✘ abilities

[whip_poor_will]

POWERS

PSYCHIC ▸

✖ Clairvoyance
As a human, Ravine was a diviner. Back then her visions were vague and usually came in the form of vivid dreams and nightmares. Now they come whenever. She can see the future and past, but also individual possibilities of a past and future and present, which can make it difficult to discern what road one should take or how to properly guide someone through their current path. She can look at a person and see the various different versions of themselves. Perceiving not only the worlds on top of worlds, she can also see the people who have and will and could have been residing inside it. In this way, she is able to parse bits of information about someone that they may not even know, themselves.

The aforementioned paths usually come in the form of thin, iridescent lights that can be understood differently. It can be something as mundane as stopping before a door flies in your face to a life-saving incident like being hit by a train or walking into a store that’s about to get robbed. This is really the only way Ravine can determine which path is more favorable than the other, when she can see a certain light and know that something good or something bad will come of it. The only downside is that she can also see the repercussions that taking a certain action can make, resulting in a butterfly effect or risking an even worse incident later down the line. Sometimes doing nothing is the only option.

This also warps her perception of time and space differently than a normal person, which basically makes her Transcendence Cat 24/7. For a human, it drove her insane, but as a Psychopomp, Ravine is able to comprehend the visions in ways that a living person would never be able to otherwise endure.

✖ Telepathy
Another ability that she possessed as diviner in Babylon. This gift was weaker back then, as she couldn’t read people’s thoughts, but she could share dreams with them when she slept, which often came in the form of her psychic visions. This was how people during her time knew for certain that she was a woman with a gift of “prophecy”. The only time her telepathy really amplified was during a state of emotional duress, in which she had then afflicted some with temporary madness.

Now Ravine’s telepathy extends much further than she could as a human. She is able to hear people’s thoughts, as well as mentally transport her consciousness into their mind. Her abilities can allow her to join a person’s dreams or simply spectate, or even trap them inside their own personal prison, resulting in a forced coma or psychosis.

Thanks to her abilities as a Psychopomp, she can not only make a person see what she wants them to, but also bend their perception of reality. This can go as far as granting a normal human a glimpse of the Zones, but only for a short time as their mental fortitude cannot always understand it, revealing symptoms of cerebral hemorrhaging and, eventually, death.

PSYCHOPOMP ▸

✖ Immortality
Like all reapers, it is not possible to “kill” Ravine. Not by conventional means, anyway. Any slices or bullets that go through her will leave a mark, but she’ll rapidly pull herself back together again in a form of what appears to be black smoke.

The only thing that can effectively destroy a Psychopomp is a bone weapon (and perhaps any convenient plot devices that can serve to harm souls).

✖ Bone Scythe
The only weapons Psychopomps are armed with, and vary from reaper to reaper. The bone scythe is primarily used on shades and shedim, as well as souls. This weapon manifests from the Ravine’s body, ripping out from her spine for its user to command.

Since bone weapons materialize out of the manifestation of the Psychopomp’s body, it is not possible for anyone other than the Psychopomp to utilize it as a tool. It especially cannot be used against the living, as the blade is unable to physically exist in the living realm and thus has no corporeal elements. It can, however, leave soul wounds that may temporarily weaken the victim, stunning them for a time.

Additionally, bone scythes are the only things known to be capable of actually destroying a Psychopomp. The weapon would have to be already evoked, however, and it would take only a certain kind of person to actually be able to use it. Perhaps someone who is neither quite dead nor alive...

Or a god, even.

✖ Head Liberation
The choker on Ravine’s neck isn’t just for show. It’s literally keeping her head on her shoulders. Remove that, she can actually take off her own head.

This can more or less help her play possum to get the jump on people... or just freak them out because headless jokes are hilarious, man.

✖ Thanatokinesis
Just as the name implies, Psychopomps harvest the souls of the living and send them to the afterlife, which resides somewhere beyond the Zones. Ravine is able to not only see how or when a person will die, but be a direct cause of it as well. The only caveat is that she is not able to make a person die on her own accord, as that would result in serious consequences by the Dumah that can cause a ripple effect of many more deaths as well. She can only “kill” a person when it’s their time to die, but she can never be the direct cause of it.

At the risk of driving a person mad with paranoia, Ravine does not, nor has she ever, share in her knowledge of when or how a person will die on her own accord.

Similarly, Psychopomps are unable to figure out the life expectancy of immortal beings. Their visions are scrambled in that department. This allows her to be able to tell who is an immortal and who is not.

✖ Darkness Manipulation
In her purest form, Ravine resembles only a pale shadow of a human being. Her physical form is but a projection she utilizes for the comfort of others who perceive her.

As a pure Psychopomp, Ravine is nothing more than a black, smoky creature, bearing glowing golden eyes. In this form, she maintains some control over the darkness surrounding her, capable of bending one’s sense of reality in order to seize the shadows around them. This is less used in a combative manner and more of a method of both travel and messing with some poor victim’s sanity.

Psychopomps can also walk through walls and hide in shadows. Think of it as something like a form of short-range teleportation as well as a direct violation of your personal space.

✖ Gravity Defiance
A Psychopomp is not only capable of walking through walls, they can walk on walls and hang out on a person’s ceiling.

Water, air, earth, fire... the possibilities for where Ravine can physically and spiritually end up is literally limitless.

✖ Spatial-Temporal Lock
Psychopomps exist outside of time and space. She can appear when she wants to be seen, and disappear when she doesn’t. This also allows her to “erase” herself from existence, so that she can interact with the living for a time and then remove herself from their memories as though they had never met. She remembers — or she will damn well try to — but the other person may not.

To put it simply, she can make herself invisible to a normal person. If someone happens to be an esper with a gift of perceiving the unseen, then there is a chance that they can see a Psychopomp whether they want to be seen or not.

✖ Omnipresence
Similar to above, Psychopomps are able to exist wherever they want to. They can even seem to be in many places at once in order to get their job done. However, they are not able to do this while in the living realm, only within the other various Zones so that they may escort the many dead souls to their destination.

Due to this ability, Ravine typically knows more about people than she’s willing to let on. She also understands them, perhaps better than they understand themselves. She has this knowledge and much more, but is usually more inclined to keep the information to herself rather than sprouting a person’s darkest secrets and fears willy nilly unless otherwise urged to do so.

✖ Omnilingualism
The language a Psychopomp spoke upon their mortal death is not the language that they speak during their role as a Psychopomp. If a person is multilingual, they may hear the Psychopomp speak in whatever language they feel most comfortable with. For instance, if two or more people who speak different languages are in the same room with Ravine, they will be able to understand her in their native tongue.

Incidentally, a deaf person may be able to hear a Psychopomp’s voice or be able to otherwise effortlessly communicate with them.

✖ Nightjar
Some Psychopomps have a particular association with death omens, including some pretty well-known ones. Not only are the usually invisible tattoos under their lower lip and chin called the “Mark of the Whippoorwill”, these birds also sometimes manifest when a Psychopomp is near, only to disappear shortly after. This has earned them a reputation as the aforementioned omen of death and misfortune.

Note that these are only manifestations, as the birds tend to materialize in areas where whippoorwills are not native and vanish when Ravine appears. Call it another facet of her ability to bend one’s perception of reality.

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