http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/tags/psionic Gaming Outpost Discussions » Tag: psionic - Recent Topics en-US Thu, 24 May 2012 11:02:54 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/search.php http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/scott-frees-the-oppressed-scott-hortons-game-continues#post-37 Sun, 19 Aug 2007 18:08:01 +0000 M. J. Young 37@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Scott was in <a href="http://discussions.gamingoutpost.com/index.php?showtopic=83061&#38;st=60&#38;start=60">Scott Free or Not</a> in the archives. My last post there read:<br /> <blockquote> Alice has never seen anything related to superheroes or supervillains, or any fiction about nuclear war or tensions that might lead to nuclear war, or stories about what might happen in the future. She is puzzled at the idea that something like this would be entertainment, and wants to know if it's a children's history book in another universe.</p> <p>--M. J. Young</p></blockquote> <p>This is the reaction he has gotten from his hostess, a waitress named Alice, to the famed graphic novel <em>The Watchmen</em>. I will ask him to fill in other details as we progress.</p> <p>--M. J. Young </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldseedling-psionic-world-a-stained-glass-mind#post-5599 Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:24:40 +0000 Tadeusz 5599@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>This falls into the category of "Worldchangers" like Crazy Night for Splinter City, or having an alien invasion. You can use it to drop into a world, and change the meaning, even temporarily, of the world.</p> <p>George F. Will is a famous soft conservative pundit who wrote of having a stained-glass mind. I'm going some place much darker than he meant with that phrase.</p> <p>This may work better with female verser players, and male npc's, but I'm going to try to write it the other way because most players are male.</p> <p>Upon tracking down a verser, you come to a hospital. Inside, you go to Long-term Care. The verser is soon being moved as they have lapsed into a coma. The nurse would tell you, if she can, that the person is of interest to the police. They have over a dozen different ID cards. Some seem valid, while others are clearly jokes. But all have different names. And the person was 'heavily armed, which didn't help them. They got rolled in an alley.'</p> <p>To help the GM what happened is thus: the verser arrived, and thieves spotted her watch, and so before she could wake, they hit her in the head. She slipped into a coma.</p> <p>However, when the verser approaches her, she will, in her confused way, reach out for help. This can be the result of a botch (well it almost has to be a botch as its not what she's intending. But that allows one to run this scenario in a world with a low psi bias.)</p> <p>The character sees her hand move, and then feels spinning, disoriented, feels like they are coming apart. The verser may have versed, he should feel.</p> <p>The verser wakes in a thornbush. He is in an expansive and high-walled English schoolground. There are a wide array of students attending.</p> <p>tHere's where it gets weird...he's inside the coma paitient mind, and everyone he meets is a partial of the body's owner.</p> <p>This is meant to be ago </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/skill-you-cant-hit-me#post-17213 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:50:01 +0000 Tadeusz 17213@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>This Psi skill is an intimidation variant suitable for defending against ranged attacks from one foe you are facing. Batman, WAW Tadeusz, and The Prodigal (from my movie review soon to be posted) would have it.</p> <p>The hero faces the villain, and the villain is so terrified that he has a hard time getting an accurate shot off. I'd say something like a Relative Success roll for intimidation gets turned into a Negative Sit-mod for the villain's ranged attack roll.</p> <p>Example:<br /> The Bat stepped out of the shadow behind the roof access, his boots crunching on the gravel impregnated tarvey roof of the Morgan Hotel. A frightened criminal looking over the night city below spun to face him.<br /> "G-get a-way from me, Bat." He cried, waving his .43 wildly.<br /> "Come with me, Murphy O'Connor." A cold voice replied.<br /> "No, they'll kill me."<br /> "And I won't?" Asked the Bat as he closed the distance at an easy stroll, every line of his body radiating confident menace.<br /> Murphy shot, and shot again, and went to fire again, and the Bat's hand closed on his wrist and Murphy fainted.<br /> Two bullets had been fired at a man-size target at eight and five feet respectively, but the worse damage the Bat had was a hole in his cape. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/wersers-multi-dimensional-threats-projectives#post-14421 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:54:04 +0000 Tadeusz 14421@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>As I've seen this game ordinarily played, there are few and far between multi-dimensional threats. This works fine, but some people are going to expect recurring villains that have more of a back history than 'the verser created them in one universe'.</p> <p>You could play a Multiverser campaign that was more about some pan-dimensional enemy than about each individual world. This is similar to how in Champions you're a super hero, but they also made the setting books to deal with being a street-level vigilante. The first really enfolded the second, but the second has such appeal that they made books specifically for it.</p> <p>We've dealt with various forms of dopplegangers, and I've sketched a world of 'illegal aliens' from alternate realities. And it would be good sometime to go back to the idea of a pan-dimensional devouring force spreading across alternate realities like a plague (the Dark Interdimensional Empire) and (The Pan-dimensional Vampire Plague that destroys all life on a planet and then moves on.) Thats not for now.</p> <p>Projectives<br /> ============</p> <p>On Earth Real, the oligarchs of the New Understanding were benevolent, kindly, guiding souls. If you doubted this, just ask them yourself.</p> <p>The various nations of the ER, or Earth as it had been known in the darkened days Before, still clung to the old ways, and the Old Gods. The Gods were a pantheon known for their strict moral code, and their inventive punishments for those who broke the code. But the Gods had not been seen on Earth for centuries, perhaps millenia, perhaps suggested some of the more radical thinkers, never. Or perhaps the Gods had died. In any case, with the rise of industrialism, and the factories, the old myths were dust or so said the Bright Young Things.</p> <p>With a bit of drug, and a bit of meditating, and some bits of philosophy gathered from here and there in an eccletic mash, the New Understanding grew. And these, the children of the elite, the few who suffered for their refined understandings and sensitive ways discovered doors in their minds. A certain union of thought and idea, the Freethinker's Guild, gave way to genuine pschyic power.</p> <p>Techniques were developed, and these techniques were so laden with meaning and symbol, that only a devotee' of the Freethinkers could navigate it. Around the planet, in stealthed spaceships set observers from older, grander, psionic civilizations, and they wondered if the meaning and symbols were essential to the learning of the psi powers the humans had stumbled into, or if they were simply fluffery attached to real technique.</p> <p>The humans saw it as absolutely essential. And the Freethinking Ways were diametrically opposed to all the ways of the Old Gods. Indeed, each stage of the rituals which led the novice into his psi power included a bit of ritual which was a defamation of one of the Old Gods.</p> <p>The Guildsmen sought to defuse the antagonism they also stoked. They created scorn, and when that was met by hostility, they complained, and created various rhetorical defenses so as to make the vast majority of the 'insensate sheep' feel awkward. Of course, some few of the 'sheep' really did not care what the Bright Young Things thought, and it became dangerous for a BYT to venture into certain countries and areas of certain cities.</p> <p>It was a cultural war between a young, rich, and stylish, and international elite aided by psi power against the vast majority of humanity.</p> <p>The Guild, which proclaimed the highest ideals, was also aided by the lowest of means. Guildmembers entetaining second thoughts had the tendency to drop cigars on their beds and burn themselves alive. Seeing as most Guildmembers were, shall we say, a tad cowardly, a few demonstrations went a long way.</p> <p>The war continued, but we take another turn.</p> <p>A certain family, the De Noveuse and their friends/retainers (friends in name, retainers in truth) went further than most in their search of psi power. They took greater risks, and they had more logical thinkers who studied the problem in depth and planned experiments on these theories. Its not that they were mad scientists or infernal priests although they had elements of both, but its clear they lacked a sense of solid moral boundaries.</p> <p>One point about the Rituals that struck Claire De Noveuse, a powerful pschyic, was how the gain in power attended the defamation of the Old Gods. Since she did not believe in such, she theorized that they represented certain primal forces instead of being the guardians and utilizers of such forces. And so, she should find other primal forces and assert her mastery over them.</p> <p>She bought a factory, and destroyed it in a ritual with explosives. This led to some insights into telekinesis which was not a common ability for the Guild who had most concerned themselves with reading thoughts, and compellign wills and sending impressions. Of course, the ancient minds in other star systems had far greater powers. And if they had been paying closer attention, they would certainly have saved the Multiverse from a significant problem by killing Claire De Noveuse.</p> <p>She then turned to studying storms, but could find no way to defile the lightning to let her into its secrets. So after a year of fruitless study, she found herself helping one of the maids in her mansion aka castle give 'birth' to a miscarriage. And it was then that she saw the beginnings of a new way forward.</p> <p>Being an attractive woman, it was not hard for Claire to get pregnant. She marvelled at the strange feelings this brought forth, and was even mildly tempted to turn back from her wickedness. In the end, she put aside the whimsy, and got down to business, and murdered her newborn.</p> <p>And with that, the defamation of life, she was able to disconnect herself from her body, to project herself into other bodies. Oh, not immediately, but the understanding came.</p> <p>And with it, came the De Noveuse's rise to power. She brought her family in, taught them her rituals, and bound them to her with unbreakable oaths. And then she spread the Newest Understanding to the others in the Movement. And there the scales in the long war began to tilt for when a man could be controlled from a distance to open fire on his conspirators against the BYTie-bits...the bittie-bits as they were called by their enemies, it was very hard for the followers of the old ways to stand.</p> <p>For the elite, it was infanticide, but they found this too hard a pill for the people to swallow, so they settled for abortion. And with that, some of the New Projectives found another level to their power.</p> <p>Claire De Noveuse never did for she was happy being the uncrowned queen of the world and of darkness.</p> <p>But some, with flexible and far-reaching minds stretched out their projective talent, and went sideways. They lost contact with their bodies, and many died, but a few were able to find bodies in other dimensions. And they were able to send back word. New worlds. Strange peoples. Exotic cuisines.</p> <p>And so at first it was ten, and then twenty, and then a hundred, and soon the Otherdimensional Projectives learned how to avoid dimensions they would not prosper in because of bias. They learned to how to trade bodies before death. And after some time, they had children who were as they were.</p> <p>And then one of them met a verser. The verser was not impressed. We don't know his or her name. We just know they fought. This happened several other times, and rumors began to spread from projective to projective when they met, and from verser to verser when they met.</p> <p>But it was still just a hand on the horizon.</p> <p>And then several projectives met a couple versers. And these versers were different. They did not care about the moral judgment of stealing bodies. But the projectives manners were high-handed to say the least. The war between versers and projectives really got going because the projectives were snooty, and the versers were arrogant. The projectives said 'step aside, peasant' and the versers drew their weapons and refused. One projective died outright without chance of coming back.</p> <p>And there the flame was lit and raced to the gunpowder.</p> <p>The high-ranking projectives found out, and sent messages when they could by various means to others, and it was war. The versers had less efficent means of communication, but soon enough, several circles of versers, the groups that gather, all knew of a new threat.</p> <p>And at first, it looked like the verser might be the truly dangerous one here because he was truly immortal. OTOH, the projective had the ability to change bodies at will,and was usually adept at controlling political power. It was the confrontation of the Gunslinger vs. the Mayor and his assistants. But then one projective discovered how to jump into a verser's head, and drive him out.</p> <p>Its a mess now, with several 'verser' projectives, and several versers who've learned projective skills (and one that knew them before the projectives and is baffled that the projectives engage in such outre' rituals to do basic psi work.) One theorist of battles thinks that there are up to two hundred combatants counting both sides in a war that stretches out over nealry a hundred dimensions. Its an intermittent war that flares hot, and goes dim, and sometimes cold.</p> <p>Most of the projectives are relatively near each other in multi-dimensional space which means that if you find one, you're likely to find others 'nearby'. Of course, there are far more versers that have never even met the Projectives. </p> <p>And the Projectives don't have a real good grasp on the size of the Verse. They have two dominant theories. One...the more scientifically respesctable one...the Verse is a thousand dimensions strong. Two...the more appealing to them and thus the more popular with them in numbers of adherents....these other dimensions are not quite real. This flows from their POV back home when they viewed the sufferings and dignity of other humans who were not BYT's as not quite human. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/psionic-skill-kulturfog#post-8292 Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:49:24 +0000 Tadeusz 8292@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Kulturfog comes from R. Emmitt Tyrell of The American Spectator who took it from the Germanic 'kulturkamp' which is basically 'culture war'. He talked about how even smart, correct people find themselves blunted and weakened in a fog of resistance.</p> <p>So, a Psi Skill: Kulturfog.<br /> 1. Its Always Active, and people who use it are not generally aware they have it up.<br /> 2. It imposes mental costs on leaving certain accepted lines of thought. Perhaps it means that to be truly creative or logical or original one has to make a Difficult Willpower Challenge.<br /> 3. The field covers a large society and is generated by most in that society. Each contributes a very small part, but the result is completely pervasive (or nearly so...maybe thats why some artists go to cabins in the woods) and subtle and strong. It shapes minds without the minds being aware of their shaping.<br /> 4. Certain people with 2@ mental traits are more easily able to resist the Kulturfog. If you have multiple 2@ mental traits like Willpower and Intuition or Willpower and Intelligence you find yourself in an odd situation. Most everyone around you is dull, banal, and not very logical, but you're able to push past this to clarity. You're the One-Eyed Man in the Land of the Blind (or Really Near-sighted).</p> <p>I'm not sure what psi level this would have to be. And I bounce it over to the system designer chaps for their consideration. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/andre-norton#post-6260 Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:54:01 +0000 Tadeusz 6260@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>I am exhausted from lack of sleep so any errors of logic or wit will be blamed on an insomniac and his insomniac child having to rise waaaaaay early in the morn, and stay up.</p> <p>Its been suggested before that psionic worlds are notably hard. I've been reading Andre Norton a lot over the last couple weeks as the house came equipped with a library when we bought it. She refutes the premise with just her own work. Almost every one of her books has psionics in it, and she wrote a huge number of novels over a very long career.</p> <p>She does not always call it psi power. The Witches of Estcarp use the Power. The Sorceress of Witch World defines things in the same world as witchcraft which is simple and sorceress which is more ritualistic and complicated and advanced. In the Crossroads of Time, the cross-time agents use mind power. In The Defiant Agents, American Apaches and Russian Mongols have a machine used on them to bring to their minds racial memories. Also, their is another usage that has a machine that controls the "Mongols" at the whim of their Red masters like zombies.</p> <p>However, in certain of her books there does seem to be "Magic-magic", not just psi that appears to be magic. And I'm not sure she makes a real distinction between the two of these concepts.</p> <p>In a lot of her worlds, they are relatively straight forward alt-historical with the addition of a psionic elite. Sometimes this psi elite is going out as other forces overwhelm it. Her work is often of kingdoms falling and failing but still putting up the good fight. She also has a very colorful touch in that she reminds me of Tolkien and Zelazny.</p> <p>So let's see if I can make a psi world or two inspired by the grande dame of SF herself....<br /> ====================================================================</p> <p> The Licaut came to the Plateau that overlooks the Rouge River after being driven from their homeland further south by nomadic hordes. Here they found a pleasant land with ancient evidences of being gardened, and pastured. Intriguing ruins were found, and often built upon again for what makes a spot good to one man will often make it good to another.</p> <p>The Old Race, as the Licaut named them, were a people of evident refinement in their fine shaped stones, and from the occasional jewelwork discovered, but no one could decipher their runic language found in occasional engravings on the walls to find out what disaster had overcome them. The Licaut, in honor of their predecessors, and to appease any vengeful spirits, did on high days offer a sacrifice of grain and game bird to their gods for the Old Race.</p> <p>And the Licaut prospered, and their steadings grew from huts to wide farms for the Licaut unlike the Old Race were truly a people born to farm. They loved the feel of warm earth between their fingers, and their highest deity was a god of the harvest who commanded them to sow well and true seed from his hand that after the end of their mortal life they might reap a bountiful harvest. The Old Race had been more eccletic, fey, and a bit strange, but some of their oddness passed on to the more earth centered Licaut. For some of the Licaut, when prosperity was well upon them, would take up the study of the Old Race, and their writings.</p> <p>And thus was opened a door in the mind of the Licaut. Dowsers, and weatherseers, animal talkers, and trail sniffers came. Later, came strange men who could See into the heart, or into a wound and heal it, or into time itself to know what had happened. The national character of the Licaut did not like this strangeness, but practicality spoke loudly. It was good to know when a storm would race over the Rouge Valley and hammer the heights of the Licaut Plateau. It saved much effort to dowse for water or for iron. But still, such folk were uncanny, and uncomfortable, and so they held themselves quiet and to some degree separate, and behaved circumspectly as sometimes their neighbours were too keen to believe someone 'touched by the Old Ones' was warped and keen to criminal acts.</p> <p>And thus it might have continued on, but the nomads had despoiled the land they stole, and others as well. And now the Hirgoni have come again to the Licaut, and they expect the Licaut to flee again. But the Licaut have bonded to their land, and felt secure in it for long centuries. They know its a natural fort, and that its wealth and ease of life is not found easily under the Twin Moons of Deukranoor.</p> <p>Also, the Hirgoni are hateful of all who have 'stolen the gods' fire', of those who have psionic gifts or can read, and would slaughter them out of hand. The fey blood of the empowered ones flames at the insult, and natural logic of self-preservation makes them at the forefront of defense.</p> <p>The stolid, dark-eyed, and brown-haired men of Licaut love their land, and find themselves unwilling to move. And many of them have a fine scorn that rises above the love of good earth to become a flame.</p> <p>So, the Licaut turn back the emmissaries of the Hirgoni even though the Hirgoni are many times their number. But, it will take many times their number for the Hirgoni to force the natural fortress of the plateau. And so they go away for now, but they begin to raid the caravans of the Licaut which go to other cities and lands. Perhaps enough raids and the Licaut will see reason, they say among themselves as they gather their camels by the campfire.</p> <p>And perhaps some traitor inside the Licaut will open the gates to the enemy which is how many a fortress fell. Some man, some trusted man, who hates the empowered ones, and loves gold more than his homeland is all the Hirgoni need, and all who understand know this. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/psionic-world-the-hunt-of-the-valderi#post-6422 Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:21:14 +0000 Tadeusz 6422@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Centuries and millenia had spun by as the galaxy slowly turned. Humanity gathered greater skills, learned to fly to other stars, to change its very form and nature, and meanwhile entropy kept dragging at them. Civilizations fell, and rose, and fell again. Despite genetic engineering the genetic load on humanity kept increasing as the DNA strands kept getting more and more tattered as cosmic rays kept at their inalterable vandalism. The stars were lost, gained, and lost again more times, and in more places than a man could quickly count.</p> <p>No mortal knew the number of humans scattered across tens of thousands of worlds in hundreds and hundreds of systems, but some guessed that it exceeded a trillion. There were at least a hundred sub-species who considered themselves True Unaltered (in important ways) Human. Some of them qualified.</p> <p>Most worlds had those with the Gift. Some spurned it, hated it, and others used it, and others venerated its users.</p> <p>The Valderi were the psi-lords of a pocket empire spanning nineteen stars and thirty-five worlds (not counting moons, asteroids, and space stations.) Their system was large, and unwieldy, and only gifted administrators could run it. When they failed to provide for such because they preferred to party than to lay down infrastructure for the future, they sowed the seeds of the eventual rebellion. A system that worked well with several geniuses, and a corp of well-trained and very able administrators did not work at all in the hands of some very ordinary men with no geniuses among their number.</p> <p>Perhaps they were doomed in any case because their system was very awkward, but they sealed their fate by their choices.</p> <p>Rebellion was followed by exile.</p> <p>And so the Valderi left, and began to hunt for the star and the solar system they had come from nearly a thousand years ago. A hundred years passed, and they had not found it, but they did find a world with pleasant green skies, a gold moon and a saphire moon, and a huge red giant of a star.</p> <p>It seemed deserted, and so they landed, and began colonization. But in the grasslands, in the trees, by the lake, and between the mountains there was a gatthering. The natives were not gone, although they had fallen from a technological height. Instead they hid themselves, and planned to ambush the settlers.</p> <p>The attack was not a succe ss since the aliens had forcsschields. But it let the aliens realize thier dilemna. They couldn't, they couldn't stay. So they blended in with the larger population of natives.</p> <p>MORE LATER&gt;&gt;&gt; </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/psionic-world-the-valley-variant#post-6412 Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:20:41 +0000 Tadeusz 6412@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>I know I've hit this one before, so I'll be brief, but the difficulty finding stuff in the archives is a problem that a new run-through with a tag might solve.</p> <p>MJ Young has a world setting entitled "The Valley" which I will not go into great detail because I took what little I knew of it, and ran in a wildly different direction.</p> <p>The Valley is where the verser arrives. It is a green, pleasant dip in the mountains. A lake, and simple huts by the lake and the stream are surrounded by lush, green and undeveloped grasslands with occasional stands of timber.</p> <p>The locals, of the name I can't remember for sure right now, are roughly three foot tall avian humanoids with brightly patterned and short feathers. Each individual is in their own pattern so they are easy to tell apart.</p> <p>The tech level is Stone Age. They fish, they build wooden huts, and tell stories.</p> <p>They have a remarkable gift for mimicry and for language acquisition. In the space of a few hours, they should be able to converse fairly well in the verser's language. They can mimic exactly with ease.</p> <p>However, they do have something even more unusual. Some of them develop gifts of telepathy, clairvoyance, and telekinesis. Some even can develop pyrokinesis. Those who become strong in these gifts live in a lodge on the hillside overlooking the village.</p> <p>The lodge's job is to deflect or destroy metereorites that irregularly drop out of orbit, and sometimes would hit the village without intervention. They are quite successful, but they would be glad for more help.</p> <p>Outside this protected valley, the land is desolate and ruined. Predators stalk the landscape. Some things survive by growing fast enough that random bombardment can't overcome them. Others have good enough eyesight, and quick enough running speed to try to dodge out of the way of a flaming asteroid chunk. But there are a number of things in the wild which would view a tired human trekking the wastelands as an unprotected food source.</p> <p>What happened in the distant past is the Avians had developed a strong interplanetary economy with a strongly corporatist tendency. This led to a pair of megacorporations gaining control of the planet and its moon. The Moon was highly developed, and generally nicer to live on. The Planet had more overall wealth.</p> <p>They struggled by means both fair and foul. There were no governments to restrain them as they were the governments.</p> <p>The Planet Corp decided to launch a crippling attack on the Moon Corp. Meanwhile, the Moon Corp had launched a cyberwar attack of less power on the Planet Corp. The result was that the Planet Corporations finely calibrated surgical strike (OF Doom) turned into a total massacre that shattered the Moon into thousands of pieces. The planet suffered under guilt, but also physical bombardment as chunks of the Moon devastated the Planet, and destroyed most of the population.</p> <p>In the midst of this run-up, there were a number of research projects. One of them was the development of psionic powers. As the bombardment hit, the test subjects gathered together, and protected each other, and fled...to The Valley where generations later, their descendants live.</p> <p>Another test project was underway at the time. Cryogenic freezing was being tested for mass use in a few years. Those nearby the research facility, which included a large number of the Planetary leaders who were visiting that day (trying to pretend everything was normal as they launched a surprise attack with thousands of laser cannons). In grief and in fear, the whole of the research facility, much of the leadership, and anyone else nearby went into the cryochambers underneath Cold City. Five thousand were frozen, and their charge was given over to an AI which over time became a bit paranoid, and infected with guilt for its part in the blowing up the moon. Its calculations had been affected by the Moon Corporations cyberattack, and that had helped mess things up.</p> <p>Now, it tends to keep people away from the ruined towers that is the only thing left of Cold City above ground.</p> <p>On the Moon, there too had been research projects. They were developing interstellar drive as a way to 'beat out the competition to new markets'.</p> <p>Some fled the system, and established a series of colonies elsewhere. Long distance telescope work confirmed that their home was wrecked, and would be wrecked for a very long time as a ring of dangerous orbital debris continued to rain down on the planet for centuries, and would continue for millenia.</p> <p>These colonists with their five solar systems developed cyborging. They used telekinesis to help them fly. They built advanced fletchette autorifles and starships.</p> <p>But, the great advantages of cyborging came at an unrecognized cost. Without much in the way of tradition to guide them, they did not realize how aberrant they were acting. A dark door had been opened in their minds.</p> <p>And so it came to war between one of the planets and another. And this war was harsh and dreadful. And then mocking, skirling laughter could be heard. The door was opened wide. Inside, angry at the pain they had suffered, they found a jeering joy in committing horror upon the enemy.</p> <p>They built a weapon to not only destroy the enemy, but to do it slowly enough that he had plenty of time to realize his fate. They could have built a nova bomb, and wiped out his system. Instead, they chose a Degenerative Paralysis Field which blanketed the planet, and over twelve hours killed everyone.</p> <p>And they laughed and danced. One of their greatest 'poem-songs' is from this incident, and listening to it wild trills and thundering bass is enough to make most sentients of any humanoid species extremely nervous for it perfectly captures the joy of insane vengeance.</p> <p>And then they realized what they were. Horror struck, they turned away, and fled into space, and fell through a door in space-time, and made a life on a new planet, in a new universe. Here, they stood, polite, charming, willing to bend over backwards to avoid giving offense. And the reason was that they feared what they would do if the other species were to back them into a corner. That same mad bloodlust still runs through their veins, still sings its seductive song, and they fear themselves greatly.</p> <p>Now they call themselves the Sarlai Keet.</p> <p>There are few things more dangerous than backing a Sarlai Keet into a corner. With the cyberware weapons, strength, and speed they can strike incredibly fast; and with their telekinesis they can attack; and their blood madness gives them more advantages.</p> <p>The Sarlai Keet are focused on avoiding serious conflict. They tend to act in accord with the moral codes of their guests, and to be very proper, but they can quite easily switch to assasinating someone to avert a war.</p> <p>They have serious problems in their society, and so they were glad when the Emmissaries came in their thousand foot long glass ships to offer the Sarlai Keet a chance to send some of theirs to the Symbiont Academy run by the Galacticans. One question obsesses the Sarlai Keet even more than restraining their madness, or knowing when to let it out. Will someone forgive them? Are they worthy of being forgiven? Do they even want to be forgiven for their is another path...bwahahahhahahahha...mad, skirling laughter trails away...</p> <p>The Sarlai Keet have come far, and they tend to live in modest skyscrapers with artificial trees for perches outside their home towers.</p> <p>Most people think the Sarlai Keet are 1)Really nice OR 2)Complete wimps. Few indeed see the laughter in their eyes. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/psionic-world-alkeman#post-6405 Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:33:09 +0000 Tadeusz 6405@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Men primarily, but a substantial number of women, have always had the ability to learn the ways of the Fire. In the beginning, this led many to worship fire. Logical thinkers raised that higher, and began the Temples of the Solarii, who are fire elementals much given to spite and venom with each other and their human worshippers. But then a revelation came, and the teaching of the True Fire came to Alkeman.</p> <p>This explanation was logically, emotionally, and morally superior to the Temples. That is, it made more sense rationally and philosophically. It was a better, more accurate story. It demanded better behavior of its adherents. And the fact that its early adopters were able to walk through fire without harm, even fire cast by Temple priests, was pretty impressive.</p> <p>It replaced a celestial chaos with an orderly, yet benevolent universe run by the True Fire rather than the feuding Solarii. With that assumption in place, it made sense for the alchemists to begin to study nature to find out its rules. They began to use their native pyrokinesis powers (all powers below pyro are powerblocked by the reigning deity, the True Fire who got tired of how the Solarii were messing things up and, ah, fired them as managers) to test and experiment with objects and what happened when you heated them.</p> <p>This led to steel, and carbon steel. It also led to steam engines heated by pyrokinesis.</p> <p>However, without a mass base of power supply (only a few people have the combination of leisure caused by independent wealth, mental curiousity, strength of will to learn this difficult skill since the precursors are unavailable, and sheer luck to survive learning a very dangerous skill to learn Pyrokinesis) like water, wood, and coal provided in the Prime timeline, these technological advances never advanced to being more than rich men's toys.</p> <p>This situation continued for several hundred years. Some of the advances provided by the pyrokinetics trickled down to most of society. Carbon steel plows were useful enough that nobles bought them for their peasants, and nobody wanted to send their soldiers into battle with swords that broke under the enemies' better quality swords. Some agriculture investment, some military weapons programs, a few medical advances, and entertainment for the upper nobility were the sum of the general advances.</p> <p>One other advance was that systematic studies of pyrokinesis were undertaken. This led to schools of training, and pyro duels. This led to Rules of Pyro Combat, and that led to pyro combat training masters. A very quick, and fluid style of combat which emphasized dodging and misdirection as much as raw, ah, 'fire' power emerged. It did little good to throw a fireball at your opponent if he merely dove and rolled under it while flinging a smaller, but more precisely targetted fireball into your face.</p> <p>For inspiration, think of Rennaissance fencing masters.</p> <p>But, other, more battle heavy devices emerged from the laboratories of the alkemans. If one could form steel, and power steam engines, and pump up hydraulic rockets with steam pressure....why one could make a ten foot tall iron armor with two inch thick plates that was powered by steam and moved by pulleys. It could launch steam air pressure rockets with black powder explosives at its enemies. It could lurch across the battlescape as nearly invincible (unless it tripped).</p> <p>And that is where we are now. The Kingdom of Albion, the Kingdom of Castille, the Kingdom of Gallia, and about a dozen other kingdoms are engaging in raids, and sponsoring pirates to raid each other, and assasinating enemies, and trying to put down peasant revolts....</p> <p>Some of the people such as the Kingdom of Norte Frei which looks north to the Baltic Sea, and to some degree, the Albionese, are trying to follow the Pure Teachings of the True Fire. Others such as the Gallites, and the Roma Tribes have rejected the reformers of the Pure, and claim to be adherents to the corrupted classic doctrines, but in reality have embraced hedonism. This is proven by the massive waves of venereal disease common in the Roma, and by the tendency of the various Tribal States to have sudden changes of power orchestrated by an Alkeman pyro in an iron suit. The Albionese have resisted this tendency to coup d' etat via pyro as they claim its illegitamate for a ruler to be deposed by interior force. This has given them greater political stability, and ironically, the Albionese pyros are safer than the Roma pyros because no one thinks the Albionese pyros are about to grab for power tommorrow. In Roma, one is either a very tough pyro, or hidden, or dead.</p> <p>Gallia is about halfway between Albion and Roma. Castile is hedonistic, but they are very strongly in favor of legitamate rulers.</p> <p>=======================</p> <p>And this gives us a world of skullduggery, deniable pirates sponsored by nations (like terrorists sponsored by nations today...how modern), galleons, and horsemen, sword fights, but also giant iron suits with rockets....Its early Rennaissance. Albion and Norte Frei are early Reformation, and hence a bit more advanced in freedom, morality, and science and generally successful than the Rennaisance States of the Roma Tribes and Gallia. Castille is kind of in the middle, although it definitely slants more toward the Rennaissance than the Reformation. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/psionic-world-four-alien-minds#post-6381 Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:16:51 +0000 Tadeusz 6381@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>The Carriaseius are equally at home in river water, and in the deep ocean. There are physical adaptations one must make in the long journey from the Abyssal Plains where its safe because few can reach one there, to the mid-ocean, to the surface, to the river, and back again in the twenty year cycle. This cycle can be considerably abbreviated, as short as one year, as Body skills modify the body, but in general its best to follow nature's normal path, and swim the Great Cycle four-to-six times before laying down to fertilize the next generation, and for the Great Sleep before the Lord of Waters wakes all who sleep in the Day when the Universe becomes Water.</p> <p>The C have powerful talons, and poisons in their vaguely humanoid bodies. But, they also have mental control of water via telekinesis which makes them rulers of the world's oceans.</p> <p>The Aistrye are fierce, unkind to themselves and others. They, unlike the C who are calm and kind, are full of pitiless drive and thundering courage. They live atop the tallest mountains, and launch themselves into the jet stream so that they can cross the ocean in hours. Their razor edged wings absorb sunlight, and their taloned feet chip rock into soil which can be swallowed, and crushed in a kind of gizzard. After this, it is respat out, and swallowed again by the second stomach, and then the third stomach finally gets most of the good from it, and it is disposed of.</p> <p>They live in a fury of activity, finding it slovenly to sleep four hours a night, and weak to pause once an hour for breath. They can, in their giant expandable lungs, catch enough air to actively move as high as twenty miles above the surface. Their bodies are filled with hormones demanding activity, and right now. They live to be perhaps thirty before dying, usually from a burst heart as they attempt to prove they are not declining and rise high into the sky.</p> <p>There is a name for this among them. Sunchasing. It is thought that they come from the stars, and want to return to them (this is not true. They have a cultural and biological fascination with extreme heights, and a need to prove themselves).</p> <p>Some of them develop powers of the will (and with their formidable willpowers these are great in power indeed) which give them mental control over the wind.</p> <p>The highest recorded flight is thirty miles.</p> <p>They rarely go below four miles from sea level.</p> <p>The Roaulia are huge, slow creatures which live for centuries. They give birth via eggs, but these eggs require great heat to soften the exterior and waken the child inside. That is, the typical Roaulia egg will not hatch unless its owner is buried in hot lava.</p> <p>Now, one thing about lava is that when it cools, it becomes tufa. This curious rock is soft, and easily carved, but when exposed to the air it hardens. So, the infant, being woken from his perhaps decades long coma by the heat begins to peck at the shell as the heat inside drops. Sometimes, he makes it halfway and the temperature he has stored has gotten so low that he relapses into a coma. This is tragic because he is likely to die from various causes.</p> <p>Usually, he cracks the shell after the lava turns into tufa, and carves his way to the surface. (All Roaulie have perfect directional senses. The very concept of 'getting lost' is meaningless to them. They can sense the shape of a gravity field.)</p> <p>Once on the surface, he searches for heat which is usually a volcano, and begins to eat. His body is made of silicon and iron primarily along the general shape of a walrus. Mature Roaulie can reach fifty feet in length, and live for a millenia. They tend to move at a speed of 1/10th of a mile per hour, but their brainspeed is about half that of a human. </p> <p>Naturally, they are a contemplative and logical race.</p> <p>Once filled, the youngling (after several years) goes forth in search of a teacher. He seeks a mature Roaulie (the larger the better) who will instruct him in the ways of the world and in knowledges. This varies from basic items like what types of rocks to avoid to theories about the beginning of the universe. It also involves training in mental control by telekinesis of fire.</p> <p>The teacher receives a couple benefits. One, he knows someone will teach his or her children even if he does not know who those children are. Two, failure to teach at least once a century is generally regarded as proof of social 'loserdom', and teaching brings respect from others (the Roaulie have little in the way of material things. Status is gained by physical size, exploration, brilliance of thought or talk, and of course, teaching). Three, the teacher gets a personal servant for the duration of the teaching.</p> <p>The feeding of the Roaulie requires heat, and heated stone. Volcanoes are ideal. Happily for the Roaulie, they can survive short dips in hot lava, and their telekinesis can provoke volcanic eruptions. Unhappily for others such as the C, the Roaulie can live on the Abyssal Plain, and provoke volcanoes, and they do. And the high mountains of the A are also targets for volcanoes.</p> <p>The R would say that the A spread like locust. "In the space of a century, they would go from a few mountains to all the mountains in the world." The R think that the C's on the Abyssal Plane are not yet intelligent, and don't matter. The first is true, but not the second.</p> <p>The A have the capability to kill the R with their fierce talons, although its like wolves taking on an elephant. The C are sometimes able to drag an R away from a heat vent far enough that the R goes into a 'cold coma' before it trundles back.</p> <p>The R on the ocean floor would say that they can't leave without taking some of the A's mountains, and without causing serious devastation on the way out to provide heat. They claim that for the R to leave would require dozens of volcanoes on the Abyssal Plain to heat the way, and this would be more damaging than what little they do each year.</p> <p>The Mruudia are humanoid-ish lizards who are so susceptible to heat and radiation that they spend nearly all their time slathered in several inches of mud. They can dig very well, and swim quite well too either in shallow salt seas or in river waters with equal facility.</p> <p>They are roaming tribes looking for hunting grounds. The C are a favored prey, especially as they make the transition from surface salt to river surface (which leads to mating). However, the M will climb mountains to rob nests of the A. They oppose the volcano-ization as they dislike heat. When they can, they spread mud and delta, and cause avalanches to degrade mountains.</p> <p>They do not eat that often as they sleep much of the time. The others hunt them when they sleep (even the A have attempted to bomb their mud dams which they make in attempts to turn plains into swamps with the result that sleeping M who are breathing air suddenly choke on water, and sometimes are not able to transition before they wake).</p> <p>The Mruudia feel they only seldom eat, but they must survive. And they greatly fear their sleep times which sometimes last for two to three weeks because they claim that many more of them are killed than they kill. "And we kill to eat. They kill for spite."</p> <p>The Mruudia are carniverous with a very large mouthful of teeth. Most of them have telekinetic control of earth, mud, and rock. This last makes them very dangerous to the Roaulie, although the Roaulie can call fire, and the Mruudia do not enjoy fire at all. Full out wars between R and M tend to be very bloody. Both sides try to ambush the other side because they fear all out slugging matches with each other. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/psionic-world-slaves-of-power#post-6376 Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:36:18 +0000 Tadeusz 6376@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>I've seen this idea before, so lets see if I can jazz it up as I lay it out for people unacquainted with the idea.</p> <p>===========================</p> <p>Everyone knows there are two sorts of people. One is gifted with foresight, and the ability to plan. The Othren only think of today and their belly. One is wise, genteel, kind, and noble by birthright. The Othren is foolhardy, brute, brutal, and low in all his ways. One is beautiful, sensitive, and sweet but strong in her glory. The Othren is ugly, hardened, vicious and yet filled with weakness in his infamy.</p> <p>The starship Lady's Way came to Terrefiorian via the High Road. Female Sensitives cast ahead and guided the starship through the maze of OtherSpace which could have beguiled or destroyed lesser minds until the ship arrived at the planet that precognitives had seen.</p> <p>There the ship landed its shuttles, and the Matriarchy began its just rule. And then without warning or provocation, the Othren struck. The Matriarchy was forced to strike back in self defense.</p> <p>And since technology is great enough that those of the High Sensitives and the Great of the Othren live for a very long time, some of the traitors are still with us, fomenting rebellion, and that is why the Othren have to be kept collared.</p> <p>And so it is taught in the Wisdom Schools with special emphases on the evil of the Othren to the young, medicated males among young Ladies.</p> <p>But if you were to venture underneat the City Gracious, to the steam tunnels, and the power cables you might hear another story.</p> <p>A story of how outcast Ladies came to male Power Lords and pled for aid on the planet Zandercoast. The dominant Matriarch of Zandercoast had spurned them, and their shame was great, and they would be willing to deal with the Power Lords. The Lords were moved by compassion, and attraction, and the chance to have a society they deemed fair where a man was allowed to speak his mind. And so they gathered up much hidden wealth, and financed the Lady's Way with the outcast's wealth.</p> <p>And using their native Powers they powered the Ship giving it light and gravity and electricity and warp drive by their unyielding will even as the Ladies bestrode the bridge. Even then, the Othren of near three hundred years, with bitter eyes, sighs as he speaks to you.</p> <p>"We should have seen it. We were consigned to the Engine Room. They always had good excuses. If a Matria patrol ship saw a starship with a male on the bridge, they would fire upon it as mutineers which is true, but we were going past the Rim of Space. And we hoped so hard. We fooled ourselves."</p> <p>They kept asking for more speed even as we broke our minds to spare themselves the effort. So we arrived, and we were a sorry lot. By then, we were half-crazed and nearly out of food. The Ladies were better off, but even they had suffered. We all came very close to not surviving at all. Another two weeks in space would have done for us all.</p> <p>So they left us on the Ship to 'get help' and 'set things up'. They sent back food and water, and proceeded to arrange things on the planet. First building they built was a jail for Power Lords. The pattern continued, and we saw that they meant to reinstitute the Matriarchy of Zandercoast with themselves as the new matriarchs, and we as their slaves. We saw, and so half-crazed, we acted. We launched attacks, and tried to take their buildings down, but they were more clever than us. They had capacitors built into the buildings to absorb our powers and use the energy on us.</p> <p>And then they use the Warp on us. It nearly killed us. At one time, I didn't have three eyes. Nor did I have teeth that fall out and regenerate each day. I was regarded as 'reasonably handsome'.</p> <p>When we woke up, those that survived the counter ambush, and the Warp which had been built into the spaceship so long ago, we found ourselves collared. The least whim of telepathic attack against us, which is a power of the Ladies, and we are screaming as if boiled in acid.</p> <p>Now, we use our Power Generation Psi to provide the electricity, and light we funnel through pipes to the surface. To heat the steam pumps, to lift starships to orbit with anti-gravity. We use our TK, the only gift shared with the Ladies to pump water up from the river.</p> <p>And I see my brethren, both Othren and domesticated suffering. Babies are born in creches, of course, but a certain percentage are exposed to the Warp until they develop Power Lord skills. It was found that the Warp, along with twisting a man's body, will boost your chance of gaining Power Generation and TK.</p> <p>The other males are domesticated with medicine and with being taught to be ashamed of their own natures.</p> <p>We do not have longevity treatments here so people born on this planet only live perhaps a hundred years. We do not have the greater psi powers like the precogs which found this planet.</p> <p>The Ladies have telepathy and powers of attack, and clairvoyance, and of course, their most demeaned power, the one they share with us, TK. More Ladies have Power than Power Lords have Power for their powers seem easy, but I cannot grasp the nature of their powers even though my heart says I should be able too. I fear they have done something to me back when I was a child in Zandercoast in the creche. But as heartless as the Matriarch of Zandercoast was, she did not shut her Power Generators up in chains beneath the surface. One worked your day, and went home to your hovel, but it was yours. I was an idiot to come here.</p> <p>A High Ladies private viewpoint:</p> <p>The Power Lords were crazy aboard the Lady's Way so we had to prepare for them. Its clear in open combat they have an advantage over us. Granted we can telepathically coordinate and strike with Mindpain, but they can toss lightning bolts.</p> <p>They proved how dangerous they were in their attack.</p> <p>We were, despite our preparations, about to be defeated. So we had prepared, just in case, a last-ditch weapon we had promised not to use. The Warp is a horrible thing, but we had to save ourselves and our society.</p> <p>I am not like some of my sister High Ladies, in fact, many of them. I admit it was a horrible thing we did to our fellow humans. And unlike the younger Ladies, I know they were our fellow humans. But after the Warp, they became most fully what was already in them, their maleness was fully expressed. They became bestial, non-human. It is our sin which we must bear, but we cannot let them free. Especially now, their vengeance would be terrible.</p> <p>Universe Biases: Tech: Longetivity (five hundred years); Outer Space Rocketry; Quantum Computers<br /> Psionics: Precognition; Warp Travel</p> <p>Males (Power Lords) have TK and Power Generation. The Warp effect gives a substantial bonus to learning these two psionic skills. They also use learning machines which psionically stimulate the brain to teach young Power Lords.</p> <p>Females (Ladies, Matriarchs) have Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Mind Attack, and TK. These skills are taught by a telepathic teacher showing the student patterns in the brain to activate these powers. Such a method is far gentler than the psi-machine method which is unpleasant at best.</p> <p>Normal males have no psionic abilities, and developing them is cause for imprisonment, but not with the Othren because youngsters are taught the Othren are non-human, and thus human males cannot be placed with them. Typically, prisoners are sent to work farms. This is not horrid, but it is difficult for the soft clerks to suddenly learn how to weed corn in hundred degree heat on Farm Island which is several hundred miles south (and hotter) than The City. Prisoners with psi abilities have to take drugs to neutralize such talents for the rest of their lives. Prison sentences tend to be life, although minor crimes such as 'not respecting a Lady after being reminded' might only merit a couple years.</p> <p>The effect of a collar is to make the wearer very easy to target with psionic energy, and to raise the damage level Mindpain attacks do by two levels.</p> <p>_____________________________</p> <p>Yup, I think that definitely jazzed it up. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldsapling-psionic-world-high-frieresc#post-5534 Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:03:57 +0000 Tadeusz 5534@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Its obvious from the book, and from its logic that there are pan-versal structures. The most common is the Smaller Multiverse like a line of worlds that runs from Chaos to Order, and almost all have a high magical bias. Also, every story is true somewhere so the story goes, and pan-universal structures are not exactly common in fiction, but they do exist.</p> <p>And let me drop that thread for a second.</p> <p>One of the evils besetting Old Earth was an abundance of competent, intelligent, and ambitious people. There were whole groups of elites suited to running things as they were, but only one group could run things. </p> <p>In truth, what they were lacking was compassion and vision. An opportunity was placed before them to rise above, to make a grander, and greater land than any that had been seen before. Instead, they opted for stasis, for doing things as they'd done them before.</p> <p>Which left the various groups of elites out of power. Civil war threatened, and this was not a world in which civil war might be survivable. Loitering remotely piloted vehicles armed with Fusion bomb pumped lasers, and hypervelocity beadpistols had replaced fighter jets and tanks. A man could control an rpv with voice and eye clicks, and with his hand hold a pistol that could shoot five thousand rounds per minutes of beads that accelerated due to airflow before breaking apart at slightly below escape velocity. A few seconds flow of beads, a mere pulse, could reduce an old-style tank to confetti. A 'fuse-laser' could turn a city block into a puddle in a fraction of a second.</p> <p>And war was coming.</p> <p>So all the sides were happy to accept exile for the losers. Earth spent itself nearly into bankruptcy to send the Five Ships out. The propaganda was of brave voyagers. The truth was War or Exile.</p> <p>What happened on Old Earth afterwards? Some thought it turned inward, and became cautious and a touch repressive. Others thought that the war they had tried to dodge came to them anyways. No one thought that Earth would send any more into space in the next several centuries as much of the wealth of the world had gone with the exiles.</p> <p>Of those who fled into space, there were four powerful factions, and one weak one. The powerful naturally took the best for themselves, and the nearer stars, and the finest of Earth's museums, and set themselves up. What happened to them is uncertain.</p> <p>At least one must have suffered a total societal collapse all the way down to using bone for weapons because flintknapping was too complicated. One may have created its own stellar system wide enterprise as it was interested in the asteroid belt and the great wealth to be found there....or that system might be dead with space factories and habitats half-built and the makers starved. There was a slight chance of one developing into a local star federation, but who might do that was uncertain. One would have suffered a fall, and then begun climbing back up, and was no doubt thinking of travelling the stars like the Ancients did in a few centuries. They had fallen as far as steam power, but now, a mere fifty years later, they had aircars.</p> <p>But, our colony, the weakest faction, had to be satisfied with the leavings. They got some wealth, some seeds (which mostly did nothing for them), but the Mona Lisa and David were already spoken for. So too the great space habs that Earth had spent nearly three decades building.</p> <p>The weakest faction were firm believers in the value of the wise, the sensitive, and the strong to guide things. And so they set out with a group, and with another group of refugees that had been taken from refugee camps around the world. Again, they had the leavings of these camps as the others got to pick first. After all, each elite needed its followers.</p> <p>And thus Old Earth got rid of elite troublemakers, and emptied out its refugee camps at the same time.</p> <p>Upon arriving in the system they named High Frieresc after their leader's home city of Frieresc back on Old Earth, they began to study. Happily, they found a functioning biology that seemed as if it would be friendly to humans.</p> <p>The sheer mathematical impossibility of this did not bother them as they were Darwinists at that time. Later they changed, but not by logic.</p> <p>However, there were problems with the system. It was a trinary system, which had not been obvious to them back home to them. The three suns produced enough heat to bake an egg in its shell on the planetary surface. They also produced enough radiation to thoroughly scramble a genetic code. </p> <p>They considered leaving, but then they found that their stardrive, which was rated for ten thousand lightyears, and had gone barely five hundred had maybe a hundred left in it. It seemed Old Earth had a few tricks up its sleeve. Perhaps Earth had sent them out in the hope that they would die, and had managed to help things along.</p> <p>This revelation produced a coup d' etat. The security forces took over the Ship. They argued that insufficient paranoia, that they had not been listened too enough, that weak-willed leadership had contributed to this disaster. They had a point as the former leadership had been dithering for a month after the scope of the problem became apparent.</p> <p>Things got moving. Exploration teams were sent down because as King Johannes the First (nee' Security Chief Clark Johannes)oointed out, they had to live here, so they might as well find out how.</p> <p>The silvery surface of the planet turned out to be leaves, with a very high aluminum concentrate. They lost a shuttle when something exploded underneath it. Things seemed hopeless until the King ordered a nuke strike on the 'surface. The launch was meant to clear back enough space to peer through with radar. Instead, it caused an planetwide explosion at the level of the silvertop. Much later, they found out why, and realized that the silvertop explodes on its own every fifty years or so.</p> <p>The radar went down, and down and down, and just saw more, and more tree trunks and branches. Eventually, several hundred miles down, the radar energy was attenuated enough to stop returning a discerible signal. Which meant that the planet was a solid forrest at least three hundred miles deep with an atmosphere of two hundred miles above the 'silvertop'.</p> <p>Botanists suggested that the silvertop was a protection against the excessive radiation and heat. Biologist suggested that humans could live somewhere. Military types pointed out the fruits hanging from some of the silverleaves that read to sniffers as nitroglycerine.</p> <p>The fruits were what had killed the shuttle. And since the suns gave so much energy, it seemed that the trees stored some energy in long chain, high energy molecules aka explosives.</p> <p>The problem with landing a shuttle was a very difficult procedure involving dropping men on ropes with tools. The Firstmen (who later became important, and were known as the knightly Order of the Axe) built a platform for shuttles to land on from the native trees, and from the Ship material.</p> <p>People started to be ferried down. This was a significant problem as the Ship had been designed to land, and unload its gorging holds. However, no one could think of a means to land the Ship with its multi-million tonne mass. The Launch Deck on Earth had been made of carbon-carbon chains which were tens of thousands of times stronger than the rather sturdy trees of the Wood of High Frieresc.</p> <p>MORE LATER.... </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/leinsters-tangled-lines#post-5662 Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:51:33 +0000 Tadeusz 5662@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>This 'world' is so named in honor of Murray Leinster, SF writer, who had an intriguing idea or three.</p> <p>There are four worlds, one might call them Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma. Each world is practically identical on planet Earth, although in deep space very different forms of aliens have arisen that raise the bias levels in variable fashion.</p> <p>In each world, the bias for one of the four biases is several levels higher than in the other worlds. Thus in Alpha, the Tech bias is 13@2. In the other worlds, its 10@1. Likewise with Psi in Beta which is 4@10, and 1@5 in other worlds. In Delta, magic is 4@1, and in other worlds its 1@3. In Gamma, Body is 15@10, and in other worlds it 10@2.</p> <p>Also, these worlds have innumerable small gates that open and close on irregular schedules. Some gates float as they are influenced by gravity (these tend to be larger gates with more mass to them).</p> <p>These gates are invisible and practically non-detectible except with specialized equipment.</p> <p>Thus, you could walk down the street, get in a cab, be driven through a gate, and arrive at a bank where the cashier lives in another reality than the one you came from, and the one he works in. The next time you go to that bank, you could walk there, and thus enter another gate, and arrive in the first cashier's home reality, but the cashier that waits on you (and looks identical to the first one) is actually living in his house in a fourth reality.</p> <p>Each universe is very similar. In part this is because the constant immigration, and emigration tends to average things out.</p> <p>Dopplegangers resist meeting each other because at a certain subconscious level people are aware of what's going on, and so they use their innate pschyic potential to block dop's from approaching themselves, or they make themselves sick to avoid the dop.</p> <p>Also, culturally, the people in these Lines tend to be rather absent-minded and not aware of their surroundings. This is a choice not made consciously, and reinforced by their culture because again this allows them to avoid facing the truth.</p> <p>Those who tend to be 'aware' of surrounding structures more than most often end up being stay-at-homes. And indeed, there is a much larger percentage of stay at homes than some civilizations.</p> <p>Also, those groups that are at the cutting edge tend to find themselves in a friendly world, and to stay put once they find it. Thus much psi work is 'garbage', but there are Centers for the Study of the Mind in the high psi universe. And so on....</p> <p>I might need to make it harder to get started in magic and psi in these worlds. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldseedling-psionic-world-the-pan-galactic-challenge#post-5572 Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:48:31 +0000 Tadeusz 5572@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>At first thought, this is a world for the experienced and very capable verser. Yet, even one with moderate talent might find it a good world to be in.</p> <p>Shenxou is a planet of a hundred huge islands, and thousands of tiny ones. It is green, and lush, except where volcanoes have recently erupted which is a commonplace. </p> <p>It has not suffered a catastrophe in its past such as the Flood, or a close passage of a planetary comet, or the impact of an extinction level meteor. There are no vast desserts, no huge swathes of fossil beds, and the planet lacks for true mountains as the tallest one on the planet is but five thousand feet above sea level.</p> <p>The locals drive three-wheeled hydrogen powered cars, and take trains for longer trips, and ferries from island to island. Only the wealthy or the elite of the government or military can afford to charter a seaplane.</p> <p>The Hundred Islands yield the Hundred Governances, in theory. There are several city-states, and one Empire of the Islands that controls five islands, and two governances split up four different islands to make eight governances for these specific islands.</p> <p>Most people are fairly self-sufficient with solar power providing electricity which then runs the robo-hydroponics shed for vegetables and grains. Some of the electricity is siphoned off to the water purification household 'plant', and some is sent to crack water into hydrogen for the family car. </p> <p>Most people live on the shore, or on a creek so that there are large areas of deserted land without sufficient water supply for their lifestyle. Some, of course, dig wells for water, but culturally, this is considered rather odd. Its the type of thing that isolationist, antisocial hicks would do is the general thought.</p> <p>There are those who have the Gift. They can see the future in dreams, or tell fortunes by palmistry or tea leaves. And all of them are predicting a great disaster.</p> <p>Upon this peaceful, and largely inoffensive world, is granted the 'honor' of being the host site for the Pan-Galactic Martial Arts Challenge. Competitors from Andromeda, the Lesser and Greater Magellanic Clouds, and our own Milky Way Galaxy are coming for the fight of a century. Whoever wins will receive great reward from his patron, and the patron will receive even greater reward from the Powers.</p> <p>Two of the Powers are openly represented. The Lords of Order, and the Spawns of Chaos come down to this world. Traditionally, both bring out great champions, but they are willing to make a deal with the winner so as to receive great advantages for their own side in their continual war with the opposing force.</p> <p>Past independent champions have received such gifts as 'being the founder of a star empire that lasts for a thousand years of an age of gold'. Order gladly paid up in exchange for the power to harry Chaos for the next century across uncounted galaxies.</p> <p>However, if Order wins, it likes to memorialize the occasion by turning the planet of its victory into a perfect, sterile monument with no messy sapients around to clutter things up. If Chaos wins, the planet devours itself as it falls into primordial (meaning the earliest form of) chaos. First governments begin to fail, then relationships with friends, then sanity, then the laws of chemical bonding, then the laws of atomic valences, then the laws of quarkial existence until what is left is a boiling rot of Pure Chaos.</p> <p>The Challenge is launched by the Childe who brings out the Sphere of Calling. This device bends probability to the point where exceedingly unlikely things will happen. The wish is for 'warriors to come here, to make an interesting fight." The result is sudden gravitational vortexes, and time tunnels, and a thousand other bizarre coincidences that bring to this small world Champions from all over time and space and other dimensions.</p> <p>Its commonplace for one to meet ancient nemesis at this fight.</p> <p>The competitors can be of any skill level so as to accomodate the verser. Some are versers, and some are not human. Some may be the distant descendant of another contestant.</p> <p>The Childe is forbidden to say anything he is not told to say unless he is questioned. However, he is the representative of the Firemind that created this universe. He desires the Challenge for he wishes to see his creation test themselves, and show greatness. But he balances love and justice, free will and law. Both the Lords of Order and the Spawns of Chaos are rebels against his righteous rule. Order wants perfect stasis and beauty with no humans. Chaos wants untrammelled expanses of reality to bend and shape at his/her/its whim. </p> <p>If the verser is wise, he may notice the Childe, and ask the right questions. In that case, he may choose the Childe as his patron, and thus save Shenxou from destruction, and let the PGC be turned to what it is supposed to be instead of what it has been corrupted into being. The Childe has been 'caught' in an agreement that binds him, but he has plans for this. His catching was essential to limiting the evil Powers.</p> <p>The competition allows the usage of psionic and martial arts attacks, but no technological attacks. The universe is powerblocked for all but 3@1 and lower Magic skills, except for the physical presence of avatars of the Powers. And these Powers are limited to physical and psionic attacks except for normal Magic skills. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldsapling-psionic-world-the-four-lords#post-5567 Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:57:25 +0000 Tadeusz 5567@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>The Lords Physique, the Lords of Meaning, the Lords Tekne, and the Lords Mentat had always ruled Do' Cam'mara-phon from their high castles of red stone set high over the rocky land, and the sheer chasms of the Belowmountain. For the Mountain was the world.</p> <p>The World stretched from the highest towers of the Four Lords Councilcastles down the skirts of the Mountain which were red with iron ore much prized by the Tekne, and on to the caves of the dragonwyrms which preyed on the sheep, and gave cause to the Physique to demonstrate their warrior skills, and onward it went to flatter lands with sudden chasms where grass might grow, and sheep, if tended carefully by kindly men prone to prayer, might survive, and then on to the outer edges of the world where men listened to the Sun as it whispers secrets in their minds.</p> <p>For the world mountain is a mile high, and twenty miles in radius, and below its level where men live is a great ball five miles through which serves as the keel of the mountain as it floats through the air of space, and around a telepathic Sun that burns coal. And the nature of the universe is that it is filled with air, and green grasses and mosses grown on the wall of the outer edge of reality which is but a thousand miles across.</p> <p>So things had continued for a long time. The Physique studied stealth, and to strike as a dragonwyrm strikes with no thought, and ultimate speed. They learned techniques to leap high, and strike with devastating force.</p> <p>The Meaning prayed to the Maker, and blessed their people,and gave healing as it was requested. And sheep, who would die faster than live, under their care lived, and thus Man had meat and wool. For the Meaning told that one day long ago, Man had warred upon each other with great weapons of magic, and that the Maker had come down and taken these weapons away from them, and rebuilt the world they had almost completely destroyed. But he had so little to build with, and he would not give them new things to put in their care for they were unworthy of his trust, so that there was little for Man to live on but sheep, and vegetables, and that Man would have to watch over these both with care for a reminder of his lack of care, his recklessness, in the old days.</p> <p>And the Tekne take iron ore, and make steel. They take steam engines and have moved a single railroad up the Mountain. They give the Physique steel crossbows to hunt the dragonwyrms with when they come out of their caves in the twilight to hunt sheep. They make stoves of iron that can hold coal. </p> <p>The Lords Mentat have long served as communicators via telepathy, and they have served otherwise. But a great inventor has figured out how to make psionic amplifiers. And he has realized that with an amplifier, he can make a better amp. The process looks to feed upon itself,and offer speeds that climb ever higher and ever faster.</p> <p>In another world, one might say 'the Computer Revolution' has happened. Here, psi amps are the key that opens other keys that open even more keys. Its a snowball effect.</p> <p>And now, in a world that has stayed the same, comes change, and not just any change, but riotous, and fast moving change. Its a Psionic Singularity. </p> <p>At the beginning, all levels are about six or so, but the psi people start rapidly going up. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldsapling-psionic-world#post-5551 Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:42:04 +0000 Tadeusz 5551@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>BTW, I'm modestly irritated. Part of it is my two tykes making cleaning their room a much larger endeavour than it should be. So I'm going to take that excuse to dodge finishing Frieresc, and maybe invent something horribly nasty.</p> <p>Ah, yes. I remember one D20 player who had a very nice set of stats for his thief character who worshipped Masq, god of thieves. In fact, his stats were better than his deity. He wanted to know if I'd allow him to run this character. My response was that he could, but Masq being the 'wonderful' being that he was, would come down, and tell him he was going to paradise, and Masq was going to use his body in his place.</p> <p>This is an excellent world for someone with low psi abilities, and high stats.</p> <p>I've also read SF (mostly the back covers because the book sub-genre doesn't really appeal) about being able to rent someone else's body.</p> <p>So....Pecking Order Psi World. Most psi powers are unheard of...that is, telepathy is possible, but no one has ever heard of it. In this world, psionic defenses, and illusions, but the primary power is possession, and a very specific kind of possession is taught in this world as they know no other kind.</p> <p>Bodystealing is the societal norm.</p> <p>If you meet someone with a better bod than you, then you psionically attack them, and trade places. Then you go to the Registry of Persons and answer a few secret questions. Perhaps, if you are an Important Soul, then they have a close examination of your mind to match with its electrical patterns. You are registered in your new identity, and all bills, and jobs go to the new body.</p> <p>Naturally, fraudulent bodystealing is possible, but its considered a serious crime, and usually punished with a number of years in the weakest, most decreptit body around, and jail time.</p> <p>It is not possible to cheat death with this by stealing a younger man's body because there is a connection between the old body, and the old mind. And when the old body dies, so does the mind. In light of this, bodies are severely conditioned to avoid suicide. Thoughts of committing suicide, or 'versing out the self' are enough to provoke panic attacks. Actually attempting to do so is likely to provoke severe asthmatic and hive related problems along with a physical weakening of the will.</p> <p>It is highly illegal to bodysteal someone under maturity as such can be extremely damaging to the child (its also damaging to the typical adult, but adults tell themselves 'they can take it'.)</p> <p>One side effect is significant amounts of depression, and alcohol abuse in the society.</p> <p>One other side effect is the near total lack of extreme health people. There are no professional sports, no marathoners, no triathletes, no handful of vitamins and ten miles at the gym sort of people. In fact, there is no 'gym' culture. There is no point to getting a 'good' body if someone stronger and more skillful at bodystealing is just going to take it from you.</p> <p>So, this is a world of fat, out of shape, but very willful bodystealers who try to steal bodies from those who have bodies in slightly better shape than the one they currently have.</p> <p>Dropping a reasonably healthy verser without psi defenses into this world would be like dropping a raw chunk of meat into a pirahna pool.<br /> In fact, a verser who spent a lot of effort on their body skills, or was just naturally good looking might provoke something of a minor riot as people race in to try to claim the body.</p> <p>The result is likely to be too force the verser to learn psi skills so he can steal his body back. One point to keep in mind is that the verser's body does not have strong aversive conditioning taught to it via means of pain and drugs in his childhood in the wonderful 8th grade class known as P.E. for Positive Enforcement.</p> <p>The largest government is small state, thus Great Britain would be Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England. There are no contintental states like America, Canada or China as the people are too selfish to devote themselves to something so large.</p> <p>The verser arrives in the city of Mortilanta, in the northern region of Litvania on the continent of Draumshir. Mortilanta is in the temperate region south of the equator. </p> <p>It has a small coastline with a modest harbor city, and a beach famed for its black sand. Tasquin, the harbor city, is primarily a resort town since its nearby ports in neighboring countries are more useful for modern deep draft ships.</p> <p>Local time is reckoned from the reign of Maxis, the first discoverer of bodystealing. So, the current time is 1517 ACM (After the Coronation of Maxis the Great Willman).</p> <p>The locals call themselves "Willman" as we call ourselves "Human". They tend to exalt the importance of the unaided human soul and will over 'mere matter'. There are drunkards, but they are despised. However, there are many, many 'heavy drinkers' whom other cultures might call drunkards, but they refuse to admit they have a problem they can't control. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldsaplings-psionic-world-democratic-future#post-5557 Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:23:14 +0000 Tadeusz 5557@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>On Katrigern, the science of precognition was developed first by machines. Computers were designed to figure out what was the most likely outcome of events. However, human free will, seemed to be irreducible to material effects.</p> <p>Still, they managed to terraform their home planet of Katrigern, and its primary moon of Lacia, and the secondary moon of Teklaz, and the nearest outer planet of Visgo. They had wars, but they soon found that with the aid of the Prognostication, that they did not need to fight. Things tended to turn out as the computers suggested they would.</p> <p>However, the computers also suggested that the species would now enter a long, silver age of genteel decline. By rigorous logic, it could be proven that human was more than matter, but due to advocates for materialism, and due to the laziness of the mind...almost certain knowledge of the future was read as Absolute Knowledge and "Free Will is Dead!" shouted the intellectuals from every college establishment.</p> <p>Well, with that rot growing at the base of the tree of civilization, a long genteel decline was the best one could hope for. The Materialist leaders knew better than what they preached in the classes, but power spoke louder than principle in their ears.</p> <p>And then something happened that was not predicted. Certain people arose who saw clearly and logically, and worse, they had an imagination. They wondered if the human mind could be trained to do what computers do. And so with help from the well-wishing AI's that ran the Prognostication Service, they duplicated the effect, or so it seemed. </p> <p>It looked slower, and less accurate. And the researchers let that impression stand. For they knew that it was, in its very limited, but specific way, more accurate. For a computer could take in all the facts, but a human could only take in a few. The only answer was that the human had detached himself from the body and the timestream, and stepped into the near edges of eternity to look at pages not yet turned in the Book of Time.</p> <p>Eventually, there arose a great dissatisfaction with the intellectual elite, the leaders of society, and these researchers into Genuine Human Precognition were ready to step into the gap as the leaders of the revolutionaries. The combat between the Materialists armed with the weapons of war and of persuasion, and the Futurists armed with the common man, and precognition was the first, and last bloody war for five hundred years on either side. Unlike later accounts, the Futurists fully used the Prognostication Service as did their enemies. Romantic tales make it a matter of man vs. machine, but it was not. It was those who believed in the spirit and matter vs. those who only believed in matter.</p> <p>The Materialists would not yield power even though they were vastly outnumbered at the vote. Instead, they manipulated votes which is as the precogs and the machines predicted. The machines predicted that the Materialists must win. There was no avenue for Precog victory. The Precogs looked into the future, and found a route so strange, so bizarre that no man would have thought of it, and they won.</p> <p>Part of it was they saw the weaknesses of the enemy commanders. Many of these weaknesses of character had been unknown even to the person himself, or at least hidden from the machines to whatever degree they could. But the precog could see it, and plan on it.</p> <p>Now hundreds of years later, everyone can see the future. But there are so many futures that could be. The problem is, which of the many futures do people want to live in.</p> <p>One can see a future where Joe marries Mabel, and one where Joe marries Susan...and futures where either is happy, and either is unhappy. And futures where Joe becomes a monk. And Joe, Mabel, and Susan, and Joe's competitors for Mabel and Susan's hands can see this too.</p> <p>So Mark might point out to Joe that he would be a much better person as a calligrapher and monk, and to Susan that she could buy calligraphy from Joe thus making her happy to see her friend, but that she was not in love with Joe yet, instead she could choose the future where she would fall in love with Mark. And Mark could offer Mabel support in her vision of the future where she marries Rick against the wishes of Stephanie who also wants to marry Rick.</p> <p>Most of what people do is try to work out coalitions to create the future they want. However, its been found that the best way to get something close to the future you want is to help out everyone. No one will likely get everything they want, but help out everyone as much as possible,and that creates a brighter future for all.</p> <p>And so they vote on the futures to create daily.</p> <p>And the verser may arrive in the run-up to the Materialist War, or he may arrive in the Utopia. The Utopia also can be the contingency world for the Materialist War setting.</p> <p>In Utopia, the verser is immediately going to be recognized as a stranger. No one's seen him in any future. Pretty quickly people are going to go from 'you're not from this town, are you?' to 'you're not from this planet, are you?' And then when people do look into the future, they will see him mentioning who he is.</p> <p>This won't necessarily be a bad thing as these people are very nice. However, they will generally know what he's going to do before he does it.</p> <p>And if he's an evil verser, he may get the surprise of his life as they will know what he is, and what his nature is before he's revealed it by his actions.</p> <p>I would say that living in Utopia would be quite weird. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldsapling-psionic-world-1#post-5552 Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:43:05 +0000 Tadeusz 5552@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Oak has a few questions that form a good world-generator. What power is involved? How many have it (is this a gift of the few or the many?)? Is the world dynamic or static?Vernor Vinge wrote some excellent stories about the Singularity, but he also wrote one SF book, The Witling, about normal humans meeting near humans (with green skin) who had a single psi power--teleportation.  And then he developed the combat aspects of this idea.You could teleport rock from the other side of the world, so it would be going in the opposite direction at a thousand miles per hour. (If thats hard for you, take out a ball, and spin it...oh clockwise. The right side of the ball will always be going toward you, and the left side away from you.)Thus you could zap someone with a thousand mile per hour rock, but they could counterzap the rock. Or they could teleport themselves although that took them out of the fight for a longer time, and made them vulnerable.You can see how he took this model of combat and used it in outer space with stasis bubbles and nukes in Marooned in Real Time.In Oak's Questions that would be: Teleportation only. Static. Everyone has it, but in the larger universe, only these aliens have it, and whatever corporation can make a deal with them first is going to be very wealthy. So that is a variant on Many/Few and on Static/Dynamic.Anne McCaffrey has Talents who run interstellar transport by t-porting ships.  Thats Static and Few.So let's see....Few, Dynamic, Only Teleportation....Interestingly enough, I hope to watch Jumper on DVD tommorrow...Let's go some place very strange instead...Paratur Belt is far in the future. Its people fled centuries ago from persecution for their House which might have been named Bright Star or Rising Plasma.  According to legend, they could see the future, but no one now knows how.No one remembers the direction as data was lost in the great solar storms that shatter computers and anything electronic in the Paratur System.They did not live on a planet in their preceding system, but in a spacehab as did most of that system's population.  And most of that system had never heard of Old Earth.And now Paratur Starlines delivered the exiled House for an exorbitant fee to their hideaway.  And they dug into the asteroid belt, and began to make their high-tech home.Unfortunately, the ship left, and the storms struck, and the ship died, and so did all their computers. They thought they were going to die in the cold and the dark with oxygen failing and the cold of deep space seeping through the airlock doors which were no longer heated by electrical heat.But, there were other things living in rock. Things that loved radiation, and faint heat. These things crept and crawled and slithered for they had no fixed shape. And that night, they slipped down the throats of the colonists scattered through several dozen asteroids.  In dark tunnels, and in the few great gaping grottoes formed by laser ballooning, the Para symbiote moved toward heat.People woke, and found their brains worked differently. After some panic, one young fellow tried out the new possibility he saw in his brain.  And he caused rock to melt by force of will.Centuries later, the residents of the Paraturain belt have spread to several hundred rocks. They use telekinesis to move the rocks so that they can spin it, and thus turn the black side to the sun (to gain more heat), or the white side to the sun (to lose heat).  The 'paint' is dust from certain asterroids they've turned to powder by crushing them.Pyrokinesis provides heat and light.Teleporting provides a quick means for the 'porter and his passenger to move trade items and people back and forth.Hydroponics feeds the people, and runs the oxygen cycle. Water and more earth come from new asteroids with ice on them.  Turning rock into good earth is more complicated than heating ice and straining the water, but it can be done.Their tech has declined. Quill pens, with an artificial hydrocarbon slurry, serve where chalk and a chalkboard don't. Clay tablets are used for long-term storage of data...these are typically stored in space.They do know how to forge hard metals and make poor, but heavy glass with help from pyrokinesis.Most Psi's focus on one skill as the society does not have enough wealth to allow someone to study everything.The society is quite medieval with guilds of different types of espers. This is kept in check by the overriding necessity of survival, however.  The Council of Elders can and does override Guildmasters at will, but not at whim.The people tend to be very tall, and very slim.Loose robes (formed from the fur of the gerbils that are their only animals) are their clothing.</p> <p>They have little records of their past, and not only have forgotten Earth, but have forgotten the word 'planet'. They are mostly happy with their life, although they are aware that it is a hard life.</p> <p>If you see in your mind a collection of medieval peasants working hard by candleligh...err...melted rock light...inside an asteroid floating in outerspace, then I've gottent the idea across.</p> <p>========================</p> <p>Yes, I'm aware that I changed my specs a lot, but the Paraturians needed a lot of help to survive. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldsaplings-psionic-world-splinter-city#post-5514 Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:52:04 +0000 Tadeusz 5514@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>The Jewel tumbled through space, picking up layers of interstellar dust until it looked like a normal meteor. Then it got caught by the passing solar system, this creation of an ancient alien race that had leapt spaceward but a thousand years after Creation, and over the next couple centuries as Science was created, it fell.</p> <p>Until, on one fine hot late morning, it intersected the orbit of the third planet from a very important sun. For this sun was one of the very few of the ten trillions of stars that supported life.</p> <p>One might think it simple chance that the Jewel came here, but the odds against that were roughly 10 to the 147 power to 1. In other words, impossible. But who or what the guiding mind intended is not known.</p> <p>And then it fell into Earth's atmosphere at the optimal angle to survie entry. But perhaps the guiding mind miscalculated for it did not survive entry. It began breaking up over the Northern Tremenos Ocean, and then the Coastal regions, and the highland hills received even more of the splinters that fell from the sky. Until finally it exploded over Sintar City.</p> <p>That night, the obstretrics wards were swamped as an unusual number of children were born. Also, a rather remarkable number of children were born nine months later. Worse, there were huge numbers of people checked in to insane asylums.</p> <p>It went down in regional folklore as The Crazy Night. Many people claimed to have seen things that were not there. Some claimed to see aliens speaking to them in some babble. Others heard thoughts.</p> <p>A great fire was started north of Sintar City, and it burned for four days. Some say it burned unstoppably until one Kevin Rice Martins got drunk enough to pass out. But no one officially credits that explanation.</p> <p>The central government and the provincials and even the metropolitan governments investigate, but claim to find nothing unusual. This might be true, but the various governments tend to squabble a lot with each other as the central is the most powerful, but it depends on the metro and town governments to donate their taxes to the provincial (who run most of the military as a consequence) who then donate it to the central.</p> <p>Its not very efficient and effective, but thats partly the point. The governances spend so much time squabbling with each other that they rarely have time to bother the citizens unneccessarily. It also helps that the typical citizen is armed with a machine gun for 'home defense', and a .60 calibre sniper rifle for 'bear hunting'. The fact that these weapons make governmental excesses extremely hazardous is a fortunate historical accident due to the Invasion Panic of 6792 After Creation. </p> <p>The Panic had the locals convinced they were about to be invaded by several foreign armies about a hundred years ago. So they armed themselves for defense against a war that never happened. But they noticed that the 'excessively rude' governmental officials suddenly became polite, and so they held on to their weapons.</p> <p>And then in 6894 the Crazy Night occurred. (As a side note, one can take a normal, but boring world, and insert a Crazy Night.) Over the next several months more and more proofs of power occurred. Psionic abilities multiplied in those in the area.</p> <p>Before this there had been tales of hunches and luck and the Sight. Now, there are starting to be rumors of telekinesis and mindreading. Stories get out, but its generally 'friend of a friend of a friend.'</p> <p>In '95 AC, the Sintar Park Incident occurs, and nearly three hundred people claim to have witnessed 'a young man with long hair wave his hand at a car on top of a child, and the car flew and crashed on top of the gazebo across the park.' as one witness put it. 'then a female with spiked blonde hair healed the child, and then dissappeared with the young man.'</p> <p>More claims come forward, and more of them sound solid. Some research projects are getting started in parapschyology, and are reporting some remarkable results with Rhine card testing.</p> <p>In late '95, the Painted Horse Riot occurred. This riot was claimed to be about police brutality, but most experts thought that an excuse for the fun of an orgy of shoplifting and vandalism. However, several dozen people claim that the Painted Horse statue (from the aboriginal people who used to live in the area) animated, and a man armed with a spear forced the most violent of the rioters to withdraw in confusion.</p> <p>In '96, it became generally accepted that 'something odd was happening'. Religious texts were studied, and so was the increasing parapschyology research. The texts spoke of 'the gift of light from the emptiness' and 'the end of all things shall not come before light comes unto the people'. Many preachers had thought the second, a prophesy, had referred to the electrification of the world, but some now wondered if this was 'the light'. It did seem to fit the original language better than the other interpretation.</p> <p>In mid '96, the City Guardians began to operate. So did the Seeing Eye, an anonymous reporter who claimed to be telepathic and to use his powers to spy out what the government was really up to. So did Mr. Vigilance who served as 'judge and therapist through pain' at the same time.</p> <p>On the other side, the Dread, and the Force Majeure, and the Dead Yankee, and the trio of bank robbers--Loot, Rob, and Steal all begain to operate. Also a number of secretive power mongers began to use their powers in hidden ways to evade the rules and limits built into the economy.</p> <p>The highland hills actually got more people using their powers earlier, but not as many went 'super' in part because less attention was paid to them than the city psi's. The Coastal and the Sea regions were also bombarded with asteroid dust and splinters, and they more slowly developed powers.</p> <p>Some people were hit with splinters, and they developed powers first. Others were dusted, and this dust could grow into 'splinters in the mind' to borrow a phrase. Still others, among the susceptible would develop mo slowly. These susceptible including those in the womb, and near birth.</p> <p>Psi 15@10<br /> Tech 13@10<br /> Body Regular<br /> Magic 2@2 </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldsaplings-psionic-world-madagascar-and-falantir#post-5505 Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:31:29 +0000 Tadeusz 5505@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>It is a very good that Humanity developed psionic gifts in the late 21st century. For these led to a rejection of materialism, and to the hearing of the Calling.</p> <p>There is a reason that SETI did not find aliens communicating on the hydrogen wave line, or anywhere else. Aliens were using something better. Telepathy.</p> <p>From their view, telepathy is the defining hallmark of a sentient species. And if they had come upon Earth as it had been, a haven of materialism, they would have taken the 'non-sentients' at their word.</p> <p>"We are meat. We have no soul."</p> <p>The aliens would have looked at the aggressively expanding Human/Orca/Kraken civilization and taken them at their word, but through alien lenses they would have seen....an aggressively expanding hive of lower life forms. Well you know what you do when you discover termites. You blow up their sun.</p> <p>But the ship Madagascar was a dissident faction from All That. And so they looked for some place on the outer edge of the Solar System where the Materialist Hegemony would leave them alone.</p> <p>And thus Madagascar found the Ring Gate on a small moon in Saturn's Rings. They were looking for an icy asteroid with nickel-iron to boot (if they were lucky) that they would lase into a rocky balloon, and turn into an O'Neil habitat. Instead, they saw something that 'ate' their radar waves, and so they investigated despite the risk of losing their lives. For unlike the 'rational cowards' of the Hegemony, they believed they were 'souls attached to matter', and so life beyond death was a rational factor to consider in making the decision to risk that temporary life.</p> <p>It also helped that they had some of the only clairvoyants and telepaths in the Solar System.</p> <p>Eventually, they took the ship through, and 'met' the League of Sentients which was on the verge of 'dealing with termites'.</p> <p>After that, they learned much more about psi from the older races, and they returned to Earth. Needless to say, the masters of the universe in Wall Street and Shanghai were not pleased. Only the threat of immediate and total annihilation by the aliens kept them from 'disapearing the tom-fool mystic idiots'. Still, they tried to work things around their way, but the power equation had changed. The facts were made clear, and over a generation, the Hegemony was destroyed. It was not all peace and light because some of the new psionic powers enabled horrible abuses. And the Hegemony fostered terrorists who nuked several cities. But in the end, nothing Man could do, could stop the Alien tsunami.</p> <p>And thus in the early 23rd century, Humanity was given charge of a Protected Planet. Falantir hosted several thousand planet trees. The very largest dozen arched from the ground up into orbit. These sentient trees were happy to share the planet with humanity as humans and Falantir trees occupied almost totally different ecological niches, or could. Its a typical sized planet, and three thousand trees, even city-sized ones takes up very little room. And the vast majority are only about two hundred stories tall. One would have to be deliberately seeking offense to find having to share a contient with five hundred trees to be imposing on personal space, or to find that the trees request for the use of hydrogen powered or electric cars rather than polluters to be unreasonable.</p> <p>On Falantir, some of the hard-core resisters have infiltrated along with the less hard-core who were invited. The Council of Mind that now rules Earth and the Sol system (with areas set aside for Materialists who can function as they wish inside these reservations) thought that sending some of the resistive, but somewhat reasonable enemies among the sentient trees would open their hearts and minds to the truth. What it did not count on was the infiltration of the Materialist Hegemonies last hard-core of terrorists.</p> <p>With a fine disregard for logic and consistency, the MH terrorists now uses telepathy and telekinesis even as they council regular MH supporters that doing so is 'delusion and mental illness'.</p> <p>Also, the occasional alien (with huge powers of mind and tech) occasionally visits the Falantir and the Subcouncil of Mind for Falantir (Smof).</p> <p>The powers of the Falantir vary with age, but the older, the stronger is the general rule. However, the older, the sleepier is also the general rule. Humanity in the Alien's mind is to serve as 'housesitters' and 'water the plants'. In return for the use of the planet,humans are to protect and care for the Falatir. By any reasonable standard, this is a very good deal, but the MH are trying to bend reality with clever words.</p> <p>This is a TWO-POINT ENTRY WORLD&gt;One, the verser may enter the world aboard the good ship Madagascar as it boosts up from Mars on its ion drive, or the verser may arrive on Falantir as the MH terrorists strive to find some way to break the SMOF such as starting a forest fire that would burn the Falantir trees (which would kill everyone on the planet). A 2pt. world can be used as a contingency world, or simply as a variable entry point world. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldsaplings-psionic-world-soliant-and-dultigur#post-5504 Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:25:10 +0000 Tadeusz 5504@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Soliant is a beautiful world where telepathy enables friends to remain in contact on far sides of the planet, and telekinesis enables the mightiest works of construction. And the great Knights Energon bend raw energy to their will in accordance with the dictates of He Who Is Truth, and the Rules of Prudence worked out over the last thousand years for psi-masters.</p> <p>Dultigur, on the opposite side of the solar system, in the exact counter position to Soliant, is an ugly place. There is no tradition, no ancient rights guaranteed by the goodness of the Truthful One. Everyone is an atomized individual under the eyes of the Watching Ones, and used as bio-energy to sustain the Movers, and all of this to sustain the glory of the Arms of Energy, and of the Great Being of Power.</p> <p>The principal psionic powers are telepathy, telekinesis, and energy manipulation. Other powers less than energy manipulation are possible, but far less frequent. On Soliant, any with the Healing Talent join the Healer's Guild. On Dultigur, any with the talent of bending body join the Research and Development Group where they can learn new methods of altering humans to become less than, and more than human at the same time, or work for Dr. Tortic in the Pain Rehabilitation Citizenship Program.</p> <p>Soliant and Dultigur are at war with each other. This typically entails sending TK maneuvered asteroid fortresses around the sun at each other. Collossal battles in space ensue as fortress meets fortress. Telekinetics strive to rip apart the others' fort, or throw him into the sun. Telepaths read secrets, and spread confusion. And the Captain of such a fortress must be an energy manipulator. He can be a Knight Energron or an Arm of Energy.</p> <p>Soliant is a near utopia, a constituional monarchy, and Dultigur is a power-mad dictatorship. Soliant believes in Truth and Justice and Tradition and Beauty. Dultigur believes in Power and in following the Party Line until that changes, and then following it slavishly then. Soliant has a hierarchy of nobility (that may be entered by deeds of especial virtue), and Dultigur claims to be wholly free and instead this freedom is the chance for the powerful to do as they will to those without power.</p> <p>Both sides have low technology, stopping above transmitting electricity. Dams are built of huge rocks moved by TK. TK moves iron ore in a giant bucket to the vat where a Knight Energon channels enough heat into the vat to turn ore into steel.</p> <p>Without much of modern industry, they are able to build giant dams, and space fortresses. But most houses are simple stone walls with a nice layout, lit by electricity, and with running water. However, TV, computers, automobiles, airplanes and a thousand and one other things are not known.</p> <p>The Soliant people enjoy their powers, and the chance to serve the Truthful One, and the King. The Dultigur would not be much of a threat, but they are insanely aggressive. They spend one of every four drachmas they make to buy weapons, and arm troops.</p> <p>Soliant is healthful and beautiful. Dultigur reeks of pollution and of escaped war gasses. They've been fighting ever since Soliant discovered Dultigur seventeen years ago. </p> http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/worldsaplings-psionic-world-tamarinton#post-5503 Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:50:06 +0000 Tadeusz 5503@http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/ <p>Tamarinton is a planet of near-human telepaths. They stand an average seven feet tall,and weight about two hundred pounds. Their skin is a pale yellow to pale brown color. It is smooth, entirely hairless, and slightly slick and slimy.</p> <p>They are an amphibious species with wide (seven fingers on hands and toes) hands and feet with webbing between fingers and toes. They can breathe underwater by means of gills for several days, but living on land is less costly in personal energy. They need to visit land occasionally to replenish themselves on fruits and to rest on the warm islands that make up Tamarinton. In the water, they must work harder to breathe, to move, and to keep warm despite the great warmth of the close sun (they are in a Venusian orbit), and the volcanoes that dot the water, and breathe warming fire into the shallow seas.</p> <p>They do not have a mouth on their head. Instead, they have 'medusa' hair which plucks plankton and other tiny creatures from the sea in a continous flow of work. However, they can place a large chunk of fish in front of the 'medusas' and this will enable the always questing medusas to eat faster and mor efficiently.</p> <p>Due to their telepathy, they can read the thoughts of others, and even pierce deep into the minds of others. This has made them a communitarian species, and insulated them from materialism.</p> <p>They consider the notion (that a few of their less clever philosophers have taken up) that 'mind is meat' to be silliness. They also tend to judge by intention more than by effect (although they do have the saying 'good heart, but a clumsy hand' to describe the well-intentioned klutz).</p> <p>They have less illusions about others, and their own selves.</p> <p>They do struggle when certain groups such as the Northwater Teaching Flock turns from having children to having parties, and tries to destabilize the ancient patterns of society. While the NTF decries the danger of 'overpopulation', the more far-sighted realize that the NTF plans to party now, and then have the children of the STF take care of them in their old age. The NTF is trying to change ancient arrangements and treaties to benefit itself in the present moment, and its showing signs of being violent if it does not get its way.</p> <p>Earnest entreaties, and telepathic messages have been sent, but the NTF, due to some now obvious flaws in its educational corp of bards and songsingers, seems determined to ignore the facts that work against its case for 'party now, worry later'. It decries the emmissaries from all the other flocks in that section of the world as 'traditional worrywarts determined to hold on to their power', and 'reactionaries'. </p>