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Author Note: Defiants are fairly unheard of, even to psions. Most that learn the existence of defiants typically assume them to be phase matter organisms until they learn of their psionic nature, and many simply consider rumors of defiant to be superstition. The existence of defiants has wound up influencing many cultures.
¶ Defiants
A defiant is a "psionic ghost", a mind whose dying state has been immortalized into something forlorn via the dangerous effects of psionics after death. Defiants can exist in a variety of different forms, though some types have been specifically classified; types of defiants include defiants that engage in neuroparasitism to feed off of a host mind, or visible defiants called eidolons that are sometimes created when a metacreator or metacreator-adjacent psion is turned into a defiant.
Defiants can have different motives related to their death such as revenge, and levels of power depending on how strong they are. The sapiency of defiants are debated, as they seem to just be twisted snapshots of the person in their death, fixated on only a few emotions or motives. Rarely, defiants can be sapient, a phenomenon that seems to happen more among defiants created from neuroinvaders. However, these thinking defiants are nothing like the psions they were transformed from.
¶ Dealing with Defiants
Many defiants can pose a considerable threat to the public due to their abilities, and due to the secretive nature of psionics' existence, can cause them to be overseen by typical defenses. The presence of a defiant to most are no more than mere rumors of a haunted location, or perhaps one of their friends acting strange and unlike themselves - and sometimes their impact becomes more severe. Strange sightings of mangled bodies, a spike in missing persons; paranormal activity. For this reason, some have taken to hunting defiants down for their own reasons, whether it be to protect others, research them, or even collect the spoils of their demise. These hunters go by various names: bordermen, ghosthunters, conciliates, etc., and quell this rising threat.
The method of dealing with defiants varies depending on their type and nature; and this, of course, means first discovering what type of defiant one may be. Some types can fairly easily be diangosed; the presence of a manifest is sure to indicate an eidolon, whereas some defiants such as a phantom are difficult to locate due to their innate subtlety. Dealing with defiants can vary; defiants like eidolons can typically be physically attacked due to their corporeal body, but phantoms may be more difficult to deal with due to the presence of their possessed host. Regardless of a defiant's type, cuilsight is incredibly valuable in detecting and dealing with them in addition to other equipment, such as a cuilometer or other tools that help discover a defiant's type, such as incense to help read the presence of anomalous flow, neural scanners to detect a phantom's presence, and more.
¶ Conciliation
Conciliation is the act of peacefully putting a defiant to rest. Most defiants are single-minded beings with a focus on the circumstances of their death; losing this focus or coming to terms with it will cause them to fade away as they lack the will to inspire flux, preventing them from maintaining their existence and finally disappearing for good. Though many hunters prefer conciliation as a means of avoiding potentially dangerous encounters with defiants, the preparation for setting up a conciliation can be complex, involving extensive investigation of who the defiant was before death, and finding a way to conciliate the single-minded spirit. The paths for conciliation differ for each defiant if at all possible; a revenant defiant may only conciliate if it manages to murder its target, for example, and some defiants with little information regarding their past lives can be difficult if not impossible to conciliate.