ILLUSION

What is real and what is Illusion. Are the one and the same? These question and there elusive answers are the purview of Illusion. Gods who bestow these Blessings are mysteries. The Chosen one never really knows what IS and what IS’NT when he deals with them.

Innate Ability: When a Champion concentrates on an item that he touches or carries and spends 5 motes the item becomes unobtrusive even to a concentrated search. As long as the Champion maintains contact and doesn’t manipulate the item in an obvious fashion other creatures simply ignore its existence. The object must be small enough to hold in one hand. Once the Champion uses the object in an obvious fashion, such as taking money out of the wallet or drawing and cocking a firewand, it becomes evident to everyone. The concealment lasts at most a single scene in any case.
Observers with an essence score pit their (Perception + Awareness) against the hiding Champion’s (Manipulation + Stealth). If the Champion’s player scores more net successes, his item remains hidden; otherwise, it is spotted. The Champion can hide multiple small items at once by paying the Essence cost for each, and a viewer tests against each one separately.

Stolen Face
Cost: 3m, 1wp
Mins: Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: Illusion
Duration: Scene
Prerequisite Charms: None
Tricksters in myth often take on someone else’s appearance, generally to further a special plot or to bring humiliation to a rival. This Blessing makes such a disguise supernaturally believable. The trickster simply dons a cursory disguise—a piece of clothing, a fake wig, a mask or some make-up—and the power of Illusion does the rest. If the Champion tries to impersonate a particular person, the dice roll gains a +2 bonus if the Champion carries some item the emulated individual owned. A sample of the subject’s hair, skin or nails raises the bonus to +5. (Having body sample and an object, or having multiple objects, does not give multiple bonuses.) The Champion’s player rolls to set the Blessing’s success level when it’s activated. Anyone who deliberately tries to see through the disguise must best the Champion’s total successes with a (Perception + Awareness) roll. Having only a brief, momentary interaction imposes a -2 penalty on the observer’s roll. A lengthy interaction (lasting several minutes) when the observer knows the emulated subject well grants a +2 bonus. If the observer scores more successes than the trickster, the observer realizes that the Champion is not who she seems to be, though the true identity of the disguised Champion remains unclear unless the disguise is actually removed.
Stolen Face doesn’t prevent people from suspecting that the Champion might not be who she seems if she does something wildly out of character. A Champion disguised as Ronald Reagan who breaks into a bank, paints the vault red and flies away on camera will probably not be mistaken for the dead president in question. Mortal onlookers certainly won’t figure out who it really was, though, or how she managed to do such a convincing Reagan imitation! A Champion can also use Stolen Face to create a false identity of her own invention. Such a false identity can be as rudimentary as an anonymous old man, as Odin advised Sigurd on how to deal with the dragon Fafnir, or as elaborate as a whole second life as a courtier at a Kings court. Mortal onlookers tend to overlook flaws in such false identities. Even most Champions remain unsuspecting of such a deception unless they specifically think there’s an imposter around or someone has a secret identity.
Regardless of the successes scored, some element of the disguise always leaves a hint of the Champion’s true nature. A Champion disguised as trader might still appear to sandasls that clash with his fine robes. A Champion pretending to be Artemis might forget to change her eye color to match. A artifact might retain its true appearance. Such omissions usually go overlooked unless the disguise is penetrated, in which case it’s generally the first thing that the viewer spots.
Stolen Face remains in effect for an entire scene; spending a Willpower point extends the illusion to another scene. Anyone who fails to penetrate the disguise during that time cannot try again. If one person sees through the illusion, he need merely perform some action to expose the fraud—yank off the wig, smear the make-up—and everyone else instantly sees through it as well.

Fool’s Gold
Cost: 6m, 1wp
Mins: Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: Illusion
Duration: Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Stolen Face
Beyond simply concealing items, tricksters occasionally make worthless leaves, rocks or sticks seem valuable—or otherwise make objects seem like things they’re not. The Champion must conceal the item in some way, from closing his hand around it to draping it with a scarf. He can then reveal the item as something else. (The Champion could place a convenient object in a pocket or satchel where it can’t be seen and then activate the power at a later time, seeming to pull out something else that’s just the thing he needs.) The source object must be about the same size as the illusory object and have some other trait in common, such as its shape, color or composition. For instance, the Champion could make a wooden flame piece look like a real flame piece, or he could make a sack of yellow leaves seem to be a sack of gold coins. He couldn’t disguise a bottle as a huge diamond or a firewand.
Casual handling of the illusory item does not reveal its true nature, though breaking it or other violence does so. The object does not actually have the physical properties of the real object, but it appears to function as expected. Golden leaf-coins will fall, not flutter, and land with a heavy clink. A a wooden flame piece fires with a bang and a smell of firedust (though it cannot inflict more harm than a wooden flame piece).
The item remains disguised for a full scene. As with Stolen Face, the player makes an initial roll when the Champion activates the power. If any onlooker suspects a fraud, her player must roll (Perception + Awareness) and exceed the Champion’s total successes to see through the deception. For purposes of this power, anything that the Champion can hold in one hand counts as one “item,” so a handful of leaves could all be disguised at once. Fool’s Gold cannot make an item appear as a living creature, nor can it disguise a living creature. It affects only inanimate objects.

Dreamcraft
Cost: 5m, 1wp
Mins: Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: Illusion
Duration: As long as the champion can concentrate on the illusion.
Prerequisite Charms: Fools Gold
The Illusion Blessings available to heroes still need a real subject upon which to work. A demigod can craft hallucinations that do not correlate with anything real. Only the individuals whom the Champion wants to fool can perceive them.
Each person the Champion wishes to perceive the hallucination costs the Champion three Essence points when she activates the Blessing . Her player’s (Wits + Art) roll has a difficulty set by the number of senses the Champion wants to affect and the complexity of the illusion (see the sidebar). Note the final number of successes. If any subject has any reason to doubt the illusion, his player must beat that number on a (Perception + Awareness) roll. Dreamcraft can add, subtract or transform one discrete entity or element in the target’s sensations. For instance, she could make a person imagine the sky turned green, or see a snarling dog running toward him, or not see the Champion standing nearby. To make a person suffer all these hallucinations, the Champion would have to use this Blessing three times on successive actions.
A Dreamcraft illusion lasts only as long as the Champion specifically concentrates on maintaining it. She cannot also engage in combat or other challenging activities (i.e., any task that would call for a dice roll). A Champion cannot maintain more illusions at once than she has dots of Intelligence. Every subject affected counts as a separate illusion, though a character can attack more than one person at a time. Note that Dreamcraft cannot create an illusion of something the Champion herself cannot imagine. If you’ve never seen Thor, for instance, you can’t create an accurate hallucination of him. Of course, if your subject has never seen Thor either, you can just create an image of a big red-haired guy swinging a stone hammer and that might be enough.

Difficulty Illusion Factors 1 One sense (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) 2 Two senses 3 Three+ senses +1 Changing entity (a moving car, fire, music, intelligible speech) +1 Complex entity (paisley, a symphony, anything that interacts significantly with its environment) Example: Creating the illusion of a wagon driving full-tilt at a person with some one blowing a horn would have a difficulty of 4: two senses (sight and hearing), +1 because the illusion is in motion, +1 for complexity to supply the car with a driver and have its wake blow leaves around and otherwise interact with its surroundings.

Loaned Identity
Cost: 6m, 1wp
Mins: Essence 4
Type: Simple
Keywords: Illusion
Duration: Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Dreamcraft
The lesser Blessings of Illusion functions only on the Champion or on small items. With Loaned Identity, the Champion can disguise a person or a significant object as something else. In the Prose Edda, Utgard-Loki disguises fire as a person for an eating contest and disguised the Midgard Serpent as a cat for a test of strength. By the same token, a Champion with this Blessing can provide a false face to a person, creature or object and make it appear to behave in a consistent fashion. Each target so disguised costs five Essence and requires a roll of (Manipulation + Presence) to establish the Champion’s threshold of success. Those who suspect treachery can use (Perception + Awareness) to try to defeat the illusion, though a careful Champion arranges situations so that onlookers have no reason to suspect deceit.
In other ways, Loaned Identity functions like Stolen Face, with the onlookers rationalizing or overlooking inconsistencies in the behavior and appearance of the disguised subject. (As the case of Jörmungandr-as-cat shows, however, Loaned Identity ignores differences in size between the real object and the image.) A disguised fire made to look like a person (as in the case of Logi) would seem like a quiet but ravenous man, quick, red-haired and surly. Others would find him eccentric but fail to realize that he was anything other than what he appeared to be. The Loaned Identity does not give the subject any special powers, but a clever Champion can use other Blessings to support the illusion—such as using the Fire Purview to make a disguised fire move as ordered and devour items appropriately. An item’s or creature’s doing something patently impossible for its appearance immediately breaks the illusion.

Fantastic Vista
Cost: 8m, 1wp
Mins: Essence 5
Type: Simple
Keywords: Illusion
Duration: Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Loaned Identity
The illusionist’s powers of deception allow her to conceal entire landscapes. With this illusion, the Champion conceals an entire building or natural feature. A forest can appear as a glittering faerie glade; a ruined hovel can appear as a golden castle. Through two uses of the Blessing , a giant could trade appearances with a convenient mountain. While the physical dimensions of the area remain roughly the same, the features and ostensible boundaries take on whatever characteristics the Champion imagines. Trees can fade into stone walls, or existing walls can look cracked and cobwebby or polished and painted. While items and creatures in the area are not necessarily disguised, they can be further concealed by other illusions, so a demure housecat might resemble a lion via Loaned Identity while a rotting plate of spoiled food could resemble a feast thanks to Fool’s Gold.
Fantastic Vista can cover an area up to 50 cubic yards per Essence dot of the user has. Interacting with the area is not enough to banish the illusion. To onlookers, the area seems to react as appropriate to its appearance. For example, a man hurled through a non-existent wall would cause onlookers to see that wall break apart as he flew through it, and everyone would agree on the particulars of how the wall seemed to shatter. As always, only characters or creatures with a Essence score or a supernatural means of piercing illusions have any chance to see through the deception. They must best the initial successes rolled for the invoking Champion. Fantastic Vista lasts for a full scene. At the end of that scene, spending three more Essence points extends the illusion into the next scene.