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Psyker

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A psyker is a being who exhibits the ability to use psychic powers. Most races have individuals that have these powers, whereas some despise them so far as to engineer warriors that actively seek out and destroy them. Some races are so dependent on psychic powers that they have based their entire civilization around them. The powers come mostly from the warp, but in the case of the Orks, they draw from their collective Waaagh power. Psychic powers are measured by using The Assignment scale.

These powers may manifest themselves in many ways, from predicting enemy movements to projecting bolts of devastating psychic energy. Some can even aid troops towards more devastating attacks.

Human Psykers

The psyker mutation among humanity is becoming increasingly common, presaging the emergence of a new, psychic race. Psykers represent humanity's future, the ideal creature into which mankind will evolve, a more powerful, intelligent and capable life form. This new race is still weak, its members lacking the mental strength needed to resist the dangers of the warp. They are both a threat and a boon to the Imperium.

Left unchecked, psykers present a potential danger to entire worlds, and much of the Inquisition's role is focused on hunting them down. The Imperium ensures psykers are suppressed, tracked down and controlled; those strong enough will be recruited into Imperial service, fulfilling vital roles in the Imperium as Astropaths and Sanctioned Psykers. The weakest are doomed to serve humanity through service in the Adeptus Astronomica, or as nourishment for the Emperor.

Imperial Guard

The Imperial Guard's one psychic unit is the Sanctioned Psyker. They are trained at the Adeptus Astra Telepathica's Scholastia Psykana for service on the battlefield.

The Inquisition

Many Inquisitors are potent psykers.

Space Marines

Space Marines also shun those with psychic powers, but they too make use of one unit, the Librarian. He is similarly trained, but also benefits from advanced equipment, such as the psychic hood. These advantages coupled with his improved Space Marine physique make him more useful than the the average Sanctioned Psyker.

The Librarian's powers are slightly more powerful, but still nothing compared to some other races' powers.

Chaos Space Marines

Chaos Space Marine armies are similar in design to those of Space Marines, using Sorcerers instead of Librarians.

Eldar

The Eldar are a psychic race, and some of their most powerful units have strong psychic powers. Eldar who tread the Path of the Seer are Warlocks. Spiritseers are specialized Warlocks. Farseers are Eldar lost on the Path of the Seer.

Their powers are usually subtle, ranging from having visions of the future, detecting enemy movements, to fighting mental battles. However, a Farseer may be capable of using telekinetic power to hurl a battle tank into the air. One particular Craftworld, Ulthwé, may also group together its most powerful psychic units, making an expensive, but devastating unit.

Dark Eldar

The Dark Eldar are similar in nature to the Eldar, but have given up the use of psychic powers. They do use psychic objects, but any psyker found on Commorragh is treated as a plaything, which necessarily involves much pain and suffering.

Orks

Ork armies certainly make use of psychic powers - Ork psykers being unique in that they draw their psychic power from the other Orks instead of directly from the warp. A large mob of Orks tends to generate what has become known as a Waaagh field, which is then absorbed by the Ork psykers known as Weirdboys. They have little control over this and too much of a build up will likely explode the Ork's head and devastate the surrounding area. A Weirdboy avoids combat, like most other fragile psykers, but can cast green flame capable of melting armour and killing the warrior inside.

The powers of the Weirdboys are unpredictable and may have catastrophic results, but the gains from these units are often seen by the Warboss. Weirdboys currently do not appear among tribes which have advanced from the feral stage; instead the army relies upon the more advanced technology, however crude.

Tau

The Tau have not developed psychic abilities, possibly due to a chemical mixture in their brains that prevents access to the warp. Why they developed this is unknown, but it prevents the Tau empire from being easily corrupted by the forces of Chaos. None of their units have psychic abilities.

At least two of the Tau's allied races, the Kroot and the Nicassar, however, posses psychic powers. The Nicassar mainly use their psychic powers for the purpose of navigating their Dhows through the vast reaches of space, and also provide escort vessels for Tau Space Fleet .

Kroot who have fed upon creatures with psychic power may develop powers of their own. These Kroot are referred to as Shamans by their kindreds, and are responsible for leading their fellow Kroot in their ancestor worshipping practises. The Kroot are also capable of Warp Travel, although they only seem to be able to travel to planets with functioning ecosystems.

Necrons

The Necrons have long fought against psykers. This is due to their war with the Old Ones. They were the ultimate psykers, controlling and manipulating the warp before it became a place of evil and death. They used it freely to move about the galaxy and controlled their empire with it. When the Necrons attacked, they sent vast amounts of pain and death into the warp, and destroyed a good deal of the Webway. As such, the Necrons do not employ psychic units. This may also be because the average Necron does not have the mental capacity to control the raging tides of the warp. The C'tan feared the Warp, for they could not sense it or control it in any manner, and so they battled against it in many ways. They created the Pariah, a psychic abomination, making life for psykers difficult by disrupting their link to the warp. They also destroyed or removed the ancient weapons known as Blackstone Fortresses, which had been constructed by the Old Ones to release an immense psychic blast capable of destroying a C'tan utterly if they should ever rise again. Their most ambitious project is a ward designed to completely seal off the material universe from the warp, which they were unable to complete before they went into stasis sixty million years past.

Tyranids

The Tyranid forces are highly interconnected and linked to each other using psychic powers. The Hive Tyrant acts as a node for the other forces on the ground. The Dominatrixes act as relays between the Norn-Queens and the other ground forces, helping to co-ordinate attacks from orbit.

They use the warp to communicate and travel, spending a good deal of their time in the warp, travelling between planets to find sustenance. Tyranids tend not to use their psychic powers offensively, except by the Zoanthrope, whose psychic blasts are devastating to almost every unit in the game.

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