They are confident. Arrogant, even.

Most of their power comes from psychological trickery. Even my 5 year old understands the basic trick of lying... but they take it well beyond these basics.

Have you ever heard of NLP? Neuro-linquistic programming.

To someone, say, 200 years ago, NLP would seem like magic. It's a science, really... but it's a psychological science. And it's very, very powerful.

This is the sort of science they use. Trickery, subterfuge, misdirection.

The bible itself is chockablock full of psychological trickery (I know because of how extensively I've studied it. however, the quran is just as bad if not worse).

I can barely list them, there are so many embedded psychological tricks.

However, that being said... I also do know that they have some paranormal abilities. I don't think they have anything that others can't have, but... we have no knowledge in how to get them.

So it's a three pronged attack on the common person:

1. trickery/psychological games
2. magic (or, unknown abilities, if you prefer)
3. suppression of knowledge (knowledge hoarding)

However, they hate life, and the universe is biased towards life. So theirs is a continuously uphill battle. Entropy continues to seep in and screw up their efforts.

I could go on and on about this for hours, lol. Not much point in doing so, but I could. :p