Psychic Powers

And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires
— Marvell

Psychic powers among the myriad species and cultures of the galaxy are as various as literature or music. The dominant school of psychic practice in the Core and along the Corridor is the Quartet School, which recognizes four basic psychic powers: telepathy, clairvoyance, levitation (or "static TK"), and control of chance ("stochastics" or "dynamic TK" or "dicing").

The main alternatives to the Quartet school are Auric, Contact, and Enhancement. This page examines the four basic Quartet skills and then examines the other schools by comparing them to Quartet.

In a psionically rich environment, people (and animals and sentient machines) may pick up elementary psychic skills without training. Many untrained people can feel the difference between psilence and open psi. (Psilence is a psionic condition in which psychic skills cannot be used.) A smaller fraction can tell when psychic activity is going on, and a still smaller fraction can identity the psychic or the skill being used.

There are also idiosyncratic powers that just crop up, not teachable and not in the system of any school. These are called Knacks. Some are listed at the end.

Telepathy

Telepathy has no range limit, but contact is vulnerable to quantum and relativistic effects. Telepathic contact varies in depth; the standard levels, in increasing depth, are:

Presence—The "not alone" feeling.
Awareness—The "being watched" feeling.
Identity—Know when familiar people are near.
Empathy
Verbal thought
Sensory experience—Whether immediate, imagined, or recalled.
Conceptual thought
Conscious memory
Unconscious memory—Additional special methods required.
Unconscious thought and feeling—Additional special methods required.

Telepathic contact is always reciprocal — if I read you, you can read me, and just as deeply. It is still possible that the read may not notice the reading, or may choose not to read back. Quartet School telepathy does not include coercive or controlling power.

Without special shielding skills, a deeper contact includes all the shallower ones. So, for instance, if you are in verbal-level contact, you are also in empathic contact and aware of each other's emotions. This makes the communication necessarily honest.

To make telepathic contact, you must be in sense-shot of the target or have made contact in the past. This residual contact is broken or greatly weakened by transilience or hyperdrive.

These related skills require telepathy as a prerequisite:

Energy Transfer—Move psi points between parties.
Power Burn—Combat telepathy: destroy target's psi points.
Telestrike—Combat telepathy: randomly jab target's brain.
Shield—Counter telepathic contact.
Filter—A refinement of Shield: counter contact at specific levels.
Skill Swap—Use or lend skills.

In Endeavor, it take 3 psi pts and a successful skill roll to make contact. For more detail, see the FuRPiG rules.

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance takes more forms than any other psychic mode. In the Quartet School, it is usually trained into vision and hearing through a disembodied viewpoint. This gives a great deal of clear information, but there are constraints on placing and steering the viewpoint that give Quartet clairvoyance a more restricted scope than other schools of clairvoyance.

You can launch a clairvoyant viewpoint from yourself, or through the eyes of anyone you are in telepathic contact with, or from a "tracer." This is a tag or bookmark you can set on a physical object, to refer to later. Tags are vulnerable to transilience and hyperdrive.

Clairvoyance can also be used to see in the dark and through walls, and to detect others' tracers and clairvoyant viewpoints.

These related skills require clairvoyance as a prerequisite:

Clairtangence—Add the other senses to sight and sound.
(Details may differ by species. For instance, dogs can smell just with basic clairvoyance.)
Retrocognition—Look backward in time at the location of your viewpoint.
Microclair and Macroclair—Clairvoyance at different size scales.
Clairometry—For stimuli outside the normal range for your species.
Cyberclair—Clairometry on computers.
Cloak—Counter clairvoyant vision or search.

In Endeavor, it take 3 psi pts and a successful skill roll to launch a viewpoint. For more detail, see the FuRPiG rules.

Telekinesis – Levitation and Dicing

The two forms of TK have range limits characteristic of the individual psychic. Both require sensory feedback, the more immediate the better. Few Terran levitators can lift more than 400 kg; mechanical TK easily outstrips living psychics (including AIs) in raw force. Mechanical reproduction of dicing, on the other hand, is difficult and limited.

These related skills require levitation or dicing as a prerequisite:

Firekey—Thermal TK.
Alchemy—Chemical TK.
Windkey—TK on air currents.
Temper—TK controlling viscosity or rigidity.
Telecode—TK hacking; also requires cyberclair.
Fleshkey—Bio-TK: heal, shock, stun, sleep, rouse, etc.
Ectoplastics—Create objects from ambient fluid (e.g. air); also requires bind.
Glamour—Visible and audible illusions.
Block—Counter TK action.
Bind—Make a static TK effect permanent; used to make psi point batteries.
Trigger—Make a TK effect delay until a specific condition; also requires clairvoyance.
Pattern—Program TK effects to occur in your absence; also requires clairvoyance.

In Endeavor, it take 3 psi pts and a successful skill roll to start TK. Your range is one meter per point of Psi attribute. Your load limit is 10 kg per point of Psi attribute.

Dicing must be cast when the uncertain action is happening, e.g. as the dice are rolled or the cards are shuffled.

For sustained levitation, the GM asks for repeated rolls against your Psi attribute, getting harder as time goes on, failing after a few mintues.

For more detail, see the FuRPiG rules.

Other Schools

Other schools are rarer, partly through historical accident, partly because the Quartet school is easier to learn, and partly because it is harder to learn the other schools if you have learned Quartet first. Because of the last, some people deliberately learn another school first and Quartet second, or take amnesia on their Quartet skills while they learn another school.

There are schools still rarer than the three listed here, and familiarity varies from place to place. Some are much more specialized, e.g. the Timekeepers, which teach Anticipation and Foresight (see Knacks) as skills, along with Retrocognition, but teach no telekinetic skills.

Auric

Allows for the same range of effects as the Quartet school, but uses a bodily aura as an organ for sensing and acting. The aura is usually visible as light in a color characteristic of the psychic, extending no more than three meters from the psychic. It costs 5 psi pts. to cast the aura, but you can then use it for anything for a number of minutes equal to half your Psi attribute before the GM starts asking for Psi attribute roles.

Limitations:

It is difficult to exceed the range of the aura.
The aura cannot usually penetrate solid objects.
The aura cannot usually work through cracks smaller than 5 mm.
The aura is usually conspicuous.

Telepathy:

If the target is within your aura, telepathy proceeds normally.
If you explicitly set a tracer on the target while they are within your aura, you can sense remotely down to the identity level and so be able to track them.

Clairvoyance:

The standard form is to do psychometrics or retrocognition on targets within your aura.
You can do remote viewing if you leave a tracer on the target when it is within your aura, but you cannot move the viewpoint away from the target.

Telekinesis:

In addition to the TK effects available to the Quartet school, the following skills are available, all requiring levitation or dicing as a prerequisite:

Mask—Make the aura invisible.
Extension—Stretch aura to same limits as for Quartet school.
Penetration—Push aura through solid objects.
Warp—Squeeze yourself through tiny cracks, as long as the transit only lasts five seconds or less.

Contact

This school requires physical contact for a lot of things, but is much cheaper in psi. Here, "physical contact" means "able to exert force on the target using your own body"—

Gloves and other clothing are not an issue.
Exerting force with something like a stick (e.g. a wand...) or a rope is also allowed.
For AIs and anything similar that comes along, "your own body" means the one you are hardwired into; no telefactors.

Telepathy:

If you can touch the target, telepathy proceeds normally.
If you explicitly set a tracer on the target while touching, you can sense remotely down to the empathy level. ("Timmy's in trouble!")

Clairvoyance:

The standard form is to do psychometrics or retrocognition while touching the target.
You can detect and analyze psi without actually touching the object, but you must be within touching distance and you roll at -20%.
To do dowsing, you must be touching a token of the target.
You can do remote viewing if you are touching a token of the target, but:
- You must make two consecutive successful rolls, both at -20%.
- You cannot move the viewpoint away from the target.

Telekinesis:
This really takes the "tele" out of "telekinesis," but–

It costs only one psi pt to turn on.
Sustained effort does not require repeated rolls, just sustained contact.
You can use your TK to fly, walk up walls, or exert "super-strength" by adding your TK to bodily exertion.
You can do Firekey, Lifekey, Alchemy, Glamour, etc., on any target in physical contact, if you are trained in those skills.
You can use protective clothing while doing the above. (See remark about gloves at the start.)
You can use or add your TK for force and aim when you throw something, though you can't steer it thereafter.
Contrariwise, you can catch bullets and other projectiles by using your TK to brake them to safe velocity.
In general, you can armor yourself against effects that you can control by TK, e.g., against heat and cold if you know Firekey.
You can extend your effects to targets you touch. So you can fly and lift someone after you, or armor yourself and someone you touch.
You can set blocks, bindings, triggers, or patterns, but you have to be in contact with the target.
You cannot do dicing.

Enhancement

The psychic can take a skill or ability in which they excel and work it up to superpower levels. If you have 90% or more in a skill, you can Enhance the skill. Each Enhancement is advanced as a separate skill; practice in Enhanced Singing has no effect on Enhanced Dancing. If you have a 99% skill level and roll a 00 in that skill, you acquire 1% in Enhancement. Psi point cost is variable.

Examples:

Singing—The audience will see visions of what you sing about, or understand regardless of language barriers.
Dancing—Dance up the walls or on air; pull in untrained partners, who follow your lead perfectly.
Tailoring—Make clothes of ordinary cloth that act as armor or are always camouflaged.
Perfect Agility—Patharchic Hysterical Agility dialed up to eleven. Catch arrows? Juggle cats? Write with both hands on different topics? Cut diamonds while running? No problem.
Disguise—Blends into Glamour.
Doctoring—Blends into Gift of Healing.
Parkour—Run across ceilings, over water, and through absurdly narrow cracks; make ridiculous jumps.
Martial Arts—Like parkour, with less evasion and more violence.

Visionary

The psychic goes into a trance, in which telepathy, clairvoyance, and TK run simultaneously, for 3 psi pts. The trance lasts until interrupted. To resist an interruption, or to walk and talk at the same time, make a Focus roll and spend 3 focus pts. To work machinery at the same time (e.g., drive), make a hard Focus roll and spend 5 focus pts.

In the vision, telepathy seems to be talking to the target. Deeper than the Verbal level, the experience becomes more dreamlike, but the target is still your companion. If the target is a telepath, the contact feels like the form of telepathy they are used to. If the target is not a telepath, the contact feels like an imagined conversation that they cannot stop imagining.

Clairvoyance is a moving viewpoint as in Quartet clairvoyance, but your visionary body seems to be there. And this visionary body is visible to other clairvoyants.

TK is simply doing stuff with your (visionary) hands. TK fails and the visionary body becomes impalpable outside TK range; you are left with telepathy and clairvoyance. It is more difficult for Visionaries to learn TK skills other than levitation, such as Firekey or Binding, and Dicing is a Knack for them, and a rare one.

Knacks

Knacks are psychic skills that people learn without formal training. Some a very common, others very rare. Some knacks are "knacks" for one school, because that school cannot teach them, but are simply skills in other schools.

Anticipation—See just far enough into the future to dodge a shot or a blow.
Broadcast—Make telepathic contact with everyone in TK range, simultaneously. Uncommon in Contact and Auric schools. Roll a second time at -30% to make the contact deeper than Verbal.
Detect Psi—Feel traces of psychic activity, possibly including the identity of the skill and the psychic.
Dowsing—Know the direction of the target and maybe a dim idea of the distance. Must have previous contact with or token of the target. Very common, especially with clairvoyants.
Flight—Levitate yourself. Moderately common, especially with telekinetics and people around them.
Foresight—Lets the psychic's player add to the backstory so the psychic turns out to already be prepared for the present situation. The psychic generally does not foresee details; the preparation just "seemed like a good idea at the time."
Healing—Heals the target at a cost of Psi, Focus, and Effort points. Requires physical contact and works best in conjunction with mundane medicine.
Pain Casting—Makes the target hurt, but causes no organic damage. Commonest in Auric and Contact schools.
Psychic Hypnosis—Works like normal hypnosis, except the target goes into trance whether they trust you or not. Commonest in Auric and Contact schools.
Repair—A technological gift of healing, gives you intuitive insight in how to repair machines and uncanny "luck" in carrying out the repairs. Unteachable and rare, but commonest among highly technical people.
Sensitivity/Acceptivity—A bundle of Anticipation, Detect Psi, Dowsing, Foresight, and empathic Telepathy, at the cost of only being able to learn a small number of additional psychic skills. Unteachable, but rather common in some societies or bloodlines.
Tongues—Lets you understand and be understood by any sentient communicator who is actually present (so it doesn't work on recordings or over comm). Unteachable and rare, but commonest among gifted telepaths.
Tools—Lets you use a tool as well as the most skilled previous user. Works better the longer the tool was used. Unteachable and rare, but commonest among highly technical people.

Psychic Illnesses

Haunting—Involuntary spasms of retrocognition; exhausting, tiring, and sometimes upsetting since they tend to home in on traumas.
Poltergeist—Involuntary TK, not necessarily levitation.
Spawn—Involuntary creation of ectoplastic creatures, of any form and unpredictable temperament.
Therianthropy—Involuntary disguise as another species, using glamour and ectoplastics.
Vampirism—Inability to generate psi points; the resultant craving pushes you to drain them from others.

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