A new skill, primarily in the hands of Dipsomancers, that allows one to smell souls… and track them down.

The art of soul sniffing has been practiced since early tribal cultures, passed down from shaman to shaman. It formed the mainstay of many African priests’ tribal duties, since it helped one find witches, appease ancestors, and locate missing children. And now, Dipsomancers have re-discovered it.

Dirk Allen, in perhaps his one charitable act, published several screeds about the Voodoun practitioners of New Orleans that collectively contain a hidden record. Read correctly (i.e. while drunkenly flipping through all of the relevant articles), anyone magickally clued-in can begin to understand the necessary tricks. In game terms, anyone obtaining a full set of Allen’s New Orleans journals and spending several days pouring over them can spend XP on a new Soul based skill—Soul-Sniffer.

Soul-Sniffers attune their noses to the subtle scent of ghosts and auras. They can take a sniff of the air and attempt to smell souls, living or dead.

Firstly, this sensitivity to souls allows Soul-Sniffer to function as Aura Sight, but any roll below 30 fails– it has trouble detecting details. GMs should take care to present all Soul-Sniffing derived information through olfactory clues. A demon lends the possessed a tainted smell like rotting wood, while a mage carrying a large number of charges might have a pungent, powerfully musky smell.

The primary use for Soul-Sniffing, however, is the art of finding souls. A practitioner can breathe in deeply and attempt to catch the scent of souls on the air. This allows one to mystically track anyone that the Sniffer knows the scent of (anyone they have spent at least a half-hour with, or that they deliberately got up close and sniffed at length). On a successful roll, the Sniffer should get any idea as to the general direction of his target, if it is within several miles at most. Note that this sniffing is just as likely to be re-directed to a proxy of the target as a long-distance blast spell. Alternatively, a Sniffer can search with no particular target, and try to catch the scent of powerful souls in the area (powerful souls include Lords, powerful Avatars, strong Demons, highly charged Adepts, and other such characters).

While this potent tracking ability makes Soul-Sniffing a useful art, it is very sensitive and very limited in many ways. Many environmental conditions can make Soul-Sniffing more difficult, and several mini-rituals can be performed by one who suspects a Soul-Sniffer on their tail to evade them.

Modifiers to Soul-Sniffing (use all that apply):
-5% for daytime (sniffing seems to work best at night)
-10% for no wind (whether a calm day or indoors)
-10% for distraction by other nearby smells (whether from a nearby strong soul or by mundane scents, like a wreath of garlic)

GMs should also raise the minimum roll required to succeed (making low successes into failures), if the target is:
+10% if the target is currently surrounded by strong mundane smells
+10% if the target has been indoors for a day or longer

—–

Evading Soul-Sniffing:
Just as the trick of Soul-Sniffing is spreading slowly through the occult underground, tricks to evade it are spreading as well. Some of the more common ways to evade Sniffers follow (players and GMs—feel free to invent more).

Tricks to Evade Sniffing:
*Wear a wreath made from Car Air fresheners and doused in Rum (while this is the most commonly passed on formula, this simply surrounds the target by strong smells- it has no further effect)
*Bathe for an hour in pure running water while wearing a white robe soaked in Rose water. Adepts must also expend a minor charge. This ritual makes one invisible to Soul-Sniffing for 24 hours.
*Breathe deeply into a cat’s mouth, then strangle it with your bare hands and hang the body at least 10 feet in the air (off a light-post or such). Killing a cat with your bare hands is a rank 2 Violence check and my trigger strong Self-checks at the GMs option. Again, Adepts must expend a minor charge. This effigy will draw the Soul-Sniffer tracking you to it instead for as long as it is hanging.

Note: This idea was inspired by the works of Tim Powers and Robert Heinlein, and I do not claim that this idea is mine originally- it actually does have some basis in many African tribal beliefs.