♥ liked by @cubeCultivator
Some of you are rather fond of calling psionics "mental powers," which is just as informative as calling digestion a "stomach power." The thinkpan is an organ. It is a complicated one, mind you. But an organ nonetheless. Trolls possess the same broad neurological necessities one would expect of any sufficiently sophisticated animal: sensory processing, motor control, memory, endocrine regulation, autonomic function, and so forth. The unusual portion is a set of structures threaded through and immediately beneath the ordinary neural tissue which have no especially useful human analogue. For convenience, I will refer to this system as the psionic complex. It is composed of three major components. Some neurosurgeonerals of Alternia refer to them by the shorthand of the lattice, node, and resonator. I will elaborate on the specifics shortly, but understand that each of these structures has its own substructures. The first component mentioned, the cerebral lattice, is a dense web of conductive tissue distributed primarily around the frontal, parietal, and temporal regions of the thinkpan. It is similar enough to ordinary neural tissue under crude examination that those crude trolls examining it tend to miss it. Its cells are considerably richer in conductive metals and electroactive proteins than the surrounding matter, and they form repeating geometric bundles rather than conventional branching neural networks. These bundles carry and synchronize electrical impulses. A normal thinkpan contains billions of individual neural events occurring simultaneously. The cerebral lattice can force enormous numbers of those signals into phase with one another. Once sufficiently synchronized, the activity ceases behaving like mere thought and begins producing a coherent psionic field. This is one of the fundamental cornerstones of psionic biology and of psionic practice. A psion does not "think very hard" and move an object. Their thinkpan converts synchronized neural activity into an external physical effect. This keeps particularly determined idiots from developing their own telekinesis. The second structure is the psionic node. This is a small organ seated deep within the thinkpan, approximately where several major sensory and endocrine pathways converge. Its precise shape varies considerably between castes and, even more importantly, between individuals. If you were to open a troll with negligible psionic aptitude, you would scarcely find more than a knot of this specialized tissue. In a powerful psion, it can be enormous relative to the surrounding structures. It would be vascularized to maximize activity and connected to the cerebral lattice with bundles of conductive fibers. This node performs two functions. It regulates output, and it determines the category of output the thinkpan is capable of producing. This is where the popular notion of "different psychic powers" becomes rather strange. Telekinesis, communion, mind control, prophetic sensitivity, dream intrusion, and the various phenomena collectively referred to as chucklevoodoo are not entirely separate mechanisms. The primary difference between these abilities would be the node. A goldblood whose node is heavily integrated with motor planning and spatial processing may externalize those systems. The thinkpan ordinarily calculates force, direction, velocity, weight, distance, and position so that the body may reach out and move an object. The telekinetic merely eliminates the inconvenient requirement that the arms participate. The third and final component is the cranial resonator. This is where this little system goes from novel to unpleasant. The inner surface of the skull contains microscopic crystalline deposits interwoven with the meninges and vascular channels surrounding the thinkpan. In most trolls, these deposits are sparse. In gifted trolls, they form branching structures around the cerebral lattice. They are similar to biological antennae. The node generates, the lattice synchronizes, and the resonator couples the resulting activity to the world outside the nugbone. Without it, a powerful psionic thinkpan would accomplish little besides cooking itself. Which, incidentally, still happens often. Headaches, nosebleeds, eye hemorrhage, seizures, temporary blindness, sensory distortion, aphasia, and loss of consciousness are all perfectly reasonable consequences to expect when your resonator matrix is damaged. It is important to understand why different hemotypes have different relationships to psionic structures. Different hemotypes deposit different concentrations of metals, pigments, proteins, and trace compounds into nervous tissue during development. These compounding elements result in certain changes: conductivity, vascularization, and resonator and node densities and shapes. Most importantly, they alter where the psionic node establishes its strongest connections. This is why psychic abilities tend to cluster by caste rather than forming a collection of caste-exclusive abilities. Blood does not contain "telekinesis." Blood creates the developmental conditions under which a certain kind of psionic architecture is more likely to form. Rustblood psionics appear to suffer from unusually permissive sensory filtering. Aradia Megido did not require a specialized organ for hearing ghosts. Her thinkpan simply admitted information most trolls automatically discard. Bronzeblood communion externalizes the machinery used to interpret other creatures. At sufficient strength, it becomes influence. Goldbloods have the most developed raw psionic architecture, with enlarged nodes, dense resonators, and extremely conductive neural tissue. This grants tremendous output at the cost of instability. Telekinesis, involuntary discharge, migraines, and prophetic noise are different consequences of a nervous system coping with psionic information. Cerulean domination is far more specialized. These psionics interface directly with motor and executive pathways. The victim need not cease thinking. They only cease being the primary authority over the body. Purpleblood chucklevoodoos instead interfere with fear, sleep, memory, and perception. Why seize someone's limbs when you may alter what their thinkpan considers frightening, significant, familiar, or real? Success is not determined by raw power alone. Psionic abilities depend upon resonance between nervous systems. Some thinkpans synchronize readily; others resist. Blood influences both architecture and compatibility. These categories may also overlap. A troll may possess telekinesis and clairaudience, communion and emotional projection, or any number of hybrid expressions. The classifications are ours. The anatomy is less considerate of the taxonomical categories provided. All of this is metabolically expensive. Psionic use consumes enormous amounts of oxygen and glucose, producing exhaustion, overheating, migraines, tremors, hemorrhage, seizures, and, when pushed sufficiently far, catastrophic damage to the thinkpan. So there is no mystical reservoir of caste energy involved. For the inevitable "TL;DR" request. Blood shapes the thinkpan. The node determines what it can affect. The lattice produces coherence. The resonator carries the signal beyond the skull.
¡ a9ree
@cubeCultiwvator says: "🚬" hell yeah, brother. hell yeah. #askcro #cigarettes #substance
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@chilleraficionado You. 🫵 #larkdoodles https://i.ibb.co/wpkvvprv/illustration-20260929.png
layinng 0nn the fl00r time..
Oh, my!
sometimes i remember chittr exists and im like "ooh, i should check whats going on there! maybe even make a post!" but im a busy woman with a life outside of my computer; i dont have time to be scrolling all day and yet i dunno i sorta miss this place im always wondering how rubies little alternate-universe half-sibs are doing maybe thats silly?
anon asks "[cipher text hidden because i am greedy] If you guess who sent this correctly, I will give you the key to decipher it." -caaaasper? if no, give me a hint. this will piss me off, otherwise. okidokiLoki ask "wiggles wiggles wiggles wiggles" -yeah? really? really really? cubeCultivator asks ":)" -i like your glasses, man. they'RE cool. https://forms.gle/CsCaKhfwEEGHCqSDA
damn minecraft being mentioned makes me wanna play a new bullshit horror modpack. some of them have good spooks.
xx_isotropic_quadratic_affine_planes_kinematic_geometries_noneuclidean_geometry_xx
late 1:30 am snack
You’re listening to… Good Evening, Everyone! The rain has returned and the clouds or fully rolled out. I can even hear thunder growing ever closer out there. Do be careful tonight, folks! Keeping us safe from the chill and the lightning, we’ve got “ロマンス” or “A Romance” by Hiroshi Suzuki. Thanks for listening! …Midnight City Jazz!
Wonderr if I c'n get some bees out herre. Rreckon th' old mead rrecipe I got would be worrth it. #substance
daddy needs...glass of ice water
every time a new way to call someone ugly but in a "trendy" way comes up i get more annoyed. like. you're still just calling someone ugly.
Ƹ 🌂 > The DARKNESS grows… EVER DARKER… AND DARKER!!! Ʒ
what accent do you think little florid has
yay that was fun :)