Side Story: The Bases of Magic 2 – Alteration

Of course Catherine follows him. Finally having affirmation that Uklag can’t just teach her new things but also improve what she has learnt thus far fills the witch with determination. They walk through a couple of rooms filled with all kind of crafting tools or raw materials until Uklag stops in a room where four chairs stand around a small table.

“Let’s sit down for the next part.” Uklag says and takes place. “Tell me what you know of Alteration.” He asks when Catherine has taken place as well. “Alteration is the magic of spiritual influence. It is used to sway emotions of either a single person or people in a radius around you. These are the basics.”

Uklag smiles, “Very nice quoting of Aclysia there. However it seems like you didn’t finish the book, did you?” Catherine shakes her head in denial, “I was sent on the mission to capture you before I could.” Uklag hums and taps on the table a few times.

“Well what you said is correct but you only tell me of the first school of Alteration.” Catherine is taken aback, “The first? Of how many?” “Of four. Emotional Alteration is what you just described, the school to change, strengthen or suppress emotions. Then there is Ideal Alteration, the school to change ideas and morals of a person. Thirdly we have Illusional Alteration, where you make people’s senses confused, like making them see things that aren’t there. Lastly there is Mind Crushing, only available to experienced and especially strong mages.”

Uklag takes a small break to let these new information in. “Now, you know that I hate it when people try to influence my mind. If you want to practice do it with one of the soldiers once they are broken, I will simply tell you what each school is in its details, understand?”

“Yes, Master.” Catherine says, the greed in her eyes is burning. “Good. Emotional Alteration is the hardest school simply because of how easy it is to trace. People usually don’t suddenly feel something so when they feel a sudden surge of rage a sensible person would ask themselves why before acting. The trick here is to combine it with Ideal Alteration, implanting a thought that makes them angry and then escalating that feeling. Many people don’t question what they think, thoughts tend to be jumpy after all, but you still should try to evaluate your targets personality before implanting something random. In both Emotional and Ideal you can have your way with brute force of will as well, but don’t expect especially subtle results.

Illusional Alteration however cannot be brute forced, the thing about Illusions is that they are incredibly taxing on the mind as you need to hold an image of something for a long period of time. Again there is a trick her in coupling it with Ideal Alteration. Although it sounds weird you need to use Alteration on yourself to keep yourself thinking about the image, that way you can keep the Illusion stable at the cost of more magical power.

Mind Crushing is not exactly hard to do once you know how. All you need to do is find a person thoughts and personality and, well, crush them into non-existence. The reason why we call it a master discipline is that you need to know how to COMPLETELY annihilate a person’s personality and reprogram it, so you need to be either very thorough or have a lot of time. Also interesting could be that Mind Crushing is pretty hard to pull off unless you have skin contact with a person.

All of these schools also carry with them a shared weakness: that they can be resisted if you get noticed. You don't need to be schooled in Alteration to do so, having a disciplined mind is enough to shut out the mage's influence once you know he is fiddling with your mind. Of course lesser minds can not completly shut out a skilled and strong mage, while the greatest of them can block virtually anyone, there are varying degrees between. On that note never look directly at somebody while using Alteration on them, it's just an easy giveaway if they should resist.”

Uklag finishes his monologue and waits for Catherine to stomach all of that. “But, why do I need to destroy all of a person’s mind? Or why can’t I just leave him empty?” Uklag raises an eyebrow. “You should be able to answer that first question yourself, think about it.”

A couple of seconds later Catherine makes an enlightened sound. “A personality can regenerate from even the slightest piece. So that’s how it is.” Uklag smiles, “Exactly. Think about a window, you may crack the glass but unless the whole structure falls apart the shards will remain in the frame. Unlike a window however a mind can mend itself. For your second question: As you found out yourself, Mind Crushing is quite painful on the victim and destroys every bit of personality it had before that given point in time. Now imagine this, A mage has just destroyed your mind in a rather painful way and you manage to survive the few days your brain needs to recover from the ordeal. You are without personality and your freshest memory is pain, a face and the vague feeling that your self has been destroyed. What do you do?”

Catherine understands. “I will either hunt down that face or run as far away as possible and warn everybody on my way.” Uklag claps, “Exactly! A hassle to deal with either way. So you can do it but there is just no reason to. If you want to have the guy out of the picture just fry his insides or something. Any more questions?”

Catherine denies that and in response Uklag grabs his staff again. Rising up he says: “Well then unto another room.”