Application: Diana Vertue (aka Jenny Psycho), Simon R. Green's Deathstalker Saga

[psycho_vertue]

((With permission from Valentine-mun, seeing as we are the exact same person. Diana is in her canon one of the most powerful espers to ever have lived, though her powers will be Hogwarts-dampened. Telepathy, telekinetic manipulation and suchlike will be only by mun approval. She's usually described as putting off a very tangible aura of presence

Comments

[arrakis_savior]

Hogwarts had dampened Paul's precognitive powers in much the same way that the Dune Tarot had done: muddying the waters of Time, distorting and dilating the oracular vision. The presence of another oracle had a different effect. A Guildsman, for example, could shield an entire group of conspirators from Muad'Dib's eye.

Diana Vertue was an oasis of blankness in the field of Paul's oracular sight.

This made her interesting, and also potentially dangerous. Revision: very dangerous, he amended, assessing the person and her bearing. She did not carry herself with the care of one trained in prana-bindu discipline, but it did not take such training to pose a serious challenge, if she were crossed.

"You're not one to cross." A mild observation, neutral.

[psycho_vertue]

"No, I'm not," she said in the same conversational tone. Good. Someone who saw past the teeny blonde exterior to the berserker within. Tentatively, she let her esp out in his direction, curious as to what was there behind his exterior.

[arrakis_savior]

What was there: not an esper, not an elf. Not a telepath. To a telepath, Paul's mind would be a strange place indeed. Mentat training had made of his mind something almost like a computer, the post-Butlerian age's answer to thinking machines; Fremen mysticism had wrought an altogether different change, without compromising the underlying Mentat efficiency. And beneath all that were the Bene Gesserit precepts and arts his mother had inculcated in him from earliest childhood.

It would be difficult to read him, and someone trying to read him might be caught in the attempt: not by any psychic trap or barrier, but by Paul's observation of his interlocutor, whatever subtle signs might indicate the other's concentration or abstraction. Hogwarts-style Legilimency, requiring the practitioner's ocular focus, would be immediately perceived. Esp power like Diana's ... would not be as easy to detect at work.

"This is a room for introductions," he said.

[psycho_vertue]

Diana was fascinated. Espers where she came from, even the most well-disciplined ones, were still a tangle of chaos, bits of their minds and powers bubbling up and out like solar flares. This was... almost Shub-like. She'd felt a similar organization there, except that this was still unquestionably organic. She pulled her mind back into her own head, shutting that window firmly.

"So I see. Speaking of which, what exactly are you? And who, I supposed," she added as an afterthought.

[arrakis_savior]

"I'm my father's son," said Paul Atreides. "What more I've come to mean is not important here. To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers." He was quoting a Bene Gesserit axiom which the mun lifted from Dune Messiah.

It was intended to answer her question. What exactly are you? There were answers within answers. He'd wielded raw power, thus power had come to wield him. Hogwarts was a refuge from the jihad whose tool and symbol he as emperor-commander had become. He seemed, perhaps, at peace, a temporary and provisional sort of peace: a sojourn between storms.

"The name my father gave me is one I've kept. Paul Atreides. I don't think it's wise to make assumptions as to the nature of a Jenny Psycho," though there were analogues within reach, between her bearing and the sorts of people he'd met in life or seen in ancestral memory, and the closest of these could be a sayyadina. "So: what exactly are you, and who?"

[psycho_vertue]

"Nicely mysterious," she said, nodding. Mysterious wasn't necessarily a bad thing, sometimes. It was well-suited for drama, and having had experience in politics, drama was something valuable.

"Paul. Hi. I'm Diana, actually. Jenny's someone I used to be, and while I'm her on occasion it's not a constant thing any more. It's healthier for everybody that way. Let's see, what am I..." She tapped a fingernail on one of her front teeth as she thought that one out. "Terrorist, politician, former prisoner, living saint, uber-esper, rabble-rouser, pain in the ass, former vessel for the Mater Mundi." She nodded. "That might about cover it. It's been a busy few years."

[arrakis_savior]

He'd wanted to see how she would react to the term. It had seemed more a title than a name. Now he thought not.

"Many of those roles can be interchangeable." He knew this from experience, and probably sounded it. "What is the Mater Mundi?"

[psycho_vertue]

"The Mater Mundi." She drew out the words bitterly, baring her teeth in more of a snarl than a smile. "We thought it was practically a god. It wasn't. Do you know what it's like to know that your own collective subconscious is holding you hostage, dragging you around on a leash while it kills anyone who gets too close to the truth?" She shrugged, jamming her hands in her jacket pockets. "I helped destroy it by showing everyone the truth. Now we have the Oversoul where the Mater Mundi used to be, but without the secrets and lies. Except for me. I've always been my own person."