Author: Rose Skye

Espers derive their abilities from the plane of consciousness, so the techniques they command most naturally affect consciousness itself. Indeed, espers of the first degree (i.e. toposophic level 3) can only exert direct influence over the fundamentals of the mind: thoughts, emotions, sensations, and so on. This poses no great obstacle for influencing the world: inducing hallucinations, rewriting memories, and amplifying intelligence constitute sufficient means to take control of a country on one’s own if unopposed by other espers.

However, breakthrough into level 4 unlocks techniques that go past the boundaries of human minds. One learns to treat everything that performs computation – that is to say, everything, viewed through the proper lens – as a mind, and therefore something one can establish psychic resonance with. The following is a survey of some advanced techniques available to the enlightened.

Chirothesia

The power to heal or otherwise affect living tissue. The name refers to the religious practice of laying on of hands to a sick person to bless them, although the psi technique does not require direct touch. Chirothesia extends the concept of “the mind” from just the brain, to the nervous system, to the other complex systems throughout the body, treating them as part of holistic unit that can be affected by the noosphere just as the brain can. With it, one can heal torn flesh and cure disease – but also inflict organ failure and warp flesh into strange shapes, if they wish.

Chirothesics constitute one of the most sought-after class of esper due to their ability to heal bodily harm with supernatural swiftness – any serious esper operative unit includes one to patch wounds, and freelance chirothesics can live more than comfortably simply taking occasional jobs curing the maladies of the wealthy. While the ability can be used as an attack, it’s relatively slower than most other psychic techniques, so it’s usually not enough of a threat on its own to require special countermeasures.

Chaosemiotics

The power to manipulate probability – however, that description, although the most common, mislabels the true nature of the technique. The name refers to “chaos” and “signs”, as it actually involves heuristically interpreting the vague and shifting forces of the world through a mental method partially derived from chaos theory. To explain: ignoring the underlying unpredictability of quantum effects, things we call “random” – such as rolling a die – are in fact deterministic given knowledge of all factors affecting the outcome, simply computationally intractable to solve. A chaosemiotician resonates their neural oscillations with that of the system they’re attempting to predict – the atmosphere, the economy, the ecosystem – and interprets it as they would a mind. This gives them uncanny understanding of what that system is likely to do in the near future, giving the impression of supernatural luck as long as they submit to the waves of the chaotic ocean they float in.

Chaosemioticians will dodge 90% of any attempt you make to attack them physically, socially, or emotionally, through infuriatingly baroque coincidences. The trick is to keep trying: their abilities are stochastic, so play the numbers game and keep trying until you hit that last 10%.

Clairvoyance

The power to sense things outside of the range of conventional perception. A clairvoyant can see, hear, smell (or detect with any other standard sense) things as easily as though they were standing right next to it. The sensitivity attenuates according to distance and physical barriers between the user and the target location, but can be performed through solid rock or from kilometers away as long as they have a clear idea of the place you’re trying to envision and enough time to concentrate on it. With practice, clairvoyants can even convey sensory information outside of human range, such as ultrasonic hearing and magnetoception. The real application other espers fear is seeing through the eyes of someone else they make telepathic contact with: a potent espionage tool.

For all reasons listed above, clairvoyants make for ideal spies, requiring no physical presence at the sites they surveil. When considering a future operation against one, don’t make, speak, or write any of your plans out loud – telepathic contact is usually safe, though. Some agents have even resorted to blindfolding themselves during mission preparation to maintain opsec against a known clairvoyant.

Precognition

The power to predict the future. A precognitive can see what will mostly likely happen up to a few seconds hence at all times, as well as forecast the next day by concentrating on it briefly. Further than that, and they must form an intention to learn the particulars of a future event, leading to vivid prophetic dreams, sometimes forgotten until the moment draws near and the time to act arrives. Similar to channelers, all major esper groups employ at least one precognitive to guide their policy decisions. Their abilities function because the noosphere exists along the axis of synchronicity, along which future events reach back into the past to birth themselves.

Near-future-sight gives precognitives effective reflexes on the order of multiple seconds, making them extremely difficult to find, catch, or attack unless you can move much faster than them. Meanwhile, their longer-term predictions allow them to dictate the circumstances of engagement every time. While they lack distinct attack modalities, very few have managed to capture or kill a reasonably skilled precognitive, making them the perfect people to hold secrets and precious cargo.

Conjuration

The power to contact and command noospheric entities. Conjurers possess an especially sensitive facility with accessing the noosphere as a place to explore rather than as a reserve to be drawn from, and by spending time in that mental space, learn to understand and talk to the things living there. Such things include pretas, decayed imprints of the dead with unfulfilled desires, and maras, poorly understood beings thought to originate from somewhere other than human minds. The former are easily communicated with through human language, whereas conversation with the latter is only possible through the telepathic equivalent of pantomime. By taming, allying with, or hiring these various spirits, one can then send them to perform tasks on your behalf.

A conjurer’s efficacy depends almost entirely on the specific entities they can call upon: different entities possess a wide possible range of abilities they can employ on behalf of the conjurer, necessitating individual surveillance to determine capabilities before moving on them. Thus, there is no single countermeasure to defeat them, save for one: do it now, because the more time passes, the more friends they have on the other side.

Upon initial breakthrough, espers develop a two-way connection to the noosphere – but that torrent of mental input can easily overwhelm an untrained mind. Therefore, they must drill themselves on basic meditative techniques for calmly letting go of thoughts and consciously directing their attention so as to remain lucid while in the sensory swirl of the psychic access state. Once they stand upon a firm foundation, they can stretch their newfound phantom limbs and begin learning psychic techniques.

All espers inherently possess a bit of telepathy: they can dimly sense the thoughts and feelings of those around them, silently speak in a way other espers  perceive as a faint whisper, and vaguely detect the nearby use of psychic abilities. Beyond that, it takes sustained effort, ingenuity, and self-reflection to nurture those core faculties into useful skills.

All basic esper techniques are outgrowths of elementary telepathic proficiency. Below are some of the most common fields of study at that level.

Telepathy

The power to sense the thoughts of minds around you. Telepathy is the most basic application of psi, one that every esper develops at the beginning of their training. However, those who keep refining it beyond the standard level unlock subtle new uses. A true telepathy effortlessly notices the surface thoughts, emotions, and immediate of everyone around them – and if they choose to focus a mental probe on someone, they can tweeze out even their deepest secrets. An experienced telepath can send and receive psychic messages over vast distance and through low-level jamming fields, as well as act as a hub of mental communication, allowing even nearby non-espers to use telepathy within the local network they manifest. With practice, telepaths can learn to speak the strange mental languages of animals, computers, and even plants, who murmur as though half-asleep.

Because a telepath knows what someone is about to do right before they do it, that split second notice before someone throws a punch effectively increases their reaction time. This can be countered by thinking of nothing (very difficult), smoke-screening your intentions in chaotic distractions (makes it hard for you to act), or acting purely on reflex (fast but unreliable), but if possible it’s safer to set traps too mechanically simple to constitute minds they can read.

Channeling

The power to connect one’s mind to the vast store of memories within the noosphere. A channeler can “download” any skill or field of academic information known to any mind tied to the noosphere: they can act as post-doctoral authorities on any science, operate any machine, read any language, and quote any law with perfect accuracy. Some channelers have even learned to tap into the ancestral recall of animals and other living things. While channeling, one’s mental clock rate increases proportionately with the frequency of their beta brain waves, thereby augmenting the user’s intelligence past that of the greatest natural human genius, able to solve problems and make plans so fast that no one else can keep up. For this reason, all significant esper organizations are lead by channelers.

Most channelers will, if threatened, use enhanced social skills to talk you out of attacking them. If that doesn’t work, they’ll switch to brilliantly executed martial arts and tactical maneuvers. Thus, even lacking abilities that directly affect their opponents, they constitute a significant threat. Don’t give a channeler a moment to think, or they’ll out-think you – and definitely don’t give them a day to plan, or they’ll have help when you arrive.

Telempathy

The power to detect and affect the emotions of others. Similar to but more specific than telepathy, but as a result more potent within its sphere: telempathic powers work on groups of people as easily as telepathic ones work on a single person, while narrowing focus onto a single target produces an almost overwhelmingly intense effect. Telempaths are constantly aware of what everyone around them is feeling, giving them supernatural capacity for navigating social situations and saying the right things, but can also project emotions outward, causing targets to feel even highly nuanced sentiments as long as the user can imagine them. Telempaths typically have to learn control over the tendency for their own emotions spontaneously overflowing into those around them. Their most confusing ability is the induction of xenoemotions: feelings humans don’t naturally experience and therefore have no words to describe.

The telempath’s greatest advantage is the sheer force of their abilities: even a mid-level user can move entire crowds to inconsolable despair in seconds, flood an attacker with artificial love sufficient to make further violence unthinkable to them, or incite rage-fueled riots against their enemies. The best counter methods, therefore, require speed or stealth: either way, striking before they have a chance to respond.

Illusion

The power to induce hallucinations. You can cause people (and anything else with a mind) to receive falsified sensory perceptions of whatever you wish, such as seeing something that isn’t there, making something that is there invisible, or altering the appearance of things. While illusions require your continued presence and concentration to maintain, experienced users of the ability can virtually take over all sensory input of multiple people at once. A very high levels of refinement, you can even affect perception of time, making an imagined moment stretch on for hours.

Illusion remains one of the most feared esper techniques because its mere existence calls into question the reliability of basic reality – at any time, an illusionist might be deceiving you without your knowledge. Not only that, but even those aware of the sensory fabrication might be forced to endure a time-dilated hell-chamber inside one’s own head. The best counter to either of these applications is psychic jamming to directly end the effect, but barring that, periodic dream-checking exercises are recommended for all espers, and internal amplification of either delta or alpha waves can provide relief during unavoidable illusory torment.

Mnemonism

The power to read and modify memories. Once in close psychic contact with someone, a mnemonist can sift through their target’s mind, revealing the most recent and emotionally charged memories first, then the older and more mundane ones with prolonged scrutiny. Once they understand the mnemonic architecture of a given mind, they can insert, delete, and alter the contents to their liking, although they must take care to link up falsified memories to the person’s existing autobiographical web, lest they leave doubt-nucleating inconsistencies. Mnemonism inherently takes time, making it of little use in a pressured situation, but of incredible value when something knows something you don’t know.

Aside from pronunciation of their title, mnemonists are most feared for the existential dread they engender by their simple existence. Much like how illusionists force you to always doubt your senses, mnemonists force you to doubt your memory, even your most cherished recollections of past life events. A nullifier can undo a hasty mnemonic shuffling, but once a memory is fully reworked, the effect is permanent, barring the aid of a specialized psychometrist/mnemonist on your side. Never forget to perform regular personal history hashing checks with one or more of the suggested ciphers, and confer with allies regularly to keep your stories straight.

So, an esper from a rival organization has just broken into your facility, but you don’t have any psychic powers. What do you do?

The key is preparing yourself for known unknowns: esper abilities, while varied, fall into certain common categories with accordingly standard countermeasures. Unique powers exist, but belong only to a handful of the strongest espers, and are unlikely to be encountered by a normal employee. Instead, focus on these core defensive strategies.

Psychological Countermeasures

Learn to recognize what a psychic probe feels like! Even non-espers can detect the tell-tale characteristics of unmasked mental intrusion, which you can learn through one of the listed seminars. If you feel you are being scanned, or know that an enemy is nearby, it is imperative that you have already trained in basic meditative techniques to reject psychic contact. The core of this is one-pointed focus: the natural mind is scattered by numerous thoughts, but with discipline you can tame it down to a single thought of your choosing. Your own breath is the most reliable method, but visualizing a stone wall is a traditional choice as well. Either one will provide a measure of defense against scanning of your thoughts, as you will deny the attacker the numerous potential attack vectors an untrained mind presents, as well as suppress the reading of potentially sensitive surface thoughts.

Chemical Countermeasures

As soon as you spot a hostile esper or an alarm warns you of intrusion, take one or more inhaled doses from your company-issued handheld vaporizer. This device contains two active ingredients: a fast-acting stimulant and an anti-hallucinogenic serotonin antagonist. The former provides a boost of energy and focus that will aid you in any moves you make during the ensuing crisis situation, but most importantly protects you against the sleep-inducing influence of delta waves. If you begin to feel unusually tired, it is imperative that you do not succumb to the desire to close your eyes or lay down! The second ingredient provides broad-spectrum protection against hallucinations caused by psychic influence. Do not use your vaporizer outside of emergencies, or both effects may dull from repeated exposure. Those with the highest security clearance may also be issued tablets providing a final fallback in case of capture.

Mnemonic Countermeasures

Regularly perform “am I dreaming” checks: the standard method is attempting to push your finger through your palm, but you may also squeeze your nose shut and try to breathe. Learn to do this not only in response to suspicion of enemy esper presence but occasionally throughout each day, as you will not know when you are trapped in a psi-induced dream state: this is what makes them so dangerous! Also be on the lookout for unusual numbers of fingers on your hands, or clocks that shift displayed time upon a double-take. If you realize you are hallucinating, you can take control enough to navigate them lucidly, and potentially break out of the illusion.

In addition to dreaming checks, you must also periodically verify that your memories have not been tampered with. To do so, review the documentation on multi-modal autobiographical hash tables. In summary: by encoding the basic facts of your own personal history into one or more non-autobiographical formats (such as a series of colors or letters keyed to life events by a referenceable system) you can effectively store those memories in more than one way, and check them against one another. A hostile esper who has modified your memories may not have the time or skill necessary to manually alter every alternative memory encoding, leaving traces of your true past.

Physical Countermeasures

An esper’s greatest weapon is their mind, but their bodies remain only human. Therefore, use your own body in response: your first instinct should be, in all cases, to escape. Immediately try to break sight lines and put distance between yourself and them so that they don’t get a chance to use psychic techniques on you. If you can’t escape, then disrupt their concentration to make psi usage difficult. Always carry one or more of the following: a flashlight (for blinding), an air horn (for deafening), and a laser pointer (for distracting), and if you don’t have any of those on hand, simply yell, taunt, or throw nearby objects at them. If you truly are trapped at close range, then you may resort to physical violence: carry some form of close-range personal defense such as a tear gas spray canister, or a proper weapon if trained and licensed with one. Unarmed hand-to-hand combat lessons are available for all employees.

Although less than twenty espers occupy the highest echelons of authority, many others carve out their own niches in the psychic landscape – many of them quite powerful in their own ways. Below are a handful of the people you might meet walking the streets of the special district.

Shesha

A group mind of six children, who telepathically form a single conscious identity. Product of a clandestine genetic engineering program intended to birth someone with the predicted genotype ideal for reaching transcendence. Ultimately successful, but the final batch chose to fuse their minds together through gamma wave synchrony, giving them the combined psychic power necessary to escape their captors and establish their self-determined identity as “Shesha”, self-named for a many-headed divine serpent from Indian mythology.

Shesha never leaves a low-grade access state, in order to maintain its telepathic link. They appear as a group of identically dressed children (three boys and three girls), all twelve years old. Their personality is alien due to alienation from their fellow humans, giving them a cold demeanor and distrust for authorities that might attempt to recapture them. They wish to be taken seriously as peers of the adults around them, and react with hostility if talked down to.

Jorge

A middle-aged university professor of distinguished features and austerely tailored sense of fashion. Holds dual degrees in logic and psychology. In the former field, he is a subjective idealist who takes the heterodox view of dialetheism, believing that a statement can be both true and false at the same time. In the latter field, he applies a neo-Jungian form of psychoanalysis that pays particular attention to the interpretation of dreams.

Jorge uses his psychic abilities almost solely to serve his psychological practice. A master of both delta and theta waves, he puts subjects into deep hypnotic trances and peers into the contents of their unconscious minds. Once he finds the crux of a complex, he edits the offending impulse to relieve the emotional tension it causes the patient. Although this fact has never been brought to light, he has occasionally broken the sacred trust of his patients by furtively stealing key pieces of information from their minds to sell to rival esper factions.

Saito

A polymath par excellence. Upon breakthrough he showed immediate talent for the induction of oscillations within his own brain, but little facility or interest in affecting the minds of others. What he has always valued, since a young age, is personal arete above all else. As such, he near-constantly amplifies his theta waves (to learn faster by stimulating his memory) and his beta waves (to sharpen his focus) as the two engines driving him toward his ultimate goal: mastering every skill a human might possess. He achieves mastery (equivalent to a post-doctoral degree, although he rarely seeks credentials) of a new field every few months.

Saito possesses, among other things, Olympic-level athletic conditioning for several sports, a veteran’s dexterity with blade, fist, and firearm, deep knowledge of multiple hard sciences, high technical proficiency with a paintbrush as well as multiple musical instruments, and fluency in around twenty languages. His true fear remains boredom catching up to him: what purpose will remain in life once he wields every skill civilization might furnish his ravenous mind? Even greater, what meaning is there in learning them purely for their own sake?

Bell

A mystic infamous for founding an esper-led organization generally regarded as a cult. Said cult applies neuro-linguistic programming techniques to cure (they claim) various disorders of the mind and body while unlocking the true potential of the former: it tends to take in vulnerable people with low or no psychic potential who desperately wish for mental powers, and promise them a path to their dream. Their leader, then, uses his own (substantial) abilities to push their minds into blossoming – sometimes breaking them in the process.

Bell’s psychic abilities are real, but he himself began as an esper of little talent, grasping at any means of advancement. An opportunity presented itself in the form of a sapient noosphere entity that, in traditional demonic fashion, offered a deal: partial ownership of his body in exchange for power. It’s not clear how much of Bell’s speech and behavior is him anymore, and how much of it serves the goals of an inhuman intelligence.

Zeta

An occultist who strives to meld the disciplines of magick (with a k, she insists) and psionics into a harmonious whole – an endeavor considered ridiculous by most espers. Makes a living as a stage magician, using both sleight of hand and psychic techniques blended together so subtly that audience members cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Very popular among the average person, despite the low opinion she garners among espers. Wears a flashy signature outfit with a “Z” motif.

In truth, there’s a method to her postmodern chaos magick: she’s actually a serious operator in the psionic underground, with a high win ratio in combat encounters. Her best trick for winning fights is the same one she uses in her shows: her opponents never quite know when she’s actually employing psychic powers or merely doing a magic trick, and her showmanship prevents them from identifying what technique she’s using when she does pull one out, slowing their reflexes for a countermeasure.

Winter

The product of a clandestine project to elevate a mediocre psychic talent into something transcendent – at least, that was the hope. While a willing participant in the experiment, the scientists involved downplayed the extreme nature of the procedures to be carried out on her. The dubiously ethical combination of research chemicals and neurosurgery unlocked Winter’s latent psychic power, to be sure, but in an imperfect manner she struggles to control with precision. Her power spikes to unrivalled levels when provoked to fear or anger, but tends to shred anything in her nearby environment whether or not she wants to.

While easily one of the most powerful espers in the world by raw amplitude numbers, the project leads felt forced to install a psionic dampening prosthetic to prevent Winter from injuring herself and others by accident. This sense of enslavement salted the emotional wounds inflicted by the painful and disfiguring medical experimentation, making her even more of a danger. Any day now she might decide she’s had enough.