This power increases the acuity of all of the vampire’s senses, effectively doubling the clarity and range of sight, hearing, and smell. While her senses of taste and touch extend no farther than normal, they likewise become far more distinct; the vampire could taste the hint of liquor in a victim’s blood or feel the give of the board concealing a hollow space in the floor. The Kindred may magnify her senses at will, sustaining this heightened focus for as long as she desires. At the Storyteller’s option, this may make hunting easier.

Occasionally, this talent provides extrasensory or even precognitive insights. These brief, unfocused glimpses may be odd premonitions, flashes of empathy, or eerie feelings of foreboding. The vampire has no control over these perceptions, but with practice can learn to interpret them with a fair degree of accuracy.

Expanded senses come at a price, however. Bright lights, loud noises and strong smells present a hazard while the vampire uses this power. In addition to the possibility for distraction, an especially sudden or potent stimulus (like the glare of a spotlight or a clap of thunder) can blind or deafen the Kindred for an hour or more.

At the character’s discretion, she may selectively heighten one specific sense, rather than leaving them all on. In these cases, the difficulty to perceive stimuli using that sense drops by one, but the difficulty to avoid distraction or temporary bedazzlement increases by one.

This power does not let characters see in pitch darkness, as does Eyes of the Beast (p. 199), but it does reduce difficulty penalties to act in such darkness from +2 to +1, and the character may make ranged attacks in pitch darkness if she can hear, smell, or otherwise detect her foe.

Using this power, the vampire can perceive the psychic “auras” that radiate from mortals and supernatural beings alike. These halos comprise a shifting series of colors that take practice to discern with clarity. Even the simplest individual has many shifting hues within his aura; strong emotions predominate, while momentary impressions or deep secrets flash through in streaks and swirls.

The colors change in sympathy with the subject’s emotional state, blending into new tones in a constantly dancing pattern. The stronger the emotions involved, the more intense the hues become. A skilled vampire can learn much from her subject by reading the nuances of color and brilliance in the aura’s flow.

Aside from perceiving emotional states, vampires use Aura Perception to detect supernatural beings. The colors in Kindred auras, while intense, are quite pale; mage halos often flare and crackle with arcane power; the race of shapeshifters has strikingly bright, almost frantic, auras; ghosts have weak auras that flicker fitfully like a dying flame; and faerie creatures’ radiance is shot through with capricious rainbow hues.

Note that it is nearly impossible to determine with certainty if a particular character is lying or not with this power – vampires are inherently deceitful by nature, but even mortals might react with anxiety to questions while still being truthful. It is, however, helpful in determine the target’s emotional state, which might lead the vampire to decide that a particular target is suspicious.

A character may choose to perform a very cursory aura scan of a large area like a nightclub’s dance floor or the audience in a gallery. In this case, the player decides which characteristic of auras she’s looking for, and that’s the only information she’s able to glean if the roll is successful. (At the Storyteller’s discretion, on this general scan roll, more successes on the roll may more quickly yield what the character seeks.) For example, the player may specify, “Who’s the most nervous person in attendance?” or “Are there any vampirically pale auras among the CEO’s entourage?” Thereafter, the player may narrow down her scrutiny of a single individual, with an additional roll as normal.

The character may focus in on a particular subject’s aura only once per scene with any degree of clarity. Any subsequent attempts that result in failure should be considered botches. It is very easy for the character to imagine seeing what she wants to see when judging someone’s intentions. After 24 hours, the character may try again at no penalty.

It is possible, though difficult, to sense the aura of a being who is otherwise invisible to normal sight.

When someone handles an object for any length of time, he leaves a psychic impression on the item. A vampire with this level of Auspex can “read” these sensations, learning who handled the object, when he last held it, and what was done with it recently.

Gleaning information from the spiritual residue requires the vampire to hold the object and enter a shallow trance. She is only marginally aware of her surroundings while using The Spirit’s Touch, but a loud noise or jarring physical sensation breaks the trance instantly.

The vampire projects a portion of her consciousness into a nearby mortal’s mind, creating a mental link through which she can communicate wordlessly or even read the target’s deepest thoughts. The Kindred “hears” in her own mind the thoughts plucked from a subject as if they were spoken to her.

Reading thoughts with Telepathy does not commonly work upon the undead mind. A character may expend a Willpower point to make the effort, making the roll normally afterward. Likewise, it is equally difficult to read the thoughts of other supernatural creatures. However, the character may project her thoughts without expending a Willpower point. These thoughts, however, are still obviously intrusions into the target’s mind, but the character may attempt to disguise her mental “voice” with a roll of Manipulation + Subterfuge (difficulty equals the target’s Perception + Awareness) so the target doesn’t recognize her as the “speaker.”

The Kindred with this awesome ability projects her senses out of her physical shell, stepping from her body as an entity of pure thought. The vampire’s astral form is immune to physical damage or fatigue, and can “fly” with blinding speed anywhere across the earth — or even underground — so long as she remains below the moon’s orbit.