Illusion Magic

Illusion magic is the art of being able to create mental illusions for others. Masters in the art of Illusion magic tend to be able to create hallucinations, make people hear voices in their head (and this talking to them in some way), but they can also create mental barriers when trained enough.

Origin
The art of Illusion magic started somewhere during the second era. People who lived on Kierra knew tricks that could deceive the mind, making things look different from what they are, or create images of things that were not there.

A group of deceivers who knew these tricks started to study them, they learned how the brain worked and reacted to what happened. With this, they learned that certain forms of energy can do the same. They tried to influence these energies to do the trick, trying to create images that were not that, or make people see and hear things that weren't there.

They kidnapped people to experiment on, trying to get a feeling for how it worked as they studied it, but this went horribly wrong. The people went insane and paranoid. They started to kill each other, and when the group of deceivers tried to stop them, they also killed them. Those who survived the slaughter would have killed themselves moments after, too paranoid to live, to scared to fight. The camp where the deceivers did all this, was lost in history, and only small stories about it ever reached the outside world.

Their journals and notes were found years later by a group of traveling scholars who were searching for their lost camp, hearing about it in stories and legends. They took the journals and read them, learning about what the group of deceivers learned and did. They brought these journals to their academy, hoping to be able to study them more, but once at the academy, the teachers there saw it as fake and false. They took the original journals and burned them.

The group of scholars, saddened by the reaction of the academy, traveled to the tower of Merlin, the journals and notes lost, but their information not forgotten.

Once at the tower of Merlin, the scholars would explain to the council of Magi what they found and what happened. The council at first didn't believe them, but granted them a chance to prove themselves. They asked the group of Scholars to rewrite what they learned and present that to the council. And so they did. The group of scholars would write down every little thing they did, recreating the journals and notes before they handed it over to the council of Magi.

The council of Magi was impressed by their work and asked them to continue on it. They granted them a secluded area in the tower to do their studies and experiments. For years the group of scholars studied and learned the arts of Illusion magic, and became the first Illusion mages.

Philosophy
The art of Illusion magic is all about deceiving the mind. Use the flow of energy from your own mind, and with that influence the outside world, creating things that are not there, or making someone hear and see things that are not real.

All of these illusion, varying from things that one could see and hear to things that one can feel or even protect are all tricks to the mind. One with a strong mind and will would be easily be able to look through illusion made by someone with a weaker mind, making this art of magic very dependent on the state of mind of the mage.

Learning the art of Illusion magic
To learn the art of Illusion magic, one would normally start with learning simply tricks, such as card tricks or other small, simply things that are made to delude the mind and make things appear different from what they are.

After the learner learned a few tricks, he has to learn to see through it, so that he would learn how it works and how the mind is used against the person self. Normally, the learner would have to learn and see through tricks he already knows, but it is common for the teacher to show him something that the learner has not seen before yet.

After this, the learner would be asked to use his own mind's energy to influence the material world around him. How this is done is up to the teacher, but it always starts with something very simple as creating a simple sound or making a colour appear different for himself.

The next step would be for the student to influence another person's mind by letting him hear his voice, thus learning a one way communication to deliver a message to someone in total silence. This is one of the most basic Illusion magic abilities and one must master this before being able to continue with learning this art.

As last, the learner can use his own imagination to start and thinking of Illusions to create. The possibilities and limits lay with the mage himself, only limited by his own mind.

Abilities
The abilities regarding the art of Illusion magic involve tricking the mind of the target into seeing, feeling or hearing something. These are all hallucinations, and depending on the willpower and state of mind of the mage, the reality of these hallucinations would vary.

Harder, bigger and larger illusions such as a creature would require a lot more willpower than to make a small, easy illusion such as hearing a voice in your head. All if these powers, and their chance of succeeding depend on the willpower and state of mind of both the mage and the target. A target with great willpower would more easily see through illusions compared to someone who does not has such willpower, but an illusion made by a mage with great willpower and a good state of mind would be much harder to see through compared to the illusion of a mage who does not have that.