Cybermancy

If a child’s parents, mostly the pregnant mother, get exposed to Cyberian on an adequate level - the right time and amount of exposure remaining unknown - their kid might become a Cybermancer. Cybermancers are gifted people born with psionic powers that they are able to use after receiving enough training, including mind reading, sharing their memories with others or, rarely, ability to shape parts of their realm, creating shields or projectiles of pure energy for a limited time. Most of their cells become replaced with corresponding Cyberian type dependent on parents’ exposure, making way for quick body regeneration, even in the case of death, allowing them to survive fatal wounds and come back to life within hours - as long as their body is still able to sustain itself. Often cell rotation also stops the aging process after reaching a certain age, differing between individuals. Unfortunately for them, it also makes them infertile and unable to have children.

Once a Cybermancer realizes their heritage, either by extreme stress conditions, noticing their regenerative properties, written knowledge or with age, they become “Awakened” and have all powers at their disposal - however, they will not use any of them to their full extent and will require extensive rest after even the simplest attempts of casting, as all of their powers require high amounts of concentration at first. They’re able to train their abilities by themselves or with help of trainers. Trained individuals require less focus to use their powers, allowing them to utilize them for longer or sometimes transform them into more powerful variants. This process takes a lot of time, however, and as such is often artificially hastened with use of drugs or technology to extend time of focus or force higher levels of powers. Hastening poses a health hazard that often cannot be negated, even by healing properties of Cybermancers’ bodies due to damage inflicted directly to their brain. Damage is always temporary, but might take a long time to recover. Often times it’s simple memory loss, but can also result in paralysis or loss of several higher brain functions.

There is no limit on the amount of Cybermancers in the world and their birth is a rare sighting - one in ten millions chance or lesser, according to studies. They aren’t that hard to find, however - due to their healing abilities and lack of aging, many of them have survived hundreds of years, remaining alive in the modern age - and their birth rate is steadily increasing as Cyberian becomes more prominent in daily lives of Teurorans, increasing their exposure to it.

In the past, most Cybermancers who were found using their abilities were burnt alive after being accused of “dark arts”. In the modern era, however, Cybermancers are mostly seen as powerful tools for governments - often captured in their youth, taken away from their parents before they’re able to fight back, then raised by complete strangers and experimented upon with a sole goal of creating a perfect weapon - swift, efficient, and most importantly, immortal. Most Cybermancers are locked away and hidden from public eye while the masses are fed with lies dehumanizing “gifted people” - simply to induce fear in the event they meet one. Those not affiliated with governments - either by escaping or never being found out in the first place - either hide their abilities from the public or flock to the few places that welcome their kind - usually the Almond Estate, located near the northern coast of Union, who’ve sworn to protect them from being exploited by wrong hands.

Despite their healing abilities it is possible to kill them - an indirect method that doesn’t permanently kill a Cybermancer is imprisoning them without providing them food - without it their starved bodies will not be able to move. Another method is incinerating their bodies in places with extremely high temperatures, like volcanoes, as extreme heat will drastically slow down or neutralize regeneration. The quickest and easiest method is use of specialized collars invented by New Justice 9’s engineers which are able to cease Cyberian’s activity for as long as they are worn - a person can be “killed”, then the collar can be applied on the corpse, disabling revival - decomposed bodies aren’t able to regenerate anymore. A person wearing the collar before a fatal wound is taken is killed outright.