Psionics

*"You can surround yourself with as many soldiers as you please...you will still be alone in your own mind"*

-message sent by Zracon agent Kataneera before the mental breakdown of Shalani commander Zidrakos-

Also called "Mental powers" and "Psychic skills", **psionics** refer to those mental faculties shown by a chosen few which allows them to use their minds in a wide range of ways. From making someone a few steps away suddenly fall unconscious to creating burning torrents of pure, concentrated rage, researchers still are not certain about the limitations or effects of these powers.

Humanity first found out about psionics when the first explorers landed on the world of Redamon Prime. Entering the now-famous Crystal Pyramid, a building of unknown, alien construction, some felt their minds change and transform. Getting out of it, those affected quickly discovered they could read thoughts from those near them, or move small objects if they focused hard enough. Nowadays, the Pyramid and its surrounding area serve as an academy for people who have developed such powers so they may learn how to control them and use them wisely in service to the Commonwealth.

Aside from humans, very few species have shown any psionic abilities so far. The reaction of other realms and nations about this event differs widely, with some galactic leaders eagerly hiring psionic users as bodyguards and special agents, while others fear and hunt them down whenever they set foot on their territory. The government in Ortus makes heavy use of psionic users in the ranks of the army and security forces, all the while keeping a close eye on them. After all, the field of psionics is still a new one and scientific research in this matter is often difficult and slow.

## Psionic levels

It is hard to be sure of the level of control and power of one psionic user or another. Some can do incredible things thanks to years of training and an excellent knowledge of their mind, others instead seem to be just naturally gifted individuals who can lift trucks and burn a platoon of Biluan drones through sheer willpower a day after joining the academy. Some can read minds and make people do as they please (a skill which requires the Commonwealth to put down lists as to who has the power so as to keep eyes on hand) to be living connections over light-years of distance, making contact even on worlds without basic radio towers simplistic. Still, the Commonwealth has ordered the Psychi Myrad to make a basic chart to divide psionic users depending on their power:

*Neckbraces are positioned on each member of Psionics, these are implants made by Biosoc and Lachinov industries to 'generally channel the force of mental powers into a psychical machine instead of others. A collar, which has both a tracking beacon inside of which and a series of layers of sand or metal depending on the type of Psionic*

**Dormant**: These are those individuals who have just become aware of their powers and still do not know how to properly handle them or don't know they are psychic generally. Aside from some basic levitation tricks and being better at reading someone else's moods, these psionic users usually remained undetected for a while before their powers begin to manifest in a more obvious manner. Most children in the Commonwealth by the third generation realize this is a case by the age of 5 or 6, it is rare for a 10-year old to get away from the eyes of Commonwealth's bureaucracy yet there have been cases of note. Their neckbraces are small, barely weighing a pound at most, and are generally given a 1 to represent this.

**Awakened**: The majority of psionic users. These individuals are able to perform different tricks and use powers depending on their personality and level of skill. They are usually trained, and mostly join the Commonwealth as odd but generally interesting peoples. Their neckbrace of stature is a 2-4.

**Gifted**: One out of every thousand psionic users know their mind well enough to use a wide range of powers, from reading someone's mind to blasting a soldier away with a mere thought. Users at this level usually need specialized training at the academy on Redamon Prime to keep their powers in check and prevent incidents from happening, as they may lose control of their powers and harm others in acts which the Commonwealth Law court rules are due to 'infantile memetic damages'. They usually receive the 'seven package' and their neckbrace is specialized for them and only them making numbers utterly pointless.

**Prodigy**: Of every fifty thousand people who visit the Pyramid, one will show powers and skills to overshadow those of even veteran gifted psionic users. Seen as both a gift and a curse, those people with this level of psionic mastery need to train for years and use some specialized devices to keep their growing powers in check, as they will keep listening to the thoughts of people around them for half a mile, or increase the heat in the room to dangerous levels when angered. In some circles, psionic prodigies are referred to as "sorcerers", and simply knowing about the existence of such individuals has caused an increasing level of concern about government surveillance, and about the dangers of what a rogue psionic prodigy would pose to galactic society and stability. Those with the information to know about her say that the existence of the Zracon convert Kataneera proves that these concerns are well-founded.

(Note the Final level is classified to all but the highest level of Galactic statesman and woman of the Commonwealth, if you refuse or lack credentials seven G-class police droids will escort you away from the premises before TFE (task force Ethereal) issues standard detention and interrogation procedure)

-Access granted!

-Receiving information....please wait...

-Found....

**Symphonic Dossier:** The following, is the result of a secret investigation on the capabilities of psionic powers when they're used at their fullest capacity; an investigation that has been taking place in order to understand how the Zracon are able to master the powers that exist beyond the void; and the results while extremely theoretical show some very concerning results.

Thanks to the reports brought by spies deep within Zracon territory, it would seem like they view psionic power as some sort of residue of higher beings of existence which are part of their light worship. Them using those powers is a way to connect with divinity and seeing how Zracon psionics are far more advanced that their Commonwealth counterpart indicates perhaps a misunderstood truth to their worship.

It's also worth mentioning that according to reports, some very powerful agents have been able to shake the ground around them and shift weather provoking deadly lightning storms. There is also information describing how the Zracon tap into the aforementioned powers; they believe nailing a particular frequency is paramount to achieving mastery of the psionic powers and thus communicating with the higher beings. They do this by canticles that facilitate the process and increase significantly the potential of the powers.

This process has been labelled by Commonwealth scientists as "Symphony of the void" and it's believed that should the previously mentioned powerful users unite in a single canticle, their combined power would be enough to reach planetary levels of destruction and in the unlikely scenario of an entire race achieving the ultimate level of control over psionic powers, then the entire galaxy would be at peril becoming a doomsday weapon of sorts.

## Known Powers

The mechanics behind Psionics are poorly understood, but Commonwealth researchers and the staff of the Pyramid facility have made much strives to map out the abilities that manifest in individuals with psionic power. These are generally sorted into four categories: passive telepathy (or mind reading) active telepathy (mental projection and illusions) gravitic manipulation (telekinesis), entropy reversal/acceleration (colourfully referred to among the general public as "pyrokinesis" due to its main application of moving and manipulating thermal energy.), or [special cases] usually held by the Commonwealth.

Each of these categories has a number of distinct sub-powers that are recognized by the Commonwealth's Department of Psionic Affairs, but the DPA makes no claim that these lists are anything approaching a complete inventory of all known powers, as every psionic individual has a slightly different power set, and some even have unique or semi-unique powers, which the DPA has barely begun to catalogue.

### Mind Reading

The category of mind-reading is generally considered to be the most basic and common form of psionic power, with almost every visitor to the Pyramid having some degree of mind-reading ability within the next few weeks.

* **Empathy -** The ability to intuit the emotions of others is usually only the first stage of psionic awakening, but in some cases, a person's powers will never go beyond this level. Most individuals with any form of more advanced psionic powers also have the power of empathy. In spite of how commonplace it is perceived to be, psionic individuals with advanced forms of the Empathy power (such as "directed empathy", the ability to focus on a person and perfectly understand and sympathize with their emotional state) find themselves in high demand as psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, wet nurses or even general nurses.
* **Psionic Skim -** Most psionic individuals can, through varying degrees of training, develop the ability to "skim" a person's conscious surface thoughts in detail. This power usually only provides single images or strong words or phrases, but in the hands of a skilled interrogator, those can be all that's needed. Many spy agencies in the galaxy now train their operatives to resist psionic skims through self-discipline, burying important information under heaps of useless thoughts. With even a little training, most psionic skims can be resisted this way indefinitely.
	+ **Psionic Sweep -** Many gifted- or prodigy-level psionic individuals have a more advanced version of the Skim, known as the "psionic sweep." This power can be used to simultaneously skim dozens or even hundreds of people and search for patterns in their thoughts. During the Biluan Wars, this was one of the only reliable ways that Commonwealth ground teams had of isolating and identifying Biluan command drones. Some psionic prodigies have a version of this power that they can't control without intensive self-discipline.
* **Mind Scan -** An intermediate form of mind-reading, and generally the most advanced form available for anyone below the rank of "gifted." Mind scans can, over the course of a few minutes of continual focus, map out the entire conscious mind of the target. However, while this can be used to access information that a Skim would miss, it can't gain any information that the target isn't currently thinking about.
* **Mind Probe -** The most invasive form of mind reading, "mind probes" allow the user to dredge up any information the target knows, even subconsciously, and even allow them to isolate and examine memories and aspects of the target's personality. This experience is often highly unpleasant for the target, as it can cause them to relive repressed memories, or can trigger mental spasms if it's clumsily administered (seizures at worst, though they are rare...). The Commonwealth Department of Psionic Affairs' Bill 119 designates the use of Mind Probes to be a violent act, and forbids law enforcement agencies from making use of them without evidence of a "clear and present danger to the well-being of one or more sapient peoples."
* **Ping -** Many psychics have the ability to sense the presence, direction, and distance of other sapient minds around them. It also often alerts them as to whether those individuals are psionically gifted themselves.
* **Psionic Link -** Some visitors to the Pyramid gain the ability to form permanent "links" with other psionic individuals, allowing them to communicate amounts of information that would be unusual for them at their personal power level, and over similarly unusual distances. The strength of these links depends on how familiar the two psychics are with one another. Sets of psionic twins have been known to be able to gain direct sensory information from one another over distances of dozens of lightyears, and Voice was able to communicate with its drones from halfway across the galaxy.
	+ **Biluan Hierarchical Links -** The Biluan Mind was made up of billions upon billions of psionic links. Each commander drone was simultaneously linked to ten drones of lesser rank and one of higher rank, sending and receiving orders and sensory information with all of them simultaneously. This is a feat no human psychic has been able to duplicate - the most advanced known human psychics can still only maintain half a dozen links at once, and can only have one or two active at any given time.

### Mental Projection

Compared with mind reading, mental projection - the set of powers that allow the user to influence the minds of other beings - is much rarer, and even those psionic individuals who have access to this type of power often say that it's considerably more difficult for them than simply receiving information. Mastering mental projection takes more practice than any other category of psionics.

* **Emotional Projection -** Some psionically gifted individuals can project their own emotional state directly onto the mind of somebody else, or, in more advanced cases, project a specific, selected emotion onto the target. This is generally used in distractions, though torture has been documented in the Yaanari Leagues and even the Favism Dominion using such methods.
* **Mental Strike -** Some Psionic operatives with mental projection powers are trained in a combat application of their powers where they dump loads of junk information into a target's mind. This can cause confusion and disorientation, intense pain, and muscle spasms. More advanced versions of the Mental Strike can even be used to simply shut down the target's nervous system, knocking them unconscious or killing them outright. (The DPA, obviously, views this as murder if done in cold blood or in non-combat areas...see Bill 21)
* **Dream Projection -** Some psionically gifted individuals can alter and influence the dreams of a sleeping being, often from an impressive distance. As with other powers, this has a lot of variation to it, with some psychics only being able to use this ability while they themselves are asleep or in a trance. (If in cold blood, and causes death it is murder...however, if viewed as accidental is not even viewed as manslaughter at worse or an "accident from god" (DPA bill 5). Robbing someone while using dream projection is also thievery (Bill 4)
* **Hallucinations -** One of the rarest psionic abilities, only manifesting in a fraction of psychics of gifted or prodigy rank, is the ability to project images and sensory information into another being's mind, altering or adjusting what they see, feel, hear, etc. With training, these hallucinations can fully overwhelm or replace the person's actual senses, throwing them into essentially a waking version of the visions produced through Dream Projection. (Bill 5 & 6)

### Telekinesis

The ability to manipulate gravitic fields is one of the most poorly understood aspects of psionics. The DPA has made no attempt to categorize telekinetic abilities. They simply note that while dormant or recently-awakened psychics can usually only use it to lift small objects, some psionic prodigies have been known to pick up and throw tanks, tear buildings apart with rapidly-rotating strong gravitic fields, or use brief telekinetic "punches" powerful enough to dent or tear steel bulkheads.

### Pyrokinesis

Some psychics have a limited ability to control and reverse entropy in a confined area, causing heat to flow from cool environments into hotter ones of its own accord for brief periods of time. Usually, this can only be used on a scale that allows for igniting small, flammable objects. However, a few psychics can maintain temperatures hot enough to melt metal or can throw cones of fire. These psychics are easily the flashiest and most prone to drawing attention. for this reason, many pyrokineticists wind up working as part of the Commonwealth military's PR units.

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