Healing
Healing magics are in some ways the most accessible and the most difficult to master of all the magic abilities available to almost any mage on Agrakos. They also stand out in the modern schools of teaching magic in that they have no dedicated Magi, or really any single god as a patron of healers. Instead, the varying range of healing magics have a varying range of patrons and methods.
Overview
[edit]Almost all forms of healing work through magically speeding up the natural healing processes, as the individual processes of natural healing are so numerous and complex that it takes a master of the subject to replicate it through other means. This means that the vast majority of healing done by any sort of mage is simply the act of encouraging the body to do what it would already have done at a much greater rate. This does mean that hastily done healing magic can often leave a patient with lasting side effects just the same as a naturally healed.
One of the major differences between the different healing magics is where they draw the energy from. The patient’s own energy, and the energy of magic itself are the two primary sources, though some can draw upon natural energy, their own, that of spirits, or that given by a divine benefactor. Healing drawing from the patient’s own energy is by far the easiest to learn and the easiest to control, as it plays upon the innate nature of speeding up said patient’s own natural healing processes. However, it does have the side effect of draining them of energy, leaving the patient exhausted, and potentially incredibly sore.
In all forms of healing magics, if the healer does not know what they are doing, they run the risk of healing an injury improperly. This can result in severe scarring, or worse. This can be the most evident in battlefield healing of broken bones, which in the worst cases may need to be rebroken to be properly healed.
Generally healing magic will leave a person in immense pain, as their body undergoes the rapid healing of a wound that may have proved fatal or would have taken weeks or months to heal properly. The soreness and pain can be mitigated by skillful healing, and even more so by using a source of energy which does not draw directly from the patient. The one exception to this is a patient who has recently suffered from apprentice's sickness, in which case any sort of healing will be excruciating. It is highly inadvisable to draw upon anything but the patient’s own energy in such a situation for fear of worsening the apprentice’s sickness or even causing permanent damage.
Healing magics can backfire and rebound onto a person, usually in a localized sense, if their subject is fully deceased or otherwise resistant or immune to magical manipulations.