An Intermediate’s Guide to Psychomancy

## Prologue

So my fellow Psychomancers, or maybe you aren’t a Psychomancer? All are welcome to read this book to expand your knowledge of this school of magic. I welcome you to the second volume of my collection. So I see you have advanced to intermediate, it is often referred to as a turning point in any mage’s career. This book will go over practice methods for intermediates, how to teleport, some tips on fighting, and overall how to progress.

## Chapter 1: Illusions

Illusions are not that realistic at lower stages, but they can become convincing at first glance or during times of stress. If you’re actually trying to fool someone then keep it to small things, going too big will be too difficult, both in looks and maintenance due to your small vitor pool. For now, let’s get into the realm of fooling people. I’m not exactly going to cover illegal things due to wanting my book to be sold majorly in kingdoms and not just underground criminal rings. I assume you already know this already, but if you don’t, buy gloves if you conjure through your hands, or cover up wherever you conjure from.

To start us off, magic tricks are a neat thing. They’re the common people's equivalent of Psychomancy, fooling without the mystic art. When you mix in mystic art, you expand your already broad options in the world of magic tricks. Setting up a place near a kingdom to perform magic tricks in front of kids or other people is a great way to practice illusionary tricks. The first trick we’ll review is the switching ball under cups trick. I’d recommend using small cups for now, don’t worry about casting on a crowd, just focus on the single person you’re trying to fool. Make sure you have experience with this trick before attempting to add your illusions to it.

First off, you’re going to want to shuffle like usual, occasionally passing the ball between cups, and then when you’re ready, raise 2 cups and conjure on the person, then make the ball appear to roll under to the other cup you have raised with an illusion, then set the cup down. Practice makes perfect, preferably have a friend to practice this with before trying on real people. A tip when doing this is tilting the cups forward so that when you raise it, you don’t have to make the original ball not visible. Once you get down the illusion part, start incorporating manipulation into the illusion, really making your target feel the ball has moved when it hasn’t.

While magic tricks are good ways to practice, not every psychomancer wants to practice that way. Another way to practice is by incorporating illusions into hunting. When an animal first hears a sound in the distance it will stop in its tracks and try to identify where it came from. Some hunters utilize whistling to make a shot on a still target due to that natural reaction. A psychomancer could incorporate noise illusions while hunting to do the same thing. As you get better at making illusional sounds, you could even reach a stage where you can make an animal run towards you by placing predatory sounds opposite from your direction, though you should still be in a hiding spot.

An often underutilized part of Psychomancy is scent. By conjuring upon an animal and making it smell something sweet, it can easily drive the animal to move to a better spot to shoot with your bow. Scent does not only have a role in hunting though. Scent and taste are two senses that tie in heavily with each other.  By focusing on improving an existing scent, you can make food more appetizing. At intermediate, improving existing smells will be overall easier than creating entirely new smells.

## Chapter 2: Telekinesis

At intermediate, the power of telekinesis becomes much more viable for use. You won’t be lifting heavy crates, or living your life not needing hands, but there are many quality-of-life things you can do with it. A great way to practice telekinesis is by making it an extension of yourself as if you had a longer arm. During your daily routine, use telekinesis to bring items toward yourself instead of using your hands. Or before you go to bed, if you still have vitor left, you can try to keep an item suspended in the air as long as you can before you sleep.

While incorporating telekinesis into your daily routine is good, you should still occasionally do training sessions solely for telekinesis. At intermediate, it’s best to practice agility with telekinesis now and incorporate more power into it later. A good way to do this is by setting up a training area. It can be simple as placing long sticks into the ground, or if you’re able to make more advanced creations, rings and targets. For the more simple training area, get a 2-5 pound rock and practice weaving the rock in between the sticks in a pattern, focusing on not hitting the sticks rather than speed. And for the more advanced area, you should focus on getting through the loops, rings, and sticks without hitting anything but your target at the end. As you get more confident with your current area, you should occasionally modify it to spice things up, keep on pushing yourself more and more!

## Chapter 3: Teleportation

Teleporting, also known as blinking, is one of the more complex things to learn on your own, though it is possible. One might think teleporting the furthest distance at once is best, but that is simply not the case, as you would run out of the majority if not all your vitor. You should only teleport your max as a last resort. Keeping it to short distances is the best. Something many psychomancers do not know, even experts, is that you can teleport through windows! Yes, you read that correctly. You can blink through ANYTHING that isn’t opaque. I will go over the use of this in Chapter 4.

Some interpret teleportation as just imagining yourself in another location. Others may interpret it as moving really fast to your intended location; though this is wrong as one is able to teleport in between cracks in walls. My interpretation of teleportation is easy to understand. Lunar glass is preferred when practicing, but not necessary. First, you want to start circulating your vitor. Then you want to imagine and set a tether of vitor between you and your intended location. At your intended location, you should create a mass of vitor similar to your body size for your tether to link to. Then with great focus, making sure to keep your eyes locked on your intended location, will yourself to exchange places with the vitor. If done right, you will have teleported. One must make sure not to break the tether of vitor. At higher levels this tether becomes thinner as they have greater control, at lower levels the tether tends to be thicker so it doesn’t break as easily. If this is hard to follow, a drawing below should help.

## Chapter 4: Combat

Intermediate is the stage where you can begin to incorporate Psychomancy into fights. The two most common spells an intermediate uses at this stage are doppelgangers and telekinesis. A more uncommon spell, but one that can be useful if executed correctly, is teleportation, but I will get onto that later in the chapter. Also, if you can then get yourself a dagger, preferably with a narrow point. If you are a pacifist and are intending to skip over this chapter, know these two things. As a Psychomancer, or any mage, you will attract unwanted attention, so it is vital to know how to defend yourself. Two, we will also go over tactics on how to escape.

Before you even consider fighting with Psychomancy, you should be able to fight without it. If you can, have someone teach you the basics of hand-to-hand combat. Mainly how to throw a punch, how to take one, and how to block properly. And get someone to train you how to fight with weapons if possible. If you cannot find a trainer, the thing I would recommend the most is practicing throwing a knife into a piece of wood at distances of 5, 10, and 15 feet.

First off, let’s discuss the use of telekinesis in combat. You will not be doing things like piercing through chainmail, even Gambeson will be hard to get through in some areas. If you have practiced diligently enough in your training areas, target soft spots such as the top of a foot. Telekinesis should mainly be used to correct flight paths rather than entirely propelling it. Though propelling things off the ground is a great way to surprise attack. The feet are a great location to target as not only does it inhibit movement, but it also reduces power from their attacks. Sometimes you don’t have a knife, or sometimes your opponent might be wearing a helmet. Levitating a rock off the ground and propelling it into the opponent's head or throat is a great attack one can do. Preferably attack the throat if they have a metal helmet, as during the intermediate stage, your power is not great.

Next, let’s go over doppelgangers in combat. I heavily recommend only using dopplers for short amounts of time, as a more experienced opponent can easily notice a fake doppel the longer you have it out. An example would be splitting yourself into two people for a short amount of time to make your opponent guess from which direction you are actually attacking from. This is especially useful when you are throwing projectiles. Another use of doppelgangers is using them to bait an attack causing them to be vulnerable. One example of this is making a doppel suddenly run at your opponent with a knife, causing your opponent to slash through the doppel. The slash leaves them open for you to make your own attack to a vulnerable spot, leaving the opponent in an undesirable situation.

Finally, let’s talk about teleporting in combat. Teleportation can easily drain you of vitor if you decide to use it in the midst of fighting, especially if you do it multiple times. There are only two situations where I can recommend teleporting. That’s if you intend to attack first, or if you intend to escape. Teleporting behind an opponent and stabbing them in the back is a great way to start off a fight. If you are fighting an armored opponent, such as if they have chainmail, then I’d recommend either targeting his feet or head, or you can optionally grapple him to the ground. Slashing a person across their forehead can blind them with their own blood, allowing a plethora of opportunities. If trying to escape, teleporting should be used if you can teleport across a gap one cannot jump through, on top of a wall that cannot or cannot easily be climbed, or into a building with people that can help you. It is best to have your opponent separated by at least 20 feet of space, otherwise, they WILL attack you while you are trying to focus on teleporting.

## Chapter 5: Conclusion

At the end of the day, this is all just advice on how to train yourself further. No book will ever contain everything you can do with Psychomancy. It’s such a versatile magic, so practicing spells only from a book instead of making your own will limit you greatly. That is not to say that you shouldn’t learn from other books entirely, I recommend a book called The Hawke’s Book on Psychomancy if you are looking for spell ideas. Once more, don’t forget to practice your own ideas. Have a great time, and thank you for reading my book.

*- Ruven Vendita*