I know that no new skills are supposed to be submitted for development, but I wasn't sure if that included skills that'd already been put up for first draft or not so I posted this one anyway.
The original draft for divination was made by Bumblebee, but they invited me to join in the development ages ago and we've both worked really hard to build it up into something special. Although Bumblebee isn't on ST anymore they've given me permission to post this skill up in their stead.
I hope you like it.
Tio
Name: Divination
History
The history of Divination is shrouded in mystery and subject to much debate, yet in truth this skill was originally discovered by the Shay as a means to understand the forces of Idalos and their spirit and dragon gods through. The practice was nearly lost in the destruction of the Shay, Hhwever it survived through Ziell, who had learned and perfected the art during the war against the ancient spirits and taught it to the early humans. Through their natural curiosity and adaptability it did not take long for these humans to create their own new forms of divination, turning it into a skill almost magical in nature.
Mechanics
To understand how divination works, a fortune teller must first understand the following two concepts: Chains of Events and Omens.
Chains of Events
All actions create a chain of events that, with one exception, are set in stone. Every action a person takes causes a reaction, which in turn causes another action to take place. For example a person might have chosen to let their cat outside of the house, which in turn gave the cat an opportunity to eat a passing bird. If that bird had lived its alarmed chirping would have warned an old lady living in the woods of a dangerous animal nearby, allowing her to escape from it unharmed. However since the bird was killed it was not able to do so, and thus the old lady was also killed. In this scenario by choosing to let their cat outside, the owner unwittingly created a chain of events that led to the death of an old lady. The moment they chose to let their cat outside, the old lady’s fate was all but guaranteed.
The one exception to the above rule is the ability all creatures with a soul possess to “choose.” Objects move as they were mechanically designed to, animals and monsters act as their instincts and training dictate, and natural phenomenon occur as a response to different types of energy building up and interacting in different ways; these are all calculable responses, things that can be predicted and measured through physics. However the soul is different. A being with a soul possesses free will; the ability to decide on their own course of action in a way that cannot be predicted. Because of this no fortune teller, no matter how skilled, can ever know for certain what decisions a person will choose to make. They can predict what would come to pass if a person does choose to follow a certain course of action, but cannot guarantee that a person will make that choice. Therefor no future is truly set in stone so long as at least one person has yet to make a choice that will determine its outcome.
Bearing this in mind, it is possible to map out a chain of events as points in time where people made decisions which, one-by-one, led to an outcome.
Normally chains of events consist of hundreds of different choices, but on their own very few have the weight to alter the outcome. In the above graph there a four “major” decision chains, and if at any one of those points the person in question made the opposite decision then the outcome of the king’s death would not have come to pass.
In between those 4 major decisions there would be a large number of “minor” decisions. Did the assassin decided to stab the king, or to poison them? Did the palace gardener decide to try and stop the suspicious looking person when he saw him walk past? Did the king decide to go to bed early that night? Alone these minor decisions would not have the weight to changed the outcome, but had enough of them all been different then perhaps their combined weight would have been enough to save the king’s life.
In short the free will of people, their ability to choose the actions they want to take, is both a fortune teller’s greatest relief and curse. Free will has the potential to avert pretty much any calamity they can foresee just as it has the potential to create them. As long as there is a will to avoid the most likely future, there is a way to do so. For better or worse though this means that even if a character is a grandmaster of divination they will still, quite often, be wrong in their predictions.
Omens
As all who follow the Immortals know, believing in a concept gives it power. The actions a person takes feeds power to domains directly relevant to those actions. Burning an offering feeds the domain of fire. Succumbing to and acting out of anger feeds the domain of rage. Telling a lie feeds the domain of deception. It is for this reason that worshipers of spirits and Immortals go to such lengths to take actions that feed the domains of the beings they serve: for as a domain gains power, so to do the beings connected to that domain.
What many do not know however is that the laws of time are far more fluid in Emea than they are in Idalos. When there is a possibility in the coming future that an event will take place which will feed it, domains begin to stir like hungry dogs at the scent of a meal. The bigger the event, and the closer it comes to happening, the more vigorously the domain begins to stir. These stirrings ripple through Emea and into Idalos, riling up spirits related to those domains and prompting them to use their powers to cause smaller scale events. These events are known as omens. For example if a great battle between two nations was due to happen in the near future then domains such as war, death and pain would start to rumble with anticipation, creating ripples. These ripples would excite spirits of war, death and pain, causing them to run wild and create mischief. They might kill flocks of crows, cause normally docile creatures to fight, or make people stand on sharp nails. Ripples tend to be much more focused on areas and people important to the events they are heralding, and as such the omens tend to occur much more regularly around them.
Divination
When a chain of events begins, domains relevant to the outcome begin to stir. The ripples these create go on to cause omens. At a basic level, a fortune teller’s job is to measure and interpret these omens to try and figure out which domains are the ones that are stirring, and from that knowledge theorize what events might be about to occur. Using the previous example of an upcoming war, a fortune teller would look at the omens and figure out that they all relate to violence, killing and such. As tensions between the two nations would be common knowledge, the fortune teller would likely make the connection between the omens and that tension, and (correctly) guess that the omens are referring to an upcoming battle.
As the example highlights a lot of divination really does rely on guesswork, however there are things a fortune teller can do to increase their accuracy. This is where different “schools” of divination, such as Tarot Card reading or Haruspicy come into play. Certain items can resonant with the ripples sent out by domains they are related to, influencing the way they may fall or increasing the probability that they are chosen seemingly at random. Others can be used as intermediaries that allow spirits and ghosts to pass basic messages to the living, warning them of what they feel is about to come. These different schools are better specialized to read different types of futures. Palm Reading is one of the best at determining what events are likely to occur in an individual person’s future, whereas Cloud Reading would be better to figure out what events will befall a whole city. There is a lot of rivalry between practitioners of different divination schools as to which is the most accurate.
Inaccuracies
The interference of free will and the difficulty of interpreting omens are not the only problems a fortune teller faces in predicting the future.
First of all is the “Strength-Time Conundrum.” As previously mentioned domains begin to stir more vigorously as the event that will feed them draws closer, and also stir more vigorously for bigger, more important events that will feed them more. The problem is that it is impossible for a fortune teller to distinguish the correct cause for this vigor. The appearance of weaker omens could either mean that an event of less importance will be occurring the next day, or could be the precursor to stronger omens of a disaster coming the following season.
Second is the “Overshadow Conundrum.” More vigorous ripples drown out lesser ones, meaning that as bigger events draw closer it becomes harder for a fortune teller to predict anything but that event, as the details of the more important event spill into predictions of lesser ones. For those who rely on divination for a living this means that they will make more incorrect predictions, and thus have less satisfied customers, as the moments of great catastrophes draw near.
And finally is the “Trickster Conundrum.” Fortune tellers rely heavily on reading omens to predict the future, however the spirits that cause those omens are aware of this. Sometimes these spirits will not want to reveal which domain is exciting them, and although they will not be able to resist creating omens they may deliberately try to disguise them as actions of a different domain. Some people, such as mortalborn, marked and those born on special days, will possess a natural affinity with spirits and will rarely have this problem, but most fortune tellers may need to give regular gifts to the spirits to prevent this from happening.
Divination Schools
There are many different techniques that can be used to foretell the future, each using different bits of equipment and methods to do so. Although they all measure and read the ripples of domains and the omens created by spirits, the ways in which these schools do so varies wildly based on the resources and cultural influence present in the cities they were developed in. Some of these schools are more efficient at foretelling certain types of futures, such as the future of a specific individual or of a whole city, however specializing in one area makes the school less effective in all other areas. There is a great rivalry between students of different schools over which techniques is the best, although this does not usually prevent students from learning from multiple schools.
According to legends passed down from fortune teller teachers to students all the modern schools are descended from one true, pure school: the original divination technique passed down to the first humans by Ziell himself. This style was supposedly unmatched in its ability to predict any type of future, but became diluted over the ages by the ambitions of its practitioners until only the bare basics remained. It would take a grandmaster of divination to even come close to rediscovering this style.
General Schools
General schools are the unspecialized, all-rounder schools. They can be used to predict the future of anything from an individual person to an entire continent, but are not as efficient at doing any of them as a specialized school would be. Beginners to the arts of divination usually learn one of these schools first and learn more specialized schools afterwards.
General schools include:
Individual Schools
Individual schools are those that focus on learning the futures of individual people, or at a stretch small groups of them such as families. They focus on reading the effects of ripples concentrated solely on that person. Teachers of these schools often warn their students against using their skills to read their own futures, for it is said that to read one's own future and use that knowledge to avoid your own fate angers the domains you rob of the chance to feed from your future, and in turn inspires them to turn spirits related to them against you until an appeasement is made.
Individual schools include:
The opposite of individual schools, populi schools are designed to learn the futures of large groups of people or large landmasses, such as settlements or entire islands. As governments rarely need to employ more than one fortune teller into their service, if any at all, then practitioners of this school alone struggle to find work. It is usually only those who seek to help (or harm) their community without asking for personal reward that seek to learn these schools.
Populi schools include:
The rarest of the divination schools, specialist schools are those created to foretell a very specific kind of future. Because they are so highly specialized these schools are rarely used, and as such very few people have a need to learn them. Those who do choose to learn these schools however will find that they often grant a clarity greater than anything they’ve ever known in forseeing the future they’re designed to read.
In order to achieve this intense specialization some schools have to break societal taboos, leading them to be labelled as criminals or madmen. They commit human sacrifices, steal corpses from graveyards, and do other unspeakable acts of evil as part of rituals designed to know the darkness approaching in the future. All should beware the dread prophets who practice these schools, for the terrors that they can work to bring about into the present are the stuff of nightmares.
Specialist schools include:
Although often considered the tool of charlatans, cold reading is a useful skill for regular fortune tellers to develop. The more they can learn about a person from a glance, the more they can apply that knowledge to what they have learnt from reading omens and consulting spirits to guess at what the future might be. The ability to cold read is determined by a characters observation and detection skill levels.
Out of Character
Using divination, players are able to create prophecies of events that will befall their characters or their NPCs. However to make a prophecy for another character you must have their direct permission to do so. As stated before even master fortune tellers often make incorrect prophecies, so just because you have prophesied something does not mean that any other player, or moderator, is under any obligation to follow that prophecy. This skill cannot be used to dictate anyone else's actions under any circumstances.
Trivia
Novice: 1-25
It is very challenging to be a novice fortune teller. At this level the character will only be learning the techniques of one school, usually a general school, and will be completely reliant on the guidance of their teacher. It is highly unlikely that they will ever predict anything correctly as the patterns and meanings they are asked to decipher will seem like nonsense. They will almost assuredly question at some point whether their teacher is just making things up, and as such most novices drop their lessons before reaching competent.
Competent: 26-75
At this level the character is starting to notice that there is something of a pattern emerging in the divination techniques they've been learning; some sort of truth there that they're only just catching glimpses of. Only about one in every ten of their predictions come true, but those times prove to them that it is possible to see deeper into the designs of fate. They will still only practice the techniques of one school professional, but may begin to explore the techniques of a secondary school as well to broaden their perspective.
Expert: 76-150
An expert fortune teller now knows for sure that the future can be predicted, and has grown proficient enough at the techniques of their schools to be accurate in about half of their predictions. They can use techniques from three different schools with confidence, as well as dabble in the basic techniques of other schools.They are good enough now to earn a degree of popularity in their local area or serve as an adviser to a king or nobleman if so inclined.
Master: 151-250
The oracular abilities of a master fortune teller is a sight to behold. They seem to be almost never wrong in their predictions about less important events, and can sense the coming of greater events from arcs in the future. They see and understand omens that few others even notice, and can use techniques from five or more different schools. Whether seeking to avert a coming event or ensure its arrival, the understanding they have of the flow of time can make their success seem as it if was almost fated to be. It is said that at this level the very best of them, such as the blind seeress Joelle, even become so attuned to the arts of reading the future that they see visions of what is to come in their sleep.
Credit: Tio Silver and Bumblebee
History
The history of Divination is shrouded in mystery and subject to much debate, yet in truth this skill was originally discovered by the Shay as a means to understand the forces of Idalos and their spirit and dragon gods through. The practice was nearly lost in the destruction of the Shay, Hhwever it survived through Ziell, who had learned and perfected the art during the war against the ancient spirits and taught it to the early humans. Through their natural curiosity and adaptability it did not take long for these humans to create their own new forms of divination, turning it into a skill almost magical in nature.
Mechanics
To understand how divination works, a fortune teller must first understand the following two concepts: Chains of Events and Omens.
Chains of Events
All actions create a chain of events that, with one exception, are set in stone. Every action a person takes causes a reaction, which in turn causes another action to take place. For example a person might have chosen to let their cat outside of the house, which in turn gave the cat an opportunity to eat a passing bird. If that bird had lived its alarmed chirping would have warned an old lady living in the woods of a dangerous animal nearby, allowing her to escape from it unharmed. However since the bird was killed it was not able to do so, and thus the old lady was also killed. In this scenario by choosing to let their cat outside, the owner unwittingly created a chain of events that led to the death of an old lady. The moment they chose to let their cat outside, the old lady’s fate was all but guaranteed.
The one exception to the above rule is the ability all creatures with a soul possess to “choose.” Objects move as they were mechanically designed to, animals and monsters act as their instincts and training dictate, and natural phenomenon occur as a response to different types of energy building up and interacting in different ways; these are all calculable responses, things that can be predicted and measured through physics. However the soul is different. A being with a soul possesses free will; the ability to decide on their own course of action in a way that cannot be predicted. Because of this no fortune teller, no matter how skilled, can ever know for certain what decisions a person will choose to make. They can predict what would come to pass if a person does choose to follow a certain course of action, but cannot guarantee that a person will make that choice. Therefor no future is truly set in stone so long as at least one person has yet to make a choice that will determine its outcome.
Bearing this in mind, it is possible to map out a chain of events as points in time where people made decisions which, one-by-one, led to an outcome.
Normally chains of events consist of hundreds of different choices, but on their own very few have the weight to alter the outcome. In the above graph there a four “major” decision chains, and if at any one of those points the person in question made the opposite decision then the outcome of the king’s death would not have come to pass.
In between those 4 major decisions there would be a large number of “minor” decisions. Did the assassin decided to stab the king, or to poison them? Did the palace gardener decide to try and stop the suspicious looking person when he saw him walk past? Did the king decide to go to bed early that night? Alone these minor decisions would not have the weight to changed the outcome, but had enough of them all been different then perhaps their combined weight would have been enough to save the king’s life.
In short the free will of people, their ability to choose the actions they want to take, is both a fortune teller’s greatest relief and curse. Free will has the potential to avert pretty much any calamity they can foresee just as it has the potential to create them. As long as there is a will to avoid the most likely future, there is a way to do so. For better or worse though this means that even if a character is a grandmaster of divination they will still, quite often, be wrong in their predictions.
Omens
As all who follow the Immortals know, believing in a concept gives it power. The actions a person takes feeds power to domains directly relevant to those actions. Burning an offering feeds the domain of fire. Succumbing to and acting out of anger feeds the domain of rage. Telling a lie feeds the domain of deception. It is for this reason that worshipers of spirits and Immortals go to such lengths to take actions that feed the domains of the beings they serve: for as a domain gains power, so to do the beings connected to that domain.
What many do not know however is that the laws of time are far more fluid in Emea than they are in Idalos. When there is a possibility in the coming future that an event will take place which will feed it, domains begin to stir like hungry dogs at the scent of a meal. The bigger the event, and the closer it comes to happening, the more vigorously the domain begins to stir. These stirrings ripple through Emea and into Idalos, riling up spirits related to those domains and prompting them to use their powers to cause smaller scale events. These events are known as omens. For example if a great battle between two nations was due to happen in the near future then domains such as war, death and pain would start to rumble with anticipation, creating ripples. These ripples would excite spirits of war, death and pain, causing them to run wild and create mischief. They might kill flocks of crows, cause normally docile creatures to fight, or make people stand on sharp nails. Ripples tend to be much more focused on areas and people important to the events they are heralding, and as such the omens tend to occur much more regularly around them.
Divination
When a chain of events begins, domains relevant to the outcome begin to stir. The ripples these create go on to cause omens. At a basic level, a fortune teller’s job is to measure and interpret these omens to try and figure out which domains are the ones that are stirring, and from that knowledge theorize what events might be about to occur. Using the previous example of an upcoming war, a fortune teller would look at the omens and figure out that they all relate to violence, killing and such. As tensions between the two nations would be common knowledge, the fortune teller would likely make the connection between the omens and that tension, and (correctly) guess that the omens are referring to an upcoming battle.
As the example highlights a lot of divination really does rely on guesswork, however there are things a fortune teller can do to increase their accuracy. This is where different “schools” of divination, such as Tarot Card reading or Haruspicy come into play. Certain items can resonant with the ripples sent out by domains they are related to, influencing the way they may fall or increasing the probability that they are chosen seemingly at random. Others can be used as intermediaries that allow spirits and ghosts to pass basic messages to the living, warning them of what they feel is about to come. These different schools are better specialized to read different types of futures. Palm Reading is one of the best at determining what events are likely to occur in an individual person’s future, whereas Cloud Reading would be better to figure out what events will befall a whole city. There is a lot of rivalry between practitioners of different divination schools as to which is the most accurate.
Inaccuracies
The interference of free will and the difficulty of interpreting omens are not the only problems a fortune teller faces in predicting the future.
First of all is the “Strength-Time Conundrum.” As previously mentioned domains begin to stir more vigorously as the event that will feed them draws closer, and also stir more vigorously for bigger, more important events that will feed them more. The problem is that it is impossible for a fortune teller to distinguish the correct cause for this vigor. The appearance of weaker omens could either mean that an event of less importance will be occurring the next day, or could be the precursor to stronger omens of a disaster coming the following season.
Second is the “Overshadow Conundrum.” More vigorous ripples drown out lesser ones, meaning that as bigger events draw closer it becomes harder for a fortune teller to predict anything but that event, as the details of the more important event spill into predictions of lesser ones. For those who rely on divination for a living this means that they will make more incorrect predictions, and thus have less satisfied customers, as the moments of great catastrophes draw near.
And finally is the “Trickster Conundrum.” Fortune tellers rely heavily on reading omens to predict the future, however the spirits that cause those omens are aware of this. Sometimes these spirits will not want to reveal which domain is exciting them, and although they will not be able to resist creating omens they may deliberately try to disguise them as actions of a different domain. Some people, such as mortalborn, marked and those born on special days, will possess a natural affinity with spirits and will rarely have this problem, but most fortune tellers may need to give regular gifts to the spirits to prevent this from happening.
Divination Schools
There are many different techniques that can be used to foretell the future, each using different bits of equipment and methods to do so. Although they all measure and read the ripples of domains and the omens created by spirits, the ways in which these schools do so varies wildly based on the resources and cultural influence present in the cities they were developed in. Some of these schools are more efficient at foretelling certain types of futures, such as the future of a specific individual or of a whole city, however specializing in one area makes the school less effective in all other areas. There is a great rivalry between students of different schools over which techniques is the best, although this does not usually prevent students from learning from multiple schools.
According to legends passed down from fortune teller teachers to students all the modern schools are descended from one true, pure school: the original divination technique passed down to the first humans by Ziell himself. This style was supposedly unmatched in its ability to predict any type of future, but became diluted over the ages by the ambitions of its practitioners until only the bare basics remained. It would take a grandmaster of divination to even come close to rediscovering this style.
General Schools
General schools are the unspecialized, all-rounder schools. They can be used to predict the future of anything from an individual person to an entire continent, but are not as efficient at doing any of them as a specialized school would be. Beginners to the arts of divination usually learn one of these schools first and learn more specialized schools afterwards.
General schools include:
- Tarot Cards - A tarot card deck has 78 cards, each of which have names and images tying that card to certain concepts, or ‘meaning’. When this deck is shuffled the ripples of domains affect cards with meanings similar to it, and make it more likely that these cards will end up at the top of the deck. For example if a disaster is in a city’s near future then it likely that “The Tower” card, which means disaster, will find itself at the top of the deck.
(All tarot card meaning can be found here.) - Scrying - Scrying involves using a ball made of glass or some other clear substance which has been filled with smoke. Spirits of all kinds can enter this ball and shape the smoke within it to form images of the future.
- Runes - Using a set of runes, each of which have different meanings, the fortune teller throws them onto a level surface and calls upon the spirits to show them the future. If any spirits are listening they influence the way the runes fall so that they land in certain positions. By reading the where each rune has fallen the fortune teller can then decipher a hint as to the future.
Individual Schools
Individual schools are those that focus on learning the futures of individual people, or at a stretch small groups of them such as families. They focus on reading the effects of ripples concentrated solely on that person. Teachers of these schools often warn their students against using their skills to read their own futures, for it is said that to read one's own future and use that knowledge to avoid your own fate angers the domains you rob of the chance to feed from your future, and in turn inspires them to turn spirits related to them against you until an appeasement is made.
Individual schools include:
- Palmistry - The ripples of domains focused upon a person cause the wrinkles on their body to form in certain ways, particularly on the palms of the hand and on the face. By studying the patterns of these wrinkles a fortune teller can decipher what domains caused them, and through that what their future holds.
- Osteomancy - One of the oldest known forms of divination. Osteomancy works similarly to runes, except that the user throws animal bones instead, and calls upon the ancestors of the person they are reading to guide the positions the bones fall into rather than spirits.
- Haruspicy - One of the more ceremonial divination arts, Haruspicy requires an animal (or animals) to be sacrificed to one or more spirits of Idalos and their entrails cast upon a surface large enough for the entrails to fall where they may.
The opposite of individual schools, populi schools are designed to learn the futures of large groups of people or large landmasses, such as settlements or entire islands. As governments rarely need to employ more than one fortune teller into their service, if any at all, then practitioners of this school alone struggle to find work. It is usually only those who seek to help (or harm) their community without asking for personal reward that seek to learn these schools.
Populi schools include:
- Horoscopy - There are six great star spirits in the service of Xiur, each of whom watch over people born in one of the six seasons. Each of these spirits commands a number of stars in the sky, which together form complex constellations. By studying one of these constellations a fortune teller can learn what events are more likely to happen to people born during that season.
- Cloud Reading - Due to its lightness water vapor is a very easy substance for spirits to interact with, and the spirits that reside in the sky take great pleasure in forming the clouds into special shapes to reflect their thoughts and feelings, like works of art. A fortune teller can learn to decipher what each of these patterns mean, and thus guess at what events are likely to affect the wide area of land around them.
- Tasseomancy - Similar to palmistry, the plants, trees and vegetation in an area can develop wrinkles and patterns because of the ripples they are exposed to. These patterns are not always obvious at first, however when boiled in water these patterns become far more pronounced and easier to read.
The rarest of the divination schools, specialist schools are those created to foretell a very specific kind of future. Because they are so highly specialized these schools are rarely used, and as such very few people have a need to learn them. Those who do choose to learn these schools however will find that they often grant a clarity greater than anything they’ve ever known in forseeing the future they’re designed to read.
In order to achieve this intense specialization some schools have to break societal taboos, leading them to be labelled as criminals or madmen. They commit human sacrifices, steal corpses from graveyards, and do other unspeakable acts of evil as part of rituals designed to know the darkness approaching in the future. All should beware the dread prophets who practice these schools, for the terrors that they can work to bring about into the present are the stuff of nightmares.
Specialist schools include:
- Pendulum Reading - A form of divination specially developed to divine the locations of people, places or items that will be involved in future events. All spirits that are affected by the ripples caused by a coming event are able to tell when they are getting closer to or farther from a place important to that event by the intensity of their own excitement. After enlisting one of these spirits to aid them, a fortune teller dangles the pendulum in the air before them. The spirit then uses whatever ability it has to affect the living world to gently push the pendulum in the direction towards the location they want to go to.
- Full Moon Scrying - Although Treid, the Immortal of Knowledge, is incapacitated the influence of his domains on the world is not. During nights when all three moons are full, in large, still bodies of water that are exposed to the light of all the moons, people have reported seeing strange images in the water. It is said that these images are the dreams of Treid himself. A select few fortune tellers have spent their lives studying these strange images, and speak of how they reveal pieces of knowledge no mortal aught ever to know.
- Automatic Writing/Art - A very dangerous type of divination, automatic writing involves the fortune teller ingesting special herbs or potions that attract malicious spirits, such as death and destruction spirits, to them and make them more susceptible to possession. Once a spirit inhabits their body they then try to guide it into writing down or painting clues as to the calamities they know will come in the future, all the while fighting to prevent it from taking complete control of their body and destroying them. Stronger spirits give clearer images, but are much harder to wrest control back from.
Although often considered the tool of charlatans, cold reading is a useful skill for regular fortune tellers to develop. The more they can learn about a person from a glance, the more they can apply that knowledge to what they have learnt from reading omens and consulting spirits to guess at what the future might be. The ability to cold read is determined by a characters observation and detection skill levels.
Out of Character
Using divination, players are able to create prophecies of events that will befall their characters or their NPCs. However to make a prophecy for another character you must have their direct permission to do so. As stated before even master fortune tellers often make incorrect prophecies, so just because you have prophesied something does not mean that any other player, or moderator, is under any obligation to follow that prophecy. This skill cannot be used to dictate anyone else's actions under any circumstances.
Trivia
- Because more spirits live there, Melrath has a higher about of omens than any other city, and fortune tellers living there are far more likely to be accurate in their readings than anywhere else in the world.
- Those blessed by Immortals and Mortalborn are more accurate at predicting future events related to the domains of their patrons. For example being marked by Faldrun makes one far better at predicting that an uncontrollable fire will break out in the near future.
- Those born of days special to spirits, such as the 12th of Ashan, the 31st of Vhalar or between the 7th and 15th of Cylus, are naturally gifted at divination. They possess a strange pull with the spirits that makes them more inclined to be truthful to them.
- Those possessing Ziell’s mark, Ezere, find it easier to interpret the correct meaning of omens than others.
- It is rumoured that Ziell likes to adopt a mortal guise and visit fortune tellers as he passes through cities. If they impress him with their prophecies he offers them his mark or rewards them some other way.
Novice: 1-25
It is very challenging to be a novice fortune teller. At this level the character will only be learning the techniques of one school, usually a general school, and will be completely reliant on the guidance of their teacher. It is highly unlikely that they will ever predict anything correctly as the patterns and meanings they are asked to decipher will seem like nonsense. They will almost assuredly question at some point whether their teacher is just making things up, and as such most novices drop their lessons before reaching competent.
Competent: 26-75
At this level the character is starting to notice that there is something of a pattern emerging in the divination techniques they've been learning; some sort of truth there that they're only just catching glimpses of. Only about one in every ten of their predictions come true, but those times prove to them that it is possible to see deeper into the designs of fate. They will still only practice the techniques of one school professional, but may begin to explore the techniques of a secondary school as well to broaden their perspective.
Expert: 76-150
An expert fortune teller now knows for sure that the future can be predicted, and has grown proficient enough at the techniques of their schools to be accurate in about half of their predictions. They can use techniques from three different schools with confidence, as well as dabble in the basic techniques of other schools.They are good enough now to earn a degree of popularity in their local area or serve as an adviser to a king or nobleman if so inclined.
Master: 151-250
The oracular abilities of a master fortune teller is a sight to behold. They seem to be almost never wrong in their predictions about less important events, and can sense the coming of greater events from arcs in the future. They see and understand omens that few others even notice, and can use techniques from five or more different schools. Whether seeking to avert a coming event or ensure its arrival, the understanding they have of the flow of time can make their success seem as it if was almost fated to be. It is said that at this level the very best of them, such as the blind seeress Joelle, even become so attuned to the arts of reading the future that they see visions of what is to come in their sleep.
Credit: Tio Silver and Bumblebee
