Augury Magic

School of magic

Classification	Compound School
Prime blend	Lux + Aion + Memoria, often supported by Umbra or Verba
Core discipline	Omens, branching futures, timing, hidden outcomes, and probabilistic foresight
Key distinction	Augury does not reveal one inevitable future. It reads weighted branches, omens, and pressures in possibility. The clearer the future appears, the more likely it is that cost, bias, or compulsion is already gathering around it.
Spells	23

The compound school of Lux with Aion and Memoria, which treats the future as a field of pressure rather than a fixed script. See The Schools of Magic.

Philosophy

Augurs treat the future as a tide of likelihoods rather than a fixed script. Signs gather around likely outcomes. Choices cast shadows ahead of themselves. Strong intentions, great disasters, and tightly converging events can be felt before they arrive. The art lies in reading these signs without mistaking desire for certainty.

Because augury tempts rulers, warlords, merchants, and the frightened, it has a long history of abuse. Some augurs merely advise. Others steer a lord by dressing a likely future up as destiny, and more than one war began because a seer swore it would be won. Caravans and sellsword companies pay road-augurs to read for ambush; barrow-breakers want to know which stair will hold. Villages fear the augur who reads death: when one stops at a door, the house starts counting its sick. The school is respected where caution is valued and feared where prophecy becomes a weapon.

Example Places of Study

A glass-roofed hilltop observatory: A renowned academy for celestial augury, trade forecasts, and long-range omen interpretation.
The Forked Mantle Houses: Itinerant schools that teach road omens, battlefield timing, and danger reading, and hire out to caravan masters and sellsword captains.
The Lantern of Seventh Dawn: A temple-college where prophetic sleep and the foretelling of floods, fires, plagues, and raids are trained together.
The Ledger of Tides: Merchant augurs who specialize in shipment futures, market turns, and storm likelihood.
The Veiled Choir: A secretive order of omen-readers who study catastrophic convergence and the futures people are afraid to ask about.

Common Spells

Omen Candle · Dice of Inclination · Silver Thread · Battle Weather · Crow Reckoning · Window of Best Passage · Mercantile Auspice · Death Hour · Dream of Branches · Ruin Sign · Red Thread of Betrayal · Borrowed Tomorrow · Fortune Theft · Doom Weight · Prophet's Veil · Hazard Bell · Star Ledger · Choice Scar · Pendulum of Workings · Lost-Thing Trail · Living Bearing · Far Eye · Basin Watch

Omen Candle

Purpose/How It Works: Omen Candle reads the near future through the behaviour of a prepared flame, showing steadiness, fracture, danger, or favourable opening.
Notable Exceptions: It gives direction and tone, not detailed explanation. Strong emotional bias from the caster can distort subtle readings.
Example Use: A caravan master checks whether leaving before dusk reduces the chance of ambush.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by a prepared candle, ambient possibility-pressure, and the caster's concentration.
Casting Methods: Candle lighting, a breath or two. Shrine omen rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: The decision at hand. Fades within moments.

Dice of Inclination

Purpose/How It Works: Dice of Inclination assigns weight to several short-term choices by reading how probability bends around them.
Notable Exceptions: It works best on clearly defined options. It degrades when the future is too chaotic or all choices are equally poor.
Example Use: Smugglers choose which ford to risk past the lord's riders by casting three marked bone dice over a map.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by defined options, marked dice or tokens, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Quick cast with tokens, a breath or two. Formal table read, a short chant.
Range/Duration: One set of choices. The verdict comes at once.

Silver Thread

Purpose/How It Works: Silver Thread reveals the most favourable immediate route through a dangerous space by showing a brief luminous line where chance least resists.
Notable Exceptions: It shows the best current route, not a permanent truth. Changing enemies or terrain can invalidate it quickly.
Example Use: Delvers cross a trapped ruin gallery by following a thin silver thread only they can see; the one who stepped off it is still down there.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by local possibility structure, line-of-march intent, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Forward-cast gesture, a few heartbeats. Survey rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: The stretch of route just ahead. The thread fades within moments.

Battle Weather

Purpose/How It Works: Battle Weather reads morale, terrain, timing, and converging actions to forecast the likely emotional climate of a coming fight.
Notable Exceptions: It predicts momentum better than exact casualties or brilliant improvisation.
Example Use: A captain delays the charge after sensing the next short while will belong to panic, not discipline.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by troop movement, observed signs, and the caster's focused interpretation.
Casting Methods: Field glance, a few breaths. War-map rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: One battlefield or engagement. Holds for the opening clashes, rarely for the whole battle.

Crow Reckoning

Purpose/How It Works: Crow Reckoning reads scavenger flight, shadow movement, and trace-attraction to identify where death is most likely to gather soon.
Notable Exceptions: It overreads plague zones, battlefields, and carrion-heavy landscapes.
Example Use: Border guards know which mountain pass will see blood before sunset because the crows have already chosen it.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by bird movement, ambient trace pressure, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Open-sky cast, a few breaths. Feather-circle rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: From the horizon down to a single district. Holds from a short while to half a day.

Window of Best Passage

Purpose/How It Works: Window of Best Passage identifies the most favourable time to act within a bounded period, such as an hour, a tide, or a night watch.
Notable Exceptions: It narrows opportunity but does not eliminate all risk. Delays outside the window can worsen outcomes.
Example Use: Thieves wait exactly as long as the reading told them, not a breath less, before moving through the manor's west gallery.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by a defined deadline, clocks or water-measures, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Timing cast, a few breaths. Hourglass rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: One planned action. Gives a single timing answer.

Mercantile Auspice

Purpose/How It Works: Mercantile Auspice reads likelihoods around trade routes, prices, spoilage, and demand to guide buying and shipping decisions.
Notable Exceptions: It is strongest on short and medium horizons. Political shocks and deliberate magical interference can defeat it.
Example Use: A merchant house buys grain now because the auspice shows the river road closing to raiders within the month.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by ledgers, route records, market signals, and the caster's concentration.
Casting Methods: Ledger glance, a few breaths. Trading table rite, a long chant.
Range/Duration: One market or shipment network. Looks ahead from later the same day to some weeks.

Death Hour

Purpose/How It Works: Death Hour estimates when an already-doomed person, siege, sickness, or animal is most likely to cross its fatal threshold.
Notable Exceptions: It is best on futures already weighted towards death. Timely intervention can still change the outcome.
Example Use: Healers triage a plague ward by identifying who will die before dawn without immediate treatment.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by medical or situational evidence, strong converging pressure, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Touch diagnosis, a few breaths. Bedside rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: One subject or crisis. Gives a single forecast.

Dream of Branches

Purpose/How It Works: Dream of Branches places the caster into a guided sleep where several strong future branches are dramatized symbolically rather than literally.
Notable Exceptions: Symbolism is subjective and can mislead untrained dream-readers. Repeated use breeds obsession.
Example Use: A regent sleeps in the omen chamber before deciding whether to marry for alliance or march for war.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by sleep, prepared incense, symbolic anchors, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Self-sleep rite, a long chant. Temple-guided vigil, about an hour's ritual.
Range/Duration: Self. One night's sleep or induced trance.

Ruin Sign

Purpose/How It Works: Ruin Sign searches for converging indicators of structural, political, or personal collapse and marks the most unstable point in the chain.
Notable Exceptions: It sees imminent weak points better than slow decline hidden over years.
Example Use: A delving company's augur marks which pillar of a drowned hall will give first, and the company crosses on the far side.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by visible stress, records of prior strain, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Site read, a few breaths. Surveyor's rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: One structure, house, or plan. A brief reading.

Red Thread of Betrayal

Purpose/How It Works: Red Thread of Betrayal marks the most likely point in a group where loyalty will break under current pressures.
Notable Exceptions: It identifies strain, not moral truth. People can resist the branch the spell sees.
Example Use: A sellsword captain learns that his cousin, not his lieutenant, is the first likely turncoat.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by social observation, names, and the caster's concentrated interpretive work.
Casting Methods: Group-read cast, a few breaths. Circle chart rite, a long chant.
Range/Duration: One group or conspiracy map. Holds for part of a day.

Borrowed Tomorrow

Purpose/How It Works: Borrowed Tomorrow grants the caster a brief anticipatory flash a heartbeat before an immediate danger fully manifests.
Notable Exceptions: It is exhausting and unreliable over long periods. Repeated use causes migraines, hesitations, and timing drift.
Example Use: A duellist sees the stab a fraction early and twists aside just enough to live.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by the caster's own reserves, sharpened attention, and high temporal stress.
Casting Methods: Reflex cast, an instant. Prepared stance, a few heartbeats.
Range/Duration: Self. Heightened danger sense for a few moments, a short while at most.

Fortune Theft

Purpose/How It Works: Fortune Theft steals favourable weighting from one nearby outcome and redirects it towards the caster or a chosen ally.
Notable Exceptions: The stolen luck is never clean. Someone else usually inherits the worsened branch.
Example Use: A gambler ensures her die lands well by nudging failure into the hand beside her.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by concentrated intent, symbolic exchange tokens, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Quick theft cast, a heartbeat or two. Marked-chance rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: The immediate surroundings. One event to a short run of them.

Doom Weight

Purpose/How It Works: Doom Weight presses a target towards the worst already-plausible branch available to them by making hesitation and error more likely.
Notable Exceptions: It cannot invent catastrophe without an opening. Strong discipline, wards, and counter-augury reduce its hold.
Example Use: A rebel augur makes the tyrant's executioner pick the wrong stair during the palace fire.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by a target's existing instability, dark omens, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Gaze-and-curse cast, a breath or two. Effigy rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: Within sight or a linked target. A short while to several days, depending on complexity.

Prophet's Veil

Purpose/How It Works: Prophet's Veil shields an augur from the social and psychological aftereffects of strong prophecy by muffling the compulsion to treat one vision as certainty.
Notable Exceptions: It softens prophetic fixation; it does not protect against all obsessive interpretation.
Example Use: A lord's augurs wear the veil before reading famine signs so they do not become unusable with dread.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by cloth, calming symbols, and low steady caster output.
Casting Methods: Self-veiling cast, a few breaths. Wardrobe rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: Self or a touched augur. Most of a day.

Hazard Bell

Purpose/How It Works: Hazard Bell attunes a bell, chime, or vibration marker to ring when a predicted class of danger approaches its most likely arrival window.
Notable Exceptions: It works on broad categories such as fire, raid, collapse, or betrayal, not on unlimited unknowns.
Example Use: A frontier village sleeps under an augured bell keyed to raids; it rang twice last winter, and both times the riders found the palisade manned.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by a named kind of danger, a resonant bell, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Bell-keying cast, a few breaths. Watchtower rite, a long chant.
Range/Duration: One building, village, or quarter. A night to several weeks.

Star Ledger

Purpose/How It Works: Star Ledger maps long-cycle celestial omens against the fortunes of houses, kingdoms, and seasons to forecast what is broadly coming.
Notable Exceptions: It is excellent for season and year scale tendencies, poor for daily details. False star tables ruin it completely.
Example Use: A kingdom begins floodworks two years early because the ledger shows converging river signs.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by accurate astronomical records, old ledgers, and prolonged interpretive labour.
Casting Methods: Observatory read, a long chant. Full annual reckoning, a night's vigil.
Range/Duration: Realm or regional scale. Looks ahead months to years.

Choice Scar

Purpose/How It Works: Choice Scar marks a person who has recently taken a world-shaping decision so that future auguries can follow the consequences now spreading out from them.
Notable Exceptions: It is ethically dubious and forbidden by many lords, except to their own seers, because it makes private consequence easier to watch.
Example Use: A rival prophet marks the new queen after coronation to follow every future fracture born from her first decree.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by proximity to a major decision, symbolic marking, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Touch mark, a breath or two. Hidden sigil rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: One marked subject. Days to months.

Pendulum of Workings

Purpose/How It Works: Pendulum of Workings reads active workings, residue, and the distortion they leave in the surrounding area.
Notable Exceptions: It reveals presence and rough character better than exact school or intent unless the caster is highly trained.
Example Use: A delver knows at once that the vault door was last opened by spell rather than key, and stops before touching it.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by local magic, attentive focus, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Sensing cast, a few heartbeats. Lens or pendulum focus, a few breaths.
Range/Duration: The immediate surroundings, up to a room. Lasts a few moments.

Lost-Thing Trail

Purpose/How It Works: Lost-Thing Trail follows the strongest probability trail towards a known thing by name, pattern, or intimate familiarity.
Notable Exceptions: Wards, false copies, and overloaded markets can blur the signal badly.
Example Use: A lord's mage tracks the stolen signet through three alleys of thieves' stalls.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by known target-pattern, directionality, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Named search cast, a few breaths. Compass or token rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: A street to a district, depending on the item and wards. Holds for one search.

Living Bearing

Purpose/How It Works: Living Bearing searches possibility-space for the most probable path to a known living target.
Notable Exceptions: Strong concealment, false trails, and targets crossing warded thresholds can break the line.
Example Use: A ranger-augur finds a child carried off by raiders before the snow closes over their tracks.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by known target-pattern, directionality, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Name-and-focus cast, a few breaths. Hair, blood, or icon rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: Nearby to a whole valley, depending on link quality. Holds for one search.

Far Eye

Purpose/How It Works: Far Eye opens a remote sensory window onto a chosen place the caster knows well enough to frame.
Notable Exceptions: It is vulnerable to warded privacy, illusion interference, and poor destination detail.
Example Use: A siege council watches the enemy's west tower without sending a scout.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by destination familiarity, an anchored point of observation, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Remote eye cast, a few breaths. Mirror-bowl rite, a short chant.
Range/Duration: A known distant site. A few moments to a short while.

Basin Watch

Purpose/How It Works: Basin Watch searches out a person, place, or thing and holds a live viewing path on it even as it moves.
Notable Exceptions: Good wards, false doubles, and active countermagic can distort the image or send back dangerous reflections.
Example Use: An archmage tracks a raiding warband's march from a basin of still silvered water.
Typical Cost/Power Source: Usually fed by strong symbolic links, remote focus media, and the caster's reserves.
Casting Methods: Basin or mirror scrying, a short chant. Great observatory rite, a long chant.
Range/Duration: Nearby to very far, depending on link quality. A short while to most of a night.

In the Writers’ Guide

The Schools of Magic FoundationsThe Compound Schools
Omenfern A Bestiary of Caeldon
Glossary Foundations