9.3.4 THE HEALING SKILL (Secondary)

While this skill allows healing oneself through manipulations of the spiritual aura, it is also an empathic ability whereby the healer can take the wounds or ailments of another into him or herself. In contrast to traditional curatives, healers generally categorize ailments by non-mutually exclusive types (such as ailments of the sensory system) or humours (such as the phlegmatic temperaments). Eventually, experienced healers will be well trained to heal the deep wounds of others, cure their patients from afar, or even shed their own afflictions by flinging them onto the auras of their unsuspecting enemies.

The power of a healer's defensive and offensive abilities are directly linked to the healer's empathic reserves. Healers who exclusively use their curative powers on themselves will quickly lose empathy, which will increase the subsequent costs associated with curing themselves. As healers cure or heal others, however, their empathic reserves will recover, and the costs of using their healing abilities on themselves will return to normal. 

In addition to their healing powers, healers can use their superior knowledge of spiritual auras to hinder the healing abilities of their foes. Learned healers will be equipped with a number of offensive techniques that, as a side-effect, cause destabilization of their target's aura, also known as aurawarp. As a person's aura becomes increasingly destabilized or warped, he will have greater difficulty curing himself through traditional means, and eventually his aura may even unravel entirely. However, the degree of aura destabilization inflicted on a target is also linked closely to the healer's empathy, as more empathetic healers will naturally inflict less aurawarp.