Editing Taylor Hebert (section)

===Khepri===
In order to combat the end of the world during the [[Gold Morning]], Taylor gave Panacea instruction and permission to remove the safety restrictions and regulations on her power through the Corona Pollentia and Gemma. The result of this was later known as "Khepri". Taylor's range became significantly reduced to a radius of three hundred feet,<ref>I felt the range of my power halve, as though a guillotine blade had dropped down, cutting it off.<br><br>My control began to slip.  It wasn’t so severe as the effect on my range, but I could feel it degrading.  I was aware of my bugs in a general sense, and they were moving in reaction to my subconscious thoughts, but the end result wasn’t precise.  I moved them, but getting them to stop had a fraction of a second’s delay.<br>[...]<br>My range was dwindling with every passing second, and so was my control.<br>[...]<br>I could feel Panacea working to give me that control, changing what she was focusing on.  I felt the swarm moving more in sync with what I was thinking and wanting.  But this… I could sense what was happening, feel my range plummeting yet again, the guillotine coming down.  My range had been cut down further.<br>[...]<br>''Stop'', Panacea, I thought.  ''Stop, stop, stop, stop…''<br><br>My swarm attacked her, and it wasn’t because of any conscious command on my part.  The attack was crude, more the swarming behavior of wasps drunk on attack pheromones than the calculated attack I was used to employing.<br>[...]<br>I looked at Amy, realizing the bugs were still approaching her.  I pulled the swarm away, and I felt how hard it was to move them.<br><br>I was left with the ruins of my power.  My range was maybe a third of what it might otherwise be, the control rough-edged at best.  There were bugs in my swarm that I couldn’t control, too small. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/15 Excerpt] from [[Speck 30.1]]</ref> making her diameter double that at six hundred, which she could extend through the use of her relay bugs.<ref name="30.3"/> While her control over insects was still present, and she could still sense their presence and have them react to her subconscious thoughts, this control was reduced in precision to an unknown extent, her bugs using more swarm tactics than her usual calculating attacks, nor could she communicate through her bugs. Furthermore, her size limit has increased, as she comments on there were bugs in her former swarm that are now too small for her to control.<ref name="30.1-1"/>

To contrast this, Taylor gained a crude control of nearly every sapient and sentient creature that enters within nearly sixteen feet (fifteen point nine-eight feet to be precise)<ref name="30.1-1"/> making her full range a diameter of nearly thirty-two feet. This most notably includes parahumans and, subsequently, humans,<ref name="30.1-2">It belatedly clicked.  Sixteen feet was the distance they needed to keep from me. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/15 Excerpt] from [[Speck 30.1]]</ref> as well as a focused sense and awareness of their bodies. This range cannot be increased through periods of stress mirroring her original trigger event, as her Corona no longer connects to the parts of her brain related to emotions or similar concepts. She also slowly began to lose control and awareness of her own body, unable to communicate directly, move as fast or as well as she used to, only able to focus and perform one bodily function like breathing at a time, and losing touch with reality. Her Shard was able to to obtain some control over her body, emotions and thoughts, and would perform actions without her conscious or reflective command in an effort to help her, trying to learn how the two can work together. All of which grew worse as time went on and the barrier between Taylor and her Shard became thinner and blurred, losing understanding of what people were saying and interpreting all actions as conflict to fight.<ref name="30.1-1">[[Speck 30.1]]</ref>

This control is not automatic, and Taylor, in brief periods of lucidity, can choose not to control someone in her range. People who are in her control are capable of feeling emotion, perform steady breathing, feeling tense and perform slight, subconscious usage of their powers like Lung; all of which Taylor is capable of sensing, along with sensing other inner workings like their well-being, where a person was sore, how fit they were, and most importantly how their parahuman powers works. Taylor can also co-opt their senses like she did with her bugs, allowing her, for example, to see and hear through multiple people. However, the people are completely unable to move despite their feelings and attempts as they are, in Taylor's words, "Waiting for instructions". Any control that Taylor does exert on them is crude, but a bit more fluid than her control over her own body at that point, allowing Taylor to give them somewhat more precise commands. This ability also causes Taylor and those she controls to suffer shared experiences; feelings felt by one bringing up different memories from each person that are associated with those emotions, and those memories being exchanged between them and Taylor, as those she controls become an extension of herself. Control and senses over their parahuman powers is more precise and efficient, though Taylor remarks in the case of Bitch that controlling her would not give her any special knowledge of Bitch's whistles or commands, or her instinctive understanding of the dogs.<ref name="30.1-1"/>

Taking command of [[Doormaker]] and [[Clairvoyant]], Taylor was able to round up and control roughly five thousand two hundred Parahumans and over ten quadrillion insects from dozens of different Earths to combat Zion, using the latter to find parahumans and insects, and to keep track of the battle across alternative Earths, and the former to open portals within her range to other parahumans so that she can control them. Taylor comments that, had she the time, she could control over ten quintillion bugs; the total number of insects on the entirety of Earth.<ref name="30.3">[[Speck 30.3]]</ref> With these she coordinated the fight with Zion while launching a number of psychological attacks against him, taunting Zion with his dead partner, and sequestering a vast number of Tinkers away to construct a form of tinkertech interdimensional battering ram to kill The Warrior's main body when his avatar was destroyed and a portal was opened to it.

Though a full list of creatures Taylor can now control is unknown, there are a number of beings she cannot that is known. She could not control Zion or the Endbringers, nor the [[Three Blasphemies]]. She seemed to be unable to control Dragon for unstated reasons. She is unable to control Imp and in fact the latter is able to get closer enough to talk to her through power keeping her hidden,<ref>I heard a voice, female, kind words, spoken haltingly, out of place in the midst of this.  I had trouble placing the memory.<br><br>[...]<br><br>Again, the voice interrupted.  Patient, almost like I was overhearing something being said.  It made for a kind of… what was the word?  A conflict between two ideas.  Dis- Dissonance.<br><br>[...]<br><br>I was preparing to go down with the clairvoyant, making sure we wouldn’t break contact even if we had a hard landing, when I heard that voice again, small and afraid.<br><br>I couldn’t place the recollection.<br><br>[...]<br><br>Again, that soft voice I couldn’t place, something to help me keep moving onward, a human sound when abstracts were becoming all too real.<br><br>[...]<br><br>I could hear the voice again.<br><br>Another person appeared twenty or so feet to my left, startling me.  My bugs moved, creating a barrier.<br><br>No.  She was a familiar face, so to speak.  A gray mask, horned, with mischievous eyes, a mouth hidden by a scarf or cowl  she’d piled around her shoulders.  She was the source of the voice.  She’d been with me, keeping me company.<br><br>Tears came unbidden to my eyes. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/26/speck-30-6/ Excerpt] from [[Speck 30.6]]</ref> though she was able to take control of Imp once she turned her power off and revealed herself fully.<ref>I sensed my bugs moving, shifting position without even moving a limb or wing.  Before I even grasped what was happening, I was moving.  I cut out with my knife, feeling like I was swinging madly into open air.<br><br>A girl materialized, shouting or saying something.  She’d appeared just a little in front of me, her back initially to me as I continued cutting, the actions jerky and stiff, uncoordinated and continuing long past the moment there was any point.  I could feel her body appear in my mind’s eye, and I asserted control over her. - [[Speck 30.7]]</ref> She was temporarily able to control [[Glaistig Uaine]], but she was able to escape Taylor's control by swapping the control on her over to one of her ghost projections. Finally, she did not control the [[Sleeper]], though this was not due to an inability to control him but rather because she determined doing so would be more troublesome than it was worth.

Had [[Jack Slash]] been active at the time, [[Jack Slash#Shard|his secondary power]] would be better at sabotaging her compared with the typical [[parahuman]].<ref>'''Depression-the-Game:''' Alright so, Jack Slash doesn't lose against parahumans. What about shard controlled Parahumans? Like Ash Beast or Khepri.<br><br>'''Wildbow:'''For an analogy, think of boomers trying to use an app a bizarre sci-fi megacorp designed to kill an executive officer of that megacorp's company. ''And'' that megacorp is monitoring them ''and'' they control their internet, the data they see, and you're tracking them. The boomer, for whatever reason, can't ditch their phone (In setting, it's stuck to their brain).<br><br>Because they're boomers they don't really understand the tech and a lot of it is screened off from them, right?<br><br>Boomer has an app that mail orders feral bears? "I guess we have to deliver, but let's just order some really shitty bears and have the driver honk his horn to alert the CEO, and if our boomer makes any mistakes in the ordering and isn't focused then we'll just empty the truckload of bears right in front of him."<br><br>App to get someone killed? They hook it up to your boomer's pacemaker and reserve the ability to stop his heart when his lifespan (going by compiled insurance data from up to 150 providers) is halfway up, in exchange for giving him data to call in accurate hits. He just made that install and your tracking indicates he's intending to call a hit in on your CEO? Use just the two providers that give the shortest lifespan, cut that in half, (he should be in 4 minutes, according to sketchy companies A and B? hit that button to stop our boomer's pacemaker!) Or lean on your megacorp's subsidiary companies and track what he's doing on the internet to slow him down. Mess with his head.<br><br>Utilizing a shard-controlled parahuman is getting ''deeper'' into the megacorp's control.<br><br>The way it works is that you want to rely on someone who isn't using the megacorp's tech or who isn't tracked and monitored by the megacorp. Anything else is going to see the executive officer getting a courtesy phone call and your tech guys are going to do everything they can to mess with your potential threat.<br><br>Anything else is liable to be a "Gee, why can't I use my app from megacorp to destroy a megacorp executive officer?" - Conversation with Wildbow on Reddit, [https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-quotes-and-wog-repository.294448/page-24?post=91563426#post-91563426| archived] on Spacebattles</ref>