While humanity has started taking to the stars, their psionic potential has blossomed. Each generation of the last two has seen slight improvements in natural potential, and more children born with the abilities.
Piku Psionics are based roughly on real world ideas about psychic powers, but are far more powerful and easy to use, and are a "gift" which only a few people are born with in a measurable amount.
Character creation: decide your threshold, which powers you have (most psis have only one or two), and what your Talent with each one is.
All psis have a measured threshold. Most psis start at around 10 joules at puberty (and the world record at puberty is 122 joules); every 5,000 hours of psi exercise doubles the threshold (hours put towards psi skills count 1/10th towards exercise). Note: late 20th century saw a typical starting threshold of 0.05 joules, for comparison purposes.
Threshold is used for all powers.
Psi is functionally a Have/Have Not game. For a non-psi who wishes to develop their mental powers, however, the effective starting threshold for mundanes is around 0.000001 joules (sufficient to shift 1 gram a distance of 1 mm). After 100,000 hours, the former non-psi would be able to shove 1 kg a distance of 1 meter.
Subtlety defines the psi's natural Talent (and can be different for different powers). Talent is classified as "rough" (Talent 9 or less), "good" (Talent 10), "fine" (Talent 11) and "very fine" (Talent 12+). Even a rough psi can master fine control with practice, however, and in reality these distinctions are extremely hazy, based mostly on what people have observed you do and succeed at.
Reach: Special.
JSpace is a fourth dimension to the space curvature, in which distances are shorter due to the curve through this space. JSpace is broken into energy levels, starting with 1 ("astral space") and counting upwards. Each +1 energy level reduces distances by x10, but makes it more difficult for the psi to sense gravity wells and otherwise navigate.
JSpace is a hard vacuum. Matter tends to naturally "fall" out of it into normal space when not forced into place by a psi.
JSpace psi is special in that it is mostly ineffective without the addition of cybernetics to pump raw energy through the psi's "circuit". The JSpace ability essentially creates a spatial envelope, which the cybernetics can then pour power into expanding - the result is that up to 1,000,000x the psi's threshold can be used for JSpace purposes (in other words, 1 megajoule per joule of threshold).
The psi is able to travel JSpace mentally, leaving her body behind. This ability is relatively easy for most JSpace psis - it costs 10 joules multiplied by the desired level of JSpace, plus 0.1% of that per second to stay. While "astral", the psi can travel very rapidly (1 joule per second provides a movement rate of 45 meters per second, modified normally for JSpace distances; each x4 joules doubles that speed) and does not require psychokinesis or other method of movement. However, the psi's ability to travel is limited by distance from the meat body. Each meter of distance from the body costs 0.001 joule (so a kilometer is 1 joule), and the psi is unable to perceive the physical world except through psi senses.
The psi's mind is not affected by the hard vacuum of JSpace.
This is the psi's ability to pull matter (including the psi's own body) into JSpace. This costs 1,000 joules to pull 1 kilogram into JSpace, multiplied by the desired energy level, plus 0.1% of that per second to stay. Thus, to pull a 250 ton ship into level 2 JSpace would cost 500 million joules, plus 500 thousand joules per second thereafter.
Once in JSpace, the psi must continually concentrate and expend the necessary energy to remain in JSpace - losing concentration results in popping back out into normal space. For this reason, psis usually work in teams on long trips, passing the maintenance of JSpace off to each other as they go.
Other Psi: Other psi abilities work just fine in JSpace. ESP is particularly useful for its ability to see into normal space (only from level 1) and PK is useful for Shielding (against the hard vacuum) and Levitation.
Exiting: Exiting is easy - the psi merely lets go and all objects in JSpace immediately enter normal space, radiating energy equal to roughly half the entry energy in heat (80%) and light (20%). Most psis will drop to level 1 first, then slowly enter normal space, to minimize this to about 1% of the normal energy shedding. This technique takes several minutes, but greatly reduces the environmental impact.
Although matter does not appear to exist in JSpace (except for matter the psi brings in), gravity wells still exist there. Thus, a psi could dive through a planet, but would still feel the effects of gravity. JSpace psis have a natural sense for gravity wells, however, which functions as a highly specialized ESP. Their BASE range for detecting and "seeing" gravity wells is approximately 1 kilometer at 1 joule threshold, doubled per x8 joules; this is an instantaneous sense (the psi sees where the gravity well IS, not where it WAS).
Each energy level of JSpace multiplies the effective distance of this sense by x10 (as per the standard rules for the energy levels), but gives a -1 to Skill for sensing purposes.
Voices: It's not a well known fact except among fringe groups and those studying Jumpspace, but psis begin to hear voices in Jspace after long exposure to it. The length of time required is somewhat variable with the person, but is usually somewhere around 15,000 hours. Although it sounds like language, and sometimes a word is picked out of it, it mostly sounds (to the psi) like babble. The scientific community has generally stood behind the theory that these "voices" are actually just electronic noise from all the raw power shoving its way through the psi's head, which the psi's subconscious attempts to make sense of.
Gravity Wells: The psi can sense gravity wells in normal space as well, but the range limitations are pretty restrictive here.
Other Objects: The psi can sense other JSpace psis who are pushing themselves into JSpace, but not how much mass they have brought with them. Only psis within the same energy level can be detected in this manner.
Special Effects: JSpace is just like normal space, except that there is no matter in it except what the psis bring in with them. It is a hard vacuum, and completely pitch black. Objects (including light) can travel for a second or two before falling back into normal space if the psi is not maintaining their presence. Gravity is still present for large planets, roughly halved per energy level in JSpace. Getting mired in a planet's gravity well can be a no-escape proposition, so most psis avoid getting too close to planets without sufficient thrust to leave them.
Reach: 5 meters at 1 joule; doubled per x8 joules. ESP powers have much greater ranges, but take a -1 penalty per doubling of the base Reach. Note that for Telepathy, Reach is the only real effect of Threshold.
ESP powers are actually the development of sensitivity to certain patterns in the "psychic environment", allowing the psi to know things without any apparent physical method of doing so. ESP powers do not affect the environment directly, but merely observe it.
The psi is sensitive to and familiar with the mental patterns that make up emotional states.
Physical/Emotional Health: The psi can judge the relative healthiness of the subject. To the psi's senses, the information is conveyed in terms of energy/activity, balance/stability and degree of pain. This allows the psi to detect depression, emotional shock, illness, sleep, unconsciousness, high energy, injury, and more.
Crude Emotions: The psi can detect the presence of very strong "crude" emotions, such as anger, resentment, fear/anxiety, need, desire, pleasure, and adrenalin. The psi can detect a rough level of emotion strength (absent, mild, simmering, boiling over).
Lies: The psi can guess that someone is lying based on their general emotional state in the same manner as a lie detector. Deception causes slight tension and nervousness (mild levels of fear/anxiety), and in combination with what the person says, may give the psi the clues needed to ferret out a lie. People who can fool a lie detector by remaining calm can fool the psi as well, however.
Detection: A psi can use this ability to detect people he can not see, and get a rough feel for their location. Direction can be detected as roughly front, left, right or behind; distance can be guessed at as within arm's reach, close (same room), nearby or far away. Make a roll anytime it is important, and the psi detects one person if she makes it exactly, doubled per point of success (starting with the closest people; if there is no one within the basic Reach, subtract one point of succes and continue working outward).
Ghosts: Extremely strong, crude emotional states leave an imprint on their surroundings, which can be detected by the psi. These imprints are generally faint and provide little information other than which crude emotion left the imprint. Reach translates into hours for purposes of detection (a Reach of 160 is roughly a week). An emotion has to be extremely strong to leave an imprint at all, so there is no bonus for "strong" emotions. Need leaves stronger imprints, giving a +2 to rolls to detect it.
The psi is sensitive to and familiar with the upper layer of symbolized thoughts that occur in a normal human mind. A person can not "resist" mind reading, but they can attempt to be less focused, giving the telepath penalties.
Pictures: When a person sees something, the mind breaks it down into its component lines, colors, shapes, paths of eye movement, etc. The psi can attempt to tap into this (essentially listening in on the elements) and then try to recreate the image in his own head. Thus, a psi trying to read the mind of someone engrossed in a black and white photo of an old man might get "black and grey, a wrinkled face, masculinity, window/square, far away", or even a mental image of the old man on a good roll.
Vocalizations: People often argue with themselves, rehearse what they will say later on, recreate conversations (a memory trick), grumble and curse people out in their head, remember song lyrics, and so on. All of these things (even reading a book) creates a mental vocalization (or word symbolization) that the psi can attempt to tap into. The more focused the person is on the subject of the vocalizations, the more clearly the psi can hear it, but even with an extremely focused mind it can be frustratingly similar to reading lips at a distance.
Language Barriers: Telepaths have some chance of understanding comments in a foreign language, but not by much. Concepts which can be expressed the same in both languages give a -3 to the roll to comprehend; concepts which differ give a -5; concepts which are absent in the psi's language are incomprehensible.
Focus: Clarity of thought is important to anyone attempting to read your mind. Utter zen-like concentration provides a +2 to psis reading your mind; intense concentration provides a +1; good focus gives a +0; the average person's mind gives a -1; a distracted or poorly focused mind gives a -2; someone deliberately scrambling or a true scatterbrain gives a -4.
Reach: 1 meter at 1 joule; doubled per x8 joules.
The ability to lift and move objects. This is limited by visualization, so objects are limited in velocity to about 10 times their own length per second. Levitation pumps momentum into the object - this can not be used to "strike" or "crush", despite the tabloids. Speed is calculated as the square root of (energy divided by half the object's mass). A minimum of 10 m/sec accelleration is needed to actually levitate the object.
A device may be "flung", sacrificing control for speed. In this case, the momentum energy is pumped into the object in one quick rush, and the object is released to fly in the desired direction. There is no speed limit on this, but there is also no control. "PK Flinging" (-2, x2) is the Skill to aim with this.
Personal levitation is a bit easier, and so the psi is not speed limited by visualization.
Air resistance may matter at very high speeds. At density 1 and a non-aerodynamic shape (such as the human body), air resistance begins to matter at around 80 m/sec. Above this, each +1 m/sec counts as +2 m/sec for calculating energy requirements. Increased density increases the top speed by x1.25 per doubling of density; reduced density reduces the top speed by x0.8 per halving of density. Aerodynamic shapes can up to quadruple the top speed.
Air friction matters at extremely high speeds. At 120 m/sec, cotton cloth and other soft materials begin to tear, and protective eyegear is necessary. At 150 m/sec, even tough clothing begins to tear, skin may stretch painfully, reduced air pressure may cause the ears and nose to bleed, and breathing normally will be impossible. Full studies on faster speeds have not been done, but 250 m/sec will rip the air out of your lungs.
Manipulating Objects: Objects may also be manipulated, as if with two hands. The "strength" of this is approximately equal to half the joules used (that is, 150 joules yields about 75 kg Max Lift). Any manual Skills the character has may be used at a -2 penalty with this ability (for example, telekinetically picking a lock would be at a -2); alternately, the character may learn the Skill telekinetically, in which case the reverse is true!
The ability to generate a plane of kinetic potential which reacts to the passage of physical objects and counters their momentum. This works in the same manner as other psychokinetic feats, but relies even more heavily on the mind over distance capabilities. Shielding is only truly useful to thresholds around 100 joules and higher.
Each joule put into the shield drops the energy of a physical attack by 1 joule. For example, a psi has a 250 joule shield up, and gets hit with an 11 gram bullet traveling 330 m/sec (598 joules, 7.7 DP). The bullet drops to 251 m/sec (349 joules, 5.9 DP).
Shielding is more useful for handling gases, however. At sea level, the atmosphere exerts approximately 1 kg per square centimeter (referred to as 1P from here on). A shield capable of withstanding this pressure (and thus keeping out all gases) requires 75 joules per second for complete coverage. As a side note, 10 meters of sea water depth generate 1P of force, so a shield that kept you dry up to 10 meters deep would require a total of 150 joules (the atmosphere above the water plus the water generates a TOTAL of 2P). Fresh water is +1P per 10.3 meters (it weighs less than sea water).
Stiff winds can have some impact on gas shielding because they change the air pressure, but in general, air pressure is reduced on one side and increased on the other, so the end result is roughly balanced (add +0.1P per 10 m/sec to be conservative).
Shielding can also be used in this context to improve your aerodynamics for levitation purposes. However, this is not particularly energy efficient: to get a good "foil" shape would take around 4x your normal surface area, or 300 joules for 1P.
Air Under Pressure: If there is no protection against the pressure, a balloon will halve in volume (double in density) at 10 meters depth in seawater. At extreme depths, having your psionic concentration interrupted can be deadly, as the non-water filled spaces in your body (ear cavity, nasal passage, mouth, lungs, stomach, intestines and body cavity, primarily) compress under the pressure. If the psi goes too deep, the spaces will shrink so much that blood starts leaving the capillaries to fill in the spaces. The result can be lung, sinus or nasal hemorrhage, or a ruptured tympanic membrane. With ascent, all the breath-hold diver's shrunken spaces will expand back to their original size. Because there is no over expansion, there is no risk of blowing out a lung or other air space.
Surviving in Space: Protection against 1P is sufficient to retain air in a vacuum, but this does not recycle or provide additional air, and 1.1P protection is a bit safer in that there is a reduced possibility of a leak. To encompass a spherical volume of air 2 meters in diameter (roughly 4x human surface area) takes 300 joules, and will be sufficient for several hours (33 cubic meters of air is good for 28.8 hours for a human at rest). This will not help with sunburn, however.
The ability to generate light. Generally, 1 joule provides a 1 watt light, so to get a typical 60 watt light bulb requires 60 joules. By default, light produced in this manner is an even white (with no discrepancies in the spectrum) which is visible light only, and radiates in all directions equally.
Focused Light: Restricting the radiation to a particular direction gives a -1 penalty. Making the light coherent in a particular direction gives a -3 penalty and produces a laser. To get a powerful laser (a very narrow beam size) gives an additional -1 penalty. Lasers do burn damage (a 10 joules beam can do 1 DP burn damage; 40 joules can do 2 DP).
Altered Frequencies: The light created can be a different color for a -1 penalty; it can mimic sunlight or other light sources at a -2 penalty (the mimic is not perfect, and a spectrograph will clearly show the differences). Infrared or ultraviolet light can be generated at a -2 penalty; both cases shift it only barely into their respective spectrums. Infrared at 10 watts or higher will feel distinctly hot at close range!
Other Tricks: Light can only be generated, not manipulated, with this Skill. Thus, bending light, creating shadows and similar things are not possible here.
The ability to create spectral prisms, traps and lenses psychokinetically. The result is that light paths can be blocked, curved, and focused or defocused. This ability is NOT instant - the light effect must be put in place BEFORE the light passes through the space.
Curve: The psi can create a point in space which curves the path of light passing through it in a particular direction. The curve can be gradual (looks like a curve) or sharp (looks like a bend). Both types tend to scatter the light somewhat, creating a prism effect or rainbow; this can be countered at a -1 penalty. Gradual curves cost around 0.1 joule per square cm of surface area that curves light passing through it; sharper curves cost 0.5 joules per square cm.
Trap: A light trap absorbs light, creating shade on the opposite side. Traps cost 0.5 joules per square cm to completely block natural sunlight at sea level; less can be spent for correspondingly less shade.
Reflection: A reflection bounces the light back like a mirror. It costs the same as a Trap.
Lens: A lens functions exactly like a glass lens of the same shape. Lenses give a -2 penalty automatically, with an additional -1 per doubling of the number of lenses being attempted. A lens costs 1 joule per square cm of area covered by the lens. This can be used to magnify distant (or small) objects, focus sunlight to burn ants, defocus lasers, etc.
Light Shield: A "reactive" shield can be created which only absorbs light above a certain energy level (the usual level is 10 joules per square cm). This functions identically to a kinetic shield, with each 1 joule in the shield reducing laser energy by 1 joule (until it reaches the minimum energy). A light shield can protect against infrared or ultraviolet energy at an additional -2 penalty (or -3 penalty to protect against both).
The ability to generate electrical charges.
BEST GUESS: Calculate DP (square root of joules/10) and convert to SC as 1d6 per 2 DP.
The ability to increase or reduce specific heat of objects by increasing or reducing their molecular vibration. The joules required to raise 1 gram of several substances by 1 degree Celsius is listed on the chart below. Reducing heat costs exactly the same amount. For comparison, a 68 kg person would require approximately 0.306 megajoules to raise by 1 degree Celsius. This ability is primarily useful for party tricks like frosting a silver spoon (an 80 gram silver spoon would cost 564 joules to bring down from 30 degrees Celsius to freezing).
Heat Radiation: Note that as internal heat increases above the temperature of the surrounding environment, some of that heat will begin to radiate off. Different materials radiate at different speeds, but as a rough rule of thumb, metals can radiate around 1 joule per square cm of surface area, and most non-conductors about 0.1 joules per square cm of surface area. A moist surface doubles this rate with no airflow, or quadruples it with airflow.
Igniting & Melting Things: See GURPS Psionics and GURPS Supers.
Air 1.0 (1.2929 kg/m3)
Carbon (graphite) 0.711
Concrete 1.0
Copper 0.387
Ethyl alcohol 2.45
Aluminum 0.963
Gold 0.13
Granite 0.8
Iron 0.45
Lead 0.128
Nickel 0.461
Olive Oil 2.0
Silver 0.235
Water, frozen 2.09
Water, liquid 4.18
Person 4.5
Sand 0.664
Clay 0.13