More commonly known as the mantic arts. This is quite a large business in the Cities. Most forms are legal, unlike in a lot of other counties, so Cities fortune tellers are often visited by wealthy foreigners as well as locals. Visiting a fortune teller has long been a part of local culture and accepted as normal. It is built into some of the religious festivals (Garreday, New Year) and also the mantic men are often consulted before major life changing events e.g. marriage. The actual belief in the truth of the mantic arts is more ambiguous and varied - very few actually act on what their future is said to be. All forms of the mantic arts are one-on-one sessions between the predictor and client about the latter's life; more general prophesies e.g. on the future of the country are more rare. The mantic art is recognised as a valid trade, not licensed but subject to various specific laws (e.g. not revealing someone's future to an outside party, not profiting personally by their knowledge except in the form of the fee) which more represent a formalising of the fortune teller's traditional codes of conduct than any serious attempt to regulate the craft. There are no price parameters, for example, and what control exists comes through several overlapping and squabbling trade associations. The mantic arts naturally flourishes at times of festivals, setting up booths at all the fairs. Some of the temporary fortune tellers are travellers migrating from fair to fair, others are Cities residents who consider themselves gifted but just take up the job at special times. there are however a number of regular fortune tellers who have developed their own specialities and favoured methods of predictions. Grislacce the Seer in Cone Street, Yaleth, Suttosko the Elven who operates on Jalkin's Summer Bridge and the itinerant Munz are among the most prominent, all of which earn a tidy income. Even the most flourishing fortune teller tends to operate from tiny nooks or street booths if they have a base at all, because people expect them to be other-worldly and rather squalid whatever the commercial reality. The mantic "men" are in fact around 75% women, and is also an art considered to run in certain special families.
Types - roughly divided into commonplace, magical and spiritual.
Commonplace - the most common, cheap and least effective. There are numerous varieties, mostly drawing on intepretating the meanings behind the behaviour of certain special devices or practices. The predictor uses their knowledge and the implied interaction between their actions and various supernatural "forces", usually the Gods. In short it's mainly trickery and showmanship. Virtually all fortune tellers pretend to be either magically gifted or in touch with supernatural powers, but mostly this is just advertising.
Different commonplace practices - Cards - the single most common, generally involving the client to draw five or six cards from a deck and interpretating the overall pattern. The Garran card deck (40 different cards, each of a character from Garran mythology, also used in gambling games) is the most commonly used.
Puntiss stones - special stones which a pale green rounded pebbles. These are thrown by the soothsayer onto a 'foom chart', a cloth with a pattern of circles joined by lines, which reflect the movement of supernatural forces. The fortune teller sees how the puntiss stones have scattered and makes a prediction, using an intricate code book. Puntiss stones have Astic origin and are traditionally used by the Church to Ferlan, though some using them claim to be drawing influence from Ella.
Omen readers - There a few commonly recognised omens and a host only known to an "expert". If a person wants a prediction for a specific part of their life (e.g. love, work) they describe events which have occurred in them recently in that part and the soothsayer makes predictions based on these; the prediction is shaped by a complicated set of symbolism in events and their interaction. As with other mantic arts there are (secret) texts which give the secrets to reading omens but it is more open to individual interpretation than most and so even less reliable. The symbolic interpretations draw on a smorgasbord of superstitions from various churches.
Magical
Some wizards turn to fortune telling, usually Academy trained and licensed though there are occasionally rogue ones. The magical mantic arts are usually based around conjuring up demons or minor deities and asking their advice on what is going to happen. The effectiveness of this approach is dependent on the wizard's ability to control said demon/deity and the actual knowledge such creatures have of the future, something of a moot point. There are also a number of ways of contacting departed spirits though magic. A few spells can actually project the vision of the wizard into the future though these are extremely hard to master. Magic is the most expensive of the mantic arts though not always the most reliable.
Spiritual which may be summed up as trying to contact supernatural forces without magic and actually doing it. Most commonly involves summoning ghosts/spirits, which exist in the future to the same degree as they do the present, and asking their advise. Neither Garran nor Ellan theologies acknowledge the existence of ghosts but Torgun ones do, and their priests sometimes contact ghosts - almost always just for member's of the ghost's living family. There are also a number of specialist mediums operating with differing degrees of honesty. Contacting/summoning spirits is legal providing a) no harm results and b) an Academy rep. wizard is satisfied that no magic is involved. If magic is being used then the act is counted as necromancy, a specific criminal act in Dorlafan law. With the statute books mainly based on Garran/Ellan thinking the implication is that raising sprits by mundanical methods is impossible, whatever the evidence, so the mediums are just charlatans.
The Garran and Ellan churches also
legitimise fortune telling through their gods.
The Goddess Ella is known to regularly manifest herself on earth in one
of her many forms, sometimes to aid somebody directly and sometimes to give
predications; her appearances are arbitrary and ultimately beyond human
influence. The Garran believers are a
little more empowered; certain holy men have been able to contract either
Garrath or one of his servants, either to ask what the future will hold or to
beg for assistance. The fortune-telling
tradition of Garreday has its roots in an ancient Garran ritual where the
clergy beg for visions of what the winter will hold.