Psychics

-Initial Description-Possess the ability to manipulate the world around them through thought, be it setting objects on fire, moving them, getting glimpses of the future, or making the thoughts of others visible to themselves through a unique form of synesthesia.

-Historical Note-Due to their innate abilities psychics have come to be considered the ‘spy deviancy’ by many governments who use their abilities of cognition, telepathy, and kinetics to have their agents infiltrate various organizations.

Unfortunately, these same abilities that make them greatly desired by the governments they fall under, also leaves them with little trust from the actual citizens of said governments.

-Psychic Powers-Psychics possess a number of powers that are capable of growing the more a psychic uses them, be it in a direction of control or power. These various abilities are commonly divided into three greater branches due to the fact that a Psychic specializing in a given power can more easily develop other powers from that branch.

--Kinetics- Represent all physical based abilities of psychics that revolve around the manipulation of the natural physics of the world around them. These abilities can range from the commonly known ‘telekinesis’ and ‘force blasts’ to more difficult abilities such as pyro-kinesis through thermal manipulation.

--Cognitives-Is the branch connected to a psychics ability to perceive the world around them in a way beyond the normal means. The most infamous of these abilities being the ability to see into the future (though many psychics are limited to a minute or two at the greatest) with the most common being a spatial awareness of everything around them.

Between these two abilities in infamy and commonality is post-cognition which allows a psychic to see events that have already taken place, with the limitations on this ability being notably less than precognition. Allowing even newer psychics to see hours into the past and more powerful ones to see years or even decades into the past.

---Debate of Power vs Control- While more powerful psychics are capable of gathering information from greater distances, it should be noted that control is the aspect that allows them to actually process the data they gather. Meaning that while a powerful psychic may see years into the past, if they lack control they may only get flashes of images or a few faint whispers of knowledge.

--Telepathics-Are quite possibly the most infamous power of all psychics, with a negative stigma so powerful that many new psychics outright refuse to delve into this branch regardless of their innate talent for it.

Despite what media often portrays this branch as capable of, most Telepaths cannot actually read a person’s every thought instead using a mixed form of emphatic reading, hyper-awareness, and emotional mimicry to read a person’s thoughts.

(Note: Many mind reading psychics actually believe mind reading to be a mix of Cognition and Telepathy, rather than an outright usage of telepathy.)

Additionally the power responsible for the majority of the stigma towards psychics is their ability to link their mind with another, allowing them to either override a person’s physical actions with their own to implanting thoughts, feelings, or memories otherwise known by the Psychic in a more subtle attempt at brainwashing a person into serving their agenda.

---Safety Assurances- While both of these seem like powerful and dangerous abilities it should be noted that most psychics can only maintain a psionic link for a few minutes at a time. Additionally outside of outright hijacking for the duration of the link, these methods of brainwashing while both powerful and effective still take numerous and repeated applications, rendering them merely an acceleration of mundane brainwashing from years to months.

-Psionics and Brain Damage-It should be noted that of all Deviancies Psychics are one of the two to offload the majority of their Deviancy’s power onto their brain and thus are notably more susceptible to brain damage and aneurysms should they push their powers too hard.

In response to this frequent damaging and healing of their brains, psychics seemed to have developed a secondary power unrelated to their base psionics, with the majority of psychics possessing a notable healing factor localized specifically to their brains, enabling them to heal from damage that would cripple or kill normal people.

In fact it has been seen that should a Psychic cross an unknown threshold of mental damage they will shut down, entering a catatonic state until either their brains have fully recovered or their mind succumbs to the overbearing damage and cell death.

-Psionic Scarring- A notably odd phenomenon found in almost all people is that frequent exposure to psionic and/or madness based effects may cause people to develop what is known as psionic scarring. This mental scar tissue is shown to make a person increasingly resistant to said effects by changing the way a person’s subconscious reacts to the invading mind, often turning into what some psychics refer to as ‘a blender made from the shards of a broken mind’ and in the case of more severe scarring harming any intrusive psychics.

(Note: Psionic Scarring may only develop after a person is given time to heal from a psionic attack. Repeated attacks without this healing time are actually shown to reduce a person’s psionic defenses, even ripping open lesser psionic scars.)