Artist's Intent

Auspex Archive - Auspex 3

(Alternate power common among the Toreador)

By this gift, a Toreador may penetrate the "soul" of the inanimate artwork she is examining. Through such examination, she may better interpret the work, perhaps even gleaning the artist's state of mind, the relation between artist and work, and the stages of the creative process itself. Much of this reveals itself through a series of progressively paler images as she looks further back into the work's past. Some Toreador use this to critique a piece, while others utilize the ability to monitor their patronages for unspoken rebellion or sadness, or get the "real" story behind the letter proposing an alliance.

So far, this Discipline has proven unusable on "living" work, such as a play in performance, songs or pieces of music being played, or a story being told. Speculation on the reasons for this suggest that such work depends on and coveys, however unconsciously, the performer's intent, whereas an inanimate piece is unlikely to be "tainted" by such.

System: The player rolls Perception + Auspex (difficulty 7) for each work she wishes to examine. the number of successes determines how much she perceives of the work. the difficulty rises if she attempts to "read" a piece with multiple artists or a long creation span. Items such as cathedrals, castles and the like will leave the Toreador a gibbering vegetable from informational overload.

Successes	Information
1 success	General feelings, no historical context. ("The artist was melancholy while creating this.")
2	More specific, a vague sense of history ("he was melancholy when he started this, but I believe he grew happier as the work progressed. Perhaps he grew to like his subject, or something changed his life.")
3	Details emerge, along with a fuzzy historical outline ("He didn't like the subject at first, and he hated the work because of it, but after a while, he and the subject got along better, and the work went better.")
4	You have a definite idea about the artist's emotional state, and a fairly reasonable idea of the timeline of the work's creation.
5+	You can see the work in stages, and know how the artist was feeling every step of the way.