How does an Esper or a Psi or a Mentalist Get Started:
1. Rulebook Answer: A telepath shows you inside his own brain how he does something, and you try to copy the activity in your brain.
2. Brain Damage: This is the answer popular in Stephen King's The Dead Zone where John Smith gets hit by a semi-rig, and wakes up from a coma with precognitive abilities limited to touch and strong emotion. This is also the answer for Lisabelle, the chieftainess of Blind Justice in the parallel worlds Gallia 6032 AC or Clash of Fascisms 2030 A.D.. In both worlds, she got jumped by thugs, and stabbed in the eye with a knife. The blade went into her brain, and she gained precognitive abilities.
3. Superhumanity: The person gets genetically or intelligence wise upgraded to superhuman levels. After this, he develops psionic abilities. This is seen in the Lawnmower Man where the protagonist becomes superhumanly smart, and then develops broad-ranging psi powers.
4. Enlightenment: Due to a process of mental, and physical effort and purification which may involve smelling vapors, and meditating for long stretches the would be adept may break through self-imposed limits, and achieve transcendence.
5. Bad Hair Day: The person is not wise, and is tortured both mentally and occasionally physically by (mostly her) her peers, and her parents or caretakers. This torture is not meant to do anything except satisfy sadism, and meet decent goals in improper ways. She stews in quiet, and occasionally explodes, but gets slapped back down. And then one day, the last straw, the final insult....and there is blood everywhere as vengeance is satisfied. This path tends to lead to Telekinesis. See the movie Carrie.
6. Moment of Panic: In a high psi world, if you needed something for an extreme emergency, it's possible to learn a psionic skill. Say you needed to save your daughter from the path of an oncoming car. The only way to save your daughter is to TK pulse the car and knock it off its original course. In your moment of panic, you manage to teach yourself TK pulse. From there, you have a foundation that can be built upon. Ever seen Ghost with Patrick Swazee? As a ghost, he teaches himself how to push objects in a moment of panic. He knocks a picture off of a table....Thanks to John "A1Nut" Cross for this one.
7. The Teaching Picture: This is a picture created by Escher in another timeline. The structure of the picture, with its staircases that turn upside down, but don't, and its walls that become floors, and all the other optical illusions in it combine to make possible an effect. If the viewer is able to hold the image of this picture in his own mind which is very difficult as its a supremely nonsensical image, it may cause certain areas of the brain that are not typically used to activate to handle the image. These brain areas also handle psionic powers. And once they are awakened, it becomes possible with focus and concentration to teach oneself psionics.
8. Mind-breaking Pain: If the latent were to be subjected to extreme, mind-shattering pain for a number of hours without relent or let-up it might kill him, or it might activate his potential. This typically requires aid from another in order to keep the participant from going insane, and to help manage the pain. Julian May in one of the books related to the Many-Colored Land series tells of a technique where a psi can carry the astral presence of a latent the length and back again of the galaxy which causes enormous pain as the astral presence flows through substances.
9. Better Living Through Chemistry: It is possible to use drugs to alter the mind, or the state of consciousness, and for certain powers to be activated, or only activated while drugged. The Espers in the world Time Invasion have precognitive powers while drugged, and sometimes elsewhen, but its not so reliable.
10. Good Genes: Your father was a pyrokinetic, and mom was a teke. You have the Psi-Active Gene. In some universes, no one without a certain genetic structure can learn psi powers. This is a powerblock.
In some universes, its more detailed than that. Everyone has Talents. That is, a Teke cannot learn Pyro who cannot learn Clairvoyance. There are a number of PAG's, and each type corresponds to a certain psi ability.
In such universes, typically puberty with its stresses activates the gene.
MORE LATER--but feel free to contribute your own versions of how to become a psi...
This brings up the old question; Which came first, the chicken or the egg? How can you learn psi from someone else? Where did they learn it from? Who learned it in the first place? Where did it originally come from?
There's also the moment of panic. In a high psi world, if you needed something for an extreme emergency, it's possible to learn a psionic skill. Say you needed to save your daughter from the path of an oncoming car. The only way to save your daughter is to TK pulse the car and knock it off its original course. In your moment of panic, you manage to teach yourself TK pulse. From there, you have a foundation that can be built upon. Ever seen Ghost with Patrick Swazee? As a ghost, he teaches himself how to push objects in a moment of panic. He knocks a picture off of a table.
I think not. I think it is a feature of an indigenous race, and has no impact on a verser who enters that universe already psionically capable.In some universes, no one without a certain genetic structure can learn psi powers. This is a powerblock.
It would be a violation of the point of the bias system to bring someone who has specific psionic abilities into a world in which indigs can use those specific psionic abilities, and forbid him to use them on any basis; if a verser has the skill and the skill is possible, the verser can use the skill.
What you're after, I think, is a world in which you cannot learn a psionic skill, but must be born with it. This would mean that having been born with the psi gene, from infancy you had as one of your developing faculties certain psionic abilities which you had to train and improve over time. A verser who entered such a world could use the psionic abilities he already knew, and could improve those abilities, but he could not learn new abilities while in that world. If he had the power to observe psionic skills (that particular read minds variant), then he could use it to collect examples of skill use for reference when learning those skills in another universe.
John, it is possible that the first human psion learned his skills from an alien psion, or was taught by some supernatural meddler, or gained the abilities by one of the other methods mentioned. Spiderman's spidey-sense (rather evidentally a P11@1 Danger Sense) was gained by infection from a unique spider (whether radioactive or genetically enhanced depends on which technology we fear at the moment), but someone else might learn that skill from him even though he was not taught it.
Paul Atriedes gained a tremendous amount of his precognitive abilities, as did many others in the Dune universe, from taking an addictive drug called Spice. Lilith became psionic because her parents took enough drugs to mutate their gametes, although they were not psionic themselves.
--M. J. Young