Night Vision
See with eyes unclouded by shadow.
Prerequisite: Basic Fire & Earth
How to learn: Students first learning this skill often use nights of the full moon to accustom themselves to darkness gradually as the nights get darker, until passing the ‘final test’ of walking easily through an obstacle course set up by an instructor on the night of the new moon. Many tomes state this skill can only be self-taught, and if a student can’t learn to ‘get the feel’ for seeing through darkness within the time it takes for the moon to become new, then they are not worth teaching Dark Magic.
Usage: Night Vision is best used at night, but can also be used to see one’s way through thick, dark forests, deep caves, and even lost, unexplored tombs. Those with a crooked moral compass could easily use this ability to ease nightly thievery and household break-ins.
Limitations: Using Night Vision makes a wyngro’s eyes far more sensitive to light than they would normally be. Even simple candlelight can feel burningly bright to a wyngro using Night Vision, and attempting to use Night Vision in daylight can cause temporary blindness.
Generate Darkness
Create darkness as you wish.
Prerequisite: Basic Fire & Earth
How to learn: Best learned in a dark room with some minimal light, like a candle. Students often begin by attempting to ‘shrink’ the pool of light created by the candle, to first get a feel for working with darkness. Then, creating little dots of darkness in the pool of light where normally there would be none. Often these ‘spots’ are no larger than the tip of a finger when first learning.
Usage: Making shadows where there would be none helps offer many opportunities to make your own hiding spots when necessary. Of course this only works in spots where people would expect to see shadows, as a blob of darkness in the middle of a field can be quite obvious.
Limitations: The brighter it is, the harder it is to create darker shadows and keep them going for long. This skill works best at night or in dimly lit rooms, though the determined can learn to snuff out more brightly lit rooms with enough practice and determination.
Create Illusions
Warp reality to your will.
Prerequisite: Basic Fire & Earth
How to learn: The art of illusion is actually the first step into meddling with others’ minds, and not a skill lightly taught. Casting illusions is a matter of mind over matter: a student usually begins practicing this ability with their eyes closed to ensure they can fully focus on what illusion they are trying to create. Beginners usually start with small semi-transparent visual illusions, almost like ‘ghosts’, before practicing illusions to beguile the other senses.
Usage: Illusions are primarily useful for deception, fooling others primarily through visual and/or auditory hallucinations.
Limitations: Visual illusions are by far the simplest to create, and most likely to be able to fool someone. Though the more wyngrew the illusion is being cast on, the harder it is for the caster to keep up the deception. Most beginners can only cast an illusion on one wyngro at a time, while a master would likely struggle if trying to fool more than a dozen with a simple illusion.
Auditory illusions are much harder to craft, the ‘sounds’ often sounding like they come from no direction at all. Most illusion masters learn Basic Wind Magic to be able to make more believable with warped sound instead of illusionary whispers into someone’s head. Illusions cannot be touched, smelt, or tasted.
Read Minds
Peer into the thoughts of others.
Prerequisits: Basic Fire & Earth
How to learn: This magic requires a willing partner thinking very hard of something specific for the practicing student to guess what they’re thinking. Direct eye contact is required for the magic to work, and for the one doing the mind reading to keep their mind as empty as possible to properly and clearly read the other’s thoughts.
Usage: This magic is best used to gather secrets otherwise never slipped free by pen or tongue.
Limitations: Some say the eyes are the window to the soul, and they would be partially correct. In order to peer into another’s thoughts, it’s required to look into thier eyes to do so. Even then, you can only look so far: even masters can only look into what a wyngro is currently thinking at the time the magic is cast. Most Dark Magic users quickly learn to ask the right kind of questions or making guiding remarks to get a target thinking about what they want to know before casting this magic.
Unfortunately the tell-tale glowing magic glands make this magic difficult to perform without notice unless preventive steps are taken beforehand, like thick black makeup applied to hide the glow or a deep, concealing hood.