Psychopathic Surgery

A not-so-serious look at Psionics

Now do you remember those freak stories and movies, where some psychopathic, insane (and of course evil) doctor uses an axe or a chainsaw instead of usual tools to do their surgery? Well, even if you do not, I guess the description is quite obvious. Did I mention it is done without the necessary anaesthetics. Not? Oh well, everyone forgets things at times.

I bet there are better things to do with your night than being chained on some iron table within some dark, dirty and of course extremely secret cellar, while some psycho takes you apart with big and dangerous tools never made for this purpose, right? In addition you will be put together in a very annoying way, like having to walk on a hand and see your own butt all the time. I mean every decent person would use those tools on the psycho to make nice little pieces from him. Permanently.

If you have ever used D&D psionics (or some other system for the same purpose), you have probably heard of psychic surgery, a power that allows a psyker to repair mental damage on others (or himself), like a blitz-therapy. Now imagine the person using psychic surgery is not a well-meaning type of person, but a psycho like our scientist.

Yes, I hear you shouting that such a - well, unbalanced - character cannot muster the mental discipline to learn psionics. Unfortunately psychopaths do not necessarily lack the ability of planning, forethought or mental discipline, even if they seem to be complete nuts to anyone else. If such a character can butcher your mind, that is a scary thought for once, right?

Now some of those freak really came up with a power which he called "Great Tool For Manipulating Minds" or "GetMe²", but is commonly referred to as Psychopathic Surgery, because this pretty much describes what it does. It is not a subtle power, quite the opposite really. This type of psycho like everything they do accompanied by a great light show and other incredibly scary effects, like a sinister choir in the background. As a result lightening dances around the victim's head when this is used, accompanied by some scary sound. Some (who have been cured) have said that they heard the stereotypical choir, while others spoke of frightening whispers, screams of agony or fiendish speech or laughter.

In addition there are constantly ripples of light in the air flowing from the psychos hands to the victim's head. Psychopathic Surgery is incapable of subtle changes within a mind. It is the literal axe or chainsaw, ripping pieces up and putting them back together almost randomly. Interestingly the result is rarely a complete nut. Dangerous results like killers, or berserks are more common. Usually the result is some type of quite obvious insanity, that breaks through whenever an effect similar to the light and sound created by the power is present.

Now that sounds frightening right? Actually the power is pretty useless, because it is horribly expensive and easy to counter. It will cost you 100 psp (those special effects eat up a good deal of energy, just ask ILM :) as a telepathic science, no matter what the result is, it is never the one desired by the one using the power.

Finally any other attempt to meddle with the mind of anyone, who fell victim to this power will instead be cured, after five minutes of confusion. The parts of your mind trying to put themselves back into the right arrangement create a good deal of an intense headache, but fortunately only for a short time. Did you really think the insane scientist type would ever create anything useful?

Campaign Uses