These are attacks that generally come from one source or attacker, or a small group of attackers. They are targeted attacks, though you might come across one accidentally through tripping a construct, but this is rare. Sometimes you will get these from opportunistic entities, so don't make yourself a target by sloppy practices.

  These are attacks designed to impair you in some way, usually so a direct attack will be more successful on you. Illusions, harming your ability to perceive or your ability to do magic, all come under the category of indirect attacks.

  These are more likely to be the magical equivalent of flora and fauna than a strategic attack for a specific purpose. Energy fields, some astral entities and constructs are included in this, though sometimes it's difficult to discern where the line ends - selfreplicating constructs can quickly become just another type of astral pest, indeed all entities are constructs of a sort.

  Attackers may send hallucinations, voices, disturbing images or thoughts, manipulate your perception of reality, and send other energy attacks with various effects. This type of attack is most effective when you are new or your defenses are somehow compromised. Their various types of attacks can weaken your energy body if not properly defended against, and/or give your assemblage point a knock and move it into an unstable state, where it's harder to access your rational mind and locate and defense against the attack.

  On the long term, a destabilized assemblage point may leave you more vulnerable to other types of attacks that can `finish the job' on you, leaving you powerless and useless.

  These attacks usually cut you off from most of your rationality and stability in knowing the world. This can be very debilitating if you are not used to having your perceptions changed or usually have kept your reality in one level, as knowing our reality gives us a sense of security. The key to defeating this attack is to remain aloof while seeing the mutated perceptions. If you consider them seriously you'll get yourself in a state and waste all your energy worrying that you've gone insane. Accept what you're perceiving without accepting it, so that it can't grab ahold of you and so that you're not clinging to what you want your reality to be. Once you become stable with the warped perceptions, the ability to use will slowly returns and you can will yourself out of the attack and dispense with the attacker.

  Another method for dealing with blatant attacks is to use your personal shields. These are exercises used that will return the assemblage point to its usual position and so the distorted perceptions will disappear.

  Similar to the `Blatant' attack type. Entities that attack you in your sleep can lead to strange, twisted nightmares. Sometimes they lead you into being trapped several dream levels down so that you 'wake up' multiple times and it takes an act of will to finally wake up into reality. Other times they send things to attack you in the dream state, when these entities attack you it will feel like a painful electric shock or vibration, comparable by some to feeling 'the rolling force' said by don Juan to be the force that pushes us each second of our lives, the force that finally overcomes us when we die and pushes us towards the eagle's beak. The `rolling force' vibration is also similar to the feeling experienced when on the way to astral projection, many of the sensations in these attacks are similar.

  Sleep paralysis and other attacks that will alter your consciousness in waking to be less effective so you can fall prey to their other attacks easier. Sometimes you can get these too without any memory of the dream, but you will feel very groggy despite a good length of sleep, with a headache usually, (no, hangovers don't count). They like to work on you while you sleep as your defences are 'down' - none of us have reliable dreaming bodies.

  Sometimes you'll get dreams which seem like attacks but aren't, those being warnings of perception that you're being attacked in another way. It's kind of difficult to sense the difference between them sometimes, but you can just treat them in the same way by destroying the source of the attack whether dreamed or other.

  The way to combat these if you're stuck in a dream being attacked is to try to wake yourself up through intending it. Sometimes you will be able to detect your physical body while trapped in the dream and by trying to move it you can dispel the dream. Small body parts are the easiest to move as most of the body will be paralysed while you sleep, so you aren't running around sleepwalking. Try moving the tips of the fingers or wriggling the toes.

  If you're stuck in a dream attack where you wake up and are still in the dream, the solution is to claw yourself out of it through applying your will. Sometimes there will be many layers, all with a different obstacle or horror to face. Keep trying and you will get there.

  The important thing is not to concentrate on the events in the dream or abandon yourself to them, as this sets you up to have your energy drained by the dream. Focus only on getting out of the dream and ignore the flying screaming hell-bats or the naked rolling fat men etc.

  One of their attacks is this shimmering layer like the color oil makes on water. They use this between mages to reflect the image back at them. Simply put, it's an attack for separating mages, making it easier to attack them when isolated. The mirror image reflects magic and telepathy while giving the appearance that all is well. A variant of this can affect electrical equipment.

  Fortunately the `shimmering layer' is easy to detect once you're privy to it, or just have the self awareness to notice when you're being lead away from the flock. Wolves use this technique when hunting deer. Swallow your ego and ask for help if you can't disperse it on your own. These kind of attacks will frequently try to stop you from contacting anyone, causing them to be away at just the right moment or busy etc. Don't be meek and keep trying, sometimes even persistence will dispel these attacks.

  If you forget what attack this is, read the `Reality Waves and Points Theory' threads again.

  It's based on this except they use it against us. They get a small thread they can move easily a while back and then guide it into a maelstrom of whatever they want to screw you with. Very deceptive as it doesn't look at all like a magic attack, just 'bad luck' with strange events happening against you, like your dog being hit by a truck or your house catching fire... but it's very subtle work over a long period done by will so it's 'decomplicated' to cast. For example the tiny thread could be a small event that would change the outlook of a person causing a kernel of their philosophy to change resulting in them having a different reaction to you on a certain event leading to them kicking you from your house.

  That's just an example but you get the idea- insidious stuff and difficult to combat... until now.

  Causal attacks can be hard to detect but can also be extremely damaging to a mage, by targeting their lives; relationships, livelihood, school, etc. They get a small thread they can easily manipulate and over time it's guided into a maelstrom of their choosing, inflicted onto some aspect of your life.

  They are very deceptive as one might see the effects and assume it's just bad luck where something strange and terrible happens like a house fire or your dog being hit by a car.

  The event's cause could have been very subtle, lying with the manipulation of one small `reality thread' and growing into a destructive effect.

  For example the tiny thread could be a small event that changes the outlook of a person, causing a kernel of their philosophy to change resulting in them having a different reaction to you on a certain event leading to them kicking you out of your house. That's just one example of how a casual attack could play out.

  These attacks do take time to cast but are usually done through a retro-effect, manipulating the reality threads in the past to create a large effect in the present or nearfuture.

  Retroscanning and following the reality threads can lead you to its originator if you have the skill, where you can proceed to meatgrind them and remedy the threads to halt the effect. You need to be able to see the threads to move them back, or just move them into an acceptable position through a force of will. These are hard to detect if you're not actively searching for them, so it's good practice to do a daily sweep just as if you were searching for astral bugs. You can also make a construct effect field that automatically neutralises negative effects placed on you by thread manipulation, and they're quite effective too.

  These cause your normal thoughts to warp into troubling things so you can't think properly or form a defence. Like you'll think of your grandmother and see a grinning skull or eye sockets looking at you. Sometimes you'll get Aztec heads coming out the wall watching you all day and night and singing in Swedish. If these thoughts hook you in you can get on a track of mind where you try to find a solution to an imagined problem that would happen on a 0.0001% chance. They do this because you will spend your energy trying to find the solution where a solution is pointless and your energy will become agitated, leading to other attacks and entities gaining easy access to you. Some energy fields have this effect as well, but these are easier sensed and usually have other properties. These attacks are a lesser form of the `Blatant' attack type and most times you can still use your will normally, they are more of a distracting force than a real danger.

  It's important not to get lead down a thread of their thinking, in which they guide you to think about a scenario that they make you feel is important to unravel. The scenario often has no good solution and just serves to distract and agitate you. Whenever you start thinking like this, search for attacks and cleanse your energy.

  At a certain point they may make an artificial opening where everything finally looks easy. Then they guide you toward do or go along with whatever they made look simple. Then they stop guiding you and leave you set up to fall, because the abilities were either down to them or they were using some other attack to make you forget an important detail, etc etc. The purpose of this is to lead you into a trap by preying on your ego arrogance and lack of caution.

  Avoid these by being aware of your limitations and not getting into a situation that you can't handle alone. Allies can't always be relied on so act strategically when doing magic. Ignore the ones saying “Don't look the gift Cerberus in the mouths” because being rude is very important if you want to survive. Be suspicious if someone aids you without reason but not paranoid. Always have a backup plan.

They can sometimes manipulate your thoughts so that you think you've done something when you haven't. The reason for this is that they've actually done the same thing to another, so that once you find out about this you claim that it was your act. So when you are warned of a threat, you will think that everything is alright and you won't feel the need to defend against what you supposedly did yourself. You will instead undo “your” effect, and you're not open for further attacks because in fact THEIR effect is still there. They canalso use these to make an ally think you attacked them or get others to think the same by imitating your energy signature.

  As a further result, an ally may be trying to tell you that you did not do it, and while they are setting up a massive fortification to defend against the flood that is coming, you're standing outside to try to stop the rain that you think you caused. This is egoism. Always try to listen to others without putting your own opinions on a pedestal.

  Sometimes you will be subjected to moments which are hurtful and be tricked into believing it was yourself that caused it through your will. This is just another variant of the misdirection. The thing is that as long as you don't believe you caused the attack, your subconscious will negate the effect. Though the attack will make you doubtful by the effects it has, sometimes combined with other attacks like the reality threads to cause bad coincidences. The solution to this attack is don't be a martyr. If you're not running around murdering people then you're not so bad really. Think for yourself and cast out the mind worms. Realize the trick and then don't react, as that's their goal for you.

  These creatures seem to arise naturally and feed on various energies. If you don't shield or if you bleed out a lot of tasty energy these things will soon make a meal out of you. They come in more varieties than can be known and sometimes spread disease effects, mutate your energy, change your mental state etc. You will feel tired or maybe emotional for no reason. When scanned these are commonly seen as bugs, worms, beetles or swarms of flies. It's unclear whether that's the form they take or we see them that way because of what bugs represent to us in this world - disease and decay.

  Blast these out using energy and turn them into ash. Afterwards you should ground yourself and clear your energies to remove any harmful effects that the parasites could've had on you. Meditate on a white ball of light spinning at your solar plexus, where the stomach is in the body. Feel the cleansing energy flow into every part, dislodging the negative energies and carrying them away. Then feel the energy leaving through your feet into the ground and being neutralised by Gaia's energy. You can recoup the energy by bringing the yellow-gold energy from the Earth and flowing it through you. Breathe deeply while doing all of this. There are many other cleansing and healing techniques available, Reiki is a good one and simple to learn.

  Makes you forget a point of reality, even to the point that it ever existed. Dissolves your thoughts. See on wikipedia as `thought removal'. This article would be here months sooner if the clouds were not in place, as it had been planned but not written because of 'mysterious distractions' Stops you from thinking on a certain thing, it's what keeps many from being able to practice magic or participate in their community.

  Defences are the Castanedan-esque 'personal shields'; effective techniques for stopping the cloud are breathing quick, short breaths so that you feel a vibration in the stomach, splashing COLD water on the face, or jogging on the spot. There are lots of these, splashed around like mines. They also pop up whenever one of us gets too close to finding out about a series of attacks. To be aware of the attacks, you need to store poder.

  Though this is grouped under hazards as the cloud element was first discovered that way, it is also a direct-based attack that can be used either by dropping fields of the cloud element in locations, programming them to take effect on a certain trigger, or will-based direct cloud attacks that don't use the element at all except in thought.

  Seals are magic locks intending to prevent you from accessing something, usually your own abilities or wills. Mental blocks because of not having enough power to receive them are different and are caused naturally so you don't take on too much early and injure yourself. Magic locks that've been put on you can be sensed by a feeling of being `held back' and stifled by some source. They might prevent you from doing a certain magic like healing or using a certain energy, or block your sight from a certain magic thing that was supposed to advance you, like a reality point. Sometimes the seal is designed to drain your power and use it to power the seal or to siphon it off so the attacker can use it, this is a leech seal when designed for the main purpose of stopping your power, I generally call ones designed for mainly stealing power as parasites though we get fiddly with semantics at this stage. Doesn't matter what you call them as long as everyone knows what each do.

  Some seals have a malignant effect on them too, so instead of you casting a shield it will filter and program the energy into something harmful, like attacking a friend. This has the added part of demoralising who they attacked and maybe getting them to attack you, so again be careful. If you feel something is wrong with you, even because you tripped over stairs, it's nothing to take 5 seconds and scan yourself. Seals are pretty easy to detect for the energy-aware but sometimes you can get seals on parts of yourself that you barely use that can go unnoticed. Like someone with a closed crown chakra who doesn't notice it's been sealed because they hardly use it anyway. So another prevention is just to keep balanced and tune every part of your energy body, even if you don't consider it that useful at the moment.