Terror Sight

This spell is a part of the Blotting spell chain and is found in the Blotting rune stone.

Life as an empath is never easy. To always be able to feel so keenly the emotions of others, it makes life for the empath difficult. Empaths have had to learn how to deal with the extra outside emotions competing with their own internal feelings. Some have learned to build walls and block their emotions. Some have been overtaken by them. Some have become timoramancers, walking with Presence and Dread learning how to make use of and understand emotions - especially the primal emotion of fear. 

Terror Sight is what the timoramancer learned through Presence when learning how to make use of others fear. When this spell takes hold the world does not go dark or change in any dramatic way - at least not immediately. What changes is what the timoramancer (or the one the timoramancer passes the power to) perceives within it. Living beings, spirits, even the walking dead begin to glow with the light of their own fear. It is perceived as soft and dim in the calm, brighter in the anxious, blazing in the truly terrified. The more afraid a target is, the more visible they become. The more readable. Every movement telegraphed by the light of their own dread, every attempt to hide undermined by the fear that hides with them. A target gripped with genuine terror burns so brightly they can be seen through walls, through obstacles, through anything that stands between them and the timoramancer's gaze. Those blessed with Terror Sight have no penalties when attacking others as they have no evade bonuses and should they themself be attacked they have no evade penalties. 

The natural world can only be observed by natural vision, not by Terror Sight.Should the natural vision be blocked, Terror Sight will still work, however, non-living obstacles - walls, furniture, traps, terrain - become invisible unless illuminated incidentally by a nearby frightened presence. The timoramancer navigates by fear's light alone, which is usually sufficient and occasionally dangerous.

Against fear-based effects Terror Sight is uniquely effective. Blotting loses most of its potency. The timoramancer still sees the glow of every living thing around them, their natural sight diminished but far from gone. Encroaching Darkness loses its grip almost entirely - the timoramancer can still see every mind Dread has touched, each one burning with the fear that is the spell's very source, and knowing what they see is fear rather than real darkness strips most of its terror away. Anxiety and other fear-based penalties are reduced for the timoramancer or one having Terror Sight while Terror Sight is active, Presence reassuring them that what they see is honest and knowable. A calm opponent is harder to track. A frightened one is impossible to hide.