Garden- Reality Warpers + 8 Reality Warpers

Reality Warpers are psychics who have ascended beyond mastering a single power, and now have the ability to change reality. While many begin with only minor mental instability and only a few powers, in just a few weeks reality warper powers grow exponentially along with their insanity.

All Reality Warpers are crazy. Most are narcissists and many are homicidal. You can't play as these.

However, it may be possible to run into one as city explorers or as Garden Enforcers- the lay police force that tries to keep the anarchistic city running. Instead of a traditional stat line, all reality warpers instead have three stats, which are all measured from 1 to 10.

Potence is the measure of the warper's power level, mostly in relation to which reality warper wins if two try to change the world in opposite ways. Even a warper of power level 1 is omnipotent. The potence level is also the number of weeks any impossible changes or items made by the reality warper last until entropy brings it down to Earth again.

Awareness is the measure of the reality warper's passive perception of the surrounding world, including its range in city blocks. Reality warpers are all potent psychics as well as just being able to change anything, as such they can easily read the minds of everyone in their radius. This is how far you have to be away or else the reality warper instantly knows your plan to kill them and the special artifact you brought along to do it.

Lucidity is the sanity level of the reality warper. This is not the same as Awareness; Lucidity is the X in 10 chance that they process any given information in a way a sane person would. It is highly likely a reality warper will just ignore you if you walk up to them with a gun; they'll assume you're the milk man because of your hat and bag full of clinking ammunition.

When you first create a Reality Warper, roll 1d10 for each stat. Every year reduce their Awareness by one point. Every year, Reality Warpers also have a 1 in 4 chance of increasing their Potency by 1 point, and at the same time, reducing their Lucidity by -1 point. If a Reality Warper has a Potency of 10 and a Lucidity of 1 or 0, they have a 1 in 6 chance of disappearing from Garden forever every single week. Nobody knows where they disappear to, but many believe they create their own universe, or achieve a sort of advanced disassociation that causes them to erase themselves from existing.

What Reality Warpers are Capable Of

These are all the things a Reality Warper can do at a Potence level of 1;

• Change someone's species, features, or biological sex, permanently.
• Curse someone so every single dollar they try to find or spend is lost or wasted somehow. If this curse hits a millionaire they'll be dead from starvation in a few months.
• Give someone a distinct smell that makes everyone they meet want to fuck them.
• Noneuclidan connections between spaces; go through closet to visit neighbor's house
• Conjure any amount of any matter they want.
• Read any person's entire life story, including memories they have forgotten or things they have deluded themselves into believing and knowing about that, just by looking at them.
• Killing anything within their Awareness range, instantly.
• Bring back any dead thing, as long as they possess at least one molecule of their corpse.
• Fly or levitate at any height or speed. Themselves or anyone else they want.
• Create an engine of any horsepower that never runs out of fuel, or a gun that never runs out of bullets, or anything like that.
• Making a place x1000 times bigger on the inside then the outside.
• Make everyone within their Awareness radius forget they exist.
• Reverse time and go back 10xPotence minutes (or Turns equal to Potence). Only they and other Reality Warpers remember what happened in the “first” timeline.
• All of the above and anything else they want.

Whenever a Reality Warper tries to change reality in a way that violates a law of physics, it is ignored totally and the change just happens, that's of little concern. Whenever a Reality Warper tries to change reality in a way that violates logic, have them roll under their Potence level. If it rolls under, it succeeds. If it rolls over, they still succeed by there is a psychic backlash or unforseen consequences. Ie; they create a squared circle but every right angle within a few feet of them curves unnaturally into a circle shape, like bones or gun barrels.

Whenever a reality warper creates something plausible or within existence already; it is indistinguishable from the real thing. It IS the real thing. They can give people mutations or change their forms; from human to animal or alien to another, and these changes are totally permanent. Anything conjured by them that is a regular bit of matter is permanent and totally real; This is the reason why Garden uses paper money. Whenever a reality warper gets down and inflates a hundred million dollars of Garden's currency, the government just switch over the mint to use a new design and new dollar bill. It's happened enough times to be an issue. They can even create or resurrect living beings which are real and will live on to the rest of their biological lifespan, unless if they were created poorly. Impossibly strong monsters or beings made of unnatural materials may die soon after the reality warper is defeated or forgets about them; their biology cannot sustain a creature of the imagination.

When reality warpers create things that are impossible, supernatural, or highly psychically charged however; these things have a limitation. They begin to lose their power after a number of weeks equal to the warper's power score. This includes things like manipulations of luck or fate, localized distortions of the laws of physics, or anything involving extradimensional spaces or time. These gross manipulations of what is and what isn't correct themselves quickly; the blunt laws of reality snap back into place like rubber from the twisting hands of the warper.

Fighting a Reality Warper

You lose.

You can't beat a Reality Warper in a straight up fight. The only way to “beat” them is to destroy what little interests they have out of their zone and to avoid them and their territory at all costs. The sole exception is what happens when two Reality Warpers clash. If you could somehow convince a reality warper (who doesn't want anything) to reduce the powers of a weaker Reality Warper, then you might actually have a chance.

Any reality warper with a potency of 0 remains an incredible psychic and psychokinetic. At 0 Potence, a reality warper has the following stats;

• 10 HD
• Mastery of all unarmed, firearm, and melee martial arts
• Superhuman strength, speed, intelligence, and perception. Treat any stat modifiers as +5
• Can conjure any weapon it wants and use it once each round.
• Regenerates 2d6 Hit Points and 1d6 Psychic Stress per round
• Automatically deflects the first 1d100 bullets, shells, and cartridges fired at it each round.
• Kills anyone it can see, one per round. If you survive the first attempt, it kills you on the second round, regardless of the number of immunizes you've acquired.
• Total freedom of movement, levitates self at fast running speed, break free from all traps, containment, or snares in one round regardless of material or strength.

With enough firepower, it could be possible to defeat a Reality Warper through sheer force of arms and numbers. If so, the Reality Warper cannot revive itself from the dead as long as its body is sufficiently destroyed and ashes scattered to the winds.

What Reality Warpers actually Do

While all this above paints a pretty obvious picture; Reality Warpers are Gods. Something about Garden has awoken incredible power in some individuals. Reality Warpers don't exist on other worlds, even if psychics do, as whatever special feature makes Warpers here doesn't happen anywhere else.

However, Reality Warpers are Gods, but they don't act like it. They're all insane, and almost all of them are incredibly insular. Newly awakened Reality Warpers may be a bit more lucid and aware of the world then others. Many may get involved in local politics, conjure a few hundred kilos of high quality steel to build a new skyscraper, or slaughter entire gangs on their own. But as time goes on, they all become more and more withdrawn from the world. The vast majority of Reality Warpers stay in a single place; usually their old home or place of work, and just exist in a sort of dreamlike fairyland where all of their baggage is aired again and again. Perhaps their old apartment complex which has become like a utopia; the people there without control of their muscles or mouths and seeing everything they are doing and saying as little more then puppetry, a facsimile of kindness and neighborhood. Maybe the reality warper goes back to the job they hated, tormenting their coworkers and boss for years through mutations, constant humiliations, all of them unable to leave or find even the release of death; as they cannot die while the reality warper wishes them to live through his torments.

Once a Reality Warper has gone totally insane, lost their Lucidity, and gained more power and control over reality, they will eventually just leave. Everything inherently impossible they made will stop functioning after a number of weeks equal to their power score they had before they left.

Reality Warpers Table – Roll 1d8

[1] King Leo the First

Potence 4, Awareness 3, Lucidity 4

This lion-like alien is from another world. He lives in an apartment complex whose walls have been dissolved away, an artificial river runs through the floor, old couches and refrigerators turned to stones and sand on the floor. The area within is much larger then the area outside, though the ceiling is still the source of light, it stretches outwards. The various neighbors of all species have been stripped of all clothing and personal items except for loinclothes and primitive weapons. Guns don't work in his domain; everything is based on tribal warfare and primitive spears and shields.

King Leo is delusional and thinks himself as a King of a primitive empire. It has a Lion-King esque power structure, with the Lion and his family on top, noble beasts below, and those are above anything he views as a “cowardly scavenger” like anything resembling a hyena, vulture, or insect. At first, he may have created this “kingdom” simply to rule over his neighbors, but now he has started to fall into routine and may think that this Kingdom is his actual birthright, as he plans to give to his son when he is born.

Unconsciously, King Leo's wife has had her pregnancy extended and delayed for six years. She's still happily pregnant and thinks the baby will come any day, but doesn't know why it won't happen. She also doesn't know why she feels so tired and ready to die all the time. She goes along anyway. Leo's psychic powers are manifesting to keep his son from being born, perhaps as a subconscious desire to not accept Leo's own morality or desire to rule on his own, without sons or daughters or anything else to take it away from him or to share his prestige.

[2] Kamipo

Potence 5, Awareness 6, Lucidity 3

This is a female ice-skipper, a penguinoid race of aliens from a cold planet. Even they miss their weak, blue sun that gave the only life-sustaining heat in their icy world. Kamipo unlocked her psychic powers and currently lives within an underground subway station, part of an abandoned subway network that was built for mass transit. Doors along the train tracks lead off into the white-washed service tunnels of garden. The deeper you go through these tunnels, the colder it gets.

Kamipo is very aware of intruders within her lair, but has little grasp on reality. She views other beings as distractions, who she freezes in place and never lets leave her lair. She stays down here in absolute stillness and the cold. She manipulates the air around her body in a 10 ft radius to be almost absolute zero, but due to her psychic powers she can move and live in that environment. Needless to say, this will instantly freeze any body part coming close to her solid, even the air is sluggish and half liquid, though her reality warping means it doesn't react exactly as you'd expect.

Kamipo has become a bit of a “big game” label, somewhat more famous then some of the loose reality warpers in Garden and due to the many members of the population she has frozen in permafrost many wish to see her dead. This may also be the cause of some of her paranoia; the constant swirling of cold air around her body is to freeze bullets solid and slow them to a crawl before they touch her, not that she has let her skin and downy feathers retain their normal weakness from when she was a mortal. Regardless, there is a bounty of $100,000 on her head.

[3] Ozy

Potence 7, Awareness 2, Lucidity 2

His physical form is gone. Whatever species or type of being this once was, perhaps even female though now presents with a masculine and domineering voice, it is nothing but a spirit. His “body” is a shroud of fabrics that constantly fold and clean themselves ever moment, immune to being lit on fire and a dark mass where the face in the folds of the shroud would could speak to you.

Even as far as reality warpers go, Ozy is powerful. There is a great buzz of unreality when you are nearby his, thankfully, short range. He typically spends his time in the destroyed ruins of an old factory where he was “awakened” to his powers. Since then, a great fence has been erected around the place and people are warned heavily to stay away. He has not moved from that spot since then, and seemingly has no interest in the outside world or his continued gloomy self introspection. He spends all his time sitting on a half melted throne of chrome and iron, forged together from materials found in the factory, and staring at a wall while thinking to himself.

As a final note; there is a great number of rumors that people who climb the fence and visit this living god will be rewarded with a wish at random, if they go to him when he is in the right move or they have a righteous cause. There is seemingly no known origin for this myth, and as such it is believed to originate from the warper himself, perhaps to see how far people will go to chase an ideal. It is likely that within the next few years, Ozy will ascend to a higher plane of being or disappear from Garden as whatever is left of his sanity and universal awareness fade to nothing.

[4] Heavy Eyes

Potence 2, Awareness 1, Lucidity 8

This creature is a relatively new reality warper. They are from a genderless species of strange, doll-like people with set facial expressions from when they were born. “Heavy Eyes” looks like they're half asleep all the time, when in reality they have awakened to a cosmic level of being. However, for a reality warper they are quite weak, and are not in full control of their powers, requiring to be in the same room and taking a round to force any change on the world by staring at their target and concentrating while mumbling to themselves.

In exchange for their relative weakness, Heavy Eyes is much more sane and “awake” to the world then most reality warpers, and for the past few months has been trying to find ways to “help” people. Unfortunately, several warring factions such as an aggressive expansionist work union and a few street gangs have been trying to align Heavy Eyes against their enemies or make them fabulously wealthy by conjuring masses of money and gold for them, and as such the doll is soon going to be burnt out of trying to help people entirely. Social isolation is the eventual reality for all reality-warpers, but this will only speed up a loss of lucidity into mental decay.

Finally, Heavy Eyes as a person seems to be well meaning but idealistic. Those with sleeping psychic powers who speak to this being will find it moving to touch them; its touch unlocking their psychic powers and causing a few days of intense insomnia as their mind adjusts to the new powers. Heavy Eyes has also accidentally killed a few people this way, its touch having caused a sort of psychic resonance where the person turns inside out and dies pitifully. Heavy Eyes will always reach to their own eyes in shock and panic, and then within a moment, delete the memory from their own mind. It has no recollection of these events, and refuses to accept them even if you tried to prove it to the entity. While more sane then any other current known reality warper, it is still prone to bouts of irrationality to defend itself.

[5] Burnstar

Potence 5, Awareness 7, Lucidity 0

This reality warper is a strange exception. Having no “mind” left to speak of, it is merely a psychic manifestation that goes without thought or ending. Burnstar appears as a burning ball of plasma that falls in on itself each second, before billowing back out in fractal patterns. It has no understanding of the world or of sentient beings, but is aware of its surroundings and has a decent level of power.

Burnstar appears once every few hours randomly in the city, usually hovering over a building or interstate. For most people, they will see it in the distant as a bright street lamp and pay it no mind, but those who pass under the being may find themselves starting to sweat as it burns their skin through radiation. It may take an interest in something unusual, or strangely people wearing the color green, floating over them and following them around for a large distance. It is very difficult to lose the Burnstar once it has noticed you, usually only losing interest if you escape to the underground tunnels where it refuses to follow or you are dead and become a charred corpse.

It is highly likely that whatever psychic echo created the burnstar will wear off in the next few weeks as its lucidity means it has deleted itself from being.

[6] Cruise Malta

Potence 3, Awareness 1, Lucidity 6

Cruise was once a industrial worker turned rogue. Killing several of his coworkers after being laid off from his job, he developed a racially motivated killing urge against several species in Garden, as they made naturally better workers then his race. His rage and hatred seemed to also unlock his psychic potential, and with focus Cruise was able to transform his physical body.

Since those days, “Mr.Malta” as he is called is plastered with sheets of metal welded to his body, with rivets drilled into his skin and bones painfully to keep them together. Without his reality warping powers he would have died of infection or organ damage a long time ago, but as of now he's nearly indestructible. Unlike other reality warpers, he rarely uses his powers directly to change reality or emit energy, instead of he mostly just uses his supernatural physical strength and speed to destroy things in his own way.

In the past few years, Malta's mind state has deteriorated and he stalks an old trainyard. His mental state is such that several greedy conductors have been able to get him working for them; pushing train spikes into the ground, twisting sheet metal into place, loading and unloading cargo, even picking up and moving entire train cars. However it must be carefully monitored who goes near him, else if one of his hated races appears nearby he will fly off into another rage that may take weeks to die back down again. Unless Malta's creativity and intelligence increases over time, it is unlikely his potence stat will increase over time and as a result his lucidity will drop from it. It seems like being a reality warper means also needing a certain amount of creative force or imagination to power the changes, as Malta lacks most of those traits and mostly just judges things as they appear.

[7] Briers

Potence 9, Awareness 8, Lucidity 1

Among all the reality warpers, Briers is the most feared but well understood. She only cares about one thing; a single special object. This object is a pair of reading glasses with one lens removed. It is old and dusty, stained with a foreign yellow smear over the left rim, and despite this it is one of the most revered objects in Garden due to their reality warper's influence.

As far as everyone knows, this Reality Warper has no physical body, or her body remains asleep underneath the ground at all times. Any consciousness she has is abstract during this time, or perhaps instigating the psychic web of connections and fate that tie the city folk together, perhaps why these glasses keep being found again whenever lost. The reality warper is incredibly powerful and dangerous, but remains in this totally dormant state until someone touches the glasses. If you wear the glasses it grants a mystic sight in the remaining lens; you can see psychic energy in people and flowing through the air, and it also grants a +2 bonus to psychic attacks by anyone who wear them.

However, once someone has touched the glasses, Briers begins to look for them. Her psychic power has incredible range and perception, meaning that with each night it sweeps the city to find the person who touched the glasses, and homes in on them, hence her high awareness score. Once she has found them, several strange and unfortunate accidents beings to befall them, and plant life nearby them begins to become agitated and grow faster and stronger. Within a week, they are always found dead with their body being torn apart and decomposed by numerous brier-barbed plant tendrils growing through walls or mattresses, burrowing into their body and ripping them apart. It is almost impossible to hide from this entity once you have woken it up, even the mysterious service tunnels which most reality warpers seem to instinctively avoid she will reach to kill you with ther powers.

Strangely, while this reality warper has no known mind or personality, she seems to have enough lucidity and sanity left to spare exactly two people; the first is her great granddaughter who was the ones who found the cursed glasses and lost them the first time, and was never killed by her power. The second person was a museum coordinator, who after finding the glasses respectfully cleaned them, repaired them, took photographs, and kept it on display for a few months in a glass case until they were stolen. This person treated the glasses with such respect that the entity seemed to not have any ill will towards them, or it could be a long lost family or old friend who the entity knew back when they were a normal person. It is unknown how much longer this warper will remain in the city; most with high levels of power and low lucidity burn out shortly, but with Briers and her obsession with the pair of glasses she may remain until they are destroyed or lost forever.

[8] Gye Oceans

Potence 6, Awareness 4, Lucidity 4

Once a fairly standard musician down in his luck in Garden, he had since unlocked a great power inherent in the playing of his music. Around him now is a constant droning beat, which is muffled through walls and sounds very much like soft bar or speakeasy music, this noise somehow stretching for a city block or so around him in all directions. Those who live nearby it often question if a new place has opened up, just before it leaves the very next night. Gye is a mobile reality warper, which is not the standard for these beings.

Every few days, Gye will set up and move somewhere else. He will transform himself into different forms, different species and looks, and play music on the sidewalk to panhandle for music. This is not an uncommon sight in Garden. Those who do not provide coins for Gye will be cursed by his reality warping power- they will receive bad luck for a whole day. Treat all rolls of 2 as a roll of 1 instead.

The true terror of Gye is if he encounters another musician. If you carry an instrument, or claim to be able to play music to any level above an amateur, Gye will take interest and stalk you. When he has cornered or isolated the musician, he uses his power to strap them down and take off their skull and skin on their head; painless and gorelessly opening a hole into their body to examine their brain. He seems to have some kind of ability to psychically detach body parts and warp them to examine them closely, and can seemingly spot “talent” and “inspiration” inside his victim's brains. It is unknown how these abstract quantities actually exist in their brains, or if this is merely a delusional brought on by his reality warping abilities. He will then take away the “skill” of the player and seal their head back up. Unfortunately for the victims, this reality warping power doesn't stave off all of reality; losing skill in music usually means losing most fine motor control of the fingers, become illiterate, developing a mild form of epilepsy, and sometimes infections and death if bacteria enters the brain during his “surgery”. For this reason, Garden's Big Brass Band gang has a price on his head, and treat him a bit like a boogeyman, even though there is very little they can do against a reality warping demigod.

Cosmology and the Chain of Limits- Higher & Lower Realms

Alternate realities, dimensions, realms, or planes of existence aren't uniform. This goes beyond differences to the overall alignment, the residents, the size and geography, or even the “rules” of the dimension. On top of all these; every reality sits on a level on the cosmic chain of limits. Every realm or place that can exist exists at a state of highness and energy- some scholars believe the chain is limitless in both directions, while some think that there is a definite bottom- a lifeless, lightless pit of nothingness where the great evils will one day be banished forever.

However, all of these limits exist as a spectrum and only are characterized through relativistic means. For instance, the mortal realm or “prime material” plane could be used as the benchmark of standard or neutral, but compared to realms below it is a paradise, and compared to the realms above it is a purgatory. As such, objective measurements are useless. Instead, there is only higher or lower. However, these realms do not necessarily have to be cosmically separated from each other; they could be places in the core setting- in the same way in some more mythologically inspired worlds you can climb to heaven or dig to hell, these could apply to these too.

Additionally, each realm exists on a limit, but the limit can also expand infinitely outwards in horizontal motion as well. You might well exist in a high-fantasy medieval world, and then next to it is a bronze age mythology inspired fantasy world- these are different realms, but they exist on the same level of the cosmic chain.

Higher

Realms Higher on the cosmic chain to your own are usually heavenly realms, spirit places, or seem to exude both power, magic, and forms of authority or morality on the realm beneath. Examples of these realms to a human perspective would be places like the Celestial spheres, Asgard, the spirit realm, or other realms of enhanced reality.

These places are, in comparison with a lower realm, more beautiful and filled with life. The beings and races within this realm are more powerful by birth then anything from the lesser realm- spirit beasts are more powerful then mortal animals, demigods are greater then the greatest mortal champions, they have no base beings like orcs or humans, but superior creatures like cloud giants or numenoreans. You could imagine the standard fantasy races as being here but just “better” versions, like wood elves in your home setting are more like high elves here, OR these races are totally replaced with greater beings. The default of generic character/mortal/character sort of standard in this setting is just higher then from the main world.

In this realm, food and drink is of another level higher then the middle realm; even a pauper has lavish feasts fit for a King in our place. The same to goes for magic and treasure. The Gods or Kami may trade platinum coins between themselves for standard transactions; gold is too common and lesser of a material. These realms also often contain supernatural metals or materials too that is much higher in strength and purity then anything in realms below; one of these falling to the mortal realm is equivalent to a high level magic item being dropped at random.

To beings of lesser realms; coming here is like a supreme challenge. Everything, from the most basic of threats to the competition from intelligent beings of this realm, become incredibly more difficult as you aren't made of the same stuff. Groups of adventurers of high or name level will be akin to starting adventurers in their home country- imagine dragons or giants being basic level 1 enemies. It would incredibly difficult to carve out a niche in this world- though richly rewarding as even the most basic of treasures or companions would be greater then the greatest in your own world.

Also; beings who come from a lesser dimension to this one may find themselves becoming more powerful over the course of their life from ingesting its food and breathing its air; or through a bit of Lamarckian evolution their offspring would be considered greater. For example, a human mating with a God will produce a demigod, or simply living and being raised in a higher dimension equates to better-then-perfect growth conditions from your home world, resulting in superiority.

Lower

Realms Lower then your own on the cosmic chain are dark, shadowy, or entropic places. Lost or fallen spirits tend to end up here, either as punishment or weakness for being unable to stay in a higher realm. You could imagine dying to be like falling down a realm, where as ascension is going up a realm. Many scholars theorize the cosmic chain is not a linear chain but more like a steep funnel; it's incredibly easy to fall down, but very hard to climb up. Examples of lower dimensions include hell dimensions, shadow realms, ghost or veil worlds- something like the Upside Down or Silent Hill's dark world would be examples, or the shadow world/dark world from many games could apply. You could also apply this to fallen worlds too; something like the world of Dark Souls could be thought of as having fallen into a “lower” cosmic state then it used to be.

These places are, in comparison to the neutral middle realm above it, darker and deader. They tend to be more quiet, with less biodiversity and less life- the cosmic order and laws of nature are less important here, which tends to mean more chaos and unreality in a bad way, as opposed to higher realms which are more filled with magic, these realms are more filled with curses and oppressive darkness. They drain energy instead of giving it; much like a negative energy plane. For this reason, the beings that live here are lesser in number, weaker, less intelligent, and less moral or reliable then beings above them. You could imagine “dark” or stunted versions of the mortal races or animals- perhaps just the standard races but with more present mutations or general apathy, or a more pre-modernist view of the ancient world (people were old at 25 year old, everyone was dumb and illiterate and burned witches left and right; that kind of nonsense) but taken straight as how these lesser people actually are. Or the more standard races or animals could be replaced with totally new ones; things like the Tarkatan from Mortal Kombat; not necessarily inferior to beings of the realms above in terms of strength but more savage and less refined or spiritual.

The physical world of this dimension is also lesser then the one above it. Food may rot quicker and silver, if it exists at all, would tarnish quickly though would be unparalleled in its beauty. Most physical items are less sturdy and rot away faster, people are less wealthy regardless of the actual economic systems; Kings and nobles of this realm would live in homes that a standard villager in the core fantasy world would have. In the same way, magic and warfare are similarly different; the most powerful archmage in this setting may only be able to cast 3^rd or 4^th level spells from the core fantasy world; your apprentices are equivalent to practiced magicians in this world. This could just be because the ambient magic here is weaker then the upper dimensions; though this wouldn't stop a tremendously powerful magic from your world being an unstoppable demigod in equivalence. As for combat; the same applies- the most powerful troops here may have cobbled together armor and weapons and fight about as strong as some goblins or orcs if they're really outstanding.

Exploring this realm from the realm above would be very easy- you would be outclassing everything here with even a modicum of experience. To the people of this realm, your characters would seem incredible beautiful, smart, strong, and powerful with only average or slightly above-average ability scores. You would very much be like characters in a video game where you're worshiped as the chosen one after the tutorial mission! Even a medium level group of adventures from this world would be able to defeat and dominate almost everything here- the greatest monster in this world may be a single ogre or troll in comparison to the weakness of its people. It would be incredibly easy to dominate this world and live as Kings, but everything here would hardly be worth it. The treasure would be much less value then that from your home world; gold may not even exist, the biggest gemstone is just a tiny thing that would go on a wedding band in your world and here it would be the crown jewel of an Emperor.

Staying in this realm for extended periods of time from a higher dimension would be bad for the health. Perhaps its because the realm is higher in quantities of negative energy (or just lacks as much life energy); you'd be eating poor food and breathing poor air, and you'd slowly degrade over time from this, despite your inherent superiority over the beings here. It could also just be the same as the higher realm where only children born here are lessened- in much the same way when a God comes down and has a demigod, they are lesser then the true God. In the same way; a human breeding with a being in this realm may result in a greater then average but lesser to what the human would be in the real world. This feels very similar to how Gods might degrade their bloodlines through mixing with mortals is what happens if you live among these lesser beings from a world lesser in cosmic importance.

Garden- Psychic Rules

Some people have a special extrasensory awareness, towards the lies others tell or to events that happened far in the past. Others have claimed to see the future, or to move objects with their minds. Psychics are the name for these people. Something about a nocturnal lifestyle brings out the psychic potential in people. In Garden, you'd find about one person in a crowded diner with psionic abilities. While the number isn't huge, it's still miles away more common then on their original worlds, where psychic abilities are either extremely rare scientific curiosities or a shadowy fiction not thought of to be real. Garden has psychics in every level of society, from highly paid, telepathic bodyguards to homeless beggars leeching power off the grid to boil some snow to drink.

Some psychic powers generate stress. Psychic stress has no effect until it reaches 7 points or more. Whenever you gain stress when you have 7 points or more, roll 2d6. If you roll under your stress, your are knocked unconscious. Rolling over lets you resist this time. You are knocked out for a number of turns equal to your stress, reducing your stress by -1 each turn until back to zero.

The following powers are available to all Psychics-

Psychic Attack- Concentrate on someone you can see within throwing distance. You send negative emotions and thoughts at them, dealing 1d6 stress minus their psychic resistance. If two Psychics lock eyes and perform this attack on each other at the same time, the lower of the two rolls takes the stress from both rolls combined; the energy is redirected back at them.

Psychic Defense- Creating a “shield” of psychic energy around a person, place, or thing. This power gives its user 3 stress. Roll 3d6 die and mark the result. Whenever another Psychic wants to use a power on this thing, they must roll a d20 equal to or over this number in order to access it. If they fail, they must wait a turn to try again. Some psychic phenomena, such as psychic beings, could be blocked out of entering a location in this way. Once this barrier is broken by a successful roll, the shield disappears permanently. Additionally, when the shield is created, extra psychics can take 1 stress and add another +1d6 to the shield roll, where as the best 3 dice of all in the pool are used.

Mind-Reading- Psychics can focus their power on the minds of another being to sense one layer deeper then what is physically apparent. Using this power gives its user 1 stress. Using this on a neutral looking person will tell you what emotion or major desire is right under the surface. Using this on a clearly angry person will give you a hint at what or who their anger is directed towards and so on. This power can also work on special objects or a rare psionic nexus, but things this powerful and infused with psychic energy can be felt by any especially “sensitive” person.

These powers are what the most basic, common psychic has access to- but there are more powerful Psychics. In Garden, characters don't get experience points, so most advancement is based on wealth and political power. Psychics can advance by spending $2000 on cultivating their Psychic abilities. This includes things like money lost (trying) to use your powers to cheat at cards, buying focusing crystals or psycho-reactive drugs, purchasing strange items found in the lockers beneath the city, and so on. Psychics who spend this money learn a trick.

Psychic Tricks- Each Psychic trick can be used at the cost of 1 stress. These are “hints” of the Psychics blossoming power; whatever trick they have will determine what psychic power they can eventually develop. Tricks lack most practical benefits, but are the most overt and obvious signs of psychic power. Roll once on the trick table to determine your trick, you don't get any more.

Psychic Trick Table - 1d10

[1] You can create an electric shock strong enough to jumpstart a car or deal 1 damage to someone you're touching. It's stopped by rubber soles. (Electrokinesis)

[2] You can now light a candle in a second, just grabbing the wick with two fingers. You gain the ability to make heat in your cupped hands, similar to oven temperatures. (Pyrokinesis)

[3] You can now “touch” things up to two inches deep within a surface, physically sensing things buried within walls or in shallow pools of water. (Dowsing)

[4] You can now tell the last card that was drawn from a deck when you're blindfolded. You can only know things that happened within the past 5-10 seconds, and information is limited to a single short phrase or three digit number, not a sequence of words or events. (Retrocognition)

[5] Guess heads or tails from a coin flip. You have a 4 in 6 chance to be right. (Precognition)

[6] You can spin small objects, flip pages in a book, or gently pull or push things along a flat, smooth surface that weigh less then one pound. (Telekinesis)

[7] You can make a small object disappear from your hand and reappear in your pocket, or vice versa. The object must be a single bullet or smaller in size. (Apportion)

[8] You can heal a 1 hit point wound by touching the area and concentrating energy on it. This only works on wounds exactly 1 hit point or less, has no effect on larger damage. (Biokinesis)

[9] You can touch someone's hand to send them a blurry mental image or voice. You cannot have a conversation, just send a blurb. (Telepathy)

[10] You passively have a constant Psychic Defense around your mind equal to 3 points, or 15% chance to stop an enemy psychic attack. Your mind is like cloudy 'pea soup' to casual psychics. (Blanking)

After developing this trick, the Psychic may be spurred on by their newfound power. By investing another $5000 in their psychic development, they can finally gain a fully fledged Psychic Power. The Psychic Power they get is the advanced form of the trick- costing at least one psychic stress to perform their power but being able perform their old trick without it costing them any stress from now on. At this stage, the Psychic also now uses a 1d8 die for Psychic attacks and gain an extra point of Psychic resistance as their mental power has increased considerably.

Psychic powers beyond these in both power and scope begin to fall into the range of the infamous reality warpers. Psychics in Garden with a fully developed power are considered at the height of their “safe” power, and very few go beyond this. Rarely, a psychic may develop a second trick. This trick and second power only increases their strength, as Psychic powers add together to become stronger. The telekinetic with the powers of telepathy could move objects they can't even see, assaulting people in their homes without even having to step inside. The dowser with precognition could see a real 3 dimensional outline of where someone or something will be in the near future, letting them set up the ultimate heist or an unfortunate accident. Needless to say, Psychics who become this powerful are very feared and are on the path to full Psionic madness.

Psychic Powers-

[1] Electrokinesis- The power to create and control electricity. You can launch a bolt of electricity that deals 1d4 damage in short range, but prefers to hit metal targets. Treat rubber shoes, gloves, and so on as -1 damage to your electricity. You can also shock people by touching them that deals 1d6 damage OR stun someone with a melee hit. With your powers of electricity you can also influence machines; hotwire a car by touch, turn off or on a machine within the same room, or power a machine with your own mental energy- each turn of power requires 1 mental stress- Flying cars require 3 stress per turn to power due to their intense energy requirements.

[2] Pyrokinesis- You can control and conjure fire. You can launch of jet of flame at very short range or light something very flammable and dry on fire for 1d6 damage- water and normal skin is too flame retardant for you to be a killing machine. You can however detonate explosive ordnance within your sight- anyone carrying or immediately next to the explosive gets a save to toss it away or duck for cover before it fully explodes. Finally, you can turn up the heat around your body to intense levels, causing 1 psychic stress to you per round but dealing 1 damage to enemies in melee range.

[3] Dowsing- Allows to feel things remotely. Sensing objects by hovering your hand over them, and feeling things like psychic energy, heat, radiation, electricity, and even abstracted 'life force'. It is the advanced form of psychic intuition and extrasensory power. You can sense minor things buried up to 6 feet deep, and large objects like pipes or underground aquifers buried far beneath you. You can feel hidden compartments in walls, depending on the size of the space. You can also feel parasites or cancers growing in a person, as long as they have reached a significant stage in the disease.

[4] Retrocognition- The ability to see into the past. By touching an object, you can feel the psychic energies of what the object's owner imbued it with. You can tell if a knife was used to kill someone for example, but any more details will be too hard to tell. Retrocog can also give you psychic feedback on extremely tumultuous items or strange items from the lockers in the service tunnels. This feedback deals 1d6 stress damage, but most items that have this will be spooky enough in appearance and location as to give you warning- this is a risk you have inherently by opening yourself up to the past.

Additionally, you can investigate locations. By giving yourself 1d3 Stress, You can focus on a location to see up to the same number of days in the past. During this time, you can see rough forms moving and muffled talking, but very sudden or loud bursts of energy and noise (heightened emotions leave a stronger psychic stain) will be more clear. This period of focus is like a security camera, stuck at one location and every mundane moment must also be watched over. It takes an exploration turn of focus per day you want to search, in which case you will get only a few clues on the true happenings of what happened. Individuals are hard to identify, small items are blurry, and certain events are abstracted.

[5] Precognition- The ability to see into the future. The most sought after Psychic power. Almost all psychics with precog develop a “totem” or mental handicap that requires use to actually use this ability. The totem tends to be something they had or idolized as a child, or something they had on hand the first time their psychic powers awoke. This totem is not a single object but rather an action performed with an object. Examples include throwing “lucky” dice on the ground, drawing tarot cards, illustrating pictures with crayons, or hearing voices in a radio static. The few lucky precognates with the power to see into the future without a handicap make up about 1 in 4 telepaths; which is the chance you have to develop the purest form of precognition.

If you're intentionally peering into the future, it takes 1 exploration turn to divine your totem or to close your eyes and focus on the future. Otherwise, psychic visions come at you directly and immediately. Getting a vision or peering into the future always deals 1d4 Psychic stress to you, and you can only do it once per adventure/night.

Precognition allows the user to either retroactively avoid doing something that causes them harm immediately after it happened, (since you can't actually tell the future while playing a roleplaying game) in the form of a vision OR get a clue to the location or intent of a character. You can also use this power to know where a character will be in up to a day's time (and therefore, always meet them), but due to the chaos of the universe and unsure nature of psychic fortune telling, extreme circumstances might throw off your estimate.

[6] Telekinesis- Your powers of telekinesis have increased. You are now capable of “wrestling” with people at a distance, requiring their full strength to shove off. This is a “human” level of strength regardless of you or the enemy's alien racial origin, which could be much stronger. You can also levitate your body at a slow walking pace, allowing you to float or slow your fall. You can move objects equal to what a human could pick up or carry of an average level with a similar level of speed; heavy creates will slowly float up where as lightweight objects can be flung or levitated quickly. Finally, you can throw objects with enough force to deal up to 1d6 damage- this happens if you throw something like a knife or a pile of glass shards at a foe or a rock at someone's head. Softer or lighter objects will deal naturally less damage.

[7] Apportion- The power to instantly move or teleport matter. You can now disappear small objects even when they are observed, such as warping a gun out of your hand and into a nearby trash can to conceal it. You can't teleport objects that you couldn't physically grab or move, and any object that you couldn't conceal under your coat is too large to teleport. You can also apporate objects into your possession from through a single wall or barrier (such as inside a chest with you in the same room, or through a wall while you are outside) if you know of its exact location, but this costs 2 points of stress instead of one. Finally, you can teleport yourself up to a distance you can clearly see, or through a simple barrier if you've been on the other side before and know it well. Teleporting yourself costs 3 stress and if you fail a stress roll while doing it you disappear forever.

[8] Biokinesis- Your powers let you control the flow of blood and life. You can manipulate people's bodies, letting you cause temporary paralysis or unconsciousness on a successful melee hit. Aliens with a biology too strange for you may be able to ignore this effect. You can also heal people for 1d4 hit points at an equal cost of psychic stress. You can control a dead corpse as long as it isn't too degraded and you continue touching it, causing muscles to fire or the mouth to move and speak, requiring a point of stress every turn you control a body this way. People with Biokinetic powers can also manipulate their own bodies slowly over time. You can change your hormones, appearance, height, weight, and other factors- taking months to make significant changes similar to an endless puberty. You cannot change species or gain significant advantages, but regrowth of severed body parts or healing over permanent scars or other afflictions are possible.

[9] Telepathy- You can now send mental messages to someone you can see. These messages can include words, images, sounds, smells, or any other abstract “thoughts” that one could think. You can send knowledge this way, though anything too complex will be forgotten after an exploration turn. Beyond sending messages, you can also subtly manipulate the minds of others by sending them thoughts in secret, and if they do not know that a telepath is messing with them they may be thinking these thoughts at their own. This can include hallucinations for more skilled telepaths. If you grant a person an object of great personal importance you can send them messages at a longer distances; this costs 2 points of stress for long range thoughts.

[10] Blanking- The Anti-Psychic Psychic. The powers of a blanker disrupt the psychic fields and energies of other psyhic users or psychic manifestations. Blanks keep their basic Psychic abilities but their mind is simply too strange to develop a more traditional psychic power. The Blank becomes immune to any kind of mind reading or psychic attack, and become invisible to psychic sensing and scrying. They do not gain any special immunity or resistance against the powers of psychic that deal real, physical harm such as the fiery blast of a Pyromancer or a levitated object thrown at them.