???? I had heard the schools were organized the way they are because the Mages Guild felt that it would be easier for academic education and physical training.

I doubt even the mages guild knows why they organize things the way they do. In some respects its pretty arbitrary.

I blame Traven

Oh, lol. My bad.

Also , people's magicka is based on birthsigns. You can be born with stunted magicka and not be able to absorb the magicka from um Aethrius which looks like space from Nirn . The things that look like stars are the hole through Aethrius I forgot how those dang holes got there. Something to do with the whole creation process and some god went through the fabric of Aethrius or something kinda rusty with my lore though. Basically every being is made of Magicka and when you die in Nern you body goes back into Aethrius. Yea something like that , like I said my lore is rusty.....

And you're a Master poster, too. Shame on you. lol Nah I'm just pulling your one-eyed trouser snake. But seriously, is there no one here with the courage to answer my six questions? Because I really want to know what is past the stars, or right next to them. I mean, you have the end of the Mundus with holes in it that lead to Aetherius, but isn't Aetherius in a different dimension/realm? If you were to fly to the end but not go through the stars/holes, but rather right next to them, would it be like bumping into glass? And would the light be blinding? I bet Hellmouth knows... or Proweler. or MK. or Jeeves.

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/4708/cosmologyofnirns.jpg. The center is Mundus, followed by Oblivion, the tears, then the Aetherius.

Also, I'd say one would continue to swim through the waters of Oblivion if they didn't enter a hole into the Aetherius (I would say Oblivion is "endless" [endless is there as a post-it note till someone gives better info or I find it]). I like to believe the holes to be like dimensional tears that lead to the Aetherius from Oblivion.

I rarely post on lore forums and haven't looked into lore until earlier this year and plus I don't know how long since I seriously took a gander at the Imperial Library. But another thing I remember about the topic in hand that there was these sun birds of sorts sent to to go into the sun , I forgot what they call the sun in TES and how if you go through the sun you materialize into magicka or something. What book from the imperial library is these birds from again?

A long post about the schools, and their ways of getting the desired effects out of spells.

Conjuration is about intense focus and desire, according to this passage of http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:2920,_Frostfall_%28v10%29


http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Mysticism_-_Unfathomable_Voyage

Alteration's already been covered.

Illusion is all about how you change something's perception without altering it physically. According to "http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Incident_in_Necrom"


Restoration (at least fortifying) is more about using Magicka to help yourself or others in general, using various ways and methods, according to "http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:The_Four_Suitors_of_Benitah"





As for destruction, I've got no clue. However the people in the Destruction Skill Books seem to be very merciless and angry, it's also mentioned in http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Refugees, how a healer reversed her spell when she became angry.

Destruction, I'd say, is about controlling the forces of entropy, and causing harm. Stuff like drain and damage stats and skills, and using magicka to damage, I'd say, works oppositely to restoration (entropic forces), while your standard elemental spell is conjuring forth fire/ice/electricity/poison to cause harm

Mhm, that's what I was thinking. There hasn't really been actual insight into it, so that's probably the best explanation.

The schools of magic were set up by I think Galerion to teach beginners more easily. really, the only difference between making other people not see you and making a person's head explode is what you are convincing yourself is possible. You are still running the equasion through your brain and convincing yourself that you are invisible or that the air can spontaneously burst into a controlled fireball going in a particular direction. It's just a different equasion, but it's easier to teach a beginner if the beginner is thinking in categories instead of overwhelming him or her with esoteric nonsense.

Imagine "You can do anything." compared to "You can do things in these different schools, that are broken down by different thought processes."

Bretons are particularly talented at abstract thinking, which is why they say they're good at magic.

I think of the schools as methods of thinking. Destruction is about breaking things apart or using the energy that's there (there's heat, static charge, and cold all around you). Restoration is about thinking of things anatomically and changing them to your liking. Illusion is about tricking the senses into believing that they see things that they aren't, or making you believe in a thought like "I can't move" or "I can see in the dark". Mysticism is along the lines of making something happen without understanding it. Alteration is about bending the rules of reality, and convincing yourself that the changes your mind has made are true and using your magicka do its work. While Conjuration is about desiring something and perhaps picturing it in your mind, and plucking it from a different realm.

I'm thinking of advancing in a skill as getting better holding that thought, and getting better at thinking out how it works. A beginner may think "I can use the air already in the water to breathe like a fish." while an expert may think "I can breathe water." But you have to have the magicka to make it work too, so earlier methods may be easier, but more advanced methods may be more powerful.

You can also see where a person who thinks "I can make the tissues reattach themselves and seal the wounds." would have a hard time transitioning to "I can make that vase move without touching it." More likely than not they'd try to break it down into a logical form, but it wouldn't make sense to them and they couldn't do it. While at the same time somebody who's skilled at harnessing the energy around them to do harm by quickly concentrating a large amount of heat would have a hard time trying to believe that they can withstand more damage without trying to draw in some kind of power around them.

What I don't understand, though. Is why people can't use spells at a distance without firing it from themselves. Why can't you just pass by somebody and light them on fire?