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.
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