The Shelling Guide

This little article will deal with shelling, the noble and treasured art of keeping your constructs alive and kicking on their own. I'll try to explain the inner work to the best of my ability, and if you know me right, I'll give you a few examples to work with. Alright, let's dig in.

I trust you can make a basic construct, if not, then this is not the place to learn it. Let's pick... oh I don't know, a psiball? Although Rain would have us all make psicubes and cones, we'll pick this form so all can join in. Create the psiball through your method of choice, let's keep this really simple so I just want you to merely pool a blob of psi striking some kind of spheroid figure. Make sure the psi is not in your palms. Now let's feel around the ball and carefully smooth it out to a globe. If you ever played with clay this shouldn't be too hard. Keep smothering the surface and visualize the core of the ball pressing out towards the shell, try to feel the psi creeping too, it's good to combine two ways of visualization. When you feel that most of the construct concists of it's outer field, you are well on your way.

Now you need to program the construct. Oh no! Not programming! Don't worry, this only requires basic programming of two things, the main command, in this case "hold together" and the secondary command, in this case the duration to which the construct will hold together, here presented in percieved time. I say percieved time because I feel this is a more personal approach than setting a specific time, like 17:14. This is just the way I do it, you are of course free to choose whatever method that floats your boat.

Alright, programming time. I normally work with tactile visualization on this one, but I'll go over both tactile and visual visualization.

Tactile Visualization

Stretch out with your awareness a little and feel the outer edge turn from soft to hard, and equally important, durable. If you do not understand how to do this then go check the Sensitivity Manual. If you need a "feel tool" you can pour some stearine (paraffin wax, for you Americans) in your hand and feel it slowly turning solid. Just a few drops, don't take scoups. Go watch some glass go from molten to solid and try to relate to the process, feel the glass turning solid. Be sure to "feel" it resist breakage. The key factor in programming is that you have to believe in it, if it doesn't make sense to you, it won't work. You are working with symbols here, the prefered language of your subconscious.

When you are certain you have the right visualization you inprint it on/in the construct. This you do while performing the tactile visualization as you pool the psi between your hands in one smooth move, or you can bridge the two events by a third visualization, in where you place the finished programming as a seperate little ball within the construct and let the two melt together. Put the programming ball in the center and let it act as a "spider in the net" to the psiball. Yup, you can use that visualization if you fee like it.

You apply the timer in the same fashion, but here you feel the duration, two hours for example and inrpint this feeling, these "to-be-passed" hours, into the psiball and feel it in place.

Visual Visualization

Alrighty, the weapon of choice for many around here. Well it's easy to come up with examples, but remember that they must make sense to you. Fog turning into misty eggshell or frosted glass is good, and so is molten led hardening, water turning into ice, etc. I'll give you one that I came up with as I wrote this article in the park this morning.

Visualize the psiball pulsating, make it into an animation in your head and when a satisfactory pulsating movement has been reached, you freeze the image. For some reason, this frozen image feels unbreakable. It was fragile a second ago, but now it is no longer a part of "reality", ie, the clip and therefor does not apply to the rules. And if you know your cartoons right, you know just aswell as I do that you cannot smash something that has been frozen out of time. I found this an interesting visualization that works great for it's purpose.

I'm not too good at applying the timer through visualization but a set timer should do it, like 16:30, or a clock with a curve showing the duration of the construct. Apply this while visualizing the timer within the psiball, sinking into it and sticking.

Just remember to add enough energy to the construct for it to feed on during it's stay.

So now you should have ended up with a psiball that feels much richer than the ones you usually do. It's a good idea to place a thin finishing layer over the whole thing and let it soak into the ball, further integrating the psiball and it's programming. It should be richly intertwined - inexplicably bound even.

If you want to go all fancy you can apply a destruct programming and tie it to a physical movement instead of a timer. For example, clapping your hands twice in a row will make the psiball fade. This you apply the same way you shelled the construct.

So there you have it. An easy way to keep your constructs from falling apart when you stop paying attention to them. Play and modify with this as you please.