Discipline: Contact

One of the most fundamental elements of the Cognition discipline is the ability to reach out and form a connection with someone else’s mind. This is a subtle power, and it does not alert the victim that they have been mentally compromised unless they possess the Awareness ability. Targets with at least one level of Awareness get to roll Perception + Awareness (Difficulty = 8) to determine that something supernatural has happened to them. A successful awareness roll only alerts the victim that their mind has been breached and that the spell caster is close by. It does not indicate the source of the attack.

On a successful Contact roll, the spell casting character is firmly situated in the victim's mind and may not be forcibly ejected unless the victim leaves the user's direct line of sight or the victim suffers 1 or more points of damage to the brain. Once contact has been made, the spell caster is free to utilize other Cognition powers like Aura Reading, Telepathy, or Psychic Assault and the target is mostly powerless to resist.

Alternatively the spell caster may use this power to ping every mind within a 50 foot radius of their body revealing the total number of minds in their vicinity. Used in this way, the spell caster may determine if a person is hiding nearby via natural or supernatural means. Pinging every mind in the area does not reveal the hiding place of stealthy characters, it only alerts the spell caster that there are more minds in the area than are immediately apparent.

System

Cost: 1 Blood Trait.

Range: Line of sight with the target. If the target moves out of the spell caster's line of sight, the Contact with their mind remains so long as the spell caster maintains their concentration. Roll Wits + Awareness (difficulty = 6) to maintain concentration on this power.

Special 1: If used to ping all of the minds in the area the effective radius of this power is 50 feet from the spell caster's body. The storyteller may call for an additional roll of Wits + Awareness (Difficulty = 4 - 10) if the area is particularly crowded with sentient minds. For every 5 people in the area, the difficulty increases by 1.

Roll: Perception + Awareness.

Base Difficulty: The target's Difficulty to Enchant rating.

Damage: This power does not cause damage, but potentially leaves the victim open to other powers that could injure them via the mental link established by this power.

Prerequisites: 3 Perception Traits.

Threat Level: Low

Use of this power is considered a low threat to Article 5 of the United Earth Federation charter that bans the use of magic and other super-human skills deemed deviant to reality. Low-threat-level powers exhibit no visible signs of their use and can only be detected by:

• The hyper aware (Roll Perception + Awareness; Difficulty = 8).


• Researchers deploying hyper technology that can detect numinous anomalies (Roll Wits + Hypertech; Difficulty = 8).

Characters that the UEF suspect of using low-threat-level powers and abilities are frequently put on a watch list, but rarely prosecuted for such infractions unless their powers are used in the commission of other crimes.