Espers

While the name Esper can pertain to a great number of spirits and magical entities, the espers of this article are a specific race of sentient mortal beings that inhabit the dreamscape as their primary home instead of the Waking World that most others are used to.

Origins

No one, including the espers, are sure of their origin. They have traits in common with muses, but they are even more closely tried to flying dreams. In fact, nearly all espers in their natural state appear to have some kind of wing structures. However, the best guess was that at some point there was an intersection of both very powerful dreamers and flying dreams, and this event may have caused mortals of the waking world to reincarnate as something new.

What is known about espers is that they date back to the time of early, non-technological societies, but they are no older than that. This rules out any origin that includes their generation at the origin of time and dreams, and it reinforces the idea that espers may have had a special dual origin at a time and place when dreams and reality touched.

Major Subspecies

Star

At present, there is only one Star, but her metamorphosis is the reason all other espers exist. Her transition, the massive energy she gives off, and the other entities she inspires are what accounts for the other espers coming into being. Star could be considered a part of any of these groups. She is most often considered to be inspired by Flying Dreams and the freedom of love. Other entities like Fate, Luck, and the Jinx helped shape the waves of energy left in her wake.

Stair is a pathfinder first and a guardian as a close second.

Promethean

"Pick on someone you own size, like me."

While no one has records to prove it, the truth of the matter is that Promethean espers were first given life by one of the most powerful forces of meddling in the universe, Lady Luck. As a group, these espers are known for taking on greater spirits and even gods to level the playing field when it comes to greater powers trying to control young species and societies. They are also the most despised by these entities, and so they have become rare in current day. While they are hard to find, that doesn't mean their lineage is not still persistent.

Promethean espers strongly prefer the roles of pathfinder, guardian and caretaker depending on how they choose to guide and protect the beings they find themselves attached to.

Enigma

"Ummm, oops?"

Enigma are perhaps the strangest of espers, and this may come from their lineage tracing back to the Jinx. They simply came to be at one point in time, but were scattered across dreamlands and wonderlands. They tend to be whimsical and hard to predict, but they are rarely hostile. Muses and flying dreams tend to attract them while most enigma form more personal interactions with those of the waking world. They often hide in toys when people are young and might inhabit a personal vehicle like a car later on. They are often mistaken for imaginary friends. Guardian and caretaker roles are their favorite.

Dusk

Dusk espers arose from the borderlands between dreams and the lands of the dead. They have a very special relationship with the waking world and the land of the dead in that they are a pain in the ass for the latter and a odd second chance for the former. Dusk espers are attracted to dire misfortune, and they often appear in locations where large accidents will occur. They routinely appear as an unaccounted guest on vehicles ranging from buses, trains, or even commercial aircraft. Those who really get to know them before disaster comes often understand that fate is set against them. That is where the esper comes in.

Dusk espers can't go up against fate enough to move it, but they can take other things into their own hands such as where souls go. They will divert souls from the land of the dead into the dream realms where they can have better lives and even live closely with the esper in its natural form. They will actively try and thwart the actions of gods and monsters that would harvest the power of those souls.

Dusk espers have an uneasy truce with reapers. According to this code, neither will interfere with the other such that if a soul wishes the freedom of the dreamscape it may have it, but should it wish to move on, the esper must guide it to the reapers. In turn, if reapers request aid in protecting souls from harm, the dusk espers on their honor will come to aid them.

Because of their behavior, dusk espers are guardians ore caretakers first, and sometimes pathfinders second. Rare dusk espers will help protect sacred sites in the waking world including burial grounds. HOwever, without a vehicle shell, their ability to defend burial grounds and similar locations is often limited.

Unbound

Most espers are collectively known as Unbound for their lack of binding back to any particular family or tradition. They are the result of cross breeding of many older stocks as well as the rising up of new espers that can sometimes be the children of spirits or mortals that have a lot of contact with the dream realms. A few lines even emerged from individual wonderlands. Because of their varied backgrounds, they can appear as any kind of role and sometimes roles outside the usual ones. Most espers tend to live their lives in dreamspace and poke into wonderlands, but there are the minority that inhabit vehicles and meddle in waking world affairs. More than likely, should one find themselves among espers, they will be Unbound.

One of the best known unbound twins are Trouble and Bertha who like to inhabit warplanes.

Life Cycle

Espers are mortal, but compared to most mortals of the waking world, they can live for incredibly long times. The oldest espers can claim to be thousands of years old, but many of them get a bit senile after a few hundred with some notable exceptions. How they reproduce is not understood, and they tend to make a joke about not telling anyone about it. However, their bodies are made up mostly of thought and emotion, which makes them powerful entities in the dreamscape, they likely hybridize to form some form of spark that in turn becomes a new esper. Unlike dreams, they cannot reproduce rapidly enough to explode, and they actually tend to breed at a very slow rate primarily limited by how rarely they cross paths.

As esper at the end of its life tends to fade as the energy that defines it wanes until they evaporate much like dreams do when they perish.

There is a single factor that can extend the lifetime and integrity almost indefinitely: bonds to waking world mortals. The interlink of esper remembering mortal and mortal remembering esper can greatly bolster the life force of both entities. In this way, most espers seek some kind of link to the waking world to prevent degradation and fading.

Gender

It is hard to say if espers really have a gender, but there is a huge disparity in how they appear to others. Many vehicles are referred to as 'she' and as a result, modern espers that make bonds to the waking world are heavily biased towards female personalities and appearances. Male aspects definitely do make the cross over link, but it is nearly a 70/30 split at this point. Regardless of which gender crosses over, there does not appear to be any difference in the potential or behavioral profile of the espers.

Dreaming

Espers sleep and dream, but when they do so, they project their spirits into the waking world just like a normal dreamer's mind and spirit are projected into the dreamscape when they sleep. Dreaming espers have appeared as ghosts to those in the waking world, and they also appear as recurring spirits to those who seek them out. A good number of people have used psychoactive substances to better help them see espers and contact them. Like normal dreamers, an esper can end up in part of the waking world that is terrifying and violent, and they dislike these nightmares just as we generally hate the ones we see from the dreamscape.

Like lucid dreamers, some espers have learned to return to specific places or people, and these are often mistakenly identified as spirits with the distinction that they are very hard to affect with while a spirit might be subject to magic. Only psions have a good chance of chasing off a persistent esper, but most espers are harmless and prone to gathering people together than chasing them of.

Behavior

Espers are extremely gregarious, and they will freely associate with dreams, dreamers, and nearly any friendly essence. It is not uncommon to find espers moving in pairs, but other aspects of their nature also tend to make them disperse over wide areas. Nearly all espers are adventurers in their own right, and they love having companions. They often wander along with lucid dreamers given the chance to do so, but their relative rarity in the dreamscape means very few dreamers actually encounter them.

When they learned to link to the waking world, most espers made finding a bond to the other side as their great quest with the intention of making the other side their adventure. Finding a bond, usually a vehicle, caused the espers to break into categories. Guardians, Caretakers, Sentinels, and Pathfinders are the most common. These four are more easily defined, but there are all kinds and mixes of these traits in espers as much as there are varying people in the waking world.

Guardian Espers

Guardians are often very tough and very bold beings. They routinely inhabit heavy machines, especially war machines, and will lend their strength to the crew of that vehicle. They often feel very strongly when it comes to moral issues, and they will almost always intervene to take harm in the place of someone else. It can be said that guardians are the paladins of the esper world without the lawful stupid.

Sentinels

Sentinels are rare and tend of occupy vehicles that either don't move much, or they inhabit the engines and machines of some other large structure. They tend to wander less, and like Guardians, they will protect those that have faith in them. Unlike Guardians who are often in charge a small number of pilots, a sentinel if devoted to a location and may have an very large number of supporting people in the waking world. While powerful. they don't move much it at all, so they don't upset power structures often.

Caretakers

Related to the Sentinel is the carertaker. They often inhabit non-combat vehicles or structures, and they will move with a population. Caretakers are often powerful among espers, but they are also almost purely defensive. One can imagine most caretakers being like a big den mother that tries to just keep her people healthy and safe. Unlike Sentinels and Guardians, they are not usually well equipped for combat but instead tend to create places of harmony and healing.

Pathfinders

Pathfinders are a favorite of lucid dreamers, and they are almost among the most bold of espers. The motto of the pathfinder could be "run and find out." They are the ones who can find hidden paths, and if someone says there is no way to be had, they will prove them wrong. They rarely do what they do for glory, but no mortal species is beyond a bit of pride. Pathfinders are the espers that will also bond tightly to a single person and find a way to stay close to them. IN this way, pathfinders seek out paths in life and not just to a given target.

Intersection with the Waking World

Initial contact as spirits or ghosts

Without a hold in the waking world, the best an esper could hope to do was get the attention of someone in the waking world. This often happened by accident, and many of the early interaction were mistaken for natural spirits. Others looked to these espers as oracles if only because the espers traveled a great deal and observed much. However, some special interactions did occur. Whether by a lucid dreamer and a matched esper or by the use of psychoactive substances, sometimes a dreamer crossed the boundary just as the esper did the same. The bond allowed the other to experience the other world with senses they otherwise would never have, and both parties often found they were somehow better off for the interaction. Unfortunately, such interactions were extremely rare and difficult under even the best conditions.

Habitation of Vehicles

Eventually vehicles came into being, and there couldn't be a better object in which the people in it relied on it for their safe travels.

Unpowered Vehicles

Wagons and sailing vessels were the first real paths the espers had into the waking world. Plenty of people placed superstitious expectations of their vehicles to keep them safe, and clever espers quickly latched onto the idea that they could hide in a soulless construct and soak up those beliefs. There were no shortage of prayers and hopes the ships would hold together in storms and other dire weather as explorers too to the seas for exploration, profit, and glory. Because of this, there was a strong motivation for the espers to keep the ship and its occupants in on piece. It was also discovered that being forcefully ejected from a demolished vessel was traumatic for the esper, so they also had a personal stake in holding the vessel together.

The Rise of Technology

As devices grew more complex, superstition regarding the operation of technologies grew even more commonplace. However, it was the advent of the engine that truly altered how most espers came to the waking world. The engine is at the heart of any machine, and vessels cannot move without one. In addition, one can say that it is the engine that propels not just the vehicle but the desires and dreams of the ones who use it. For these reasons, espers found places in modern machines with much more ease and effectiveness than ever before. In the end, this led to the concept that all espers inhabit vehicles and usually their engines when they do.

Sentinels and caretakers sometimes settle into other complicated systems like powerplants or central computers. Guardians often found homes in combat vehicles while sentinels that took to medical vehicles. Caretakers could usually be found on large vessels like cruise ships. Pathfinders favored things that pushed the limits of engineering including nearly every sort of vehicle that broke boundaries be they sound, altitude, or even light.

Energizing Espers

Usually an esper's link to its pilot and crew is a matter of just a few people. However, the function is logarithmic such that a crew of four is almost ten times more powerful than a crew of one. Therefore Bertha and Trouble with a crew of 14 each were incredible powerful espers during the war and, until proper weapons were deployed against them, they were almost invincible during their bombing runs. However, the curve does change after about one hundred and rapidly begins to flatten.

The only exception to this rule is Ratatoskr who appears to have no upper bound to her power, and she is instead limited by her wisdom and experience with her powers, and she seems to develop quite slowly in those respects.

Specific Espers

Star

Star is a legend among the espers. Star inspired a person to create an engine through nothing more than dreams. This blueprint was eventually built by the cooperative work of two people, although the one who originally dreamed the blueprints died before seeing it finished. The engine was installed in a aircraft of the likes that world had never seen. Her initial ship was called "Promise" for the prom,ise the pilot made on his parent's graves to get to say goodbye to them in person. The pilot put his whole being, hopes, and dreams in that single vehicle resulting in a output level that few espers can every boast. It took solid rocket boosters to make sure the wings kept up with the rest of the body as Star carried her pilot all the way from the waking world to the land of the dead. The ship rebuilt on the other side after a crash and renamed "Shooting Star" is how Star earned her name. She remains in a new body with two pilots, the children of her former pilot, in a bigger plane. She still has the power to carry them to the land of the dead, but Star doesn't if only because her pilot made the kids promise only to fly halfway.

Star is very much a pathfinder, but she has a bit of caretaker in her as well.

Star's Secret

Star is the very first esper. Espers are kin to mortals because their origin involves mortal souls. In the case of Star, her spirit was too powerful to be held in the land of the dead, and her radiant beauty resulted in flying dreams flocking towards her. Star is the literal proof that love can defy death and become something else. The fusion of her spirit and a flying dream created the undying esper, a one of a kind esper shrouded in mystery but always leading the way for souls looking to prove that love always finds a way.

Trouble and Bertha

No one is sure of just where these two started out, but as a pair of wolves, there are some that figure they must have some Norse blood in them. These black wolves are guardian class espers, and while they have been on ships and flown in old biplanes, they are best known for their time inhabiting B-17G flying fortress bombers during WWII where they kept their crews mysteriously unharmed until the Nazis finally deployed an occult weapon against them. Trouble lost her crew but flew her broken body hack to England on her own so that the bodies would be buried properly. She succumbed to sorrow and becanme a Nothing until a crew form Spindizzy operating with Bertha was able to save her.

These two gals are everything a guardian would be. They are brave, they guard their crews, and they generally seek out a place where their strength is needed.

While they are twin sisters, they are only as identical as actual twins are. Trouble is a master pilot and is strong enough to fly an aircraft with no crew. Bertha is far from being able to do such, but when it comes to raw offensive power, there is a reason her other nickname is "Big Bad"

Ratatoskr

Ratatoskr is an esper unlike any other. The population that believes in her is in the hundreds of millions, and while Aura could possibly compare to that, no other esper has a waking world body. Rata arose from an entire population of space faring creatures called Keeth having faith in the central computer they called Mother. Believe in Mother was unfailing, and because of this, the spark of an esper in the system was rapidly consumed and fused with the central computer. Because the Keeth are a Darkness origin species, thew blend of Dreamscape and Darkness further complicated the situation. When the first officer downloaded the computer into a biological cloning sphere called a Xolos, she ended up manifesting in a physical, organic body with the powers of light and darkness atop of her esper essence. The resulting entity could call anything into being on a whim with some practice, but while she has great power, she is not omniscient.

Rata is best described as a caretaker. She is too mobile to be a sentinel, and she tends to bolder other espers and friends when she is around. The absolute power that comes from the faith of her crew in her and the vessel, called The Wanderer, gives her incredible reality warping abilities and a strong desire to bounce between dreamscape and waking world to visit friends.

Lucky

Lucky is a pathfinder to the core. She is also one of the rare espers that have found ways to stay alive for thousands of years without degradation. Her secret is her involvement with folk tails about other coyotes as well as there being some truth in her having stolen for a few tribes. Adaptable and clever, she moved around the world and poked her nose into everything from Stonehenge to Antarctic exploration. Sometime after that, she vanished from Earth and opted to meddle in a new galaxy. She has been flitting from one space exploration vessel to another trying to find a place she really liked.

In the end, Lucky inhabited and experimental heavy fighter equipped with some really fantastic and complex engines. The ship had teeth for sure, but it was built to push the limits of faster than light travel. On top of that, its pilot was a psion with the ability to directly interface with machines which meant he could also directly link with her. Landon, her pilot, and Lucky are the closest any esper has come to matching Star.

Aura

Unlike the others, Aura is a sentinel class esper that has settled into the main reactors of a space colony. Like Rataoskr, she has a large population, but they are not as focused on being linked and thankful for their home, and they tend to take it for granted. She has enough faith in her though to give her the ability to defend the colony from many cosmic threats both of a physical manner and even some of a unknowable terror. Her link to the main reactors gives her a bond with the shields and thus the safety of the colony. She is less doting than Ratatoskr and more focused on protecting her little corner of the universe where she gets to see things come and go while otherwise relaxing.

Horizon

Horizon is one of the rare male espers. LIke Bertha and Trouble, he is a guardian class bound to a warship, but in this case, he living in a massive capital class vessel with thousands of staff and plenty of belief in that vessel. Horizon protects a massive spacecraft that is used to make high risk landings to extract personnel and often take on liberated slaves. The strongest link he has to his crew are the engineering staff and the marines which means his real compliment of crew is only a few hundred, but it is enough for him to absorb abuse to a degree that no other ship in the fleet could. No one knows how it survives it like it does, but Horizon keeps them alive.

Bhyrbadydi

The Bhyrbadydi are not a single esper but an entire clan of them. Enigma espers that often take the guardian phenotype, they are routinely mistaken for Wonderland creatures.