Psychic Powers

This is a more in-depth list of psychic powers, both general and specific.

## Powers Classification

As the world and community of psychics became closer-knit, it became apparent that a standard of classification was necessary for purposes ranging from databasing of powers, through research, to picking a training regimen for nascent psychics. In the late 1040s, an international panel of experts has come up with a system of six disciplines, which is widely used to this day. The disciplines are:

* **Clairsentience**: Powers related to sensing and information gathering. Example things you could do are to see things from afar, glimpse the immediate future or predict the far future. Learn forgotten secrets and experience visions of the past and find out the truth about history. These powers are why most major corporations (LyTech included) have poured research into psychic shielding.
* **Metacreativity**: These powers allow the user to create something from nothing, or assemble something with psychic energy. It could be amorphous ectoplasm, hard light, or a specific substance like water, ice, wood or something else. Matter created with metacreativity powers usually disappears once the psychic stops concentrating.
* **Psychokinesis**: These powers manipulate matter or energy or tap into the raw power of the mind. Most spectacular displays of powers that move, melt, transform or blast things are psychokinesis. If you can create as well as manipulate matter, then you count as having both metacreativity and psychokinesis.
* **Psychometabolism**: Powers which change the physical properties of a creature, object or condition. For example, one may enhance one's own body to become stronger, faster or smarter; or turn into wood or steel; or cause a pipe to quickly rust; or transform into an animal; or stitch flesh together.
* **Psychoportation**: Powers which move the wielder, an object or another creature through space, dimensions, and even theoretically time.
* **Telepathy**: Telepaths can spy on, contact, and affect the minds of others, even influencing or controlling their behaviour.

The disciplines are by no means absolute - often enough, psychics have powers that straddle the line between disciplines, outright come from several disciplines, or refuse classification altogether. For example, a hero who can control temperature belongs in the psychometabolism category. If they additionally have the ability to control water or ice, they additionally belong in the psychokinesis category, and if they also can create water and ice from nothing, they have a third metacreativity classification.

For practical purposes psychics, heroes and villains especially, have a tradition of giving nicknames to their powers (which, in Academy City clang are called "kinks"). In contrast to the dry official classification, this allows them to exercise their tastes, whimsies, or grandstanding attitudes. Sometimes, heroes may also be known by the names of their kinks, such as Storm Mercurius, also known as the Stormlord.

## Aura

One of the more dramatic and well-known manifestation of psychic power is the aura: stray energy which the psychic did not fully control while manifesting another power. Part of a psychic's basic curriculum is learning how to control their energy so that they do not flare up during basic exertions. Some stealth-minded psychics train hard to fully control their energies and not allow anything above the faintest wisps to manifest. However, the aura is not just an incidental display. At higher stages of power, it slightly alters reality within the vicinity of the psychic, usually in some helpful way to them, such as shielding from harm, making materials conductive or boosting mental resistance. Research has shown that these effects are intrinsically linked with the psychic's personality and power.

Efficient use of the aura is often key to a psychic's success. Some psychics go one step further and make maintaining and wielding aura their main focus. With enough training, these aura wielders make excellent generalists, able to utilise powers from nearly every discipline, from touching others' minds through bursts of speed to launching pieces of their aura as blasts of energy. Psychics with specialised kinks often scoff at that, (correctly) pointing out that this lack of focus prevents them from using any but the most basic of abilities.

There are several stages of aura, in ascending order of power:

* Wisps of power manifest around the eyes and body and are visible from certain angles. These do not hinder using powers of stealth and last up to an hour after a power has last been used.
* The psychic's eyes glow and will shine though most materials placed over them. It's impossible to mistake the psychic as anything but what they are.
* The psychic is surrounded by a coruscant aura bright enough to read by and their eyes are shining brands in their faces. This is the level at which the aura's passive effects manifest.
* The psychic is engulfed by a bonfire of power that reaches from their feet to at least a foot above their head. Nearby objects may take environmental damage, such as being singed by fire, or bleached as if left in the sun for a year, or warp as if exposed to a nocturnal mist.
* A very rare aura manifestation is when the psychic is surrounded by a burning image totemic to their person. A shaman may be watched over by a ghostly eagle, an illusionist surrounded by an elaborate shifting mandala and so on. These effects fade very quickly and return to the bonfire stage within moments if the psychic does not keep exerting themselves