Editing Teacher (section)

==Abilities and Powers==
Teacher is able to give others an ability of his choice from a wide variety<ref name="power_explain"/> of [[Thinker]] and [[Tinker]] powers<ref name="granting">No doubt they were organized by ability. Teacher could grant thinker and tinker powers. If I assumed at least one tinker per group, with the tinkers carrying some ranged weapon or defense, and if the athletic members of the roaming squads were the soldiers, gifted with some knowledge that would give them a small edge in a fight, there were still two or three members in a given group I couldn’t identify. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/speck-30-3/ Excerpt] from [[Speck 30.3]]</ref> with a simple touch,<ref name="awareness"/> with the disadvantage that the recipient becomes susceptible to Teacher's manipulation.<ref name="influence"/> In severe cases, his minions remained absolutely loyal to him as long as they had the granted powers.<ref name="describ"/> Teacher is able to intensify his power,<ref name="power_explain"/> making the granted ability stronger, but the power of an ability granted inversely correlates with diminished faculties in the subject, creating a dynamic where the more information a given 'student' possesses, the less able they are to express it.<ref name="reddit list"/> While Teacher has no constant connection to his students, he is able to sense both the power and the degree of influence he has over them.<ref name="awareness">I could sense his power, and I could sense his general awareness of the people he’d affected. There was no constant connection between him and them, nothing like I had over my bugs or my subjects.<br><br>I moved another over to him, and I used his power on them.<br><br>There was a connection ''then''. It only took a little bit of time, and focus on Teacher’s part. I could sense both the power taking hold, and the ''frailty'', the weak point that manifested at the same time. There was a duality.<br><br>I let go of the subject, and I could feel that frail point linger, decaying by the smallest fraction with every passing moment. ''That'' was what Teacher sensed, an awareness of both the power and the degree of influence he had over the subject. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/speck-30-3/ Excerpt] from [[Speck 30.3]]</ref> Teacher is able to change a student's abilities at any moment, but this becomes more difficult when an ability has had time to settle in.<ref name="power_explain"/>

In addition to his ability to grant powers, Teacher is able to modify existing ones, achieving more power at the expense of control, or vice versa.<ref name="screen_scan"/> Teacher describes the process as first discovering the true nature of the power before using a sort of hypnotic state to unlock it, likening it to a [[second trigger]].<ref name="groupthink"/>

Teacher's power decays over time.<ref name="awareness"/> There have been almost no cases where Teacher’s power lasted more than a few days without a refresher, with the brainwashing wearing off over a few weeks or months,<ref name="refresher"/> but in at least one case the power remained active for several years without being refreshed,<ref name="dragon_trigger"/> with the subject showing sign similar to addiction.<ref>“That’s the funny thing about pity, Saint. It’s condescending by default. Teacher got you hooked like a dealer does. You’re ''craving'' the hit that’s going to make your little Dragon-centric world make sense again, and you’re rationalizing without realizing you’re doing it. I can’t quite figure out how much of that is his power and how much of that is you, and I’m not sure which of the two is sadder.” - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/cockroaches-28-2/ Excerpt] from [[Cockroaches 28.2]]</ref> Despite this, Teacher claims his methods are less invasive than actual brain tampering.<ref>“Because it involves tampering with your brain,” Teacher said. “My offer is… less invasive. We can break down that barrier, give you the ability to control when you change.” - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/interlude-22-donation-bonus-1/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 22.y|Interlude 22 (Donation Bonus #1)]]</ref>

Teacher's students show a form of groupthink:<ref name="groupthink">There was no conversation in Teacher’s cell block. The residents were neat, tidy, and well groomed. Some seemed functional, reading on their own or watching television. Others were more disabled. Lung could see one individual rocking in place, tapping something out on a table. Another was walking in small, tight circles.<br><br>“My groupthink,” Teacher said. “Rest assured, I wouldn’t subject you to something this grave. We would dig deep enough to discover the true nature of your power, fast enough that you didn’t feel the side effects at their worst. Then we would use what is effectively a hypnotic state to unlock your power as it truly should be, effectively a second trigger event. If Amelia is right, the entity that grants you your power will resist… but we can get around that.” - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/interlude-22-donation-bonus-1/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 22.y]]</ref> While individual members appear normal at first glance, they actually work within a complex system, which Taylor compares to an RTS game<ref>There were nods all around. Teacher walked over to another table, lined with tinker weaponry and other tools. His students were loyal, but they weren’t puppets, like mine were. Their movements were natural. The overall ''system'', though, wasn’t natural at all.<br><br>I was put in mind of Regent’s games. There was the base of operations, the cluster of villagers managing the city, and there were the more independent squads of people, deployed to the world beyond the base camp, patrolling for enemies, ready at a moment’s notice to be gathered together in a massed attack. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/speck-30-3/ Excerpt] from [[Speck 30.3]]</ref> or computer, with every individual carrying out a specific operation, gathered in clusters with people who communicate their ideas to others in efficient ways.<ref>Heads in every second group around the base turned. They looked my way, as if they could see the full five or six city blocks and see me standing in the middle of the road.<br><br>One crossed to another group, touching a young man.<br><br>“Weaver,” the young man said, in turn.<br><br>''It’s like a computer. Every person carries out a specific operation, and they’re gathered in clusters with people who can communicate those ideas to others in efficient ways.'' - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/speck-30-3/ Excerpt] from [[Speck 30.3]]</ref>

It is worth noting that Teacher does not give high-level Tinker powers. Rather, he pushes his ability to grant mastery of a given subject just beyond the normal limits of theory and knowledge, using several people working in tandem to achieve low-quality Tinker products.<ref name="power_explain"/>
{|class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed wikitable" style="width:100%"
!style="width: 100%;" |Known Options
|-
|
Teacher is able to give a wide variety of mental powers, including:<ref name="reddit list">
*Enhanced reflexes
*Enhanced awareness of environment/cause and effect in environment
*Limited ability to intuit physical weaknesses in others
<br>[...]<br><br>The power of an ability granted inversely correlates with diminished faculties in the subject and a 'candle that burns at both ends' duration, creating a dynamic where the more information a given 'student' possesses, the less able they are to express it. - [https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/3sn02a/need_some_ideas_for_list_of_powers_teacher_can/cwzaytv/ reddit comment] by Wildbow.</ref>
*Enhanced skill in an academic subject.
*Enhanced proficiency with a melee or ranged weapon of a particular category.
*Enhanced awareness of the environment or cause and effect in that environment.
*Enhanced improvisational ability, either related to the use of objects as weapons or related to manipulating the environment (in the form of traps).
*Enhanced abstract skill in navigation, direction, and intuiting the nature of the environment.
*Enhanced skill in research, data gathering, understanding and memory retention.
*Enhanced ability to pick up and retain skills. The user may suffer losses of old skills with the acquisition of new ones.
*A limited ability to intuit either physical or emotional weaknesses in others.
*Awareness of physiology.
*Enhanced reflexes.
*Enhanced aim.
*Enhanced timing.
*Enhanced willpower.
*Full sight from all angles of all things within range, in a 360 degrees radius around oneself, likely with a 300 feet range.
*The ability to have a clairvoyant awareness, picking a distant location and seeing either static objects in said location, with moving and transient objects less or not visible, or seeing moving and transient objects clearly while having trouble with static objects.
*The ability to focus on a target over a long period of time to gain information on them, similar to [[Tattletale]], initially vague or intermittent but gaining more information with time. May be biased towards either the current state or past and future events.
*Precognition, taking various forms, on a scale from short range and clear to long range and vague.
*Psychometry, where the user can touch an object to get a sense of past events. Gives more clear information when associated with [[parahuman]]s and those with a [[corona pollentia]] and living individuals.
*X-ray vision, either with vague patterns and covering the full range of vision or clear with limited range.
*Thermal vision.
*Infrared vision.
*Night vision.<ref name="II15.x eCathound">Cathound snapped his fingers twice in rapid succession.  He held up three fingers, pointed down the hall, then he tapped his ear.<br><br>Enhanced senses.  Normally teacher granted something like enhanced hearing or enhanced vision.  Cathound had the whole suite; night vision, super hearing, tactile sense, smell, and balance.  His shooting numbers were in the ninety-second percentile among everyone who had been tested.  For squad Yellow-Black, that was ''poor''. - [[Interlude 15.x II]]</ref>
*The ability to see electrical signals, including insulated wires and brain activity.
*The ability to see nerves, with a limited ability to manipulate them on striking or grappling the target.
*Enhanced sense of smell, with associated tracking ability.
*Enhanced sense of hearing.
*Enhanced sense of balance.<ref name="II15.x eCathound" />
*Echolocation.
*The ability to hear radio and other wireless signals, but with limited interpretation.
*Enhanced sense of touch, reading the position and movement of others through brushes of air on the skin.
*The ability to detect parahumans and people with a corona pollentia, similar to [[Chevalier]].
*The ability to read and assess powers, although the ability may require time to use.
*The ability to attack an opponent's body in a way that forces it into working against itself, by doing things like triggering heart arrhythmia or causing carbon dioxide bubbles in the blood.<ref>Dripfeed was fighting a young woman who was dissolving into bands of flesh.  The bands cut the soldier.<br><br>But he fought back.  He slipped past reaching bands, ducking low, then stepped in close.  Fingers stabbed at flesh, targeting specific areas.  Where the flesh wasn’t yet dissolved with her power, Dripfeed’s death touch did its work.  Each hit used a thinker power to figure out ways to convince the body to produce its own poisons or work counter to its own interests.<br><br>She coughed loudly, then expelled a mouthful of vomit with a third cough.<br><br>One hit could be enough, without medical care to reverse its effects.  Heart arrhythmia that cascaded into heart failure.  Carbon Dioxide bubbles manifesting in the bloodstream as the result of very specific wavelengths.  Clots were forced to form by impacted sites of damage, that would immediately float free and lead to stroke.  Dripfeed could be sadistic, too, leaving people brain damaged and drooling, or paralyzed and aware. - [[Interlude 15.x II]]</ref>
|}

===Named Thralls===
{|class="mw-collapsible article-table" style="width:100%"
!style="width: 18%;"|Name
!style="width: 82%;"|Details
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|[[Saint]]
|A recipient of Teacher's power,<ref name="dragon_trigger"/> using his power to maintain and operate [[Dragon]]'s technology.<ref>Saint '''Tinker 0, maintained understanding of Dragon's tech via. Teacher''' - [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgn9rgYutpBqJg1lSBP3NHnq9WK4ToLq9K4ys_I4cRc/htmlview parahumanList], bolded edit by Wildbow.</ref> Is later seen fully subsumed by Teacher, still observing Dragon's code.<ref name="happy_thrall">Teacher nodded. As much as he wanted to rest and get his bearings, he had to keep moving. “Saint?”<br><br>A student in the corner turned. It took him a second to muster the functions needed to reply. “Sir?”<br><br>“Dragon’s code. Any changes? Anything significant?”<br><br>Saint slowly shook his head. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/teneral-e-5/ Excerpt] from [[Teneral e.5]]</ref>
|-
|[[Scanner]]
|Given to [[Cauldron]] as part of the deal involving [[Khonsu]]. Allows [[Doctor Mother]] to read people, drawing conclusions about their thought and brain patterns.<ref name="screen_scan"/>
|-
|[[Screen]]
|Given to [[Cauldron]] as part of the deal involving [[Khonsu]]. Acts as router for [[the Clairvoyant]]'s power, absorbing the drawbacks and allowing for communication between the people in the network, while also allowing [[Doormaker]] and [[Doctor Mother]] to focus on different views.<ref name="screen_scan">Beside Doormaker was number two-six-five. Doormaker’s perpetual companion. The remote viewer.<br><br>Rounding out their group were two individuals. ‘Scanner’ and ‘Screen’. Not ''hers''. Teacher’s students. Loaners, part and parcel of her ‘payment’ for Khonsu.<br><br>Teacher had once specialized in renting out capes that could shape, limit or refine powers, or using his power to do the same. Thinkers would go to him for a subordinate capable of ridding them of their perpetual migraines, or capes would seek him out to achieve more power at the expense of control, or vice versa.<br><br>That second half of his business had faltered as people learned of his ability to manipulate his students… and his clients.<br><br>Teacher’s payment for Khonsu had been a partnership in Cauldron, as well as protection, should one of his enemies come after him. He’d sent some of his students to the Doctor in efforts to make himself indispensable, and Contessa had verified that there were no traps.<br><br>One caveat to two-six-five’s ability to grant visions was that it left the recipient on bedrest for a week, dazed and weak. It was ''potent'', capable of viewing wide areas or multiple things at once, viewing other universes, whole cities, anyone or everyone. But the drawbacks made it impossible for ''her'' to use the service.<br><br>Until now.<br><br>''Screen'' was a means of absorbing the drawbacks, allowing communication between the people in two-six-five’s network. He took the brunt of the images, allowed her to focus more readily, a router of sorts. He allowed Doormaker to handle requests without it taking her attention off what she was viewing. It meant the Doctor was lucid, recovering with every second.<br><br>She could spy on everyone.<br><br>And with ''Scanner'', she could read them. Draw conclusions as to their thoughts, their brain patterns. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/interlude-28/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 28]]</ref>
|-
|[[Trickster]]
|Becomes a thrall of Teacher sometime after entering [[the Birdcage]].<ref name="outside_trickster"/> Told Teacher about the coming end of the world.<ref>No, packbat’s right. My answer was originally that Amy got the info from the Undersiders, but I was in the middle of getting ready to watch Game of Thrones when I said it – a mental slip.<br><br>Apologies to those who went looking. I meant to say the Travelers; Trickster specifically. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/interlude-22-donation-bonus-1/#comment-24002 comment by Wildbow] on [[Interlude 22.x]]</ref> Is killed during the final battle with [[Scion]].<ref>The beam hit the surface of the portal, and only a fraction passed through to strike Scion from behind. Enough to kill someone, enough to kill me, if the beam had happened to touch any of my control portals, but even so, the portal itself took the brunt of the impact.<br><br>Doormaker staggered beside me.<br><br>The portal was wiped out. Without any barrier in the way, the beam radiated forward to wipe Ash Beast, the cape with the pole, Trickster, and Othala from existence. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/speck-30-5/ Excerpt] from [[Speck 30.5]]</ref>
|-
|[[Key]]
|Unspecified woman of rank and file, which is somehow important and demands a lot of effort to keep in control.<ref name="W8.y">Ward, [[Interlude 8.y II|Interlude 8.y]]</ref>
|-
|[[Scapegoat]]
|Becomes an accomplice of Teacher in Ward, post-Fallen battle, after being imprisoned. His Teacher ability allows him a greater level of control and less restraint on his powers by weakening his limits. Scapegoat can, in turn, pass on Teacher's influence to others via his power, like a contagious disease.<ref name="W8.y" />
|-
|[[Valefor]]
|The first test-subject of Teacher-Scapegoat synergy. Intended to become fully subservient tool.<ref name="W8.y" />
|-
|[[Mama Mathers]]
|Collected alongside her son.
|-
|[[The Leper]]
|A sickly brute.
|-
|[[Squad Yellow-Black]]
|Elite squad of soldiers.
|}

===Other Abilities===
Teacher is a highly educated man, having used his powers to create his own tutors.<ref name="power_explain">She did. He could intensify his power, scale up the strength of the ability with the effect on the subject, but hers was minor at best. He’d wanted assistance from a ''person'', rather than an invalid. It had been good that her spirit had been broken when he’d found her. It meant she was more compliant in general, without being useless.<br><br>''She’s happier now'', he thought. She had been lost, and now she had direction, even if it was his.<br><br>That the precognition was barely set in made it easier to undo. His awareness touched on countless abilities, arranged in grids and rows in the background of his mind<br><br>There were caveats. Issues. He could grant a kind of specialty in a particular field, a mastery over a given subject. ''This'' was how he found his expert teachers, ironic as it was. It was also how he made his tinkers, pushing that mastery to the point that it went just beyond the normal limits of theory and knowledge. Doing it with enough people, putting them all on one task, and he was effectively a tinker himself, in a roundabout way. There were tradeoffs in needing personnel, and a lack of reliability in the end product, if he didn’t carefully check every step of the way, but he was a low level tinker in every field.<br><br>He could also grant a wealth of mental powers. Perception powers, powers that gave perspective, or peculiar forms of genius that operated by different rules. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/teneral-e-5/ Excerpt] from [[Teneral e.5]]</ref> Teacher is learned in history, foreign affairs, management, and internal affairs, intelligence, code-breaking, medicine and poisons, parahuman studies, accounting and trade, the sciences, the arts and strategy and tactics in military, government and business settings.<ref name="learned"/> In addition, he has learned from those who he called 'public speakers, flirts, con artists, actors, thieves, magicians, and cutthroats'.<ref name="learned">He’d had the best teachers around. Public speakers, flirts, con artists, actors, thieves, magicians, and cutthroats. He’d been educated in history, foreign affairs, management and internal affairs, intelligence, and codebreaking. He’d learned from the best in medicine and poisons, in parahuman studies, in accounting and trade, the sciences, strategy and tactics in military, government and business roles. He knew how to make things, and how to fake them.<br><br>Even in the little things, hobbies to some and unlikely careers to the foolhardy, he’d achieved some degree of competence. Music, singing, art, prose and dance. All it took was the right teacher, a ''hungry'' eagerness to learn, and time.<br><br>One could not lead, after all, with one eye closed. Some could lead while admitting some ignorance in one department or another, but he wasn’t ''some''.<br><br>He was a jack of all trades, master of quite a few. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/teneral-e-5/ Excerpt] from [[Teneral e.5]]</ref>

===Shard===
Behind the scenes, his [[shard]] sets up a temporary network of [[thinker]]/[[tinker]] shards for his thralls so that those with granted powers are a part of the [[shard network]].<ref>Other cases of the network being in play include Teacher setting up his own temporary networks of a narrow niche of shard (thinker/tinker shards), or Glaistig Uaine co-opting other networks and making them subordinate (ripping out the entire package and making it a ghost she can load/unload). - [https://redd.it/nt15eg Wildbow on Reddit]</ref>