Skeptic Magic

Skeptic magic involves focusing inwards on one's own mind, using discipline and control to separate the individual mind from local reality, creating a temporary separate reality controlled by the mind that created it. In practical terms, this reality is only separate by degrees of freedom, and is still partially connected to the outer reality, although the purpose of some skeptic traditions is a complete and permanent disconnection. Achieving greater degrees of freedom is a temporary state, but while within that state, laws of reality around the skeptic can be modified, imposed or ignored.

This separate reality has three aspects: Magnitude, Volume and Duration, as it relates to the outer reality from which it is separated. Magnitude is the strength of the reality, its ‘realness’. This increases with the degree of separation. Volume is the physical space around the skeptic that is affected. This bubble of reality becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain the further out from his or her own mind this conception is extended. Duration is the length of time the separation is maintained.

Skeptics are often trained by mentors. They will sometimes gather with others to share techniques, safety or to help maintain seclusion. Others discover the discipline and develop their own methods, particularly those who practice other forms of magic at high levels who have trained and disciplined minds. Then there are those that develop it by chance, particularly individuals with mental abnormalities or who employ the aid of mind altering substances or trials.

The insane, those naturally divorced from surronding reality through their mental disorder, are able to warp reality around them unintentionally and unpredictably. This hazard has resulted in near universal disapproval of skeptic magic by most societies. Even trained, disciplined skeptics can cause perceptual deadzones around themselves without conscious effort and when in civilization they must be careful to allow outside perception to flow around them or to consciously submit to it. The ability to disrupt the magic of others in such a way is one of the reasons many societities disapprove of or outlaw skeptic magic.