Strength

Theoretically, a Rodinian's physical strength is absurd. In practice however, the world around them usually limits how much of their strength and speed they can use.   For example, there’s only so much friction that can be generated between the soles of their feet and the ground for use in driving locomotion. There’s only so much force their legs can exert when leaping, before the material beneath their feet can no longer withstand the force. And whilst in theory the average Rodinian might be capable of lifting upwards of 3.49x10¹⁹ tons (Roughly five trillion Great Pyramids of Giza), objects would tend to disintegrate under the strain of their own weight or inertia, folding and breaking at the point of contact between it and the Rodinian. So, unless they are interacting with each other or objects composed of Mycomatter, most of their strength is rather useless on its own.   Practical limitations aside though, a Rodinian’s physical power is difficult to imagine. Mundane physical materials (which are those not augmented with some form of psikinetics, like Mycomatter) are perilously fragile to them and need to be handled with focused delicacy. Consequently, there’s no material that can be crafted by the hands of non-Rodinians that can stop or slow them for even a moment. They can lift and move enormous loads measuring in the megatons without showing much exertion, even when their form or motion wouldn’t be conducive to lifting. And they can do it quickly too. If they need to, their limbs can move with a speed that causes sonic cracks, compresses and heats the air in front to ignition, and strips electrons from atoms to create electric discharge. There’s no mundane material that can survive a blow from one, stop one from pushing their hands through it, or prevent one from grinding it into dust or deforming it like clay in the palms of their hands.   Rodinians generally need to undergo extensive training in how to manage and control their physical strength outside of Rodinia, as the slightest over-application of force from them cause serious damage to objects, structures and people.    

Psikinetic Mechanics

  The secret to a Rodinian’s strength is their psikinetics, as it is with all psikinetic-using civilisations with extreme abilities. The Rodinians however benefit from having anomalously powerful and effective psikinetics that are not just unmatched, but unmatchable due to their hybridised souls. This is what pumps all their physical abilities to outrageous extremes, such as their strength.   One component that enables such titanic physical power is the psikinetic reinforcement of their bodies. This doesn’t just allow them to weather brutal assaults and conditions that would ordinarily obliterate them but allows them to place excess stress and strain on their bodies that far exceeds what they would otherwise be capable of supporting. Without this reinforcement, trying to lift a sixty-ton vehicle would tear muscles, tendons and cause their bones to snap.   The other component is a technique in psikinetics called Psikinetic Forcing. In simple terms, this is commanding their muscles to exert force far beyond what they can otherwise exert by moving and manipulating the muscle fibres directly. It leverages the vastly increased tensile strength of the muscle fibres from psikinetic reinforcement to force them to pull with massive amounts of force.   At a fundamental level in reinforcement, the atomic and molecular bonds are strengthened far beyond their normal strength through the altering of coupling constants between particles and quantum fields, and the virtual particles mediating quantum forces. Atoms and molecules become locked in place and cannot be influenced by anything the psikinetic mind does not allow (Unless overpowered by rival psikinetics or extreme mundane phenomena like Black Holes). In Psikinetic Forcing, the atoms and molecules are moved directly by the mind in permitted paths. This therefore translates to fibres of indestructible muscle being contracted not by a biological mechanism, but by what’s essentially telekinesis from the mind operating at quantum sized scales.   The strength of the movement is therefore determined by the power of the psikinetics, and this is why most Rodinians view the entire universe as though it were made of hair-thin glass because their psikinetics can command huge amounts of energy and matter. When they command their muscles to contract, they contract until the motion is complete, their mind can’t move it anymore, or they strike another Rodinian or something made of Mycomatter. Nothing else can stop it.    

Baseline Vs Exertion

  At all times they are subconsciously controlling both the rate of contraction and the force of contraction of their muscle fibres, as well as the volume of fibre activation. If a Rodinian needs to push themselves beyond their subconscious baseline, then they can begin to consciously force their muscles to operate above baseline. However, this requires the expenditure of mental focus and the transfer of more momentum and energy through their soul which can result in psikinetic burnout depending on the level and duration of elevated exertion.   Stronger Rodinians operate at a higher baseline. They are either more intelligent (and therefore are subconsciously performing more Psikinetic Forcing at any given moment due to having more brain/soulpower to devote to it), and/or can transfer more energy into their body’s performance. In the latter case, their souls passively transfer larger quantities of energy and momentum to further amplify muscular contractions.   It’s the soul’s ability to transfer energy and momentum that’s the larger of the two limitations. The Rodinian body is finite, relatively unchanging and well understood, and therefore the number of muscle fibres that need to have their contractions enhanced is also well understood. Most Rodinians know their own bodies inside and out, and so they don’t usually need to spend too much time figuring out what they need to enhance at any given moment. In the end it usually always comes down to how much energy their souls can transfer into their muscles and the momentum they can move around.    

How Strong?

  It’s difficult to pin down exactly how strong Rodinians are, as it can vary so much depending on the strength of the Rodinian’s own psikinetic power. Rodinians like Kalrin who have souls consisting of enormous amounts of spiritual potential, almost bottomless fractal depth, and seemingly limitless ability to channel energy, can make other Rodinians seem almost mortal in comparison.   If we take the weakest Rodinians however, which are those with either a poor understanding of their own body or a poor ability to channel energy into muscle fibre action (due to having souls with low spiritual potential), then all mundane materials not enhanced by psikinetics can be ground into dust in the palms of their hands as effortlessly as squashing wet sand. Nothing, including diamonds and high-performance ceramics, last more than a fraction of an instant in their grip. This means that when interacting in the world of non-Rodinians, extreme care is required. The slightest error in the application of force can destroy objects and maim people.   Most materials used by Rodinians have psikinetics woven into them, making them immune to mechanical stress much like a Rodinian’s own body and therefore resilient to a Rodinian’s strength. These materials can only be destroyed by a psikinetic user deliberately trying to break the psikinetic reinforcement within them. Mycomatter is an example of such a material, which is a sentient super fungus that can use psikinetics in a similar way to Rodinians by virtue of possessing a rudimentary soul.    

The Limitations of Lifting

  Large objects like vehicles, ships and buildings made of mundane non-psikinetic materials tend to break apart if manipulated with too much force. For example, lifting a car is not technically feasible as the point of contact between the Rodinian’s hand and the car itself would succumb to the mechanical stress of the car’s entire weight resting on such a small surface area. The result would either be the vehicle splitting in two or more likely the Rodinian’s hand piercing though it. If wishing to move very large objects without having them break apart, then the Rodinian will need to temporary reinforce the material/object with psikinetics (which can be costly both mentally and in terms of energy transfer depending on the size of the object). Psikinetic enhanced materials, whether temporarily or permanently enhanced, are immune to mechanical stresses and almost indestructible.   Another issue is the ground. A Rodinian lifting a sixty-ton weight is going to damage the ground they are standing on, as all that weight is transferred through the small surface area of their feet. If it can’t support that weight, then the Rodinian’s feet will just sink into the ground, and they won’t lift anything even though they are strong enough in theory.   There are ways around it, depending on the skill of the individual. They could reinforce the material underneath them with temporary psikinetic enhancement, but this requires diverting mental focus and energy. Most will instead hold themselves in place above the ground with their telekinesis (which technically uses the soul to transfer momentum around the environment), a technique that is slightly easier as their bodies are already significantly stronger than any mundane material underfoot and won’t require nearly as much conscious reinforcement.    

An Aside: Reinforcing Materials

  What does it mean to say that a Rodinian can reinforce other materials? It basically means the same thing as what they do to their own bodies. They use the different disciplines of psikinetics (Latch, Flow and Tilt) to make atomic, molecular and structural bonds nearly unbreakable, as well as making sure that necessary chemical reactions and reaction pathways cannot be disturbed.   Whilst their mind and soul subconsciously do this to their own bodies without the Rodinian needing to think about it, for foreign materials it’s different. They need to consciously “reach out” to the object and alter its properties.   This involves first conceptualising the object in granular detail to understand the subatomic, atomic and molecular interactions within it. Once this subatomic resolution has been achieved, they can start altering the properties of the matter that constitutes it. They can make it far more resilient at this stage.   Another step involves “zooming out” whilst retaining that atomic resolution so that the soul can understand how all the newly physically enhanced constituent parts fit together. This is essentially understanding how all the macro-scale components fit together, such as screws, bolts, panels, wiring, etc. The Rodinian binds all these things together by fixing their locations relative to each other.   In the end, they can make a car for example indestructible by making all the parts indestructible at the atomic level, then making all the parts maintain their relative positions with respect to each other.   This requires enormous mental focus to accomplish even for a Rodinian, and in most cases can’t be done instantly or even remotely quickly. It can come at the cost of the Rodinian being unable to increase or even maintain their own physical abilities by using up their soul’s energy/momentum flux budget, and lead to a greater likelihood of psikinetic burnout.    

Limitations of Movement

  Rodinians can generate enormous forces spontaneously, both in baseline and especially when consciously amplifying their movements with psikinetic forcing. Moving their limbs orders of magnitude faster than the speed of sound from rest is performed as though it were a normal movement, producing pressure shockwaves in front of the moving limb, a sonic boom, and adiabatic heating of the air in front producing a brief plasma reaching 4’700 degrees celcius. A large build-up of static electricity is also possible, which can discharge with tens of thousands of volts. It’s simply not feasible for other civilisations to even attempt fighting Rodinians when the act of merely moving through an atmosphere can wipe out an army.   Non-psikinetic materials (including non-psikinetic beings) struck by a Rodinian using a sliver of their strength and speed will simply explode. Even if they miss, the pressure shockwave around their limbs is usually enough to cause catastrophic damage against whatever they were aiming at. This all happens in 100 – 1000 nanosecond timeframes; orders of magnitude faster than most species’ optic nerves can transmit a signal to the brain.   In terms of locomotion, there is a limit to how fast they can accelerate on their feet despite how fast and forceful they can move their legs. They only weigh a certain mass, and therefore their feet can only generate so much friction with the ground. This means a maximum amount of force they could apply to generate motion – if they tried to apply any more force than this, then their feet would begin to lose traction with the ground and start slipping. There’s also the durability of the ground material to take into consideration too, regarding whether it can physically withstand a Rodinian trying to accelerate to what they would consider “running speed”. Most materials would simply disintegrate as their feet gouged holes into the floor, and the Rodinian wouldn’t go anywhere fast at all.   To avoid this, they either need to accelerate more gradually so that they don’t lose traction or destroy the ground beneath them, or again expend mental focus and energy on reinforcing the ground. Most Rodinians don’t bother, and just use their telekinesis to lift themselves off the ground and move through the air.   It’s a similar story when leaping. If they exert too much force when leaping, they’ll just destroy what’s beneath their feet without going any higher. Terrain reinforcement would be required, or simply flight using telekinesis.   Given that most can use their psikinetics to fly via telekinesis, most of these issues regarding leaping, running and lifting large masses don’t tend to come up outside of specific contexts. It’s just worth pointing out that to Rodinians the world feels like it’s made of wet sand.    

Heat Generation

  Muscle fibres produce small amounts of friction when they move, and this friction produces a tiny amount of heat. In normal lifeforms, this is usually insignificant compared to the heat released by metabolism.   In Rodinians, this isn’t the case. When they move their body and limbs at hypersonic velocities with enough power to move thousands of tons, there are consequences to this. The internal friction generated by their joints and muscles produces heat, and a lot of it. Under sustained physical activity at their level, this can build up and raise their body temperature into the hundreds of degrees celcius, and eventually even the thousands.   This becomes unpleasant for them, but not dangerous as their biochemistry is psikinetically controlled, and their bodies reinforced. They simply feel the heat and its intensity which can, in extreme cases, trigger pain and burning sensations.   This frictional heating will eventually make them incandescent and radiate heat into the environment as though they were made of hot tungsten. This can burn people who get too close, scorch things that they touch and even cause flammable materials to combust. This heat needs to be slowly radiated and transferred away, or ‘dumped’ via psikinetic transfer of the molecular vibrational energy into the environment or another object.