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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.)
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.
The verser wakes in a thornbush. He is in an expansive and high-walled English schoolground. There are a wide array of students attending.
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.
This is meant to be ago
Does this have anything to do with the coma patient that the retired krillis went into for a short while?
I'm confused as to how the verser would verse into her subconscious... Could you elaborate?
Tomas ended up on Oak's subconscious in Heartwar, remember?... :)
There is a rare psionic botch called the Psychic Event or something like that, usually associated with retrocog skills. It's very like this, although usually connected to an object or place. The notion is that you botch on a retrocog read and find yourself as one of the characters (not yourself, and not having your equipment or skills) in some moment in the history of the artifact, living the part.
This seems a reasonable variant of that, particularly as a psionic botch with just about any telepathic skill.
--M. J. Young
First, I didn't finish this. Second, I was (sorry!) really tired when I wrote this so my clarity and logic might not be up to par. Third, I have some idea of what I want to do here, but the key problem is still blocking me.
Onward and forward.
1. Krillis, I've been long fascinated with the idea of a verser in a coma. Your situation was one example of this fascination. Another is the idea of a Scientific Wonder, a man who has been in a coma for a hundred fifty years, and no one has a clue about him, but many theories.
Also, I don't want the character to verse into the subconscious. I want the verser to THINK he has versed.
What I want is for the comatose verser to recognize on an instinctive level that there is another verser, and to reach out psionically for help. And I can do this with a psi botch created by GM fiat if the world has too low a psi bias for this 'reverse possession'. The effect from the nurse's point of view will be 'PC walks into room, reaches out to touch comatose person's hand, and then keels over into a coma.'
Once inside the comatose person's mind, it will seem to be a school with a wide variety of students. All these students and teachers are different aspects of the comatose person's mind. If some sort of resolution can be achieved, and a desire of the dominant center of balance (which could mean many different things) want to 'leave the school to visit London' then the comatose person wakes up.
I want this school to be a chance for the PC to learn Psi. Its also a chance for a romance story from inside the girl's head with parts of her arguing against pursuing the romance (and therefore persecuting the PC), and other parts in favor of the PC (but no part is aware of what they really are).
I also want a Gothic feel to this. Perhaps with Monsters from the Id, wolves, and snakes, and archetypical things...maybe a ghost story in a Gothic school....
As you can see, there is a lot not yet figured out about this. Its a complicated and tricky idea. However, once its done, I think you could drop it into a great variety of worlds ranging as a set-piece.
It also allows a pc to enter a world with low psi, learn psi on the side, and then go straight back to using psi in the main world (outside the comatose person's skull.)
I have a question about this.
Would the verser be able to kill anyone inside of the comatose person's mind, in self defense or otherwise.
If so, would that mean a part of the other verser's persona would be destroyed, thus creating a different mental persona after the verser recovers from her coma?
Yes. And yes. The damage might regenerate over time, but I'd say treat it as some form of personality change or perhaps brain damage.