represents an opportunity to force out such a
truth. The Exalt can spend one of these successes at any time to determine the
vision soul’s motivation behind a given statement — for example, to tease the
Exalt with obfuscation, to encourage unwarranted despair or to save face after
being tricked into making some admission. Otherwise, the difficulty of the roll
is 3, and success tells the character one thing she should watch for, one thing
she should fear and one thing she should desire.
Tampering
Detection Technique
Cost: 2 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: Indisputable Physical Analysis Technique
A character using this Charm can instantly tell if an object
has been tampered with and how the tampering was done. If a lock has been
picked, forced or opened with any form of magic or if a document has been
altered in any way or if a signature or seal has been forged, this Charm will reveal
both the changes and the method by which they were accomplished. Each use of
this Charm reveals all changes to a single object that have been made in the
last year. This Charm does not reveal who made the changes and only gives
general information about when the tampering was performed, but it will
identify everything from a crude lock-picking to a use
of the Solar Charm Lock-Opening Touch.
Clear
Water Prana
Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Tampering Detection Technique
When a character examines a room or a similar-sized location
to determine what occurred there, one of the greatest risks is overlooking
details that have been deliberately concealed or clues that have been hidden.
This Charm enables the character to find everything that was deliberately
hidden or concealed in a space no larger than five yards on a side. When the
character uses this Charm, a tide of Essence sweeps through the area and glows
briefly when it encounters anything that has been deliberately hidden. If the
character is searching several small rooms or one large room, she must use this
Charm multiple times to cover the entire area. Also, there is no guarantee that
something that has been hidden in the room has anything to do with the events
in which the character is interested. If the character uses this Charm in a
room where a murder was committed, she might just as easily turn up the small cache
of opium the victim had stashed under the floorboards. Also, while the Charm
automatically detects items hidden by mundane means, to detect items hidden
using Charms or sorcery, the character’s player must make a successful resisted
Perception + permanent Essence roll against the Essence of the individual who
used the Charms or sorcery. It cannot discover matters concealed by Celestial Circle
Sorcery or some equivalent or greater power.
Eye
Of The Enlightened Reader
Cost: 3 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Investigation: 4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: Indisputable Physical Analysis Technique
This Charm does not help the character find the sources
he is looking for, but it does provide equally important information about
those sources that are useless to the character. The character need only touch
a book, scroll or other manuscript, concentrate on the information he seeks and
then use this Charm. In an instant, the character will know if the document he
is holding actually contains the desired information. Of course, specifying a particularly
broad category of information, such as “The Realm,” can provide general
information that more specific requests can miss. However, such generalities
may be useless. In contrast, asking if a book contains a biography of some
particular person will instantly reveal if the book contains such information,
but it does nothing to let the character know that this same book also contains
useful anecdotes about the same person buried in the biographies of several
other famous figures.
Information
Carrying Tide
Cost: 4 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Investigation: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Eye of the Enlightened Reader
When confronted with a great library or some other large
collection of books and/or other records, the primary challenge is winnowing
through the information to find the few grains of wheat amidst the vast amounts
of chaff. When a character uses this Charm, an invisible tide of Essence flows
outward and causes the most relevant and useful materials within the collection
to glow softly. This Charm reduces any difficulty penalties to Investigation rolls
made because the Exalt is looking through large numbers of books or other
written records that are poorly organized. This Charm reduces these penalties
by the character’s permanent Essence but cannot lower the difficulty of a roll
below 1. It merely makes looking for information among a pile of random tomes
no more difficult that seeking it among the best organized and cataloged
library in the Realm. However, if the desired information cannot be found in
the library the character is looking in, this Charm will not suddenly cause it
to be present. Instead, the character will merely be certain that this
information cannot be found in the collection of manuscripts.