Electromagnetic Radiation as Powers

[Gamma Fiend he/him]

So this is me finally getting around to my crazy fantasy world ideas I've been coming up with for a while now. After much thought and consideration I ended up with Electromagnetic Radiation powers. Such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-ray, and Gamma wave radiation. To me it's just a unique idea, and can have a lot of possibilities in fantasy, especially with Tech Interaction. Because, think about it, we manipulate and use all these forms of radiation on a daily basis. So I wanted to add in the real-world element. Also, I wanted there to be no Mysticism, or Gods, or any sort of Divine Intervention, I think that's been done enough. I don't want there to be some "big bad" out there, pulling all the strings, making all the shots for evil to prevail. Humans do that enough on our own to create juicy stories.
So this power is naturally occurring in people. A form of evolution, kind of.

I've had a lot of problems finding balances, but there's just so much versatility to the powers.

Radio Waves: Obvious one. We use these to send signals and information. Will help with instant knowledge of events

Microwaves, Same as radio waves basically, just over smaller distances But we also use Microwaves for meteorology, and radar, and the like.

Infrared waves are also pretty obvious, just basic heat manipulation/generation at higher levels. At strong levels becomes a low, dim red energy plasma that kind of looks like it flows like molten magma

Visible Light This one had me pretty tripped up for a while. Just seems too good and powerful. People who master Light manipulation are the perfect illusionists. You can bend lightwaves around you or anything, making them invisible. You can create waves, making things appear like they are there when they aren't. Just all sorts of visual prowess. Limited to a range, of course, to keep it fair. But people can get really strong with this. Weaknesses can be that you cant create sound or touch, so thats one way around illusion. Or people can use Infrared for Heatvision, or X-ray, or even Radio/Microwave for RADAR type stuff.

Ultraviolet This was one of the toughest to work out. It just seems like a high energy type wave that can be dangerous, or very efficient if used properly. I know these are invisible waves and not the purple blacklight colors we associate with it, but there is where I bend science a little bit. People can use ultraviolet for the simple purposes we use them for (mostly for disinfecting tools for medical use, radiation therapy in some cases, mostly medical). But in high levels, I'll have it appear as a type of plasma, emitting blacklight, having an electric-like, arcing appearance. Can be used to just "zap" people. More or less severe radiation burns, and this is the level where people start emitting actual radiation when using powers, making it dangerous.

X-rays using those as more of "probing" vision waves. People can use them to see through stuff. Mostly medical uses. Also highly radioactive.

Gamma Waves these are the most intensive and dangerous waves. No real practical uses, just destruction. I'll make it a greenish type plasma energy, very unstable. I imagine it just making stuff explode at the molecular level.

Still very rough and still studying and looking stuff up to figure out more uses, any suggestions will be great.
Any other questions and comments are more than welcome. I'll start compiling the world and history notes I have so far (which aren't much) and I'll put them up here too if people are interested. I might also tweak and edit this later to make it neater. Too lazy right now.

[name_here]

Note that the electromagnetic in the name is not an arbitrary choice. EM waves both produce and are produced by the movement of electrons in atoms. Also, this effect is quantized: each wave can be divided into discreet units containing a certain amount of energy. The energy in each unit is dependent exclusively on the wavelength/frequency and not the total energy of the wave. An electron in a material struck by a packet containing a certain minimum energy will become excited and potentially produce an electrical current, but will not react to any number of packets below the energy threshold.

 

So basically, EM radiation powers can also be used to produce electrical currents, but only sometimes. I think for most materials the minimum energy is somewhere in the visible or ultraviolet portions of the spectrum, but I'm not entirely sure. That said, it's a known material property and somewhere on the internet you should be able to find a giant table containing the values for every material you've heard of and many you haven't.

 

There's also the dielectric effect, which we use in microwave ovens, where polar materials such as water will align to a fluctuating electromagnetic field produced by certain forms of radiation. This burns things. Things like people. I'm not sure what the rules for that are; I wasn't paying much attention in that part of my Electricity and Magnetism course.

Edited November 6, 2013 by name_here

[Swimmingly he/him]

I would class people thus:

Emission, Consumption, Manipulation, Perception

 

Emitters would be the powerhouses, shooting frickin' laser beams etc. but using a personal store to do so. Maybe they start glowing a little as they get a laser ready

 

Consumers would be able to absorb light to use as energy; so they can eat a portion of an Emitter's attack - how much depends on how strong they are. They're basically photosynthetic badasses, given that they power themselves with light. You know when to run because their skin just started going dull and black.

 

Manipulation would be illusion and stuff. They can take light and bend it into veils, see people from around the corner, even do "magnifying glass" style attacks - even divert an Emitter's light with effort, or starve and blind a consumer. Their weakness is that they need light to manipulate.

 

Perceivers instinctually recognize patterns of light, and frequencies of light. They notice a Manipulator's veils much more easily, generally don't fall for illusions, and they can see with very little light, deconstructing the path of light beams. Of course, they're no stronger physically and a good Emitter can still burn off their head at twenty feet.

 

Note you can still classify different frequencies with this, and different frequencies play to the strengths of different types - for example, a consumer in the infrared could absorb energy without looking shady in the visible spectrum, but an emitter in the radio would be more of a glorified human radio tower. A manipulator in the visible spectrum would be strongest in illusions, but one in the gamma spectrum could block similar emitters. Radio perceivers could train themselves to catch signals over long distances, whereas those in the gamma spectrum would be pretty useless. Depending on personal strength, a very strong infrared or visible light manipulator might easily kill a middling gamma emitter during the day by blasting them with a magnified attack before the pulses of gamma do much more than give them cancer in 50 years.

[Gamma Fiend he/him]

Cool ideas Swimmingly. And thanks for the input Name_Here

I've been working and tweaking this idea for a while now, and it's been tough to get a balanced classification going. Was leaning towards One person gets one Wave type each, but as pointed out those are just different energy levels. And the whole matter of electricity and magnetism. I'm not exactly a physicist and I have no idea at what point what levels of energy turn into what property.

I know when I get this system all balanced and fixed it could be so awesome. There's so much potential for cool stuff in this world. Middle ages with just very specific levels of advanced technology. The Steam Engine can be re-hauled and revolutionized to streamlined simplicity, just create the Water and Valve system and have an Infrared (IR) user heat away. Or teams. They could use Zeppelins as travel, if not Hot Air Balloon for quick transport.

The instant communication with Radios would be phenomenal for war and politics, but also very dangerous.
Realistically people with strong Microwave powers could just go fry peoples brains at whim.

But people who Manipulate light will be the scariest. How can anybody trust what they see? This will cause very awkward contact-based greetings and rituals, in order to see if there's illusion happening or not.

I honestly might need to shelf the idea before it gets too started.


And plus: I recently read Brent Week's Lightbringer Series   and man, we're barking up a similar tree. Of course I had no idea of his and there are glaring differences. Whereas he splits the Light Spectrum into different colors that create different materials (very, radically different from what I got, safe there) but then he also branches out into infrared and ultraviolet, for somewhat similar uses.
And (book 2 spoilers)

The other 'sub-sub' colors Paryl  and Chi  IIRC are basically Microwave (seeing through metal and more readily available even at night) and X-ray (only mentioned in the magic breakdown at the end of the book in a brief explanation. Although 'having better piercing powers than the fabled Paryl' sounds like x-ray vision to me)

[name_here]

Realistically people with strong Microwave powers could just go fry peoples brains at whim.

This is a common misconception. The dielectric heating effect used by microwave ovens is not confined to the frequencies used in those. It exploits the tendency of polar water molecules to align with electromagnetic fields by producing a rapidly alternating one, causing the molecules to vibrate and generate heat. Anyone capable of generating the higher-frequency bands would be able to do it as well.

[Gamma Fiend he/him]

... Well that's even scarier then. lol

Looks like I still need to re-work my understanding of electromagnetic radiation a little bit. It's just so weird.