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| Open your mind (Implying you have a choice). |
Telepathy at its root is the ability to establish contact with the psyche of another being. This is usually accomplished with psychic powers, but it can also be done via magic, technology, or other means. Basic telepathy can allow you to read your opponent's mind and thus predict his or her moves and strategies, as well as communicate with allies to better coordinate a battle. More advanced forms of telepathy can be used to create illusions and even attack your opponent's mind directly.
Telepathy can be utilized in a number of way, including, but certainly not limited to, the following:
- Defense: Telepathy can manifest in a number of defensive ways.
- Cloak Mind: The ability to rearrange the mental engrams of mutants so their distinctive mutant thought patterns cannot be detected by Cerebro-type devises or by other telepaths.
- Psionic Shield: The ability to erect a psychic shield for protection of himself and other minds.
- Psychic Shadow: The ability to mask oneself, and other peoples' presence, from those within a certain are. A telepath can also disguise themself, making their appearance similar to that of a shadow.
- Cloak: The ability to telepathically mask one's presence and the use of his/her abilities from being detected by other mutants and psychic entities. These defenses can be extended to others around them as well. Cloaking via telepathy is not perfect and powerful telepathic mutants may notice and 'see' through this ability.
- Illusions: The ability to create realistic illusions and cause people to experience events which are not actually occurring.
- Camouflage: The ability to alter the apparent physical appearance of oneself and others by altering the perceptions of those around them. This can go so far as to make other people believe that the camouflaged people are not there (invisible). The only limit to this ability, if one exists, is only imposed by the number of people a telepath is trying to fool, not the number of people a telepath is actually camouflaging.
- Manipulation: The ability to manipulate other people's minds easily, achieving a variety of effects.
- Absorb Information: The ability to quickly process and store information, by mental transference.
- Astral Projection: The ability to project one's astral form from their body onto astral planes or the physical planes. In the physical plane one can travel in astral form over vast distances.
- Dark Psyche: The ability to release the dark side of a person's personality, either making them seem tougher or evil in anyways.
- Dilate Power: The ability to place “psychic inhibitors” in the minds of mutant adversaries to prevent them from using their powers.
- Download Information: The ability to place large amounts of information in another's mind.
- Heal Trauma: The ability to erase a person’s memories and to heal mental trauma through “psychic surgery,” the power to stimulate or deaden the pain and pleasure centers in a person's brain.
- Induce Pain: The ability to induce mental pain merely by touching the brow of the victim.
- Intuitive Multilingual: The ability to intuitively translating new languages.
- Mass Manipulation: The ability to subtly use deep influence upon multiple people, allowing a telepath to manipulate their perceptions, better judgment, wills and common sense.
- Mental Amnesia: The ability to erase any awareness of particular memories or cause total amnesia.
- Mental Detection: The ability to sense the presence of another superhuman mutant within a small but as yet undefined radius of oneself by perceiving the distinctive mental radiations emitted by such a being.
- Mental Paralysis: The ability to induce temporary mental or physical paralysis.
- Mental Sedating: The ability to telepathically "sedate" one's victims so that, if already rendered unconscious, they remain so for as long as a telepath continues to "sedate" them.
- Mind Alteration: The ability to alter the minds of others by sheer force of will, permanently changing their personality either partially or entirely.
- Mind Control: The ability to control the thoughts and actions of others.
- Mind Link: The ability to develop a mental link with any person, which remains as a connection to that individual long after the link itself is broken.
- Mind Transferal: The ability to transfer both the mind and powers of the user into other host bodies should their own physical body somehow be killed.
- Neural Jumpstart: The ability to increase the speed of neural signals in the brain, allowing him to increase another mutant's powers to incredible levels, but the effect is only temporary.
- Possession: The ability to possess the mind of another, and use that being's body, and any powers it may possess, as one's own.
- Psionic Blasts: The ability to project psionic force bolts which have no physical effects but which can affect a victim's mind so as to cause the victim pain or unconsciousness and can even kill an adversary.
- Psionic Siphoning: The ability to siphon the psychic energies from other psionic mutants. The stolen psychic energy can be used to either boost one's own powers or channel the energy into someone else to temporarily increase their psionic abilities.
- Tracking: Enhanced psionic senses enable a telepath to detect and track other sentient beings by their unique psionic emanations (thought patterns contained in the psionic portion of the spectrum), especially if they pose a threat to one's well-being in their immediate vicinity.
Broadcast & Receiving
In some mediums telepathy is divided in two classes, broadcasters and receivers.
Broadcasters (or transmitters) have the ability to induce thoughts. Illusionists, for example, usually rely on this side of the coin and have no real idea on what is going on inside their opponents' minds, and with it, enable adjustments to their broadcasting.
Receivers are the side of the coin that impacts interaction with the brain. To listen to thoughts, or to extract memories, or to realize what kind of defenses his opponent is putting up.
The skill on which side of telepathy may vary with the user, with characters like Mastermind being extremely powerful broadcasters and poor receivers, and many others being able to listen to thoughts, but not induce them
Empathy:
The psychic power in which one can fully interpret, replicate, and in some cases manipulate the emotions, moods, and temperaments of others. Will often go hand-in-hand with mental manipulation
Example of characters who can use telepathy:
- The Vulcans, Betazoids, and several other races from Star Trek
- A few characters from Bionicle
- Most Legendary and Psychic Pokemon
- Various races and characters from Doctor Who
- Many characters from Heroes
- A few characters from Twilight
- Force users from Star Wars
- Psykers and Daemons from Warhammer 40,000
- Various Psionics from Marvel Comics
- Various Psionics from DC Comics
- Several races and characters in Dragon Ball
- The Protoss race and certain members of the Zerg Swarm as well as certain humans from Starcraft