076 - Pareidolic Shamanism

Unnatural Phenomenon: Pareidolic Shamanism

Faces are vital to the way human beings interact with each other. It’s one of the first things infants learn to distinguish between, showing a strong preference for their mother’s and learning to mimic expressions they can’t yet understand. The fusiform face area is a part of the brain specifically dedicated to discerning subtle differences and associations between faces. It’s so sensitive that flipped images of our own, the opposite of what is normally seen in the mirror, provoke vague feelings of wrongness.

Diseases of facial recognition are distinctly disturbing. Capgras delusion arises when brain damage prevents the limbic system from provoking the familiar emotional responses that accompany the faces of your loved ones, the eerie disconnect resulting in the feeling that they have been replaced by a duplicate imposter. Prosopagnosia robs people of their ability to distinguish between faces altogether, forcing victims to rely on piecemeal identification strategies to interact with people.

Even in healthy individuals this creates interesting short circuits. Pareidolia, the tendency to see faces in inanimate objects, is the result of overeager brain function. Two dots and a line are enough to activate facial perception faster than real faces, the primitive recognition system useful for rapidly disseminating information in signage and exams. It makes us see Jesus in burnt toast and faces in Martian mountains.

With the right magickal climate and a little juice this perception becomes a reality.

The bow-mouth handle on a chest of drawers with knobs for eyes twists into a smirk as your creepy, dead great-uncle wonders when he’s going to get nieces and nephews. The misshapen cinnamon roll you’re about to eat begs for its life and promises to grant you wishes, if you’ll just take a moment to listen to its thesis on 1950s Japanese cinema. The smiling grille on your car asks if you’re really going out dressed like that. You haven’t gone crazy (though you might, since it’s probably a rank 3-6 Unnatural check), the part of your mind that interprets faces has been temporarily hijacked as a conduit through which astrally projecting adepts, demons and other intangibles can communicate with you. In places of great resonance even the Invisible Clergy might deign to squeeze themselves down tightly enough to speak in symbolic riddles that warp the mind.

Typically it lasts less than 10 minutes or until the afflicted individual has a freakout and everything snaps back to normal, when the windows on the train station stop heckling and taunting them in the voices of dead children. Normally isolated to one person, major versions of the phenomenon can affect groups in what science would call “an incident of mass hysteria”.

Theoretically an Epideromancer could induce this in someone permanently by carefully probing around inside their skull and dumping a few charges. Supernatural identities based on the change are best represented by the Versatility feature, given the broad spectrum of advice and warnings made possible by any part of your environment suddenly becoming a mouthpiece for any passing demon or revenant. Likely uses are the two Information and Vague Protection (“Look out behind you!”) features, more tangible supernatural effects might be possible depending on the available entity, its powers and willingness to use them.

GMs and players who wish to explore the idea of a character who has to manage their relationships with the entities that inhabit the faces of their perception may wish to crib from the standard relationship rules in the place of regular advancement. Being approached by something for a favour buying a 5% increase in reputation among the intangibles, if you cough up, is fair. Conversely, threatening to cut everyone off unless Ssissirax the Unfair warps probability on the slot machine you just stuck your last $20 into is the equivalent for coercion. If it buys something non-standard or a reroll on normally available effects a 5% cost for strong-arming the spirit world is reasonable. Working with minds that are no longer or never were human can be trying, spare a thought next time for the woman you see arguing with a crude face etched onto a wooden mallet aboard the city bus.