Psykers

### **Causes**

Those who have encountered too many Infohazardous sources over a reasonable period of time will gain powerful psionic abilities where the
 can manifest various elemental effects, generate cognitohazardous effects or bombard people with infohazards by manipulating anomalies present in Hope's reality.

 Once a person has been exposed enough to begin mutating or generating such effects, but are still sane enough to remain themselves (barely), they are called borderline psykers. These vary greatly in danger levels but all will eventually experience a neurological cascade of biological changes as their brains warp to become more violent and alien in the way they think.

### **Latent Psykers**

Latent psykers can sometimes present in a dormant state where they have little to no memory of their actual condition. This dormant state can last for hours or even years where they can only be identified by physical mutations. Exposure to corrupted data or the revelation that they are a latent psyker will often trigger a memory cascade which will cause their full and total deterioration into a full psyker state.

Signs of a Latent Psyker can include:

* Auditory Hallucinations
* Mood Swings
* Delusions
* Infohazardous data on person
* Sociopathy / Violent Sadism
* Minor physical mutations
* Evidence of wide-scale psionic effects
* Low-level radioactive emissions
* Muscular spasms that don't inhibit movement
* Immunity to Zed-Synth infection
* Strange phrases referring to people via scientific data (i.e. "You are merely molecules.")

### **Borderline Psykers**

A person who has yet to lose their personality completely to the re-coding, they are often driven by more violent impulses and must suffer through the sensation of themselves being dissolved, rewired or undone.

This terrible sensation can lead them to harm others, either intentionally or through accidental use of growing psychic energies that they are barely able to control. These moments of intense emotion are called 'cascades' and if allowed to continue unchecked will lead to rapid collapse into a full psycker state.

A Borderline Psyker can still respond to folks trying to calm them down (i.e. Stay With Me or Stall For Time skills) which can also help pull them out of a cascade. Eventually, however, the cascade will win and they will lose themselves completely.

### **Full Psykers**

Full psykers are often mutated (unless they are humans) and can warp reality to greater effect. They often have several capabilities, each to a different extent, and their own modus operandi. You can't group psykers because, other than a few pairs who mutated in similar ways, they are all unique. They do retain their intelligence but no sense of self or complex motivations. All psykers are inimical to sentient life and are driven to harm, and often kill, those around them.

### **Coma Ones**

 Coma Ones are a slang term given to those who caught a glimpse of X1-00 during the incident and immediately fell into a coma. Little is known about them other than that their power levels are so great they can't be confronted directly. They typically differ from Full Psykers in that they are often not mutated and appear as they did in life -- but their movements are unnatural and they often seem to flicker in and out of reality rather than moving as others do. Their motivations are utterly alien.