Augury

Some variant of this spell exists in every land, in response to humanity’s voracious need for knowledge. The details are not important compared to the process: the magician must enter a meditative state, observe a source of randomness, and consider the shape of the universe. If the process is successful, they gain mystical insight into things hidden or yet to come. Example focal rituals include drinking tea and then observing the leaves, dropping hot metal into cold water, throwing bones, drawing a series of cards, burning special substances and watching the smoke or flames, and so on.

The basic format of an Augury involves a question and an answer. The base cost of an augury is one point of strain. Multiple questions may be answered, although each costs one more in strain than the previous; especially complex or specific questions may also have an extra cost in strain beyond this. The difficulty is exactly the same as it would be for a knowledge check if an expert in the field were to try and answer, for hidden truths; seeing the future begins at d3 for “the next hour or so” and increases by one step for each step up in time units: days, weeks, months, seasons, years, decades, centuries. Answers will tend to be vague or cryptic, though; attempting to get a definitive answer increases the difficulty by two steps. A critical failure produces false results and the magician must immediately make a Psychic save or double the strain they take.