True Form

(• Entropy, • Mind, • Spirit, Optional • Life)

Tradition Book: Cult of Ecstasy, Revised Ed. 70

Practitioners of the Ecstatic arts often claim that chemically induced hallucinations reveal the truth of things. By their reasoning, this altered state allows one to see past the mundane and obvious, into the realm of pure truth. By taking a hit of acid, the Ecstatic can see people as they truly are. Those who are wicked are revealed to be wicked, those who are victims are shown to be the weak wispy things they are, and powerful men appear like beaming behemoths.

How the mage actually sees the true form of others largely depends on the mage's perceptions. A staunchly anti-establishment Cultist might see a police officer as a Gestapo enforcer. If the cop was corrupt, perhaps the Cultist would see money falling out of his pockets. Sometimes, the images are deeply personal. A Cultist might pick out the hidden Technocracy agent, thinking that he is, in actuality, a large bully from her childhood.

System: The mage can get small bits of information about those around herself, although this information is somewhat shrouded in metaphor and layers of symbolism. The sort of information generally involves the target's Nature. These images should be very archetypal and tailored to the individual mage's outlook. Two people using this rote at once rarely agree on what they see. To the mage sensing True Forms, it is as if he is participating in a filing of Frank Zappa's 2000 Motels, with nuns, djinns, strippers, black shrouded executioners and adult sized children interacting with one another. Adding Life 1 to the rote also allows the mage to tell the physical state of those she perceives. This perception could manifest as a visible tumor, a missing limb or, if the target is very close to death, as a feebly animate corpse.