Visomancy

The academic title given to a sect of casting often referred to by any number of informal titles (among them 'Soul Magic', 'Glimmer Magic', 'Force Magic', 'The Simple Sorceries', and others), visomancy is a sect commonly described as both the easiest method of channeling for practicioners of sorcery to learn and the hardest to master. For this reason, though its techniques are employed across students of all schools, it is rare to see a scholar dedicated to visomancy entirely, and those that manage to advance in visomantic arts are often held in high regard amongst their peers. While other casting sects attempt to use the flow of mana to influence the world around them, using their own souls as a focal point to translate the latent energies around them into motion, visomancy focuses on the manipulation of this basic energy itself. This serves as both a strong teaching point for those just beginning to dabble in the mystic arts and an invaluable resource for which to draw upon for those who have specialized in other areas – there's not a battlemage alive who couldn't benefit from the occasional spellshield, and even the most purely academically-inclined can find the benefit in shfting books and organizing shelves with a wave of their hands – but offers a particular edge to those who dedicate themselves to the study. Unlike umbramancy which can harness mana to create temporary, semi-physical objects from seemingly nothing, visomancy instead harnesses the sheer energy of that mana itself to create areas of intense force. Such instances are unstable, temporary, and much less precise than a learned psychokineticist could manage — but are far more powerful. While rudimentary applications of visomancy typically limit themselves to the creation of temporary barriers or minor projectiles, visomantic adepts have been recorded lobbing comets or directing beams of concentrated magical energy which combust upon contact with the physical, bolstering their own souls to overflow with mana and provide their physical forms with incredible strength and speed, or redirecting and severing the flow of mana to cripple a foe's spellcasting capabilities entirely.