Psiridic mechanics

II. Out-of-body projection

A psiridic user is near-constantly synchronized with an incorporeal projection of themselves, extending their mental reach into the mindscape. When the user focuses on perceiving through it, the feeling is that of an intense daydream or an out-of-body experience.

We refer to this projected form as the eidolon.

The eidolon can hover around and overlap with the user's real life body, or drift away from it.
Overlap is frequent during wake and steady focus, while drifting is often natural during daydreaming or sleep — but this isn't a concrete distinction.
Think of it as the representation of where the person is mentally. "Mind-wandering", "being elsewhere" or "being all over the place" can be quite literal in this context.

Long-term unlinking

There are cases in which a user, fully sunken into their eidolic self, is distant from their body for a longer time than that of sleep. We refer to this as (long-term) unlinking.
Unlinked eidola are often as fully aware and conscious as they'd be if synced, but many have faced distressing challenges due to not being tethered to any grounded being.

Observed cases include:

• Death.
  In this case, the user lives on permanently as their eidolon. Deceased unlinked users have been around since Psiridea's birth; some of us are in fact specialists.
• Coma and vegetative states.
  A complex case, more unpredictable than we thought. We are still watching over them.
• Intentional detachment.
  Some experienced users have been able to intentionally alienate themselves from their body and its sensations for some time, without the trigger of a traumatic event. Their body will often faint, or appear absent, slow or distracted. This has been used as a form of escapism.
• Chronic depersonalization due to severe trauma or prolonged stress.
  Another complex case. We are still watching.

Eidolon perception

The way a user's eidolon appears and is perceived (not just visually, but multisensorially) by other users depends on many factors, including but not limited to:

• the priority they place in the act of perceiving psiridically
• their self-perception or self-awareness
• sensations felt by their body, or psychosomatically
• a conscious effort to project a certain image
• a currently prominent memory about themselves that overpowers the present moment.

There is no such thing as a "standard" or true form, nor a clear division between any of them.

III. Collective lucid dreaming

When a user is sleeping or otherwise unconscious, they will frequently feel like they're drifting within a dream shared by all users. We refer to it as the subconscious plane, oneiron or simply dream plane.
This plane feels endless and ever-shifting, but also malleable — quite exactly like in a lucid dream.
Training in the art of oneironautics has in fact helped nearly every user develop their ability to navigate the dream plane, and interact more consciously with others within it.

Layers

For the majority of users, especially on the inexperienced side, falling deeper into sleep translates to falling deeper into the dream plane.
In fact, one could say the vertically-based dream plane is made of horizontal sections corresponding to each phase of sleep:

• Waking layer — exactly the psiridic mindspace users share.
• Liminal layer — a transitional state between wake and sleep.
• Light sleep layer
• Deep sleep / REM layer

The separation between them is blurred and unclear — even that between wake and sleep, and even more so in the deeper layers. But the progression is quite tangible.

Dreamscapes and Domains

Among the thought clusters that float within the dream plane, many are largely based on dream-derived imagery and memories; they feel like explorable locations or interactable experiences to the dreaming users that come across them. We call them dreamscapes.

A user's dream, even a non-lucid one, manifests as a dreamscape.

Individual dreams, especially the vague ones, often decay and disperse soon after the user's wake. But others linger — most often, when they are encountered by other users that then build upon it as they explore.
Other dreamscapes are made of location-based memories shared by multiple people that overlap significantly and are frequently run through, eg. a workplace to its employees, or a house to its inhabitants.

In both cases, the resulting dreamscapes feel more solidified, rich, and prominent.

Some of them have become reliable beacons of the dream plane. These are what we call domains.

The select few users who created a domain, or are largely the ones that build, expand and maintain it, often effectively become their administrators. Their domains often grow to only shift significantly in their presence.

Among the most stable domains:

• Mnemothèque — admin: Dr.Allan
  Psiridea's athenaeum and directory, containing memories of nearly all information regarding it and providing a stable anchoring space, especially for newcomers. Its atmosphere is something between that of a library and an observatory.
• Hermitage — creator: Kabale
  A sparse desert-scape with multi-tinted skies, mirage-esque apparitions frequently phasing in and out of view. At its foundation is the idea of nomadic, deep meditative solitude.
• Verdance
  A compound of natural biomes and greenery seen and lived by many nomads, nature lovers and green thumbs.
• A group of interlinked, architectural dreamscapes — creator: Arch. Yunha
  The growing work of a specialist who used to be an architecture student in life, and is now a very prolific psiridic creator.
• Aethereum / Illiminal white — admin: ???
  Located in the deepest layers, it's quite overwhelming and hard to access for most users. The administrator seems very protective of its sanctity and comforting quietude.
  Possibly the very first dreamscape, as if it was a core component of Psiridea.

IV. Clusters and constructs

Influence and infusion of thought are not limited to user conversation and surrounding vibes.
With the same principle of catalyst-based transmission, users can also infuse a real life object with their thoughts, feelings and memories of choice — again unconsciously, as a natural occurrence, or with focused conscious intent.

• An instance of unconscious infusion is what we call traumagenic residue, or traumatic residue. The location, real or oniric, where a user has gone through a severely distressing event will be contaminated with the user's stress-fueled thoughts imparted during the event. The resulting miasma will feel distressing for any user who'll pass through the area and empathetically perceive it. Psiridic experts will often be on the lookout for these, to exorcise them and store them in a less hazardous form that is harder to trigger at full intensity.

Listening in to any infused thought is comparable to psychometric reading.

Psiridic constructs

And yet still, this skill isn't limited to concrete objects or passive reading.
Clustering thoughts into a condensed, purposeful form and engineering it to execute a pattern — the abstract equivalent of building an electronic circuit or coding a program — is the basis of a psiridic construct.

This can translate to virtually anything. Previously created constructs include:

• glass-like holographic screens, containers and visualizers of the holder's calculations and working thoughts — common with users inspired by sci-fi (Dr.Allan we're looking at you)
• wire-like shapes that allow direct communication between the people on each end, even if distant — inspired by paper cup phones and walkie-talkies
• abstract equivalents of a comfort object, with additional memory-holding space
• shapes modeled after real life-inspired or otherwise significant forms that allow an easier grasp of a more abstract idea, eg.
  ... a gun-like object for the feeling of propelling a small object forwards, by comparing it to shooting a bullet
  ... a glove-like object for the feeling of distancing oneself from the delicate thought they're redirecting, by comparing it to the numbed feeling of touching something indirectly, or to scientific or hygienic settings
  ...a pen-like object for the idea of infusing thought, by comparing it to writing on something
  this is what we call a perceptive assist.
• the classic look and effect of supernatural manipulation and weapons, really — except for the inflicted pain being instead thought impressions of that pain forcibly pushed onto the receiving user.
  (While some users have looked into it, action-combat simulation is far from the focus of our research.)

The concept should not be reduced to that of a "magical object/power" — it is much more extensive and abstractly applicable.

Dreamscapes are constructs made of dream imagery, that cause users to feel like they are exploring a location.
Eidola are constructs that replicate and extend each user's consciousness, that cause them to exist beyond themselves.

Someone created constructs that simply replayed their favorite sensorial stimuli back to them, later expanding the concept to tea & teacup-like shapes infused with not just tea scents and flavors, but additional varieties of synesthetic experiences. Many of us are regular customers now.

The possibilities are practically infinite.