Telepathy
Telepathy is the capacity for two living creatures to communicate with one another solely via mental connection to one another. Telepathy is distinct from biological communication methods, such as bioelectric field interactions or non-verbal body languages. Consensual telepathic contact is easy to maintain.
Intrusive actions trigger instinctive resistance from the subject. After an intrusion, the subject may suffer depressive or aggressive fits, headaches, and feelings of emotional disquiet. Basic telepathic self-defense teaches people how to identify these particular symptoms and to isolate them from influencing decision making. The drug Gambutrol is an expensive but relatively common prescription that obfuscates brainwaves to make telepathic intrusion more difficult.
Potential Uses
The lowest-level telepaths are empaths. They can read (or sometimes impart) emotional sensations in those around them. It takes little effort to pick up stray emotions or strong surface thoughts. This is a 'passive' role for the telepath.
Disciplined telepaths can exchange thoughts, ideas, even images or sensory data with their subjects. Some can project their awareness into the Astral Plane. Telepaths can manipulate the senses of their subjects to hide things or to create hallucinations only the subject can perceive. It is possible to read or suppress memories, or implant compulsions and change behavior patterns. The more complicated the task, the more focus, time, and effort is necessary. Compulsions violating core ethics or causing self-harm are the most difficult of tasks.
Risk of Injury
Simple manipulations, 'Jedi Mind Tricks', require little effort to effect. Deeper dives into memory or deeply-rooted compulsions require building a strong mental bond between subject and psychic, and leaves the psychic vulnerable to psychic injury or retaliation. Mental discipline and willpower are important traits for controlling these contests. Particularly toxic or mentally unwell subjects can cause significant harm to a psychic unprepared to experience their mindscape. If the subject is badly injured or traumatized, any linked psychic may experience that trauma as if it were happening to them. Many amateur mind-controllers have died of strokes or seizures after compelling a subject to harm themselves.
Long-term exposure to repeated psychic commands can cause psychosis and even brain damage. Control of a person's mind-- "puppeteering"-- requires immense discipline and tremendous amounts of psionic energy. Even non-psychics can and will instinctively resist against this intrusion, particularly if they are compelled to do something against their core morality. If the puppeting goes on long enough the trauma to the brain can cause a stroke or send the puppet into a fit of insane violence.
Psychic Combat
Between telepaths, combat takes on a new meaning. The objective is to gain total access to the core of the target's mind. Telepaths create protections around their minds, typically giving their abstractions a metaphysical form such as high walls and barricades. Particularly intelligent or inventive telepaths create a mental ideologue to give their objectives more coherence, sending armies of whatever they can imagine into battle in an attempt to deconstruct the mental 'fortress' protecting their opponent. These are among the most aggressive of intrusions, even if no harm is meant, and requires an extremely skilled telepath using just enough pressure to crack the subject's walls without causing a psychotic fit.
