Divination is a subtle art, one that creates patterns of connection between past and future events that can be read and interpreted by a skilled magician. The general practice of divination is a matter of identifying these signs as they occur, and creating circumstances that allow them to appear.
Away from the Summit these signs appear unpredictably and piece-meal, and there are few truly reliable means to gather them. The Summit’s creation, however, has allowed such magical forces to be guided and systematised far more than they might be in other circumstances. To this end, the various Administrators have the ability to gather and codify these disparate and obscure signs into distinct items known as Omens. Each Omen is a record of some prophecy, portent or sign, that a competent diviner can interpret.
However, each Omen is only a smaller part of a greater whole. A diviner who collects and assembles a broad enough selection of Omens can combine them into something greater, gaining incredibly piercing insights into whichever topics catch their attention.
Divination Magic in Play
The nature of divination is to distil otherwise obscure signs and portents into more easily comprehended forms. A function of the magic that created the Summit is to allow the Administrators to collect these disparate signs into a standardised, codified form; the Omen Card.
Prior to the event, a number of Omens cards will have been written up. Each card has a piece of text on it, representing some sort of hidden knowledge. Typically, this knowledge will be obscured in some way, hidden behind allegorical language or in the form of encrypted text. Sometimes the knowledge will be directly useful to the crises facing the summit, and at other times it will exposit about the world and its nature.
On the other side to the text, the Omen card will have part of an image, like a single piece of a jigsaw puzzle. The image itself will have been split into 16 pieces (in a 4-by-4 grid). By assembling 16 Omen cards and arranging them correctly to reveal the underlying image, a diviner achieves insight into the world; they can ask a question relating to the subject matter of any of the 16 Omens they’ve assembled, and receive an accurate answer relayed by the Administrators. Those assembled cards are then returned to the pool for other diviners to draw from.
Omen cards are physical objects that can be traded about. There are a finite number of Omen cards; 52 total. Once they’ve all been handed out, no more can be gained until some return to the administrators and can be recirculated. There may be duplicate information and images on various Omen cards.
An omen can be gained through casting certain rituals or completing certain adjustments to the leyline nexus. Certain NPCs may also have Omen Cards they can distribute.
Example Omen Cards
Some omens are written in codes.
Some are just incredibly vague.
Some omens are simply intentionally difficult to read.