Resistance

One of the reasons why Rodinians could so effectively impose their will upon swathes of the cosmos was how they only needed a handful of troops to keep entire civilisations in check. If a galaxy had 100 stable space-faring civilisations with each having a system count ranging from the hundreds to the thousands, then that entire galaxy was effectively kept under control by a few hundred Rodinians, being supported by a network of probes, AI, and loyal civilisations keeping each other in check.   It’s because mortals simply have no way of harming or killing them, whilst the physical and psikinetic abilities of your average Rodinian can allow them to lay waste to a fleet, an army or a government. Due to the trihypostatic primacy of their psikinetics, there’s nothing mortals can do about them.    

Psikinetic Reinforcement

  A Rodinian’s body is unnaturally strengthened by the passive psikinetic reinforcement their soul conducts upon their body. The strength of the chemical bonds between the atoms and molecules in their skin, muscles, organs and bones take on a peculiar potential curve similar to the strong nuclear force, where the bond strength increases drastically if the atoms or molecules have their separation distance increased or decreased too much by an external source. The psikinetics of their soul dynamically modifies the coupling constant of bonded particles with the electromagnetic field and makes this a function of the distance between them.   The result is that the more energy you put into a Rodinian’s body to damage it, the more energy you need to continue putting into it to break the bonds that underlie the structure of their tissues and cells. It very quickly becomes an explosive exponential at separation distances too small or too large to sustain the bond, making it essentially unbreakable in terms of the energy requirement.   You could unload the entire nuclear arsenal of a civilisation directly onto a single Rodinian, and they would emerge from the atomic maelstrom completely unscathed. To harm them, psikinetics would be required to interfere with their soul’s tampering of the coupling constants and bond strengths. This would then make it possible for them to be injured. It needs to be remembered however that Rodinians have trihypostatic souls, and therefore only another trihypostatic soul can interfere with their psikinetics. Otherwise, lower grade psikinetics have no effect either.    

Biochemistry

  Unbreakable chemical bonds would present an obvious problem for their complex biochemistry, which would grind to a halt immediately. It’s for this reason that the psikinetic reinforcement of their bodies is a little more nuanced than a blanket bolstering of every electrostatic bond in their body whether proton-electron, dipole moments of shifting electron clouds with neighbouring atomic nuclei, or shared electrons. What the soul technically does is create permissible reaction pathways involving protected molecules.   The Rodinians have mapped their cellular biochemistry in exquisite detail, and over millennia have studied how to insulate all these biochemical reactions in their bodies from external interference using psikinetics. Wrote application of this has been ingrained into the subconscious soul, resulting in passive reinforcement. Participant molecules, from sugars to diatomic oxygen to fats and proteins, are essentially chaperoned along by their soul's application of psikinetics from one reaction to another, and have their bonds dynamically reinforced against everything except one another. They can therefore react with one another along suitable, required and/or permitted reaction pathways whilst remaining uninfluenced by anything else.   This is why Rodinians can’t be poisoned by toxic substances even if they drink them straight. These toxic compounds won’t be recognised by their soul as being part of any existing biochemical reaction pathway, and so won’t even be capable of passing through their intestines, the lining of their lungs, or their skin. Acids don’t react with their bodies either for the same reason, nor DNA damaging free radicals.   They can consciously create exceptions for specific things, but this isn’t common. An example of this would be recreational substance use where, in order for these substances to have psychoactive effects on them, they need to permit these substances to chemically interact with their bodies. The chemical bonds in their bodies therefore react normally to these permitted molecules as opposed to reacting with exponential bond strength.   It’s therefore never fair to enter a drinking competition with a Rodinian. They can stop it entering their body, or permit only 5% of it to interact with them.    

Hardness

  It’s commonly believed that Rodinians are diamond hard. This is the impression one gets when it’s observed how bullets shatter and ricochet off their skin, but it’s actually incorrect. Because the bond strength increases based on the separation distance between the bonded particles once outside the normal separation distance, their bodies appear normal to the touch at first. If you were to gently grab a Rodinian by the arm, their skin and flesh would feel normal and not that hard (assuming their muscles were relaxed). The harder you squeezed however, the harder their flesh would become in response. Eventually, it would become significantly harder than diamond if you squeezed hard enough. It’s through this that they survive enormous pressures – the localised pressure exerted from high-velocity munitions like railguns and relativistic kinetic weapons impacting their bodies, the pressure shockwaves in the hearts of nuclear and antimatter explosions, the depths of gas giants and stars, and even the pressure exerted on them from extreme gravitational fields.   They behave a bit like a non-Newtonian fluid – hardening in response to increasing physical stress. So, whilst you can gently poke at one and not hurt your finger, you’d definitely break every bone in your hand if you tried punching one.   Their survivability in a vacuum is related to this. Their blood vessels and tissues are only capable of expanding a certain amount in zero pressure environments before the potential energy curve of the bonds throughout their body vastly exceeds the internal pressure of their bodies. This retains their internal pressure and stops nitrogen bubbles forming in their blood and organs.    

Pair Production

  There are consequences in being able to absorb a limitless amount of potential energy into the molecular and nuclear bonding in their bodies. The energy stored in an electrostatic bond is represented by the energy being stored in the electromagnetic field that bonds the two particles together. In the presence of an atomic nuclei however, if the electromagnetic field’s potential energy is too high, then there will be the spontaneous creation of electron-position pairs from out of the enormous potential energy stored in the local field.   What this means is that Rodinians become radioactive if their bodies are placed under great enough strain. If a huge amount of energy is absorbed into their bodies and the potential energy stored in their electrochemical bonding soars, then electron-positron pairs will be emitted from their bodies carrying away some of that enormous stored energy. This doesn’t affect the Rodinian for the reasons described further above, but it could be problematic for those non-Rodinians around them.   The energy of this radiation can be transferred into the surrounding air, sometimes creating a light, ethereal and eerie plasma “skin” around them, and a haze of bremsstrahlung from electrons emitting visible light photons as they are captured by atoms in the air. If this is observed around a Rodinian, extreme caution is advised as it indicates beta radiation.    

Rodinian Blood Weapons

  If faced with a Rodinian that’s arrived in your solar system, what can your civilisation do? You can’t penetrate their body, use concussive force, use heat, radiation, poison, or vacuum. No quantity of any of this will do anything. They will solo your entire interstellar civilisation - no ifs, no buts, no doubts.   Enter Rodinian blood weapons.   Contained within a Rodinian’s blood is the power to rather ironically end their lives. This is a dark result of the power of iconoclasm within their souls and its satirical, ironic and twisted nature.   Rodinian blood can interact with Rodinians. At first glance this statement should appear obvious – as in, well of course it can react with them.   But their blood confers this property onto and into that which it touches, for as long as it possesses some degree of the Rodinian’s spiritual power. You can take this blood and mix it into an alloy to create a sword that can cut them, a bullet that can pierce them, a toxin that can poison them, or even an explosive that can hurt them.   Obtaining Rodinian blood in the first place is the issue however, and naturally it’s extremely rare outside Rodinia. But Nadrakians of the Ninth Caste still exist, and these fearsome rivals of the Rodinians stalk the cosmos looking for rogue Rodinians to capture and sacrifice to their dead god, Balaine. They’re the source for much of what’s out there, passing it to mortals in the hopes of stirring up trouble and drawing out more Rodinians.   They don’t care if the mortals succeed in killing a Rodinian however. For them it's all about the amusement of watching them likely fail, followed by the opportunity to jump a lone Rodinian and slaughter them. Just because you have a sword that can cut a Rodinian, doesn’t mean you’re going to get anywhere near them with it. And any wound you inflict other than a direct blow to the brain isn’t going to be tremendously useful. But it’s still a possibility, however remote.    

Regeneration

  A Rodinian possesses a rate of healing that’s clearly visible to the naked eye. Their passive psikinetic reinforcement of their body will attempt to stitch and weave damage tissues back together again, eventually leaving it scar free. This varies per the Rodinian, and it can take a few minutes for a deep slash from another Rodinian or Nadrakian to heal, or a split second for the more talented and powerful ones. By consciously focusing on the injury, they can will it to repair even quicker, but this involves spending mental bandwidth that could be used elsewhere. Focused healing is usually a meditative practice, as living bodies are very complex, far more so than inanimate matter.   Replacing lost biomass is much harder. If for example an arm is completely severed and can’t be retrieved, then the Rodinian’s soul is going to have to leverage its inner power of Theosis to create energy from nothing, then convert it into the required forms of matter to create the organic building blocks to regrow the arm. This is all quite taxing for a soul to do if done too quickly, and requires enormous concentration. It’s not something that can usually be done in the heat of battle or other situations that require the Rodinian’s attention.   The only wound a Rodinian can’t completely heal, either instantly or with meditation, is trauma to the brain. As the brain serves as the link between their soul and the physical world, brain damage is fatal to them. This type of damage severely truncates the power of their psikinetics, maiming them until another Rodinian can fix the damage. If severe enough, which almost all forms of brain damage are, then they die instantly due to the connection between their soul and the physical world being severed completely. It’s for this reason that almost all battles between psikinetic beings, and Rodinians and Nadrakians in particular, are exclusively about inflicting a fatal blow to the head. Mortals with weapons infused with Rodinian blood usually also plan for a headshot.    

Death Resistance

  With the exception of the brain, a Rodinian’s physical body is largely superfluous in the short term and exists only to keep the brain alive. If injured too greatly, to the extent that those injuries become life threatening, then a Rodinian can switch the mode in which their soul passively moderates the processes of their body from passive psikinetic reinforcement to active psikinetic support.   This allows the Rodinian to devote some of their conscious thought and concentration to actively sustain certain processes in their body in lieu of the proper functioning of another process. If for example their lungs no longer function, then the Rodinian can filter CO2 out of their blood and convert it to O2 through manipulating the atoms and molecules directly. This particular technique, known as “rebreathing” is commonly learned by Rodinians to allow them to exist in the vacuum of space or other non-breathable spaces indefinitely. It can also be used to recycle sugars, minerals and water, allowing in principle survival without food or water.   They can do this to support any cellular functions, and in essence keep their flesh and tissues alive despite the collapse of ordinary life support such as blood flow, nutrients, oxygen and waste removal. The cost is that it requires a substantial shift in the amount of mental focus they need to divert to the basic functions of their body. The more they need to actively support as their body takes greater damage, the less focus they have to power their other psikinetics.   The ultimate tissue that needs to be protected is their brain. If they lose this, then they die. The soul passively reinforces it more than any other flesh or tissue however Rodinians will actively reinforce it even more if required, such as if they are punched in the head by another Rodinian or a Nadrakian.   Rodinians can, as a result of being able to actively sustain their bodily functions, survive injuries that would be utterly devastating to anyone else including loss of blood and large portions of their body. It’s very difficult to kill them, unless one should destroy the brain.   As a final effort to sustain their existence, if they have been pushed too close to psikinetic burn-out or their body is simply too damaged to be capable of surviving even with direct psikinetic support, then a Rodinian can abandon their body and focus on keeping their brain cells alive using whatever psikinetic power they have left.   In this state they are basically just a brain keeping itself alive with its own psikinetic power until help from other Rodinians arrives. They can keep themselves suspended in this state for years on average. More powerful Rodinian souls can rebuild their soul’s psikinetic power and reverse the burn-out whilst also keeping their brain alive, meaning that they can do it indefinitely and perhaps even slowly regenerate. They are almost completely helpless however, and one curbstomp away from being killed permanently (and if sufficiently weakened from burn-out, then a non-Rodinian could be capable of delivering the coup d’grace).    

Space-Time Supremacy

  Rodinians are immune to almost all mundane phenomena, which is to say non-psikinetic activity. The exception is extreme space-time curvatures, where the distance between the atoms in their body is stretched and squashed too rapidly for their souls to account for. This causes the psikinetic enhancement of their bodies to fail as the bonds between their atoms and molecules are broken from either rapid expansion or contraction of space that causes particles to change their relative distance between each other at faster than light speed. It becomes impossible for force mediating bosons (such as photons) to convey information about the properties of forces like the electromagnetic field as they can only travel at light speed, and hence the particles will no longer experience that force between each other.   This is what's theorized to happen when the universe ends in the Billowing, where all distances in the universe become infinitely stretched in finite time. All atoms (and their sub-atomic particles) will be isolated to infinity from one another. This will overwhelm the psikinetic enhancement of their bodies, and kill them. The only way they could survive is to retroactively move their atoms closer to each other to offset the expansion, which would require moving them together at faster than light speed. As this is impossible for even a Rodinian, they will die.   The singularities within black holes are similar, where the curvature is infinite and ends in a point of infinitely contracting space. Here, the lateral distances between atoms are contracted infinitely fast to zero whilst longitudinal distances are stretched infinitely fast (spaghettified). Rodinians cannot offset this.   Rodinia estimates that the Billowing will occur 21 million years in the future, but some estimates place this much closer at less than one million years due to disagreements over the measurement of the volatility of the cosmological constant. This Billowing means that Rodinian immortality will reach its end. It's an area that receives enormous and furious research.  

Gravitational Collapse

  Closely related to the above concept of the lethality of extreme space-time topologies is the idea of the gravitational collapse of a Rodinian's body when they have absorbed too much energy.   When a Rodinian is hit by a directed energy weapon for example, their body will absorb this into the potential energy of the bonds between their electrons, nuclei, nucleons and, in extreme cases, quarks. Their souls dynamically alter the coupling constants governing these particle interactions in order to offset the increasing energy of the particles in their bodies. This energy is re-released back into the environment as electromagnetic radiation, heat (if not in a vacuum), pair-production of electron-positrons, and quark-antiquark mesons. The Rodinian can also use Flow Psikinetics to dump it into the environment directly.   If they continue to absorb energy however at a rate exceeding their ability to release it back into their environment, then the potential energy of all the bonds in their body will grow without limit until they are storing enough energy to exert significant gravitational effects.   For any mass there exists a radius known as the Schwarzschild radius where an event horizon forms if that mass is compressed into a volume described by that radius. For the average Rodinian height of 2.6 meters, and therefore taking a Schwarzschild radius of 1.3 meters, the corresponding mass that would produce an event horizon if confined into a spherical region with this radius is of the order of 10²⁶ kg. This is approximately the mass of Saturn.   The energy content of this mass is of the order of 10⁴³ joules, or 10³⁴ tons of TNT. If a Rodinian were to absorb this amount of energy, then the gravitational field of the potential energy stored in their bonds would cause their bodies to undergo gravitational collapse, forming a black hole.   This energy far exceeds the gravitational binding energy of an Earth-like planet at 10³² Joules – a factor of 100 billion. This quantity of energy is almost impossible for any civilization to leverage into a weapon that can hit something as small or nimble as a Rodinian. Such a device would need to channel energy at power rates matching those of a gamma ray burst, a quadrillion times the wattage of the Sun's core. It's size, cost and support infrastructure would be enormous, and it's precision and targeting ability would be expected to struggle against Rodinian targets. Any collateral damage resulting from the usage of such weapons would be catastrophic, as they would confer energies capable of vaporizing planetary bodies.   The other significant drawback is that, after the Rodinian's body has succumbed to the immense gravitational field from the energy content stored within their body, they will form a black hole with the mass of Saturn, the gravitational field of Saturn, and a radius of one meter. This cannot be undone, and would pose a substantial risk to any other planetary bodies in a solar system.