Healing Magic

## Healing Magic is the distinct and difficult art of repairing the body, mind, and/or soul via supernatural intervention.

In general, the best way for a body to heal is naturally via time and the calculated actions of cells. The best ways of healing the mind and soul are similarly via natural processes, if one becomes injured in these more ephemeral areas. However, healing naturally is not always an option (though Druids argue their way technically still is "natural"), and sometimes it proceeds too slowly. As a result people have developed methods of mending damage via application universal forces. These methods vary by the user, as does the difficulty of the task. In general wounds less than an hour old and starting from the surface of the body such as knife wounds or blunt trauma are comparatively easy to heal, and minor mental or spiritual trauma caused by spells that drain a beings energies require only slightly more skill and effort. The more time that passes, and the more severe the damage, the more difficult the process becomes. Some physical injuries, such as the total loss of a limb, complex organ, or life itself, are either very difficult or essentially impossible to heal. It is always possible to heal damage to the body and mind but not always desirable; manipulating either facet of the individual too much can result in the creation of an entirely new personality in place of the old one.

### The Methods

Note: This is post War of Deific Magic methodology. Before the war the gods often altered the effects of the magic or intervened in it more directly, even in the case of Arcane spells but especially in the case of Divine ones. Intervention was so common that priests only had to direct the energy personally to perform the most delicate of operations, and otherwise the god did the bulk of the work while the mortal functioned as a mere channel. After the war, gods have to expend much more of their personal energies to affect spells and it actually requires them to have more personal facility with the magic used (essentially, they must case a much stronger spell of their own powered by ripping out a piece of their own essence), and thus they seldom intervene. This required a great deal of relearning for healers.

Divine

Priests and other wielders of divine magic have the greatest facility with healing, of the body and other areas. The primary method is similar to the one used in creating elemental evocations: Open micro-gates to the planes and direct the energy to perform a task according to a set pattern. The patterns in this case are effects that force the body, or mental and spiritual force, to regenerate. The gates are to the Plane of Light, which is suffused with positive energy as the Plane of Shadow is with negative energy, and divine magic users find it comparatively easy to attune to the plane well enough to direct large amounts of energy in very complex ways. A skilled enough priest can regrow limbs, or lost organs such as eyes, and restore perfect functionality if the injuries are fresh enough. The older the injury is the more likely scar tissue or other defects caused by the body's attempts to repair the damage will corrupt the results.

Nonphysical ailments are affected differently by time. This is especially true with mental trauma. The longer ago an injury to the mind, such as a delusion brought on by trauma, occurred the more likely any attempt is to simply strengthen the delusion rather than remove it. It is now part of that person and cannot be magically "salved" away. Burning away curses that affect the mind or removing illusions are the exception: time is not usually a factor. Spirit trauma, usually caused by dark magic or primal powers, is either extremely time sensitive or incredibly easy to fix, and it is usually impossible for a priest to tell which will be the case without expertise in the nature of the magic involved.

Most people in search of magical healing immediately think of priests, or sometimes druids, and do not even consider other options. Priests have discovered, however, that their methods have a weakness: Disease. While priests can cast spells to heal illnesses, they sometimes backfire horribly depending on the ailment and actually make things worse. This was true even before the war, but now the reason has become clearer. Some illnesses are caused by the body growing incorrectly and inadvertently hurting itself. Feeding it positive energy and forcing it to "heal" only causes more malignant growth and can kill the patient.

Arcane

Arcanists are notoriously reluctant to perform healing magic, to the point that some people believe they simply cannot. This is not technically true. Arcanists do not attune to the Plane of Light in the same way Divine magicians do. Arcane magic draws on the harsher/"brighter" aspects of the energy and almost cannot be used for healing at all. Some mages, the magical perfectionists often called "Wizards," manage to bend small cantrips meant to ward off undead so they can heal extremely minor physical injuries (Kumo Tetsubo often used this practice before becoming a priest) but the spells are not suited to the task and can simply fail. Most (sane) mages will not even attempt that practice because opening a flawed gate to the Plane of Light can result in blindness or vaporization. The usual arcane method of healing physical, and almost all other, ailments is predictably much more complex.

Arcanists, strictly speaking, prefer not to heal the person at all. Healing implies regrowing damaged tissue or coming to terms with issues of the mind or spirit. Mages tap into the basic structure of the cosmos to bend space and time to overlap the person as they were with the person as they are and twist the person's current being into the previous form. Injuries seem to vanish, and psychic complaints are utterly forgotten, and the soul suddenly strengthens. It is incredibly difficult and mistakes can be disastrous for the patient, but the mage almost never suffers any lasting issues (see below for exceptions). This has side effects, of course. Some are beneficial. Hair that has been burned away regrows as it was, there are no scars, and other than a powerful sense of vertigo there is no physical discomfort. However, less beneficial effects can occur. The patient can lose all memories from the time of the injury to the present, the body can becomes "stuck" in that appearance and always revert to it if altered, the soul can split into two separate (but equally healthy) souls that fight for control of the body, and any number of other issues even if the healing is technically successful. Further, this method has limits. The patient can only be "bent" so far before beginning to fracture, including the mind, and thus most mages that do learn to heal either declare the critically injure "beyond their help" or can only force parts of the body back to previous form - which can cause shock. This limits the Arcanist's ability to treat disease especially. The amount of time the arcanist has to bend to cure the disease completely heavily affects can cause shock or casting mishaps with long illnesses, and shorter ones treated in this way are prone to "come back" as the patient builds no immunity to a disease they have never technically had.

Some hedge magicians, especially "sorcerers" who choose to learn and master only a few spells, actually specialize in healing. Usually they discover the aptitude early so that no awkward experimental phases are needed, and almost none of their patients experience any negative side effects beyond some oddly persistent body hair (which most people still consider better than large masses of burn scars). However, magi healers tend to start showing side effects themselves from reaching through time. Their hair turns white, eyes and skin become pale, and their psyches become progressively less grounded in the present moment. Momentary issues, such as most emotions or even physical sensations, become trivial to them. The exceptions are pain and grief. They feel these are keenly as anyone else, and can generally empathize with others in their throws, rushing to their aid.

Mages are excellent at curse breaking. If a curse is attached to the body, mind, or soul, a mage can almost always sever it without issue. They are the equal of priests in this regard.

Druidic

Druids argue that their methods are more natural than supernatural, at least when healing the body. They do not open planar gates or make tiny bends in space-time. They simply borrow the body's natural healing processes, making the body heal naturally or more efficiently (waste products are converted into usable tissue unless they are poisonous or too foreign to the body). If an injury is beyond the body's ability to heal, things become dicey. A skilled enough druid can reach into the web of life that defines flora and fauna alike (in later ages the intelligentsia refer to it as "genetic material") and borrow the healing abilities of other living things. They can borrow a lizard's ability to regrow its tail and tweak that regrow limbs, for instance. The more outlandish the attempt, the more difficult, and mishaps generally result in druid's own body warping from the attempt. More than one young druid has turned into a lizard while trying to grow back a severed arm or leg, and been unable to transform back without help. Druids find illnesses easy to heal and some almost impossible, with the type Priests find impossible to treat being virtually impossible. Anaron can sometimes perform help people with such problems, but in general the treatment will kill the patient and maim the Druid. Druids, unfortunately, have almost no ability to heal the mind other than by aging it. The mind forms scars of its own if further trauma does not wear the injuries deeper, and some druids can help that process, but doing so shortens the beings life span commensurately and can cause some physical weakness to set in. Druids cannot heal the soul without from another soul and grafting it in. Shaman, whose powers come from magical communion with primal spirits, usually use these methods but some can persuade the spirit to utilize a pure Primal Expression to heal a patient (see below).

Alchemy

While it is possible and beneficial to use Alchemical compounds in healing rituals and to stabilize magical medicines and other magical healing methods, it is inadvisable to rely on Alchemy to heal anything other fresh physical wounds and to a lesser extent scarification. So many different factors influence alchemical reactions that trying to mend someone using it is not ideal. Alchemical treatments for physical, mental, and spiritual maladies are possible, but are generally kept mild due to the risks associated with recipes that cause severe transformations. For an example of an alchemical preparation that alters the body, see Jawbone Soup.

Primal Healing

While not technically "magic," since Primality neither opens planar gates nor taps the same free energies, the difference is mostly academic when it comes to healing. Primalists draw directly on the raw energy of existence and of sentience, so they find it comparatively easy to affect the mind and soul. However, there are limits. Trauma to the mind has to be either removed entirely (as with the Arcane approach) or worked through. Primalists can do this the way druids do, or they can create a mindscape for the patient to navigate (like an induced vision quest). The patient will emerge, if they emerge from an induced hallucination forever. They will either heal, grow worse, or never actually come out of the dream. To heal the soul they simply infuse it with power. If the damage is not too severe, it will be restored. If the damage is too severe, a new soul will grow, and the person will be radically altered. Primality's limitation is actually physical healing. Without the aid of more traditional magic Primalists find it virtually impossible to restore the body without causing a commensurate degree of physical change. They can adjust their own bodies so that the damage is less severe but their shape is badly warped, or accelerate their own healing with horrific scarring, they can take on the wounds of others in their place, or they can block out pain and prevent the injury from being noticed (mostly a trick of the mind). Some, psychic surgeons, can actually alter the physical body permanently in dazzling ways - though such effects require a period of more natural healing to become permanent without horrible side effects. Possibly due to the flowing duality of the Primal pairs, no physical action can be taken on the body without a commensurate reaction. This is only the case with mortal Primalists, however. Spirits, demons, and similar beings have no such limits, though their natures bind them in other ways.

#### The Resurrection Exception

Other than the gods, for whom the process is arduous and heavily restricted by the Precursor, no records of reliable methods for raising the dead exist. Priests who attempt their method on corpses just cause the body to rapidly decay. Druids who attempt theirs tend to find the spell rebounds and forces them to shapeshift from a living druid into a not at all living corpse with no effect on the patient. Certain workarounds have been devised, but these are temporary and tend to arrest death rather than prevent it. Ancient gnomes discovered how to grow a new body from a tissue sample, similar to the process of "cloning" a plant, and devised a spell to transfer the mind and spirit upon death to the body. However, the process requires so much power as that only archmages can attempt it, and the bodies never last more than year after the transfer. Each additional "jump" forces the body's new lifespan to shorten. Similarly, the Emperor of the Culmoloi once created his "Phylactery of Flesh," a way of resurrecting himself by grafting tissue into a living being and then usurping control of that beings' form. This was never put to the test, however, and would have resulted in his being a kind of "living lich" rather than returning from death. The best hope is to use a version of the Arcane method (see above), but this research is dangerous and has had momentous effects on the world when attempted previously, so it is heavily condemned by the Arcans. It is possible, though unlikely, that Primalists have a method of raising the dead, but the exercise of that method would make it impossible to verify whether or not it worked. The most reliable way for a Primal Expression to heal someone is to transfer the vitality of the Primalist to the patient, healing them and taking on some of the patient's wounds in return. If used successfully on a dead person, which would be exhausting and incredibly difficult, this method would return them to life and kill the Primalist. However, if the Primalist only absorbed the wounds it would result in a dead Primalist and a dead patient, so not just the wounds but the very act of dying must be absorbed. This bends time in the way arcane healing does, allowing the Primalist to die at the moment the patient did and causing circumstances to twist so that the patient lives and the Primalist dies before ever working the expression in the first place (this may be able to alter Fate slightly, but Dmalthtome refuses to confirm or deny this because "if it ever happened, then it never happened, and nothing has changed").