Psionist

Metahumans with telepathic powers.

Basics

• Taxonomic Order: Metahumans

• Alignment: Nommic

• Energy: Psionic Energy

• Lifespan: 80-120 years

• Diet: Sparse mortal fare

• Habitat: Sky islands

Origins

The earliest conscious hominids developed psionic energy and began to wield it, and some humans evolved natural capability for it.

Description

Psionists have the same range of general appearance as humans. Culturally, they favor shaved heads covered in tattoos.

Procreation

Psionists reproduce sexually with each other, with humans, and with other metahumans, and the offspring’s species follows that of the mother. Outside of humans and metahumans, reproduction is not possible without supernatural intervention.

Powers

Psionists have an automatic extrasensory ability to feel the minds of self-conscious beings around them.

Psionics

A psionist can use their psionic powers to enter and affect the mind of others. There are limitations to how deeply they can probe a mind without causing distress, but they do have access to conscious and subconscious thought, background processing, memories, data, and skills. These are their main skills:

• Telepathy/Communication: sending conscious thoughts or messages to another.

• Mind-reading: scanning the conscious thoughts or subconscious thoughts of another.

• Scanning: scanning an area for any conscious minds without reading them.

• Mental shielding: creating barriers within the mind to keep others out.

• Mental masking: hiding one's mind from the scanning or reading of others.

• Alteration: changing the conscious thoughts in someone's mind.

• Transference: transferring information (data, memories, or skills) from one mind to another.

• Copying: copying the data, memories, or skills of another to oneself.

• Blanking: emptying one's mind of all conscious thought in order to hide it completely.

• Telekinesis: the ability to affect the physical world with their mental powers. For psionists, this is usually minor.

Psionists can learn to wield psionic energy in other ways with a great deal of training. There are no forms of psionics that they cannot use with enough time and devotion.

Memory

Storing the thoughts, skills, memories, or data copied from others can be expanded and augmented with psionic powers. Storage can be emptied of excess information through rest.

Learning

Psionists have the ability to rapidly analyze almost anything with their abilities. They can learn data quickly and put it together with other information they possess by scanning directly with their minds rather than processing through their senses. With incomplete information, they can come to false conclusions, but they are skeptics, always testing. They can also obtain new skills quicker than usual if they do so by connecting to the mind of someone who has learned those skills. Skills that require no muscle memory work better, as they will have to learn the physical parts of a skill the hard way.

Weaknesses

Attacks on their bodies affect them more profoundly than other humans. They are susceptible to mental maladies.

Nations

There are three nations of psionists:

• Hesan: an oppressed nation on the prison-island of Hesos.

• Murothian: a nation removed from the original in a remote cloud city where they focus on learning.

• Psyaran: the original nation, a massive hive mind in the sky empire of Psyara.

Culture

Psionists live in a structured, stratified society on floating sky islands. Their society is centered on houses of learning. Every community has multiple schools, libraries, research centers, and debate societies, and a council of learned scholars who curate what is taught, offered, or accessible run the communities. An elite body of scholars known as the consortium runs the whole country, and they elect a Vater to be their nominal leader. These elite scholars are chosen by the local councils through secret tests. The consortium is responsible for determining the curricula of the major schools, the offerings at the major libraries, and so on.

Children are raised by their families, but taken to school at a very young age, usually four or five. They live at school for most of the year, visiting home only five times for special, somber ceremonies to recognize special historical events. At school, they are tested every six months and re-sorted into new classes. At the age of 19, they are tested for the final time at school. If they fail, they are relegated to be laborers or servants. Those who pass may then go on to their choice of further, specialized schooling, independent research, or certain special occupations. The graduation ceremony every year is one of the largest celebrations in the nation. It is a major holiday that everyone participates in.

The consortium has strict laws about architecture, clothing, and commerce that keep communities more uniform than that might otherwise be. Grey clothing and severe architecture are very common. Commerce is restricted, taxed, and heavily surveilled. Art is not highly prized within psionist society, but the most popular art is experimental and complex.

National Cultures

• Hesan: Hesans formed from the isolated prisoners on Hesos, evolving into a nation as more and more were exiled there. They are still a slave nation, but they are free of the Hive Mind and have a much more progressive outlook as they struggle against their oppression.

• Murothian: essentially, the Murothians are a school and commune rolled into one, and they live a peaceful existence completely separate from the main Hive Mind, having one of their own. They have a school for almost everything.

Esoterica

Psionists are beings of psionic energy, the nommic energy of the mind and thought. They can wield it naturally. They are also wielders of ancestral memory (also a psionic energy). They can wield stravomenos, euskepsia, dream energy, or aemoa, but they often choose not to, as the aligned energies separate them from the Hive Mind. They often do use vonzot. Flux, possibility, complexity, kakraohy, menab’e, symbolism, or fate are commonly used. As dwellers in the sky, they also wield kiiric yihi and bijalee as well.

Religion

The religion of Psyara is one of worshiping the Hive Mind, Alvum Animo, and the intricacies of the mind. Their beliefs are that meditation and inner balance will lead to a deeper connection to the Hive Mind, and they practice it regularly if they are not tasked with something. Their faith leaders encourage everyone to connect more deeply with the Hive Mind, in part because this makes them easier to observe and control people.

Gender

Gender is generally not recognized within psionist society, though they study it and are aware of its variations in the major countries of the world. Outside of their nations, they take up a gender identity in order to fit in, but most have no interest in it.

Economy

Psyara is a quasi-slave-based economy - because everyone shares a Hive Mind, they are easily convinced they are not enslaved, but most workers are merely servants to the most powerful psionists who run the consortium.

Military

The consortium has a secret police force known as the excursors. These secret police are constantly scanning the minds of those in the nation, using excellent masking powers to hide what they are doing, gathering information for the consortium to control the populace. There is also a more public force known as the militis, a military force of spear-bearers who serve as police, infantry, and guards.

Language

Their language is based on Latin.

Trade

Psyarans trade with other Gyran countries; they have various resources they mine or gather on their islands to trade. They also trade in information.

Occupations

Some common psionist occupations include

• Bestial Cor: psionists who can read the minds of animals. They are usually animal wranglers or tenders of some kind.

• Circumcontus: psionic theremin players.

• Consilium: those who guide people toward the enlightenment of the Psyaran faith, of the inner mind.

• Consortian: those who run the Consortium, which runs the country of Psyara.

• Cycnus: psionic bards.

• Dirunarius: general investigator.

• Excursor: secret police.

• Latro: sky pirates who wield psionics to move their airships.

• Lenire: mental healer.

• Liberligans: bookbinders who imbue books with psionic energy to make them easier to learn from.

• Ludusite: those who study the Puzzle of Thoughts.

• Magister: teachers of the Psyaran faith.

• Mentat: spies.

• Mentologer: scholars and scientists of the mind.

• Militus: psionic warriors.

• Neurohacker: hackers who use psionics.

• Occisor: psionic assassins.

• Pedagogue: psionic teachers.

• Praenuntiator: those who speak the will of the Divine Hive Mind, prophets of the mind.

• Pullulant: rare psionists who can read the minds of plants.

• Relatoris: psionists in television.

• Telekine: those who wield telekinetics specifically.

• Telekinestra: those who use telekinesis to sculpt stone.

• Telepath: messengers and communicators.

• Vater: the hierarchical ruler of Psyara.

• Verto: silent, psionic orators.

• Volatus: sky sailors who use psionic powers to lift their ships.

Outside View

There is a mixture of distrust and wonder that outsiders have for psionists. Many have strange ideas about how they must protect their minds from psionists (tinfoil hats, for instance) that have no real power. Some governments try to recruit psionists as spies or teachers.

Notables

Some notable psionists:

• Allavare, Psionist Manifest, Aeonian

• Vater Mendaen, Founder of Psyara

• Bahman Jumad, Psyaran Emperor

• Ehud Muoneen, Master of the Excursors

• Apistos Muoneen, Bearer of the Psyaran Island

• Namad Emradin, Shaper of the Mind

• Narona Jamad, Mind's Assassin

• Paralaxyl, the Mouth of Chaos

Estimated Populations

• Hesan: 40,000

• Murothian: 20,000

• Psyaran: 2 million

• Other: 1 million

Sample Stats

PRO 7
ATH 7
STR 7
AWA 15
WIL 14
PRS 8
STH 8