By Magnus Edlund (magnus.edlund@mailbox.swipnet.se)
In the past, every cat was a Guardian and each of them chose a human, or a whole family, to Guard. But now the number of Guardians is decreasing. More and more cats are born without the Magic, without the power to Guard. With this decline of Magic more and more humans fall prey to the supernaturals. They become Ravaged by the Fae, tainted by the Wyrm, killed by the Werewolves and eaten by the Vampires. The Guardians remaining cannot hope to be able to protect all of humanity, so they must choose the ones to Guard carefully. No longer can a cat afford the luxury to only Guard one single human; they must guard whole families, sometimes whole neighbourhoods. As not even cats can be everywhere at once, they are bound to fail sometimes.
All Guardians have magical sight. This sight allows them to see things that mundanes cannot see. They can see and interact freely with the Dreaming and its Chimerical creatures. They can also see into the Umbra and the Shadowlands, but they do not have the power to enter these places; at least most of them don't.
In addition the Guardians have the power to see the true nature of a creature. This means that she can identify a vampire, werewolf, changeling, mage, and even a human possesed by a wraith at sight.
The cats have two kinds of magic at their command: Tail-Magic and Whisker-Magic. Each Guardian has a rating between 1 and 5 in each type of magic.
The rituals used for casting the spells often involve running around at high speed, pushing things from tables and shelves, and meowing without appearent reason.
To use Tail-Magic you roll Tail-Magic + Intellegence against a difficulty determined by the ST. Here follows some examples on what can be done with Tail-Magic.
Description: This spell is cast upon an area determined by the cat, normally the home of its Guarded human. Whenever a supernatrual being enters the Warded area the cat knows about it. She doesn't know what entered of where; she just knows that something has. This spell is the most commonly used one, and is normaly cast before the cat goes to sleep. The Ward lasts until sunrise/sunset.
Description: Invisibility allows the cat to, well, become invisible. She can only be detected by magical means, and the difficulty for doing so is equal the number of successes rolled on the Tail-Magic + Intelligence roll. If the cat attacks or manipulates anything physically the spell is broken; otherwise it will last for as long as the cat wishes.
Description: This spell is cast in the same manner as Ward of Warning. The difference is that with this spell all supernatruals don't notice the area Warded; they just walk right past it. The number of successes when casting this spell determines how hard it is for someone to look beyond the Warding.
Description: This spell drives away a spirit or wraith from a place or person.
Description: This ward causes all supernatruals entering the warded area to become physically weaker. For every success the cat got on his roll, one point is subtracted from all physical abilities of the invader. If one of the attributes are reduced to 0, the critter faints and does not waken until the ward expires (sunset/sunrise) or he is removed from the warded area.
This works in the same way as the Ward of Weakness, but it causes aggravated damage instead of reducing physical attributes.
To use Whisker-Magic you roll Whisker-Magic + Wits. With Wisker-Magic you can do things like this:
When activating this spell the cats lies down very closely to the person he wants to be affected by the spell. As long as the person keeps physical contact with the cat he is protected from all mental and spiritual attacks of supernatrual origin. The difficulty to penetrate this protection equals the cat's willpower.
Moon-Jumps enables the cat to jump incredible distances (his normal jumping-length x3).
Description: With this spell the cat attacks someone's mind. For every second success the target loses 1 dot in intellegence and wits (temporary).
Description: The cat can paralyze someone by looking into his eyes. When using this power the cat's eyes glow.
Description: The cat can read someone's thoughts. The more successes the more detailed information.
By using this spell the cat inflicts 10+Number of Successes of aggravated damage to all supernatrual creatures within 20 yards radius. By casting this spell the cat himself dies.