Fate is counted among the divinatory arts, and it is the odd one out in every respect. The other divinations read something outside the diviner — the sky, the cards, a beast’s liver, a still surface. Fate reads the diviner’s own thread: the character reaches for the strand of destiny they were born holding, finds the moment they are living through, and pulls.
Two things follow from that, and they are what put it in this chapter rather than among the ordinary Mysteries.
It is the only divination performed on oneself. There is no subject, no medium, and nothing to prepare; a character calls on Fate in the middle of whatever they are doing, with a sword in their hand if need be.
And it is the only divination that changes what it reads. Every other art looks and reports. Fate looks and takes hold — the character who calls on it is not asking how the moment will go, they are insisting that it go otherwise, and the thread either gives or it does not. That is also why it is the one art with a price: the reading can cost the very Fate that made it possible.
The rules
Fate is not performed the way the other divinations are, and it is not resolved the way they are. It is a resource a character holds and spends, drawn through the Aura, and it works on a test that has already been rolled — raising its success level rather than re-rolling the dice.
All of it — where Fate Points come from, which tests are beyond Fate’s reach, the Fate Test that decides what a spent point buys, and the Fate Mastery Level it rolls against — is set out in Fate Points. It is not restated here; that page is the whole of it.
Two consequences are worth naming in this chapter, because they follow from Fate answering through the aura exactly as the other arts do: no Fate point can be spent while the character carries Aural Shock, and a Fate Test can never itself be fated.