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.
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.
This is an excellent world for someone with low psi abilities, and high stats.
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.
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.
Bodystealing is the societal norm.
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.
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.
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.
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'.)
One side effect is significant amounts of depression, and alcohol abuse in the society.
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.
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.
Dropping a reasonably healthy verser without psi defenses into this world would be like dropping a raw chunk of meat into a pirahna pool.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
