Cassie O'Pia

Cassie O'Pia is a supporting character in Psychonauts 2. She is a founding member of the Psychonauts, and the author of the famous psychic self-help book Mindswarm. Her mind is explored in the level Cassie's Collection.

Personality
Cassie is physically affectionate with her friends, embracing both Compton Boole and Helmut Fullbear upon reuniting with them, and physically consoling a grieving Bob Zanotto in many memory vaults.

Notable Psi-Powers and Skills
Mental Projection

Zoolepathy

Major Relationships
Cassie's mind holds a secret alcove where memories of her friends in their prime dwell in the form of paper cutouts. This provides a thorough perspective of exactly what Cassie thinks of each of her Psychic 7 colleagues.

Compton Boole.

Cassie O’Pia's best friend is Compton Boole, whom she affectionately calls "Boolie." They kept bees together during their days in Green Needle Gulch, earning a reputation as "bug nerds" amongst their friends. They also enjoyed bowling and cooking together. For a time, Compton felt helpless without Cassie and relied on her for confidence and security. When they reunited, Compton helped Cassie calm her angry swarm of bees, and they retreated to Compton's menagerie together and cheerfully bonded again.

Ford Cruller

Cassie holds immense respect and reverence for Ford Cruller, her former colleague. After his mind shattered and he couldn't hold a conversation with her, Cassie was unable to work at the Motherlobe any longer and retreated to Green Needle Gulch. Cassie held out hope that Ford would return to his old self, and became obsessed with protecting the Gulch and caring for her beehives to prepare for his return.

Bob Zanotto

Although Cassie's paper memory of Bob Zanotto depicts him as grouchy and distant, she cares for him deeply. In the memory vaults depicting the aftermath of the Battle of Grulovia, Cassie is regularly seen consoling and comforting Bob after the supposed death of his husband.

Helmut Fullbear

Cassie fondly remembers Helmut as grandly theatrical and deeply appreciative of life. She was overjoyed to see him again decades later, embracing him and calling him "Big Bear." Although Cassie is important to Helmut as well, enough to mentally represent one of his five senses, Helmut's memory of Cassie is less glowing, talking about little else but her book and micromanaging the band. He also thinks the bee fascination she shares with Compton is "weird."

Otto Mentallis

Cassie remembers Otto Mentallis as a boisterous, smug idiot. She protested his psitanium mining operation, concerned for the environment, and is resentful that he and Lucy ignored her.

Lucrecia Mux

Cassie attempted to befriend Lucrecia during their heyday in Green Needle Gulch, and remains bitter that Lucy was more interested in flirting with Ford instead. Regardless, Lucy is preserved in Cassie's memories as the kind person she was before she became a criminal, a transformation which still confuses Cassie.

Backstory
As a young woman, Cassie's parents abandoned her in a big city, forcing her to work as a counterfeiter for the criminal Fannie Flats. Here, she developed her Counterfeiter Cassie archetype, a thick-skinned outlaw who helped her survive this period of her life. Trapped between criminals and corrupt cops, Cassie embraced her Writer Cassie archetype to escape the country. At night, she wrote her self-help book, Mindswarm, and secretly printed the book at the counterfeiting press. Mindswarm was massively successful upon publishing, granting Cassie enough financial power to leave the criminal racket and the country behind her.

Through her writing and motivational speaking, Cassie's psychic prowess reached Ford Cruller, who invited her to join his psychic research team in Green Needle Gulch, along with inventor Otto Mentallis, hydrokinesis specialist Lucrecia Mux, herbophony specialist Robert Zanotto, zoolepathy specialist Compton Boole, and musician Helmut Fullbear. The Psychic 7 became close friends, united in the goal of pushing the limits of the human mind.

Cassie treasured her time in the Green Needle Gulch community, although she disliked Otto and felt that no one listened to her concerns for the environment. She formed an especially close friendship with Compton Boole and kept bees with him, while writing more books. Emboldened the age of psychic exploration, as well as each other, the Psychic 7 experimented on their minds using Otto’s invention, the Astralathe, capable of permanently altering one’s psyche. One such experiment on Lucrecia released a dark, primal construct called Maligula from her subconscious, which thrived when Lucy returned to aid the war effort in Grulovia.

World leaders called upon the nascent Psychonauts to vanquish Maligula, after she broke a damn and drowned hundreds of peaceful protesters. Cassie was the first line of defense in the ensuing Battle of Grulovia, attempting to break through to Lucy with a motivational speech about friendship. This only angered Maligula further, and Cassie was quickly dispatched from the fight. After each of her friends were also defeated, including Helmut Fullbear, who was plunged into the frozen lake, Ford finally subdued Maligula, at the cost of his own sanity.

With Lucy and Helmut presumed dead and the Psychonauts declared heroes, Cassie joined Otto Mentallis in the groundbreaking of the Motherlobe, visibly miserable along with Compton, Bob, and Ford. Cassie struggled to fit in with the new organization, and, unable to deal with Otto's ego, Compton's detachment, and Ford's loss of self, she left in the dead of night to return to Green Needle Gulch.

Returning to the Gulch and her bees, Cassie's guilt overwhelmed her, causing the Librarian Cassie archetype to manifest and assume control over her psyche to protect her from further heartbreak. Cassie became obsessed with the past, convinced that if she took care of the hives and the abandoned Gulch, Ford and the others would return and everything would return to normal. The bees responded to this, becoming Cassie's overprotective bodyguard swarm that eventually grew beyond her control.

Lurking in the Forgetful Forest in her face-concealing beekeeper suit, sticky and covered with pine needles, Cassie became a local legend: the "Green Needle Witch," born of a banshee and a porcupine, said to impale children with her sharp hugs. Cassie embraced the legend to a degree as another way to keep intruders out of Green Needle Gulch.

Roles
Psychonauts 2

Cassie also appeared as a mental construct in PSI King's Sensorium, as the psychedelic guitarist Sniffles.

Behind the Scenes
Cassie O'Pia is voiced by Stephanie Komure, who also voiced Frazie Aquato, and Pam the brain.

Trivia

 * A wood-carved portrait of Cassie is found by the campfire in the original Psychonauts, along with the rest of the Psychic 7.
 * The books in Cassie's Collection include 101 Fake Dinosaurs, Pretzeland Murders, Bookworm Bloodbath, Goofy Grail Facts, Library Lockdown, and History's Best Doors!.