Find the Guilty

( • • Mind) Dead Magic 27

In Gabon, death is often attributed to malign influences or evil spells. The power of a person's ill will toward someone else figures prominently in some other societies, too. Though it's too late to do much after someone has died, a priest can still find the killer — or at least someone who harbored resentment or hate toward the victim. This can open the door to finding out why and how someone was killed, or whether there are hidden, malign feelings seething beneath the surface of an otherwise proprietary occasion. Should a dark secret come out in this fashion, the priest might well learn of some impropriety on the part of the deceased. Such a ritual is good for closure: Those who harbored hatred toward the deceased can let it out, while the priest can also uncover and resolve problems that the deceased may have left behind.

To find the guilty, the priest dons a ceremonial headdress, complete with ritual scars, paintings and hairs. The priest then dances among a group of villagers until his feet cause him to stop. Since the headdress may not include holes for the eyes, the priest stops only when the magic prompts him to do so. The person in front of whom he stops is the one whose grudge or disaffection figures somehow in the deceased's demise.

Because this ritual relies upon dance, mask and other cultural icons, the caster must work with a group that understands the ritual's purpose. Among the African tribes that used (and still use) this ritual, everyone understands its purpose after a death; if it's used among people who did not understand it, the ritual carries no weight and thus does not function — though the caster could explain the nature of the ritual beforehand.

Note that this ritual normally is used only with men. Tradition holds that women must not look upon the mask.

System: Though this spell does not actually call upon the spirit of the deceased, it lets the caster pull on the emotional strings of those around him. Since everyone involved knows what's happening, their thoughts and memories regarding the deceased are fresh in their minds. Even if individuals try to bury such thoughts, the caster's magic can sense and pull out the general feeling; once the caster stops his dance in front of a guilty survivor, he can proceed with normal or magical questioning to figure out why such feelings were there.

Roll the Effect as usual; the mage need only score enough Mind successes to sense the mental impulses of guilt or resentment harbored by one of the ritual's onlookers, and his magic draws his dance to that person. This is often done as an extended Effect; While the mage dances, he lets his mind wander out and sense each person separately, rather than trying to grasp the entire group at once. In game terms, the player rolls for the Effect separately against each onlooker, with the mage moving on with his dance until he finds a guilty party or fails to find anything.

Naturally, appropriate Mind techniques can defend against this Effect. However, a guilty party who wishes to shield his thoughts deliberately must use the normal mental defense rules — for a Sleeper, that means spending a point of Willpower to gain a resistance roll.