Mastery of shaping - Imagination, shaping and causality.
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2022 8:07 am
Factotum Raena wrote:It's been quite a while since I've put my thoughts on our philosophy and techniques to paper, so allow me, dear reader, to talk about our flashiest talent today. Allow me to discuss imagination and shaping, and how causality plays a part into it.
As the canny cutter you are, you are undoubtedly well aware of the fact that belief is important in the Outer Planes, and how our faction has the ability to shape this belief into the results we desire, given enough concentration and technique. This has often been called imagination or shaping alternatively, so, allow me to categorize it as I see it in my Mind's Eye.
Bear in mind, dear reader, that these are my thoughts and methods. These might be useful to you, but they are not to be taken as gospel. Your interpretation is as valid as mine; and if something different works for you, then it works. This is what works for me. Allow me to elaborate on Rough Shaping and Soft Shaping.
Imagination, or Rough Shaping
You've seen this in action, dear cutter. This is the most basic of your talents, what I've been taken to call Rough Shaping. With this method, you pit your will against the Multiverse, you say "I want this end result to happen", and if your will is strong enough to contest the opposing will of the Multiverse, it does. You might create a flower out of thin air, you might spontaneously cast a spell you hadn't prepared, or that you might not even be able to cast at all if you are a strong basher instead of a dazzler, because you used your force of will to do so. Isn't that pretty impressive? Isn't that the strongest, most potent display of skill and power in the Multiverse?
Not really.
Rough shaping is flashy, in the same way that using a battering ram to open a pantry door is. You've most certainly opened the door, but you have done it in quite a savage way. Rough Shaping changes the multiverse without causality, and thus, it's resisted and pitted against the collective subconscious. That is not to say that Rough Shaping doesn't have its advantages, for it certainly does. Sometimes you don't need subtlety. Sometimes it is convenient, or even necessary. If rough shaping can give you an immediate advantage in a critical situation, you should most certainly use it.
However, you should be aware of its limitations and dangers. Sometimes the multiverse doesn't like being tampered with. Pitting your own will against it comes with its share of dangers. The more skilled you are with projecting your will, the most dangerous it becomes. Unless you, dear reader, are Lugh the Longhand, you have undoubtedly tried to do something in the past and failed at it. Miserably, at times. When that happens with rough shaping, the results can be disastrous.
When you project your ego onto the multiverse, and the multiverse says "no", the blow can be difficult to take. It might make you feel hollow and dejected, unvalid and unaccepted by the collective subsconscious. Such feelings go away with time for normal failures, but when you fail in shaping the multiverse in catastrophical ways? The multiverse might decide that you are an irritant, and irritants need to be disposed of. When you use a battering ram to take down a pantry door, you run the risk of hurting yourself. There have been known cases of Signers losing themselves in this process - when the multiverse disbelieves their changes, they start disbelieving in themselves, and fading into obscurity. Sometimes, they disappear completely.
Reverse solipsism is one Hell of an ironic fate for the Centre of the Multiverse, isn't it?