| From: | Jeremiah Stevens <jeremiah@********.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Assensing and Lying |
| Date: | Tue, 9 Dec 1997 23:20:01 -0500 |
the general emotions of a person while he is performing an act or involved
in a particular situation, e.g., the aura of a person assaulting another
would show rage and hatred, while those of people at a funeral would show
grief and loss. Now, given that the act of lying produces an emotional
change that is as of now physically detectably (polygraphs, etc.), would
lying produce perceptable changes in one's aura?
Thus, could a mage astrally observing a person tell when he was lying
based soly on that person's aura, and how accurate would this be compared
to, say, the Analyze Truth spell?
IMO, a mage would be quite able to tell when a person was lying by
assensing their aura, although they could only do this on an emotional
level. Thus, a person who is trained to lie would be able to suppress the
emotions normally associated with lying and beat the assensing mage in the
same way people are able to beat lie detectors. Lying, then, would be a
skill, and a mage would have to make an opposed test, Aura Reading vs.
Lying, when trying to assense such a person. Otherwise, they would simply
have to make a perception test against a TN based upon the degree of guilt
and deception involved in the lie. Thus, an astrally capable mother would
be able to tell quite easily if her child were lying to her, as the child
would most likely feel a good degree of guilt which would be strongly
reflected in his aura. On the other hand, a person lying to protect a
friend, relative, lover etc. from persecution, say a mother lying to
protect her troll son during a Humanis pogrom, would feel no guilt about
lying and would thus be difficult to detect through assensing.
This would have quite an impact on society. Astrally aware lawyers or
judges would be quite capable of rooting out perjury. Also, this would
provide an excellent form of magic security. For example, simply having an
astrally aware guard assense all incoming corporate employes as they
answer a few simple questions about themselves, e.g., name, age, date of
birth. True, this could be done with an analyze truth spell, but those can
be defended against too easily- a high willpower and an initiate mage to
provide shielding and its virtually impossible to detect a lie. Also,
spells have drain and can be attacked. On the other hand, astral
perception is quite easy and can be done indefinitely.
