Aural Shock (AS) is a temporary severance between a character’s soul and body — the aura torn loose from what anchors it. It is the characteristic harm of the mystical world: the backlash of a working that went wrong, the wound left by a hostile spirit, the price of touching something that should not have been touched. The body is untouched; what is hurt is the part of the character that reaches beyond it.
Each instance is rated 1–6, and levels from multiple sources stack into one running total. A character carrying Aural Shock is not injured, not tired, and not frightened — they are simply, for the moment, cut off.
Effects
Aural Shock severs the character from everything they reach for through the aura. That is its whole effect, and it is a total one.
Every Mystical Ability is unusable. Not penalized — unusable. No incantation, talent, rite, ritual, alchemy, or divination can be performed for as long as any Aural Shock remains, whatever the character’s mastery of it.
Every Mystery is unavailable. A Boon or Boost simply stops working: while the shock lasts, the bonuses it grants are not there. Every other Mystery — Fate, Grace, Piety, a birthsign — retains its values but cannot be used. Nothing is lost or spent; the character keeps every point and every rating and can reach none of them. A Fate point cannot be spent, a Grace cannot be answered, and the influence a birthsign exerts is silent until the shock passes.
The Aura attribute cannot be rolled, and Aura-based skills are unusable. The Aura attribute itself is not tested while the shock lasts, and every skill whose Skill Base is computed from Aura is unusable along with it — as are Aura-modified tests generally, Fate tests and Spirit tests among them. The character has not forgotten the skill; the faculty it draws on is simply not answering.
If circumstances compel such a test — the character is targeted by a spell or an artifact and something must be rolled — the result is an automatic Critical Failure.
The body feels it too. Aural Shock inflicts 5 weakness fatigue per AS level, which recovers as the AS decreases — so the severed character is visibly drained, not merely mystically deaf.
This is what makes Aural Shock the one trauma every practitioner fears above wounds. A wounded mystic can still work; a shocked one cannot work at all. And because Fate answers through the same aura, there is no spending a point to escape it: the way out is recovery, and only recovery.
Aural Shock Recovery Test
Recovery is a Will test made once per day; fatigue and impairment penalties do not apply.
| Result | Outcome |
|---|---|
| CF (−1) | No recovery — Aural Shock continues; gain +1 PSY. |
| MF (0) | No recovery — Aural Shock continues. |
| MS (1) | Recovery — −1 AS. |
| CS (2) | Recovery — −2 AS. |
The victim recovers from Aural Shock when AS reaches 0.
Because a Critical Failure adds a Psyche Stress level, a long severance leaves its own mark: the character who spends a fortnight failing to reach their own aura comes back with a psychological condition to show for it.
See also
- The Pall — the other spirit trauma, and the harm that comes of death itself
- Psychological Condition — the Psyche Stress a failed recovery accrues
- Mystical Abilities — none of which can be performed under Aural Shock
- Fatigue — the weakness Aural Shock imposes while it lasts