View Animal Mind

This spell enables a shaman to probe the memory of a single animal, which the caster is in physical contact with. For the duration of the spell both the shaman and the animal are in a trance, neither aware of their surroundings nor able to react to events in their vicinity. The spell only works on normal animals with Intelligence no greater than animal level.

While looking into the creature's mind, the shaman can search for specific information known to the animal or view events seen by it from its own perspective. When watching an event which the animal has seen, all details are perfectly clear, allowing the caster to see (and memorize) facial features, conversations, and so on, even though the animal could not itself understand such details.

The caster cannot look at the animal's entire memory in one casting of the spell, but can seek only one type of information concerning one time period or individual.

The following are examples of how this spell can be used:

The shaman can review the animal's memories covering a period up to one full day (periods longer than one day cannot be viewed with a single casting); or

The animal's memory can be searched for any encounters with an individual or object known to the caster; or

The shaman can discover the largest predator in the area; or.

The shaman can skim through the creature's mind, getting a general impression of the events it has experienced – usually unimportant details of habitat, feeding patterns, and so on, but sometimes revealing important facts like a period of captivity, a traumatic encounter with a large monster, or other event that the shaman might investigate with sub sequent castings of the spell.

The spell is focused through the preserved eye of an owl, which is not destroyed when the spell is cast.