A Mind is a Terrible Thing....
Background: The vast majority of the power of the Kurama clan is derived from the harnessing of their Id, a primal form of their personality representing more base-level desires. Mastery is difficult, with few clans members displaying any special talent, and even fewer gaining general mastery over their bloodline talent. This Enhanced State represents a more advanced mastery, not merely an ability to make use of their Id to power their illusions, but a kind of potential fusion of their cognitive states, vastly increasing their raw processing power in numerous ways. This comes with its own dangers though, as this can be achieved by fully giving in to the Id, erasing the user's Ego, or by working together with it, freely fusing their thought streams or keeping them separated as the circumstances dictate. In any formulation, it can be incredibly disorienting at first, as though there are multiple separate consciousnesses inhabiting the user's mind, and the level of redundant and self-referencing information required to maintain the complex thought-structures that fundamentally warp the user's mind. Even once a user gains affinity in this, interfacing with the user's mind will remain completely baffling to the other party, with their thought palace reflecting something like an Escher painting in 6 dimensions.
Full mastery of this - regardless of whether the user's original personality remains - transcends the two dimensional increase in processing power of multiple, concurrent functioning thought centers. The user will achieve a kind of meta-awareness that crosses the physical boundaries of reality, which further increases the user's available referential information, able to draw from thoughts of themselves from alternative timelines or realities. It also increases the fully Byzantine nature of their minds; looking into mind and thoughts of this individual can fully shatter the brain of lesser individuals as they are subjected to a kaleidoscope of endlessly rushing thought.
Abilities:
- Self-Actualization: The user is able to gain a total of 4 tiers and 2 advantages of unique, passive boosts. Each tier costs 200 exp, and the 2 advantages cost 100. These can be applied to any stat the user likes, but are designated upon selection and cannot be changed later, unless the user makes use of a reset. [900 exp total]
- Meta-stability: The user's mind, Id, Ego, and Super-Ego have obtained an unusual level of cohesion, but still maintain an ability to act independently as needed. This has a host of useful abilities, including a kind of self-recursive and auto-regenerating account of "who" the person is at a core level. The user is given near total-control over their mental state, personality, and memories. This allows them to fabricate memories freely to avoid mind-reading abilities or mind-protecting abilities, and bypass techniques and abilities to sense emotions, intentions, or truthfulness, if desired. The rate of information transfer (as applicable, such as from reading minds) is tripled. Additionally, the user can "remember" the correct status of their nature, stabilized across any reality or state of perception, which manifests as the ability to ignore up to 4 tiers of debuff applied to themselves. This costs 5 chakra per post, will activate automatically, and can be suppressed if the user desires. [200 exp]
- Eyes on the Inside: The user's advanced mental state grants access to an unusual energy created essentially via materializing it through their will. This energy is referred to as "insight" and the user initially has a pool of 0, which can be increased in units of 10 per 50 exp expended, up to a maximum cap of 1/2 of their base stamina. This is gathered in the same way as Senjutsu chakra (below) and functions similarly. The user may empower techniques by adding 5 Insight to any technique. This does not enhance the power of the technique as senjutsu would, but treats the technique as if empowered by senjutsu all the same. Genjutsu empowered in this way are affected uniquely: the psychological damage they inflict is increased by 1 tier (max of S). If they do not inflict psychological damage naturally, they will inflict psychological damage equal to their rank instead.
Insight functions as a sort of refined - or profoundly warped - permutation of senjutsu chakra. Absorbing it or techniques empowered with it can prove extremely hazardous to one's mental health. Each point of Insight that someone absorbs will stick in their system, building up in their brain, mostly in their amygdala. This is represented as a stack of Insight, which each stack causing continually compounding psychological stress, heightening mistrust, aggression, fear, and paranoia. Each stack will reduce the victim's intelligence by a single advantage (-). These stacks can be purged by healing techniques or abilities, which are increased in cost by 1 per stack. Alternatively, they can be purged by a victim willingly taking psychological damage equal to the number of stacks of Insight (3 would be D rank damage, 6 C rank, etc).- Spoiler:
- Because of these costs, Sages may find themselves depleting their Senjutsu Chakra pool rather quickly, providing a need to renew that energy. By remaining completely still, the Sage can effectively become one with nature, allowing Nature Chakra to flow into his body that he immediately converts to Senjutsu Chakra. This is one of the hardest parts of mastering Sage Mode, but it is a vital skill for any Sage to learn. Remaining still requires that the user wait 72 hours before their pool is filled to 100%. No partial wait times are permitted, the user must wait the full 72 hours or nothing is gathered.
Alternatively, a player can do a mini "flashback" recalling that they gathered Sage chakra at a previous point in time. This allows the user to start with 50% of their Sage Pool filled by paying 250 Experience upon entry into the thread. It requires that the user actually have 250 Spendable Experience available per their most recent update and that they declare their exercise of this option in an OOC note in their post. If they fail to make this declaration in their entrance post, they may not exercise this option.
There are few workarounds to remaining perfectly still, which is practically impossible in battle:
By implanting the Nature Clan Bloodline -- Sages are able to passively absorb Nature Chakra -- though this is less efficient than the traditional method. This adds 5 Senjutsu Chakra per post, regardless of what the Sage is doing.
Similar to the above, a Sage can use the Amphibian, Snake, or Gastropod techniques to temporarily fuse with Animal Sages belonging to their Contract Summon. The animal Sages will attach themselves to the user and gather Nature Chakra and transfer it to the user while they fight. Each of these animals can gather 5 Senjutsu Chakra per post with a maximum of two animals per sage -- limiting the ability to generate 10 Senjutsu Chakra per post. Jinchuuriki and those of the Nature Clan are naturally incompatible with these techniques.
The user can make any number of Shadow Clones to remain still and gather the energy. So long as the clones are within viewing distance of the user, whether by being summoned to them or having been there the whole time, they can be dispersed by the user to transfer all of the Senjutsu Chakra they've gathered to the user. The maximum they can gather is the same as their creator.
- Infinite Regression: The multiple aspects of the user's mind working independently permit of a kind of multi-core approach to thought, allowing for multiple, instead of singular, language-processing centers. The user can simulate a truly staggering amount of potential simulations and scenarios of any given situation, existing not seconds, but often days or years ahead of others. By accounting for a staggering amount of variables, the user can respond to even the most improbably of outcomes. This grants the user 5 additional precogs, with two being able to be used offensively. These follow all other rules of precogs (analysis requirements, etc). [200 exp]
- Host of Nightmares: As a being of pure intellect and a higher-order construct, the user's Id is well acquainted with foreign intellects, be they other-worldly, trans-dimensional, or simply bijuu. Structures of thought are, essentially, the same to it, and it has little if any issue interfacing with foreign consciousness. The user can insert himself into the mental landscape created by a host harboring a foreign will (as appropriate), and can commune with those intelligences via eye contact with the host (The entity is free to share this communication with their host, as they choose). Moreover, the user may target secondary consciousnesses within a host, allowing them to target the host, the sealed being, or both as desired. The sealed creature is still free to break out themselves and their host as normal, but if both are affected it must break both out. Bound creatures which break an illusion cast by this user will have their intelligence treated as 1 tier lower for the purposes of recognizing/breaking illusions, and anyone will always need to pay an additional tier of chakra or pain, which stacks with other sources of cost/pain increase. (increases over S simply add 10 chakra to the cost per tier of increase) [250 exp]
