Perception in Rhuna can be trained. As a Hero learns to read their surroundings, recognize subtle changes, and trust particular forms of awareness, their senses may develop into Sense Embers within the Hero Bag.
The Five Senses are Hearing, Sight, Smell, Taste, and Touch. Each is also aligned with one of the five Threads: Touch with Dalo, Sight with Jatu, Hearing with Sere, Taste with Cora, and Smell with Nari.
Sense Embers do not make a Hero supernaturally perceptive by default. They show where the Hero has developed unusual attention and understanding. A trained ear may separate a distant footstep from the noise of a crowd. A practiced sense of touch may notice a vibration through stone. Smell, taste, or sight may reveal changes another Hero would never think to examine.
SENSE EMBERS Copy link
A trained Sense may be represented by a Sense Ember placed in the Hero Bag. When drawn during a Performance, the Sense Ember contributes its listed value and may reveal information connected to that Sense.
What the Hero learns depends on the situation. Hearing might expose movement beyond a wall, Sight might catch an inconsistency in a disguise, Touch might reveal tension in a mechanism, Taste might identify something unusual in the air or water, and Smell might expose a creature, substance, or environmental change.
A Sense Ember does not replace a Keyword or determine how the Hero acts. It adds information to the Performance based on what the Hero is capable of perceiving.
SENSES AND PERCEPTION Copy link
When awareness itself is important, the WorldKeeper should consider which Senses could reasonably reveal useful information. A Hero does not need to announce every Sense they are using before a Performance. If a relevant Sense Ember is drawn, that Sense may uncover something the Hero would otherwise have missed.
The information revealed should follow from the fiction. A Sense Ember may expose hidden movement, identify a pattern, reveal danger, distinguish one substance from another, or provide context that changes how the Hero understands the situation.
Perception does not determine whether the Performance succeeds. It determines what the Hero notices while acting.
THE FIVE SENSES AND THE THREADS Copy link
Each Sense corresponds to one of the fundamental Threads of Rhun.
Touch — Dalo, Domain. Touch feels pressure, resistance, vibration, texture, weight, and physical boundaries.
Sight — Jatu, Guidance. Sight follows direction, distance, movement, shape, pattern, and visible paths.
Hearing — Sere, Harmony. Hearing detects rhythm, resonance, vibration, tone, interruption, and discord.
Taste — Cora, Adaptation. Taste recognizes composition, change, contamination, environmental influence, and what has entered or altered a substance.
Smell — Nari, Abundance. Smell follows living presence, growth, decay, propagation, traces, and things carried invisibly through an environment.
This alignment becomes especially important when a Hero encounters active Threads.
THREAD-SIGHT Copy link
A Sense Ember may allow a Hero to perceive signs of the underlying Threads through Thread-Sight.
Thread-Sight is not ordinary vision and does not require the Hero to possess the Threads Pathway. It occurs when trained perception catches the presence of a Thread through the Sense associated with it.
A Hero might feel Dalo pressing through stone, see the path of Jatu through a landscape, hear Sere resonating through a structure, taste the influence of Cora in altered water, or smell Nari spreading through living growth.
Thread-Sight can reveal that a Thread is present, where its influence is strongest, or where something has disturbed it. It may also expose the effects of Threadcraft or Wither.
Thread-Sight grants awareness, not control. A Hero who perceives a Thread does not automatically know how to manipulate it.
SENSE TRAINING Copy link
Further training sharpens what a Hero can interpret through a Sense. This does not necessarily make the Hero hear farther, see smaller details, or smell more strongly. Training is as much about understanding as raw sensitivity.
An experienced Hero may distinguish one vibration from another, recognize the meaning of an unusual scent, identify subtle changes in air or temperature, or recognize a Thread disturbance that once would have seemed meaningless.
Sense Embers record that growing familiarity within the Hero Bag.
SENSES AND WITHER Copy link
Wither distorts the Threads, and trained Senses may notice its presence before its effects become obvious.
A Hero might hear a resonance that should not exist, feel an unnatural absence of warmth, smell growth where nothing is alive, see movement that does not follow the surrounding pattern, or taste an impossible change in otherwise clean water.
Through Thread-Sight, Wither may appear as a break, distortion, absence, or contradiction within the expected behavior of a Thread. The exact experience depends on the Sense involved and the nature of the corruption.
USING SENSES IN THE FICTION Copy link
Players should feel free to describe perception through whichever Senses suit their Hero. Sight is useful, but it is only one way of understanding a place.
The scrape of stone beneath a boot, a metallic taste carried on damp air, a familiar scent where no person should have passed, or a rhythm disappearing from the surrounding insects can all become information.
Sense Embers give those details mechanical weight when they matter.
DEADENED SENSE Copy link
A Deadened Sense is a Bane affecting one of the Hero's trained Senses. It may result from injury, exhaustion, overload, Wither, illness, supernatural influence, or another consequence that interferes with perception.
A Deadened Sense does not always mean the Sense is completely lost. It may instead be muted, distorted, unreliable, painfully heightened, or difficult to interpret.
GAINING A DEADENED SENSE Copy link
When a trained Sense becomes Deadened, its Sense Ember is replaced by the corresponding Deadened Sense Bane.
The Bane remains in the Hero Bag until the Sense is restored. When drawn, it applies its listed penalty and may distort information that would normally be available through that Sense.
DRAWING A DEADENED SENSE Copy link
When a Deadened Sense is drawn during a Performance, the Hero's perception through that Sense becomes unreliable.
The WorldKeeper may withhold a detail, introduce uncertainty, distort distance or direction, blur one observation with another, or provide information the Hero cannot immediately trust. The distortion should arise from the affected Sense rather than arbitrarily misleading the player.
A Deadened Sight might make movement difficult to place. Deadened Hearing might confuse direction or distance. Deadened Touch could hide a vibration or falsely suggest stability. Deadened Smell or Taste might make two substances difficult to distinguish.
The Hero still acts on the information available to them. The Bane complicates perception rather than taking control away from the player.
DEADENED THREAD-SIGHT Copy link
A Deadened Sense can also interfere with Thread-Sight.
The Hero may sense that a Thread is present without identifying it clearly, mistake the location of its influence, overlook a disturbance, or have difficulty separating natural Thread activity from Wither.
Thread-Sight remains possible, but the affected Sense cannot be trusted with the same confidence.
RESTORING A SENSE Copy link
A Hero may suffer more than one Deadened Sense at a time. Each replaces its corresponding Sense Ember separately.
When the condition affecting the Sense is removed, restore the original Sense Ember to the Hero Bag. Recovery may come through rest, treatment, an ability, Threadcraft, Devotion, or whatever solution fits the cause of the impairment.