Illusionism

A multi-disciplinary magical discipline that deals with creation of highly realistic magical constructs, in order to deceive, distract or entertain the target. Most illusions are intangible ghosts made out of light and sound, but skilled illusionists can weave additional energies into the image in order to fool various exotic senses or employ conjuration in order to make their illusions tangible. Some illusions also employ mental compulsions to better fool the target, but the very presence of mind magic can alert certain mages that something is wrong, so illusions that use mind magic are not strictly better than those don’t. Some illusions are entirely mental in nature, and do not exist outside the target’s mind, but they are classified as illusions rather than mind magic due to requiring similar illusion-crafting skills to cast. Disbelieving an illusion, contrary to popular belief, does absolutely nothing – the image is real, just not what it appears to be. Most illusions are very delicate, however, and are easy to dispel with magic (and sometimes simple physical force).

Illusionism was once a very popular field of magic, with many practitioners and specialists. This was because mages were rarer in the past, and non-mages had a very fuzzy conception of what magic was and what its limits were. Thus, illusions were a lot more threatening and mysterious than they are today – even an obvious intangible phantom could potentially turn the tide of battle or cow a superstitious peasant into submission. These days, this is no longer true. Obvious illusions will be recognized as such, and even fairly realistic ones will often cause suspicions since people are more familiar with magic. This, along with the fact that illusionism isn’t at all easy to practice, has caused the number of illusionists to greatly decline. The field is unlikely to actually die out, and some illusionists have found great success in applying their skills to entertainment projects, but many mages with fondness for the field lament the current state of the discipline.^[1]