Empathic replication is a rare genetic deformity that occurs within certain types of changelings. While "healthy" changelings have near-total control over their shapechanging abilities, those who suffer from empathic replication have no direct control over their abilities. Instead, their powers react to strong emotions of others, causing them to change based upon the wills of those around them. While this condition has driven many into the shadows, there are those who have worked to master their condition, allowing them to target specific people's emotions. Those who have reached this level of mastery often find work in espionage and spycraft, using their condition to toy with the emotions of their targets.
Causes
The primary cause of empathic replication occurs during pregnancy. As a child, a changeling's abilities are heavily tied to their emotions, causing them to shift during emotional outbursts, though this connection lessens as they mature. If, during the pregnancy, the mother is subject to frequent emotional spikes, it has the potential of causing the fetal changeling's shapechanging abilities to tie itself to their emotions more heavily. Oftentimes, this manifests as simply prolonging the connection, referred to simply as "late blooming".
If the mother is subject these frequent spikes during the early stages of the pregnancy, the changeling's abilities have a chance to tie themselves to the mother's emotions instead of their own. When the child is born, that connection is lost, and the child's abilities will attach themselves to the strongest emotions in the room. Usually, the strongest emotions are coming from the child itself, and the problem fixes itself naturally. But, in extremely rare instances, it may latch on to another person's emotions, causing the infant to develop empathic replication. Due to the sheer amount of emotional feedback the changeling will receive from those around them, their powers will always remain connected to emotions, as by the time the child has reached a point they could be entirely self-sufficient, the damage has already been done.
