Genius Loci

Genius Loci (•••, Legno ••)

 * Action: Extended, 5 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary
 * Dice pool: Composure + Occult
 * Cost: 1 Wisp
 * Duration: 1 scene

Places, especially buildings, have their own sort of life; as they age and people care for them, they acquire a distinctive spirit and a voice that speaks in creaking boards or rustling leaves. With careful attention and a touch of magic, the Noble can rouse a place’s spirit and listen to its voice. When activating the Charm, the Noble meditates inside the place she wants to listen and speak to.
 * Dramatic Failure: The Noble rouses the place’s spirit, but offends it. Until she leaves it, a curse of ill luck dogs her; all her actions suffer a -1 penalty. If she returns at any time during the next day, she suffers the same penalty until she leaves again.
 * Failure: The Noble cannot hear the place’s spirit yet.
 * Success: The Noble makes progress in waking the place’s spirit. When she reaches the threshold, the spirit is fully roused and communicates with her in a fashion only she understands (patterns of creaks, flickering in the lights, etc.) For the rest of the scene the Noble may use her Social skills to converse with the location as with a person.
 * A place’s spirit should have a somewhat definite personality, getting stranger as its relative power (age, fondness, etc.) grows; a recent home may offer full collaboration if one deals with the woodworm infestation, while an ancient library may refuse to answer simply because no member of the nakama has a membership card. (The Storyteller should however try to avoid making impossible demands.)
 * Exceptional Success: The place’s spirit finds the Noble agreeable. Her Social interactions with it gain the 9-again quality, if she didn’t have that quality already.

Note that some other supernaturals have powers that rouse a place’s spirit, or compel it to service, while there are places - loci or verges - where the spirits are already wide awake. Using this Charm in such places is perilous; awakened free spirits, hearing the Noble’s call, may stalk her with predatory intent, while bound spirits will warn their masters of her presence.

Upgrade: Tsukumogami (Legno •••)
The Noble can also rouse the spirits of movable objects. The threshold for an object equals its Size. A dramatic failure penalizes her actions if she has the object on her person or within her sight.