The Sight -- An Example by Thom Marrion Purple invited her friend Christian Bach (a Seer Solitaire) out to meet her new roommate at a bar called, pretentiously enough, the Bar. It's a fairly large establishment with about eighty or so people playing pool, dancing, and drinking tasty adult beverages. By the time Christian gets there, the roommate in question is at the bar trying to get drinks for their table. The roommate's name is Kate and she's hard to miss. She's an attractive redhead with the athletic build of a triathelete. She also has the sides of her head shaved, and multiple piercing in each ear. Quite striking, and a good number of the men at the bar have noticed her. Unfortunately, one of them is the Blood Magician (see Mystery Codex, p. 197) Seth Ankou who is looking for someone to sacrifice to his dark god. Seth doesn't want to use any Invocations because the presence of crowds dampens Essence effects (see WitchCraft, p. 200). There are enough mundanes in the Bar to neutralize at least 35 points of Essence, probably more. But Seth also has Seer powers, so he could always use Mindrule to make Kate leave the Bar with him. Still, why bring in the Arts if it's not necessary. He tries the old fashioned way, rolling against his Smooth Talking of 3 and Intelligence of 4. The Chronicler decides to apply a penalty of -2 because people have been hitting on Kate all night long and all she wants to do was meet Purple's friend. Seth rolls a 4, plus 3 for Smooth Talking and 4 for Intelligence, minus the modifier of 2. That gives him a total of 9. The Chronicler decides a Resisted Test is in order, and determines that a Simple Willpower Test is appropriate for Kate (see WitchCraft, p. 126). Kate's Willpower is 4, which is doubled and added to her roll. She rolls a 5, which gives her a total of 13. Kate tells Seth to get out of her face. The Blood Magician realizes that the regular approach isn't going to cut it. It's time to fall back on his Seer powers. He decides to use Mindrule (see WitchCraft, p. 228) on her. He looks into her eyes and says softly, "You love me and want nothing more than to follow me out of this bar." Seth has a Mindrule Strength of 4, but he channels Essence into it (see WitchCraft, p. 226) and raises the strength to 5 so that his victim will follow a one sentence command to the letter. His Mindrule Art is 3 and his Will is 5 (a +8 addition to the die roll). Seth rolls a 6, giving him a total of 14. Kate, a mundane, makes a Difficult Willpower Test to resist (see WitchCraft, p. 229). She rolls a 3, which gives her a total of 7. Kate stares blankly at Seth and mumbles, "I love you and want nothing more than to follow you out of this bar." Since Christian is Gifted, he has a chance to notice the flow of Essence from the use of Mindrule (see WitchCraft, p. 86). It's a Simple Perception Test, and Christian has a Perception of 4. He rolls a 5, plus 8 for his Perception doubled. This gives him a total of 13, and he cocks his head slightly as he feels the outflow of Essence somewhere in the room. Christian has the Mindsight ability (see WitchCraft, p. 227), which includes the ability to actually see flows of Essence. He decides to use that to find out who is manipulating Essence. His Mindsight Art is 3, but as a Solitaire, he has chosen Seer powers as his strong suit and so gets a +1 to all his Sight skills. This gives him a Mindsight Art of 4, which is added to his Perception of 4 to pinpoint the Essence disturbance. The Chronicler decides that the unique combination of desperation and euphoria that occurs in a room full of eighty drunk mundanes creates a negative modifier of 2. Christian rolls a 7, plus 8 for Mindsight and Perception, minus 2 for the negative modifier. This gives him a total of 13, a Good Outcome (see WitchCraft, p. 129). He sees Seth -- in all his Julian Sands Euroswarminess -- mind controlling the woman that Purple brought him here to meet in the first place! Christian also has Mindhands (see WitchCraft, p. 229) and decides to do something about this questionable pick-up. If he channels Essence, he can raise his Mindhands Strength to 5. He can either attack directly for 5 points of damage, or find something under 10 pounds to throw for D4 x 5 points of damage. He decides to use one of the billiard balls on a nearby pool table. He ignores the intense game being played by two college students at that table. Seth and Kate are about nine feet away from the pool table. This puts them at point blank range and gives Christian +1 to hit and +1 to the damage modifier (see WitchCraft, p. 136). Christian uses his Dexterity of 3 and his Mindhands Art of 3 (this includes his +1 as a Solitaire for using his strong suit). He rolls an 8, plus 3 for Mindhands Art, plus 3 for Dexterity, plus 1 for the range bonus. This gives him a total of 15, a Very Good Outcome (plus 1 damage before the Modifier is applied). The Chronicler decides for purely narrative reasons that the eight ball traveling at 50 mph hits Seth squarely in the groin. It satisfies the Chronicler's sense of Irony. Christian rolls damage on D4 for the Mindhands Strength, plus 1 because of the Very Good Outcome on the skill roll. A Multiplier of 5 is applied for his Mindhands Strength, plus 1 for the range. This makes the damage (D4+1) x 6. Christian rolls a 2, for a total of 18 points of damage. Seth sinks to his knees and whimpers. Because of the severity of the damage he just took, the Chronicler decides that Seth has to roll to maintain psionic control of Kate (the Chronicler did a bit of extrapolating from the sidebar, p. 138). This is a Willpower roll modified by the amount of damage he took. So Seth adds his Willpower of 5, doubled. Minus the 18 points of damage he just took. This gives a total modifier of -8. He rolls a 9, which becomes a 1 due to the negative modifier. Kate snaps out of it and decides that Seth must have used some kind of hypnotism on her (mundanes tend to rationalize things like this). Kate grabs Seth's arm and puts him in an Arm Lock. She has an Arm Lock of 4 and a Dexterity of 4, so she will add 8 to her roll. She rolls a 6, plus the 8, gives her a total of 14. She has a Strength of 2, and so does that much damage as she marches Seth past the bouncer and pushes him out the door. Seth had 26 Life Points, but between the speeding eight ball and Kate's manhandling he is now has only 6. Seth decides to suck it up and regain control of the situation when he sees Kate at the doorway with the eight ball in hand. She stares down at him and says, "Nobody hypnotizes me and gets away with it." She then throws the eight ball, aiming for Seth's nose. She is at point blank range so will add +1 to Task roll and damage Multiplier. The head is -4 to hit. Kate's Dexterity is 4, which will be doubled for the purpose of rolling to hit with a thrown object. This makes her total modifier +5. She rolls an 8, good enough to target a specific body part, and hits the Blood Magician square in the nose. Damage is 1 (+1 for range) times Kate's Strength of 2 is 4. Kate whirls around and goes back inside the bar to meet this Christian guy that Purple was going on about. As Seth lies on the ground, one hand between his legs and the other nursing what is probably a broken nose, his servant and right-hand man Tizoc appears to lend assistance. He looks down on the ground and says with only the slightest hint of a smile, "Shall I prepare the victim for the sacrifice, or did you wantto toy with her some more?" "Thud up Tithoc, and ged me oud da here." The redhead and the seer had gotten the best of Seth this time, but they just earned a place on his list of people to get even with. And that was not a good place to be.