Insight
(background)
The occassional odd feeling
Most of the time, insight is vague, or the visions are obscure and symbolic, Insight should not be used as a magic answer machine. The most successful Insight refers to Antediluvians through symbol and metaphor. What's more, insight reveals only information about plots and conflicts driven by vampires. This doesn't necessarily involve the lead-up to Gehenna.
The spontaneous dreams, hunches, and visions occur at the storyteller's discretion. The Storyteller can use spontaneous Insight to feed information to the character and lead her into trouble (or away from it).
Someone may deliberately try to provoke a hunch or vision about a person or situation. This usually provides less detailed information and may well fail completely. (Player rolls one die per point of background, diff 8).
Group insight: A group of seers may try for a deliberate Insight together in order to get more information. In this case each seer makes and Insight roll (diff 8) and the sccesses are pooled. All participants must spend a willpower point. Group insight should be somewhat ritualistic, malkavians that want to attempt to gain information in this method should develop a "ritual" to pool their visions, the ritual aspect is up to the creativity of the participants. Some examples are: ouja board readings, sacrificing and meditation. Players should use their imagination, and its important to remember this "ritual" is not the same as rituals performed by thaumaturgists.
Insight Shock: If a group insight results in 6 or more successes, all the participants must make a willpower roll with the number of Insight successes as the difficulty. If the willpower roll is failed, the seer enters involuntary torpor.
Auspex and Demenation can be combined with Insight to gain further information. For example, a particularly intense reading from Spirit's Touch may result in a spontaneous insight. Eyes of Chaos is particularly suited to insight, for each success on Eyes of Chaos, the difficulty for insight drops by one (or vice versa)
Documentation: The following exerpts are Insight visions (both spontaneous and forced) given to Malkavian players. Note the heavy symbolism and metaphors used in the visions. You probably won't be able to understand the meaning of these visions, because they relate to the ongoing chronicle of Diablerie.
Mercy
2/26/03
There's a dark doorway, so very dark that there's no telling what's beyond the door. The front of it has a dim light, and a halo of a human figure is in the door, standing on precipice of the abyss. And the drum beat echoes, growing louder and louder until the vision scape seems to shudder and bend: Super bon bon. Move a-side and let the man go... let the man go thru. Four overly large men walk from the darkened doorway, who knows where they come from. They're proportions are normal, and they're dressed distinctly in Victorian era clothing, gentlemanly, but in dream proportions they seem large, like stretched. There's a shift in the setting, no transition, but as dreams so often do, its a natural thing. The Stretched Men are in a circle, with a small dark haired female in the center, she looks childlike compared to their extreme dream proportions. Her head is bowed in subjugation, the stretched men seem to loom larger, casting shadows over the girl. She casts a sideways glance as the shadows loom, something sparkly there in the light of that sideswept glance. Scene morph, the shadows continue to loom and quake at the figure in the center circle, except she isn't really there, you can see her circling the Stretched Men, at every point behind them, she clinks finger symbols together, as if to mark each from behind, they never even notice, so intent they are on the subjugation of her shadow twin. Its at that point, where you see a mouse that looks strangely humanoid, like a cartoon mouse. It watches, one paw held out holding a locket made of melted plastic around what seems to be a lock of hair, it swings widdershins.