Clear Lens of the Eternal River

Rules

Performing the Ritual

Performing this ritual takes at least 2 minutes of roleplaying. This ritual requires a ring; lens; piece of glass or crystal; or a similar focus that is studied during and after the performance.

Effects

This ritual divines information about the surrounding location.

The ritual is most effective at discovering facts, analyzing auras, and providing historical details about a locale. For example, if a sorceror has murdered several villagers as part of a ritual at a circle of stones, and left a valuable scroll behind, the ritual might reveal that: "five people bled to death within this circle of stones recently"; "a magnitude forty Spring ritual was performed inside the circle recently"; "the area within the stones is a powerful Spring regio"; "a dark haired woman was here recently but left more recently"; "these standing stones were raised two hundred years ago" and that "the third stone can be activated with the operate portal spell to allow access to a chamber within the regio." It does not reveal information about motivations or emotions.

Any character who contributed to the ritual can use the ritual focus to study the area and gain information about it from a referee; they should roleplay looking at the things through the focus, and the referee will often give information only about what they actively examine. The effects persist for at most ten minutes, and end prematurely if the ritualists leave the rough vicinity where it was performed.

The kind of information the ritual provides is influenced by the locale. If cast inside a building it will provide information about that building. If cast in a graveyard, it will provide information about the entire graveyard, and possibly specific points of interest such as a nearby mausoleum or a specifically interesting grave.

At the very least it always provides information about enchantments in the immediate vicinity on places, structures or items.

OOC Elements

As with Shadowed Glass of Sung this ritual is designed to help ritualists quickly survey an area for points of interest; it is not usually a substitute for interacting with the environment, but it often provides additional details, significance and context to the history of a location. This ritual tends to provide facts, rather than subjective information. Interpreting the details is up to the players.

Description

The lens that serves as the focus can be passed from ritualist to ritualist; only the characters who participated in performing the ritual can discover anything by peering through it. It is only really effective when examining a location - it rarely reveals information about objects smaller than man-sized that are reflected in it, and it has limited effectiveness when revealing information about people.

One potential use is to identify shapeshifters; the mirror can often recognise a shapechanger or a herald for what it truly is. The more enmeshed in their role they are, the harder they are to identify however. A shapechanger that does not know it is a shapechanger is the least likely to be revealed by this spell.

Rituals like this have been used since time-out-of-mind by groups such as the Suaq icewalkers, the Urizen torchbearers, Freeborn treasure hunters and Dawnish enchanters looking for regio. The information it provides is often fragmentary, and interpreting it can prove quite challenging. It is most often performed when the ritualists encounter a mysterious or magical location - while it can provide some details about events in places like Anvil it is rare to learn anything of significance there.

The ritual is popular in Urizen, drawing as it does on the hearth magics of eyes and lenses. It is also somewhat popular in Varushka, where a warden who can perform the ritual solo can quickly gather information about a mystery, or detect the presence of a mora or other shapechanger.

This ritual is named for the concept that time itself is a river, flowing from the past to the future with the position of the onlooker divining the present. It is exceptionally rare, but there are some reports that the ritual occasionally provides information about future events - although when and how this happens is impossible (currently) to predict.

Common Elements

This is a divination ritual, and often involves runestones or cards as well as the item that serves as the focus. The focus item can be anything that one of the ritualists can look through. Common examples are actual lenses, discs of crystal or glass, polished pieces of tempest jade or ambergelt or even rings of metal. The lens is often washed in pure water, or boiled briefly in water or wine. Geometric blue and white designs painted around the eyes of the ritualists are another common element, reinforcing the connection to eyes and vision.

The rune Sular is often used with this ritual - it is much concerned with discovery than revelation. Scenes in which The Doctor uncovers or solves a mystery are another common element, as are evocations of the virtues of Wisdom or Vigilance, [{Exemplars and Paragons]] such as Vardas the witch hunter, or refrences to wise animals or creatures such as sphinxes.