Essence Skills
Essence
Bravery
This skill may be known by many names: guts, cool, courage. What it boils down to is one’s ability to face the unknown in the blackness of space and not back down. Wherever you go, you were likely not meant to be there. You have to surround yourself with a spaceship to survive the harshness of space that got you to some forsaken rock where man has never set foot. Taking that step off the dropship—and facing whatever horrors may be waiting—takes bravery. As your character travels the stars, he will become hardened. Hardness is added to bravery checks, which means that which did not kill you has made you stronger. Fear can be a powerful survival mechanism, though, and tales abound of battle-weary marines or grizzled astronauts looking some cosmic terror square in the eye and shrugging before squaring off for their last dance when flight might have saved their hides…
Psi
The psi skill is difficult to describe. Some might say you have it or you don’t. Others say it’s in the blood. Many an archaeologist has gone mad hunting Forerunner artifacts and archives trying to find the secrets of this art, hoping it is something that can be learned or taught. A strong psi skill is part intuition, part empathy. Perhaps a dash of luck, and an ineffable…something. The psi attributes are important to characters that wish to have Psionic talents, and can only be purchased or learned by characters that have latent psionic ability or are psionic Adepts. See Chapter XX: Psionics for a complete description of the psionic skill trees.
