In the Warpcraft system, the Mind concept has evolved far beyond the boundaries defined by traditional Mentem. It no longer pertains solely to human intellects or sentient beings but now encompasses all forms of mental presence — including the instincts of beasts, the awareness of plants, the patterns of incorporeal entities, and the alien cognition of xenos lifeforms.
Mind Projections govern thoughts, emotions, memories, and other cognitive states. Through the expanded discipline, a practitioner may touch any form of mental resonance — whether it be the reactive mind of an animal, the communal signaling of a plant colony, the flickering selfhood of a spirit, or the inscrutable neural lattice of an alien species.
Mental Characteristics and Effects
Mind projections can influence the following mental characteristics:
- Intelligence – capacity for reasoning and complex thought
- Perception – awareness of environment and detail
- Willpower – resistance to influence, control, or fear
- Fellowship – empathy, charm, and social alignment
These traits may be read, manipulated, suppressed, enhanced, or reconfigured through appropriate projection.
Subtlety and Superiority
The invisibility of most Mind projections makes them uniquely suited for manipulation and influence, especially among the uninitiated masses. Even those projections that require eye contact remain subtle when cast without vocalization or gesture, preserving the wielder’s anonymity and power in social or hostile settings.
Targeting and Size Considerations
Minds possess no physical size, so standard Size modifiers do not apply to Individual-targeted Mind effects. However, quantitative scaling is still necessary when affecting:
- Groups (multiple discrete minds)
- Areas such as Room, Structure, or Boundary
In such cases, size modifiers follow standard projection rules to account for the number of conscious presences within the area.
Create Mind Guidelines
In addition to healing minds, these projections can also create thoughts, emotions, and memories in another person’s mind. These creations interact normally with the target’s other thoughts, and may be changed in the process.
Create Mind
Inserting thoughts, emotions, or enhancing mental capacity.
| Level | Effect |
|---|---|
| 3 | Form words in another’s mind (telepathic speech or message). |
| 4 | Implant a single thought or emotional impulse into another’s mind. |
| 5 | Create a new memory within another person’s mind. |
| 30 | Increase a mental Characteristic (Intelligence, Perception, Fellowship, or Willpower) up to a maximum of +5. |
| 35 | Increase a mental Characteristic up to a maximum of +10. |
| 40 | Increase a mental Characteristic up to a maximum of +20. |
| 45 | Increase a mental Characteristic up to a maximum of +30. |
| 50 | Increase a mental Characteristic up to a maximum of +40. |
| 55 | Increase a mental Characteristic up to a maximum of +50. |
Guideline Table – Control Mind
The Control Mind effect governs both the transformation and command of sentient thought, emotion, memory, and will. This includes both natural mental states (which may arise through suggestion or influence) and unnatural or impossible alterations (which require reshaping the structure of the mind itself).
Control Mind effects fall into two major categories:
Directing Natural States
- These effects coerce or direct the mind toward states it could naturally assume: sleep, fear, obedience, calm, confusion, etc.
- Control Mind can suppress, command, or compel thoughts, behaviors, or impulses—either directly or conditionally (e.g., delayed commands).
- This also includes mental wards, spirit control, and behavioral inclinations.
- Inspiration: Many such effects draw from Rego Animal for emotional or instinctive control.
Inducing Unnatural States
- These effects transform the mind in ways it would not naturally go. Examples include:
- Radically rewriting or fabricating memories.
- Inducing alien or impossible emotions (e.g., bravery in a coward, predatory instinct in a scholar).
- Imposing non-human cognition (e.g., beastlike thinking or dream logic).
- Granting unnatural senses, or making a mind visible or physical.
- These changes do not persist by natural mental means and rely on altering the metaphysical structure of the psyche.
Special Notes on Unnatural Senses
Granting it to multiple individuals increases the base level by +1 magnitude, and Range/Target upgrades further increase level.
| Level | Effect |
|---|---|
| General | Ward against a ghost or an incorporeal being with Might ≤ projection level. (Touch + Ring + Circle) |
| 1 | Make a minor change in a person’s memory of an event. |
| 2 | Make a major change to a memory of an event. |
| 3 | Make a major change to memories of a series of events. Make a major change to a person’s emotions. Make a subtle difference to the target’s mental state. |
| 4 | Make major changes to memories of a period of life. Completely change a person’s emotions. Control the target’s mental state (e.g., asleep, dazed). |
| 5 | Control a natural emotion the target already feels (e.g., calm, fear). Control a disembodied spirit. Incline a person toward a particular type of response. |
| 10 | Control an unnatural emotion (e.g., courage in a coward). Imbue all responses with a particular emotion. Completely rewrite a person’s memories. |
| 15 | Control a person as long as you see them. Summon a ghost (Ritual). Make a mind or spirit visible Utterly change a person’s mind. |
| 20 | Give a person one complex command, which they try to carry out to the best of their ability. |
| 25 | Completely control a person’s mind and emotions. Make a mind or spirit solid. |
Destroy Mind Guidelines
Emotions naturally reappear in a person, so projections that destroy them must have a continuing duration to ensure that they do not come back. Memories do not naturally return, so Momentary duration projections remove them for ever, although a person could be told what he had forgotten, or reconstruct the memory from things he does remember. A continuing projection would prevent a person from relearning that information, however.
Guidelines Destroy Mind
Erase memories, suppress emotions, or destroy mental faculties.
| Level | Effect |
|---|---|
| 3 | Remove a minor detail from a person’s memory. |
| 4 | Remove an important detail from a person’s memory. Diminish a single mental capability (e.g., memory, reasoning). Reduce the intensity of all emotions the person feels. |
| 5 | Quell a single strong emotion within a person. |
| 10 | Remove a minor or short memory entirely. Reduce all of a person’s mental capabilities (temporary suppression). |
| 15 | Remove a major or long memory from a person’s mind. Remove all emotions from a person. Drive a person insane through violent mental disintegration. |
| 25 | Leave a person a mindless husk, stripping all memory, identity, and personality. |
Know Mind Guidelines
These projections are superb for cutting through the confusion of social interaction and the endless banter of the rabble.
Note that writing does not contain any information of itself, and is generally Matter, for the materials, not Mind. To translate writing, you need someone who can read it, although you could read the translation from their mind.
A momentary Mind projection can answer a single question, although it’s not necessary that the answer be expressible in a brief form. A Momentary projection could, for example, tell you exactly how the target felt about his father, no matter how complex the feeling, but it wouldn’t tell you why he felt that way. Finding out a lot of information takes time.
Sensory Filtering: Beings are perceived through their natural sensory framework (e.g., an animal may remember scent-based information more vividly than visual detail).
Know Mind
Perceive thoughts, emotions, truth, and memories of sentient beings.
| Level | Effect |
|---|---|
| 4 | Sense the state of consciousness of an living being (e.g., asleep, awake, meditating, dead, drugged, insane, or comatose). |
| 5 | Sense a single emotion in a being. |
| 5 | Understand the meaning behind spoken sounds (intended meaning, not just translation). |
| 10 | Sense all emotions present in a being. |
| 10 | Discover the truth of a spoken statement (perceive the speaker’s belief in its truth). |
| 15 | Speak with a human mind—direct mental communication. |
| 15 | Read a person’s surface thoughts. |
| 15 | Retrieve a single answer from a target’s conscious mind. |
| 20 | Read the last day’s memories from a person’s mind. |
| 25 | Learn all information the target’s mind contains—memories, knowledge, reasoning, impressions. |
Ghosts and Incorporeal Beings
In the Warpcraft system, Mind projections extend their influence not only to living organisms, but also to non-corporeal intelligences — including ghosts and incorporeal xenos entities. Though intangible, each of these beings possesses a form of mental presence that can be read, influenced, or disrupted by Mind-based Warpcraft.
Ghosts – The Lingering Dead
Ghosts are psychic echoes of the deceased, often created through traumatic death, unfinished emotional bonds, or a denial of final rest. They are typically bound to specific places, objects, or people, repeating patterns of their former life or death. Some ghosts are aware and capable of communication, while others are mindless impressions stuck in psychic loops.
Ghosts are vulnerable to Mind projections, which can calm, interrogate, or exorcise them.
Incorporeal Beings – Energy-Form Xenos
Some xenos species exist in pure energy states, photonic clouds, or subatomic coherence fields, yet retain a unified, singular consciousness. These incorporeal beings are neither ghosts nor Warp entities but are still subject to mental interaction through Warpcraft.
Because their thoughts may operate on non-linear or non-human paradigms, communication often requires specialized or augmented Mind projections. Despite their alien nature, they are vulnerable to psychic intrusion, suppression, or misdirection.
The Spectrum of Thought
Understanding the Roots of Awareness in Warpcraft
The Mind projection governs thoughts, emotions, memories, and psychic connections — but it extends far beyond the realm of human-like intelligence. Warpcraft recognizes that all living systems possess a form of mind, however rudimentary or alien it may be.
The Continuum of Awareness
Mind is not binary. It does not appear fully formed only in humans, or even in animals. Instead, it exists on a spectrum of complexity. At one end, we have sentient beings capable of self-reflection and abstraction. At the other, we find proto-minds — primitive awarenesses rooted in chemical gradients, cellular signaling, and collective behavior.
These forms of cognition, found in everything from fungi and plants to bacteria and energy-based xenos, are not “mindless” but minimally cognitive. They store information, respond to stimuli, and adapt to environments. Some even show signs of learning and coordination.
Proto-Minds and the Warp
Warp projection reveals that the Immaterium responds not only to thoughts, but to the shapes of cognition themselves. Wherever life exists — even in single-celled organisms — it casts a faint psychic footprint into the Warp. These emerging minds, far below human awareness, form miniscule ripples in the psychic substrate.
Plants, slime molds, insect swarms, and simple xenos lifeforms may lack speech or will — but they possess structured perception, internal states, and even hive coordination, all of which Mind projections can interact with.
Limits of Contact and Control
Not all minds are equal — and none may be pushed beyond their limits.
When a Warpcraft wielder seeks to probe, command, or commune with a non-human or proto-mind, the effect is limited by the target’s cognitive ceiling:
- A plant may feel pain or probe the ground beside roots but cannot reflect on the concept of death.
- A protozoan may avoid toxins but cannot understand a question.
- An animal can remember, obey, and feel, but cannot grasp philosophy or prophecy.
You cannot extract knowledge that was never perceived, nor implant commands that exceed the being’s instincts or comprehension.
Time, logic, and abstraction are bound to the nature of the mind you address.
🧠 Types of Minds in Warpcraft
| Mind Type | Description | Limitations |
|---|---|---|
| Proto-Minds | Found in cells, plants, fungi, and some energy-beings | No language, abstract thought, or memory recall |
| Cunning Minds | Typical of animals or hive intelligences | Can obey, feel, and learn — but no higher reasoning |
| Self-Aware Minds | Humans, advanced xenos | Capable of full communication, logic, and memory manipulation |
| Alien Cognitive Forms | Energy-based or dimensionally divergent beings and daemons | May have non-linear thought or time perception |
Implications for Warpcraft Practice
Mind projections in the Warpcraft system are versatile but context-bound. A projection that compels a human’s thoughts will fail to “command” a plant, because a plant has no concept of command. A projection that extracts memories from a human will retrieve only chemical echoes from a slime mold.
Understanding the mental architecture of your target is essential. The more alien the mind, the greater the difficulty of interacting with and extracting it.
Ignis Aeternus WH 40K campaign notes 