Microscopía electrónica de barrido (SEM) de P. mexicanus

This Invocation controls water in all its forms, be it liquid, gaseous or frozen. It is often used to increase the chance of rain, although careless use of this pow- erful effect will produce droughts in other areas.

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Effects:

Slow or speed up the flow of water: 1 Essence points per gallon per minute; halves or doubles the speed of water. It can cause pipes to burst by increasing water pressure.

Create an area of fog or mist: 1 Essence point per cubic yard for a thin mist that will reduce Perception-based rolls by 1; triple for a thick fog that will block visibility to a couple of yards and will make most Perception rolls based on vision almost impossible.

Create Ice or Freeze Water. This costs 1 Essence point for each pound of ice created. Ice can be used to cause the ground to become slippery, to seal doors by freez- ing them over, and anything the player's imagination can devise (except materializing ice inside a living per- son and similar abominations).

Cause rain: Causes rainfall over a small area. 5 Essence for 1 minute of light rain over a radius of 10 feet for every level of Willpower and Intelligence com- bined. Add one Essence point for each additional 10 foot radius. Add 4 Essence for hard rain or sleet, or 6 Essence for light hail, or add 10 Essence for heavy hail (enough to inflict 1D4 (2) points of damage on unpro- tected humans every minute or so). If the day was sunny, double all the above costs. During a dry spell, on a desert, or similar area where rain is unlikely, triple all the costs.

Farsight

This is the power to see into other places and to search areas by projecting a fraction of one's Essence beyond one's body. The principles of magic of Farsight are similar to those of Soul Projection (see below), but are more limited and do not require the magician to relinquish control of his body.

Effects: Failure to Dismiss the Invocation often caus-

es inconvenient visions and flashbacks to bother the magician for 1D4 (2) hours.

Look into another area: 5 Essence points allows you to look into any area within range; you must be aware of the general location of the area, however. The base range is 100 yards times the Perception attribute. This can be raised to 1 mile times the Perception Attribute for another 5 Essence, and an additional mile per Essence point spent.

Search for an individual: The more powerful the per- son being searched, the easier it is, as his Essence acts like a beacon for those with the right senses. 10 points for a mundane, 5 points for a Gifted person with less than 30 Essence, 2 points for a Gifted person with more than 30 Essence points. If the person being sought has used magic during the past few hours, all Focus rolls are at +1 for every 5 Essence points used by the target. If the Gifted character is Shielded (see the Shielding Invocation), then his Essence is kept hid-

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den and he must be sought out like a Mundane. This effect uses Perception instead of Willpower, and it searches for the person in the area covered by the Invocation. The base area has a radius of 1 mile per Perception level. Each additional mile costs 1 Essence point.

Gateway

The ways to the Otherworlds are few and hard to find.. Only a few among the Gifted know how to open and close them. Perhaps it is for the best, because there are beings in some of the Otherworlds that humans have no business encountering; some of them would only be too delighted for the opportunity to render an unwanted visitor limb by limb. The dan- ger is not always enough to deter the Gifted, of course, and many have ventured into the Otherworlds, look- ing for power or adventure.

Having this Incantation does not automatically allow you to travel across the dimensions, however, just like learning how to walk does not mean you know where every road leads. The "locations" of dif- ferent Otherworlds are closely-held secrets. Most Covens, even entire Covenants, may not know how to access any of them. Most visits to the Otherworld are made through Soul Projection, and are limited to those Realms most closely linked to our own. The Death Realms are the most commonly visited ones.

Effects:

Activate an Existing Gateway: Most Gateways were created centuries (some say eons) ago, by long-lost cultures. Even when not activated, their location often has a reputation as a "haunted" area, because it is eas- ier for beings from the Otherworlds to slip through there. If the magician find a Gateway, he can activate it by spending 25 Essence; this energy fuels the long- lasting magicks used to create the doorway between universes, allowing it to open for short periods of time (typically one minute per success level in the Focus result).

Travel to Another World: This effect allows the magi- cian to travel body and soul to one of the Otherworlds. Only the magician herself, and about fifty pounds of equipment or clothing will be trans- ported by this effect, and the magician must have pre- viously visited that dimension through a Gateway.

Close an Open or Opening Gateway: This power allows the magician to shut down a Gateway by neu- tralizing the Essence used in powering it. The energy spent is always very high, as the magician or forces opening the Gateway will resist this. Treat closing a Gateway as a Resisted Task; both sides use their Willpower and Gateway Incantation; the side that used the most Essence in the Incantation adds a +1 bonus for every 10 Essence points of difference. Page 120

Closing the Gateway does not make it go away, how ever; the walls between worlds remain weak at that location, and somebody might use it at a later date.

Create a Gateway:This expensive and difficult task is beyond the abilities of most magicians and even most groups of magicians. The energy cost for such are undertaking is huge, ranging from five hundred to thousands of Essence points, depending on the actual size and destination of the Gateway. Once created, the rip in reality will be there, if not forever, long enough to seem so to most beings.

Hideaway

Magicians with this invocation can hide their pres ence or that of other people or objects, effectively ren dering them invisible. The Hideaway invocation work on many different levels. Some of the Essence weav ing twists light in such a way as to obscure the magi cian's presence. Even cameras and infrared sensor; will only register a faint glimmer where the magician is (spotting the glimmer requires a Difficult Perception test; characters with occult experience can use Notice and Perception task instead). More importantly however, the invocation works on the minds of any body in sight of the magician. People are subtly manipulated not to look in the magician's direction and to unconsciously avoid the spot where the caste stands. Crowds will part away from the magician as he walks through them, unnoticed and unmolested Objects and areas protected in this manner similarly avoid the interest of those who pass near them.

If the Invocation is cast while the magician is in plain sight of others, there is a chance that some peo ple will be unaffected. Make an Invocation task for the Magician; the result is resisted by a Perception and Notice Task or a Difficult Perception Test by anybody who could see the magician at the time of the Invocation. Gifted characters get a +2 bonus to resist the illusion, and supernatural beings who can see through illusions have a +3 bonus to their Task or Test. Anybody who successfully resists will see the character's shape become blurry and semi-transpar ent, but the character will still be visible, especially in good light (shadows and darkness may allow the semi-invisible character to hide from even those who resisted the magic).

Attacking or otherwise attracting the attention of people will reduce the effectiveness of the magic. The mental component of the Hideaway will fail, and peo ple may be able to spot the magician's glimmering outline. Even so, attacking the invisible character is ; difficult undertaking; hand to hand attacks are at a -' penalty; ranged attacks are at -4.

Places can also be made invisible with Hideaway The effect basically hides the location from anybody

who might be searching for it; only the caster can find it without problems. The Invocation can only be cast in places that do not get a lot of traffic; if enough peo- ple are passing by the area, somebody will acciden- tally enter the hidden location, dispelling the illusion. Once the Hideaway is in place, Mundanes will not get a chance to see the hidden place; it will be as if it was- n't there. The Gifted may sense the magic on a Difficult Perception Test with a -3 penalty, but even they will not see the location unless they spend a great deal of time and effort searching for it. The Sidhe, Ghosts and other supernatural beings who can see Essence constructs will be able to locate the place on a Difficult Perception Test with no modifiers.

Effects:

Invisibility: The magician can make herself and oth- ers invisible, as described above. The Essence cost varies with the size of the spell's subject. A man-sized or smaller item or person costs 6 Essence points per ten minute period; the sorcerer can spend additional Essence to increase this period during the initial Invocation, or may recast the Invocation before its duration is over, but the latter will require a new set of Focus and Dismissal Tasks. Larger objects (up to the size of a car) cost 8 Essence points per 10 minutes. Anything larger (a bus, an airplane) cost 24 Essence points per 10 minutes.

Hideaway: A location can be made invisible. People passing by will never "see" the hidden place and any- body within it; it will be as if the location blends per- fectly into the surrounding landscape. An entire house could be hidden in this way; to outsiders, the place may look like a vacant lot, a lot that their eyes will slide over and then forget without much thought. The cost of this Invocation depends on the size of the place and the length of time. Since the place is not moving, it costs less Essence to hide it than to make a person or moving object invisible. The base cost is 1 Essence point per yard/meter of radius. This will last for one hour; the same base cost must be paid per additional hour.

Permanent Hideaway: This Invocation effect can be attempted after a successful Hideaway has been cast on a place to keep it hidden for 5 hours; this is how long the Permanent Hideaway takes to cast. At the end of the ritual, a total of 120 Essence will hide the location for one month per success level in the Invocation Task. If 240 Essence points are spent, the location will be hidden for one year per success level in the Invocation Task. Even if the illusion is broken by attracting attention to the location (see above), the Hideaway will reassert itself in 1D4(2) hours; those who saw the location will know that something is going on, however, and will have a much greater chance of breaking the illusion again.

Insight

All the Gifted are sensitive to the supernatural, mag- ical activity, and other psychic phenomena. Insight allows the magician to go even further and truly understand another being's true nature, and even uncover its deepest secrets.

Effects:

Perceive a being's true nature: This Effect allows the sorcerer to see the person's true self. Humans subject- ed to this ability resist with their Intelligence and Willpower; if the Invocation works, the magician gains a degree of understanding about the person's wants, fears and flaws. Basically, the magician knows all the character's mental Qualities and Drawbacks, as well as his main goals and fears. On supernatural crea- tures, this effect (also resisted by the creature's Intelligence and Willpower) will reveal the being's species in addition to his goals and personality. This effect costs 6 Essence points. An Essence Shield (see the Shielding Invocation on p. 161) will block this power; the Insight will only show the presence and strength of the shield, but nothing else.