Shields

              The knowledge of shields and the mastery of their usage is a vital component in the repertoire of a modern magus. This world is full of magick, and much of it is of a kind that you may not want to be in contact with it. Besides, it is much more efficient to be prepared with shielding techniques than merely react to stimulus with protection spells or countermagick. Shields are, in essence, personal energy fields constructed for the purpose of acting as an energy filter and a defense grid when needed. This chapter will illustrate shield creation and usage as well as the practitioner’s natural defenses.
              The first step is to come up with a personal visualization for shields and how they work when used. Most practitioners encounter thus far by the author tend to use what can be said as the force field model. They see their shields as energy fields that harden and flex when attacked, much like fictional shields in Star Trek or Star Wars. As the threat vary they visually alter the ‘frequency’ of the shields to adapt. Though other visualizations are available, the imagination of the practitioner is the only real limitation. Shields could be seen as the actual historical devices that materialize to stop the incoming threat as it nears the practitioner, or it could be a metaphysical membrane that surrounds the practitioner that blocks or absorbs the threat much like its biological counterpart, the possibilities are endless. Shields encompass a space much of the same size as a person’s aura, and thus vary from person to person. They can, with increased energy expenditure, be made to cover an area much greater if the controller of the shield has the focus and skill to maintain the integrity of the field at such sizes. Normally shields are powered by the practitioner’s personal power reservoirs, though depending upon the practitioner’s ability and resources, may be hooked up to and empowered by external sources. These sources can be other magi, places of power, stored energy repositories, or energy drawn from the immediate environment. In most cases the amount of power fed to the shields will relate directly to their strength, though a skillful manipulation of that energy is required to adapt the shield to the particular situation or a multitude of threats with different methods of attack.
              The particular visualization of a shield will greatly affect the exact methods in which the shield is powered, adapts to threats, and is used when the time comes. To illustrate we will use two examples. First, the force field style of shield. Most practitioners who employ this sort of shield usually only have it nominally powered during times of perceived safety or ‘downtime’. When a situation arises, they in essence use their magical will to give the ‘shields up’ command, and they begin to rapidly send energy into the energy patterns of the shield. Depending upon their skill in energy manipulation, the shields will grow to their full power very quickly or gradually. As the threats vary in number and type, the practitioner visualized a change in their shield’s ‘frequency’ or ‘recalibrate’ the field in order to deal with the new threat. Most practitioners using the force field style of shield use, in addition to their personal power, external sources. Most of these sources are connected with visualizations of power cables, tendrils of pure energy, or sigils that funned power directly into the shield. The second example, the membrane style of shield, is much different. Practitioners who use this style of shield tend to keep it somewhat more charged at all times than the force field style practitioners. This gives them the advantage of being more difficult to affect when caught off-guard, though at any given time much more of their energy is directed towards maintaining their shield, and so may not be as aware of their environment or able to push greater quantities of energy into other directions without first withdrawing some from their shields. Membrane shields tend to function in a very organic manner, so have several methods of threat elimination. One way is for the membrane to harden, like chitin or tough skin, in order to simply deflect the incoming threat. Though the second method is the most versatile, even as it is the more difficult. The shield can be made to work like an external immune system in that it engulfs and dissipates (digests) the incoming threat. This has several benefits. The first is that the incoming threat is not merely sent in another direction, but is eliminated completely, so there will be no surprises that may arise as a result of only deflecting the threat. The second is that when the engulfed threat is dissipated, its energy goes to feed the shield itself, thus the more threats it is able to absorb, the more powerful it will become. This will allow, as the conflict continues, the user of the membrane shield to use personal energy for other purposes, as the shield itself is feeding off the efforts of the enemy.
              The ways around shields are just as infinite as the types of shields. Again, much of the way in which a practitioner will get around a shield depends upon that practitioner’s visualization of the opponent’s shield. If the shield is of the force field sort, a constant ‘recalibration’ of the attacks used may be able to stay one step ahead of the shield long enough to slip something through. Perhaps the practitioner could visualize the shield as the firewall software of a computer, and ‘hack’ the shield in order to bypass its defense grid and gain access to the ‘mainframe’, which would be the now unshielded practitioner behind the grid. If the shield is of the membrane style, then perhaps sending sizeable attacks or a multitude of them could overload the absorption capacity of the shield. The more devious attacker could create a threat designed to destroy the shield from the inside, like an organic ‘virus’ the threat is absorbed by the shield, only to replicate and overload the shield from the inside.  Naturally, there are several ways to bypass the need for complex shield-busting. One is to simply send such a powerful attack that the opponent’s shield is not able to affect it, and is simply blown through as the threat makes it’s way to the target. Another way is to plant an item on the person of the target, like a seemingly innocent gift of jewelry or perhaps a talisman slipped into their coat pocket when no one is looking. This item, given that it is connected to the attacker and according to the magical principle of contagion, provides the attacker with a way of instantly bypassing or corroding a breach in their target’s shield. This is of course only two examples, as an infinite number of shields exist, as to the ways in which to neutralize their defenses.
              Now that the concept of shielding has been explained, it would do to illustrate the practitioner’s natural defenses. A practitioner, by virtue of being a dynamic magical being, has certain naturally occurring defenses. They work much like shields, and in essence can be visualized as naturally occurring shields, like the aura. Something that is simply a natural part of the physiology of a magus. Though, like the aura or muscle, the natural defenses can be strengthened through training. The best way to become more naturally shielded towards magical attacks is to actually be assaulted. Just like any martial artist will tell you, no amount of training beats actual experience. However, there are ways to train oneself so that the practitioner can survive those valuable experiences. The author and associates have developed a little exercise they have aptly named Spellblast. The concept is very simple, though its execution requires trust, control, and responsibility. The participants consciously lower their shields, and by powering down their defensive grids leave themselves open to magical assault. Then the participants cast very weak hexes at each other. By not being protected by their shields the participants take the full force of the hex, though because the hex is weak it is not overly damaging and its effects are temporary, the results being minor discomfort and misfortune.  After being bombarded with these minor hexes the natural defenses are able to grow in potency and versatility as time goes on. Once the training is finished, shields are raised and the participants go through a cleansing to get rid of any persistent hex residue. After several years of this the natural defenses become quite potent, though constant evolution of the shields are also important. The end result is a practitioner with strong shields, though one who is capable of handling even powerful magical assaults when the shields are bypassed or if the practitioner is caught unawares.