Supernatural Power Data Files: Psychic Powers

Supernatural Power Data Files: Psychic Powers

Power Details: If you are reading this, you should have psychic powers yourself. However, you may not know the full breadth of the abilities present within our organisation. This document primarily concerns itself with explaining these details to you, and thus will not assume you have been briefed in detail on any particular power type.

            Supplementary documents are available for all power types explained herein, should you desire further detail. Additionally, logs of experiments that examine the boundaries of what is possible to develop more effective means of utilising our abilities are also available.

            There are many possibilities afforded to us by our powers, and the types explained below are only broad categories of these powers. Arguments can (and have) been put forward for many types of re-categorisation of these powers, and you may feel free to bring it up with the poor unfortunate soul in charge of those details.

            All known psychic powers come with a cost. This varies with the ‘strength’ used for the power – for example, telekinetic effects and mind control are costly, whereas extra sensory perception and déjà vu have minimal cost. This cost usually takes the form of physical and mental tiredness, but in extreme cases can cause damage to the mind and body (or even death).

            There are rumours of individuals who are not subject to these rules, but none have been confirmed. Those who seem only slightly affected often have unusual physiologies that allow them to better cope with the strains that come from using advanced psychic abilities.

            Despite these costs, sensible utilisation of our abilities in conjunction with conventional weapons and modern military and police tactics grants us an almost unbeatable edge over most other supernatural entities and organisations. The combination of extra sensory perception (allowing us to know all the moves our opponents make) with advanced weaponry and physiological control powers is especially devastating.

Physiological Control: One of the primary powers used by our combat teams, physiological control is simply that – control over your own physiology. Though thought useless initially, temporary intense control over muscles, nerves, and brain tissue can allow for greatly enhanced reflexes and the ability to ‘slow’ time. These two factors combined allow for incredible feats of aim or dodging, and easily grant the upper hand in a fire-fight or a melee. It is also possible to temporarily boost your strength to the limits of your capability, though this will naturally cause great strain to the body.

            Those with strong physiological control abilities have also reported being able to control, or even alter, their physical state. The outer limits of this are still being explored, but those with very high levels of ability are able to keep themselves in top physical state without the need for exercise at the very least.

            A handful of known psychics also possess a small ability to control the physiology of others, but only in short bursts. This does, however, allow them to grant temporary boosts to the reflexes of others. Psychics capable of physiological control are often also capable of energy and physical force control.

Emotional Sensing, Sharing and Control: Often lumped under the title of ‘empathy’, the ability to sense, share and control emotions has minimal use. It can, at times, be used to understand subjects to a level beyond that normally possible – but as most of those we would wish to understand are not completely human and thus unaffected by this power it is rarely of use in the field.

            An important use of empathic powers is by our psychologists and psychiatrists. By feeling the true emotions of their patients, they are able to understand and assist them to a level impossible for ordinary people to achieve.

            Those especially strong in this ability are able to control the emotions of others. This has been used in the past to keep teams calm, but was phased out as active knowledge that their emotions were being controlled caused a large number of issues for most agents. Specialist teams, however, are still used to control crowds of ordinary people when necessary.

Those with empathic powers often possess telepathic powers or general extra sensory perception abilities as well.

Thought Sensing, Sharing and Control: Often lumped under the title ‘telepathy’, thought sensing, sharing and control abilities have minimal use in the field when dealing with supernatural entities. Curses interfere with telepathy so greatly as to make it almost impossible to read the mind of a vampire or lycanthrope, and necromancy supplants the normal mental process so thoroughly that necromantic undead are impossible to read.

            The primary field use of telepathy is identification confirmation of supernatural beings, and also to deal with necromancers or ordinary humans that have become entangled in our activities. Outside of fieldwork, telepaths are used to check agents for worrying thoughts (such as the idea of going rogue and using their powers to ‘get rich’) or by our psych teams to better aid agents who are having trouble dealing with their work.

            Telepathic individuals have, in the past, been used to transfer messages, but the advent of the internet and easy accessibility of radio (as well as the use of extremely strong encryption) has made them of no use due to their significant limitations. In short, telepathy dissipates greatly with distance – even the strongest telepaths cannot manage more than a hundred kilometres.

            Extremely powerful telepaths are capable of mind control and other more worrying effects on the minds of others. Anti-mind control training is an essential part of the current training regimens, in case of a rogue, extremely powerful telepath. Be ever vigilant.

            Often those with telepathic abilities will have empathic or extra sensory perception abilities.

Energy Control: Energy control abilities are often categorised with as two different types of power – pyrokinesis and cryokinesis. They are, however, two sides of the same power; the ability to add or remove energy to an area.

            This area is often small, and only stronger pyrokinetics can generate ‘fire’. Most are only able to generate light, and even that only with extensive training. Similarly, cryokinetics capable of freezing objects or beings are similarly rare; most often they will instead drain all light from an area instead (again, with training). The creation of significant amounts of fire or cold is a highly difficult and taxing task, though creation of an ordinary fire by a pyrokinetic is quite possible given the right fuel.

            Energy control abilities are used in the field to carry out advanced tactics that rely on the manipulation of light and darkness. As even necromantic undead rely on sight (though some tainted seem to see in spectra beyond ordinarily visible light) this control can, and has, been used to great effect. Unfortunately, light manipulation on this scale is beyond the ability of most, and as such most individuals capable of energy control are only active as support agents or left to live ordinary lives.

            Individuals capable of energy control can often add or remove energy (even if they think of themselves as only being capable of one or the other). They also most often possess physiological or physical force control abilities, if other abilities are present.

Physical Force Control: More often called telekinesis, physical force control is the most visually impressive of the psychic abilities (due to the possibility of performing many impossible acts), but also one of the most useless. Except in rare instances where an individual has great or very refined power, it is of little use beyond throwing objects or opponents across the room in a panic. The great amount of force applied compared to any other psychic ability and the lack of fine control in most cases make the cost of utilising telekinesis usually far too high.

            The few powerful individuals capable of utilising telekinesis effectively possess high levels of ability and control, as well as unusually resilient physiologies. These individuals make up the core of several specialist elimination teams, as their highly unusual abilities allow them to surprise many otherwise very difficult to kill supernatural beings.

Extra Sensory Perception: Extra sensory perception is a common, and very useful in the field, psychic ability. Simply put, those with ESP are able to sense physical matter in a large area around themselves – though often only a few metres, this is more than enough to sense opponents through walls or even just the structure of a building.

            Those with stronger abilities – either finer detail or greater range – give field teams the ability to scan individuals for unusual traits or monitor entire buildings and areas for movement. This detail – beyond anything possible even with today’s technology – greatly enhances the effectiveness of our combat teams.

            ESP is not limited to the equivalent of sight. It is also possible for most possessing some form of this power to sense the chemical composition of objects via their colour or smell, or even detect sounds being made or words being said. ‘Second-sight’ – the ability to see ghosts – is also fairly common in those who possess ESP. Unusually, all forms of elemental magic are ‘invisible’ to ESP, though the absence they leave in physical forms is often enough to deduce the position of ghouls and other necromantic undead.

            Those who possess other abilities with ESP will usually have empathic or telepathic ones.

Déjà Vu and Foresight: Déjà vu is the name used for the strange ability of many psychics to see flashes of the future before they happen – especially if the impending event is of significance. The strength of this ability varies greatly. Some will only experience déjà vu once or twice in their entire lives, and even then, only through dreams and not remember it until the last moment.

            Others seem to experience déjà vu whenever they would die in combat – flashing back to the start of the fight with knowledge of all that occurs during it. Most of those who seem to possess the power occupy a middle ground – they experience a short period, perhaps a few seconds, and then flashback to just before it.

            This ability, though highly unreliable, is exceptionally useful in combat. It is most especially useful when a fight begins suddenly – many surprise attacks on teams have been foiled due to déjà vu being triggered. There are also several instances where other unfortunate occurrences have been avoided – mostly accidents or embarrassing mistakes.

            ‘Foresight’ is the name given to the ability to see the future. While déjà vu is always of an individual’s own experiences, foresight will show images or scenes of the future. Although we have several recorded cases of accurate foresight, most so-called ‘seers’ have been frauds. Overall, although likely linked to (and thus grouped with) déjà vu, we have little evidence that foresight exists, and no seers capable of searching through the future for useful information within the organisation.

History and Theories: Psychic powers are, we are almost certain, a fairly recent phenomenon. The first details of anything resembling our abilities are at the beginning of the twentieth century, although these may or may not have been hoaxes (like the many perpetrated by fake psychics).

            The first confirmed instance of psychic abilities was in nineteen thirty-three. Between then and the seventies, various ‘psychic clubs’ and other organisations came in and out of existence, most boasting at most only a handful of real psychics.

            This state of affairs changed in nineteen seventy-two with the formation of the International Psychic Council – that is, our organisation. Initially setup to organise, manage and protect psychics all over the world, we quickly discovered that there were not just a handful, but actually a horde of supernatural terrors happy to treat humanity as nothing more than a meal. As such our mission quickly gained one more part: protect the rest of humanity from the terrors hiding amongst them.

            A more thorough primer on our history can be found in Supernatural Organisation Files: The International Psychic Council.

            The origin of psychic powers is, we believe, linked to belief in them. Psychic powers becoming as common as they are today seems to have begun back when fake psychics first truly gained popularity – and to have grown in tandem with it. As we have been keeping all true psychic activity out of the spotlight, the increase in fakes is not due to the increase in true psychics – we truly believe it is the other way around.

            Older incidents of psychic powers (and especially older reports of seers) we believe to be due to the older, lesser belief in these abilities (stories of psychic powers were not a modern invention). This possibility also supports the favoured belief theory, however it is important to note that despite the correlations there is no actual proof as yet for the theory.