Talk:Aura/@comment-28257386-20140717050620/@comment-10390252-20140717072602

My personal headcanon is that the Aura is a combination of bio-etheric energy source and an energy field surrounding the body. It can be focussed into a shield and adepts (like Ren) can detect objects by the distortion they cause to the field. It is mostly passive, 'on' all the time, even though an untrained person won't necessarily understand its warnings or correctly interpret its effects.

True adepts can focus this field into a variety of active forms like Ren or Cinder's palm shields or Ren's super-punch. However this is very much 'cast from HP' and accelerates fatigue.

In this theory, Semblance is a narrowly focussed active part of the Aura. Everyone has one but you need training to identify and utilise it. Semblance is evidently limited to a single active effect but a well-trained Adept can utilise it in many ways. The range and flexibility of Aura is further widened by using aura-activated Dust weapons or tools. We have not seen it, except possibly with Weiss, but I suspect you can also charge a Dust-powered impliment with your semblance effect or alter your Semblance in some ways by introducing the appropriate Dust to it in some way.