Psionics (Eodea)

Psionics is a branch of Eodean magic that deals with emotions and thoughts.

1. Passive

1.1. Empathy

1.2. Telepathy

1.3. Psychometry

2. Active

2.1. Communication

2.2. Suggestion

2.3. Hallucinations

3. Mechanics

3.1. Dangers

3.2. Defence

3.3. Distances

1. Passive

1.1. Empathy

Empathy is limited to the perception of feelings. In most psions (excluding elves) this is not "on by default", but requires some concentration.

1.2. Telepathy

There is no hard and fast border between empathy and telepathy; the former seems to be a limited version of the latter. The range of difficulty and therefore required skill is quite big.

• Broadcast thoughts are easiest to pick up; they are understood like speech and represent things the target wants to communicate to the telepath, but cannot state understandable, be it because the two people don't share a common language, or the target being not understandable due to background noise or other reasons, or doesn't dare speaking aloud.
  Unless they can conclude from the behaviour of the mindreader, this is hard to detect for the target. A telepath should notice if they are suspicious, but might not if they are not paying particular attention.
• Surface thoughts are things the target is thinking to themselves. It depends on many factors how easy or difficult it is to read those, including if the target considers them a secret.
  Sensitive and/or paranoid non-telepaths may get a strange feeling when probed for surface thoughts; a telepath is likely to notice unless the one doing the reading has vastly superior skills.
• Memories are things the target is not thinking of at the moment. Reading those is very difficult.
  Even a non-telepath is very likely to notice this.

1.3. Psychometry

A skilled enough telepath can learn picking up impressions and shreds of memory left on object by their owner, or by a very emotionally charged event.

2. Active

2.1. Communication

The telepath (rarely even an empath) can share impressions, images or thoughts with a target. Communicating with another telepath is simple, with a non-telepath difficult. The target will be aware the thoughts are coming from "outside", and at least get some impression of the one doing the "sending".

2.2. Suggestion

Planting emotions or thoughts into someone's head. When done properly, the target will not be aware these are coming from outside. However, it depends on the target if they will follow "their" feeling or new idea.

2.3. Hallucinations

It is possible to make someone see/hear/etc the world completely different from what it is. This, however, either needs a genius of a psion, or several competent ones working together.

3. Mechanics

3.1. Dangers

All psionics create a link between the two parties. There is always a risk feelings or thoughts of the psion could leak to the target. If that target is not a psion themselves, the "leak", if it occurrs, will always be on a smaller scale, but a skilled psion can use the link for a "counter attack".

There are also reports of mindreaders being traumatised by someone else's memories.

3.2. Defence

Anyone can try to block out a psion, but usually blocks by non-psions are relatively weak. Empathy, even though very basic, is difficult to block.

If someone knows their surface thoughts ar ebeing read, the simplest defense is not thinking of anything they do not want to be known. Reciting poems or multiplication tables helps.

3.3. Distances

There are no hard-and-fast range limits, they depend on the difficulty of the task, defence of the target and the skill of the psion. Particularly empathy can work over very long ranges, if the psion either knows the target well or can see it. The other extreme is extracting memories, which requires the psion to be within a few metres distance from the target.

It's considerably easier working on someone whom you can see; physical contact helps, too.