The mage can determine exactly when an object or
living being attained its current form. This spell reveals
when an object was made, when a raw gemstone was cut
or a hunk of ore was mined, when a person or animal was
born or when a body or fragment of bone died. Including
Life • or Matter • reveals the date of the other major
changes the person or object underwent — allowing a
mage who finds a human skull to determine when the
skull’s owner was born and when he died, or holding a
knife, and knowing when it was made and when the ore it
was made from was mined. Also, if combined with Forces
•, this spell can be used to determine the last time a piece
of electrically powered or electronic equipment was used
or when a computer file was created or edited.
For objects more than a decade old, a single success
on this roll allows the mage to know the date within a
month. For more recent objects, one success determines
the date within a day. Each additional success narrows
the time down further, in the progression listed below.
If the object reached its final state very recently, then
use the time listed below that as the starting point for
the chart. For example, if someone died within the past
hour, then one success allows the time of death to be
dated to the correct minute, and two successes allow
the time of death to be dated to the correct second.
Successes / Old Object / Recent Objects
- 1 / Month / Day
- 2 / Day / Hour
- 3 / Hour / Minute
- 4 / Minute / Second
Mysterium Rote: Temporal Forensics
For the Mysterium’s archeologists, learning if a
shard of ancient pottery dates to the long-lost days
of Atlantis, or is merely a 1,300-years-old relic of the
Dark Ages is an invaluable method of separating fakes
from real artifacts. This spell is also a swift and useful
method of determining if a potentially interesting site
is worth pursuing or if it is more recent, and therefore
less interesting, than it looks.
