The Hekau
Auspex ••••, Crúac ••
This Devotion is, for now, unique to the Covey of the Three Roads. The Hekau allows the faction’s members to scan a crowd, listening to the murmur of all the thoughts in the room. They listen not only for thoughts, but for spoken words, too, and they even catch glimpses of all the collected auras. The witch listens and watches intently until she finds what she is looking for: a persistent question or nagging indecision in the mind of a nearby vampire. Once the witch finds this, she has her prey. It is time to prepare her offer of aid.
Effect
With this power, the witch does not literally hear all the thoughts in the room — or, she does, but those thoughts cannot be deciphered into a coherent string of information. This power does not work by the vampire consciously uncovering a question or indecision in one of the room’s Kindred. Instead, she opens herself to the power, and it tells her who stands at the crossroads, and what problem or uncertainty keeps them there. (In other words, a player can’t use this power to hear all the thoughtsin the room. It comes across only as a maddening tangle of murmurs and whispers, an incomprehensible jumble.)
If the roll to activate this Devotion is successful, it grants the witch a target at the crossroads, and provides her with one question or statement that encapsulates his problem. (For example: “I continue to be humiliated at Elysium” or “How can I punish my adversary without him knowing it was me?”) Each success beyond the first allows the witch to know one more detail of the subject’s quandry. These details might include names, dates, physical locations or supplementary physical details. With three successes, for example, the witch might learn that the subject’s question is about how to defeat an adversary (the first success), the adversary’s name (the second success) and the last time the target and his adversary confronted one another (the third success). This information comes in the subject’s own voice or in words the subject has heard or read first-hand. Information the subject does not know cannot be gleaned through this power.
This Devotion has a radius around the vampire equal to twice her Wits dots in yards. A single roll is enough to listen in on virtually any space, provided the vampire has toured the area. Once the vampire has defined her search area by “painting” it with her area of affect, she makes the Instant action to activate the power. The Storyteller is the final judge of how long it takes the user to define the search area — a small room might be completely within the radius of her power, while a large club might require 20 minutes of scouting in preparation for the power’s use.
If the roll to activate this Devotion is successful, it grants the witch a target at the crossroads, and provides her with one question or statement that encapsulates his problem. (For example: “I continue to be humiliated at Elysium” or “How can I punish my adversary without him knowing it was me?”) Each success beyond the first allows the witch to know one more detail of the subject’s quandry. These details might include names, dates, physical locations or supplementary physical details. With three successes, for example, the witch might learn that the subject’s question is about how to defeat an adversary (the first success), the adversary’s name (the second success) and the last time the target and his adversary confronted one another (the third success). This information comes in the subject’s own voice or in words the subject has heard or read first-hand. Information the subject does not know cannot be gleaned through this power.
This Devotion has a radius around the vampire equal to twice her Wits dots in yards. A single roll is enough to listen in on virtually any space, provided the vampire has toured the area. Once the vampire has defined her search area by “painting” it with her area of affect, she makes the Instant action to activate the power. The Storyteller is the final judge of how long it takes the user to define the search area — a small room might be completely within the radius of her power, while a large club might require 20 minutes of scouting in preparation for the power’s use.