Lately I've been thinking and searching on how invisibility works in TES universe. I see it working one of these two ways:

• It changes how light interacts with your body making it pass through or around you instead of being absorved/reflected;
• It actually changes the perseption of those around you, trickering their eyes to see what's behind you.

The same could be said about muffle:

• Does the spell block/absorb the noise you make; or
• it mess with pple's ears/mind so their brains ignore the noise.

If the first one is correct I don't see why it sholdn't be under alteration school. Unless they wanted to "balance" the schools of magic.

If the second one is corret, then it indeed should be in the illusion school. But it should require more magicka to cast such spells in crowded locations, but again it could be gameplay feature.

My final question is: is there any piece of lore that confirms/denies one of those possiblities?

In Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, the invisibility magic effect belongs to the illusion school. There is not much more to say, is there?

The way I see magic in TES is that you can potentially cast any spell, using only one school of magic. Schools are only there to make it easier for students of magicka to learn spells, as some spells are way easier to cast with other schools.

For this reason, the same spell might not belong to the same school of magic in all areas of tamriel, since some schools have chosen to study other spells. They have categorized their spell-schools differently.

This is, however, my own interpretation, something which I consider a useful tool when writing fan-fic, as well as an easy explanation why spells constantly keep changing schools from TES game to TES game.

For example, invisibility: You could alter reality around you, making you invisible. Or, you could create an illusion. You might, perhaps, be able to summon a thin veil around you with conjuration, a veil that looks precisely like the area behind you, making you invisible to the naked eye. Who knows what kind of things you'd be able to do with mysticism, absorbing light around you and whatnot. Restoration and destruction schools might struggle with this particular spell though, although you might be able to destroy your physical body's visiblity with destruction, or simply destroy the light coming at you. However when absording and destroying light, I believe you'd still be visible in some way. A shade, or a one-colored figure of sorts. A black hole?

No, no ,no, you're doing this all wrong, ladyonthemoon. There's always more to say. Because here in the Elder Scrolls Series Discussion forum we proudly argue about nothing and do it for no reason.

I had noticed! Go figure...

That's exactly my point. there're more than one way to make someone "invisible". I got to the same conclusion about schools (when I was reading Galerion the Mystic IIRC). My question was if there's any book or text that mention which method they use to reach invisility.

@ladyonthemoon, a spell being under a certain school has nothing to do with how it works. It could be listed under Illusion for what the spells achieves, not how it is achieved. throwing a fireball or creating a stream of cold wind is pretty alterationish to me, but is listed under destruction for the effect it causes.

Illusion.

You're not really invisible, you're affectng someone's mind so that they fail to register you.

This is why, in Morrowind at least, you could not successfully cast the spell in someone's line of sight as tricks of the mind like that don't work if someone is looking right at you.

There is much truth to this statement... lol

Did you have some reason for posting that, or are you just being argumentative?

(Yeah, I can see right through you. So you must be invisible. So I'm on topic after all. Sort of. )