By Bruce Baugh
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Telepathy is the art and science of manipulating sentient minds. In the early years after her activation as telepathic proxy, Bue Li would have said "human minds," with a possible exception for her mysterious benefactors. Now she and the rest of her order know that there are more self-aware, reasoning minds than the ones found in human bodies.
As with the other aptitudes that work directly on parts of the human self, Telepathy raises the question, "What are we doing here?" What is the mind, the thing that Telepathy effects? There's no universally accepted answer, and several particularly important points of controversy.
Some things benefit from very explicit out-of-game declarations, and the role of mysteries in the game setting is one of them. So I'm putting this announcement in my own voice, just to help keep things clear.
There are some questions that no official Trinity supplement will ever answer. Is there a God, or gods? Is there an afterlife, and if so, what is it like? Are there universally valid moral and spiritual truths? The game books won't tell you these things, any more than they'll answer for sure some of the questions laid out in this chapter's introduction, like whether consciousness can originate outside a biological matrix.
The game books describe a general situation and provide some details. You, the players and Storytellers, are very much at liberty to provide more details, to decide that in your particular series there are clear-cut answers to mysteries left unsolved here and to make them available for sufficiently diligent, clever, and/or lucky player characters. Our refusal to settle some issues in print shouldn't be taken as a limit on your right to settle them to your own satisfaction.
Keep in mind, as you choose answers that suit you, that others will be choosing answers that suit them and that these may not be the same answers. In fact it's pretty much guaranteed that they won't be. There's no single Canonical Trinity Universe SI standard against which all others must be measured and found wanting insofar as they diverge from it. Every series creates its own version of the universe — what appears in print is not a complete work, but a whole bunch of ideas which you assemble different ways for different purposes. If an answer that pleases you requires changing existing elements or subtracting some as well as adding others, go right ahead. You're not required to use everything we thought was a good idea.
So invent with confidence, and (if you get the opportunity) enjoy others' inventions, too.
— Bruce
Most noetic researchers agree that consciousness emerges only within a living body. It may endure outside the body for a limited time or even after the body dies, but it begins with biology.
Most researchers, of course, even within the Ministry don't know about the vivid example of post-biological consciousness that Rebecca Bue Li provides. Nor do many of them know a great deal about the Doyen. Those who do know about the Doyen argue at great length, based on very limited evidence, whether the Doyen's demonstrated behavior shows signs of biological ancestry or not.
The vast majority of those studying the mind, inside the Ministry and out, study human beings — including aberrants — and perhaps occasionally get the opportunity to meet with Qin or Chromatics. They also get to study the behavior of computer systems mimicking intelligent behavior, and while some SIs are very, very good at acting like people, they completely lack the noetic signature of consciousness. Rumors of true electronic intelligence circulate constantly throughout the OpNet, but investigation always ends in urban legend. Nobody ever actually speaks to an AI directly; they hear about someone's cousin's boss who ran into one.
(Nihonjin researchers into the nature of consciousness tend to keep quiet during these debates. There are more and better-documented instances of what look like encounters with electronic intelligences in Nippon, but the government maintains a strict policy of not encouraging noetic inquiry.)
Altering bodies demonstrably changes minds in some ways. Regular medicine and aptitudes like Vitakinesis and Biokinesis can make it more difficult or even impossible to think some thoughts, by changing the chemistry of the brain. On the other hand, telepathic manipulation can strengthen the mind's resistance to some kinds of physiological alteration, too. The prevailing view in the 2120s describes mind and body as symbiotically linked but somewhat distinct.
What makes one sentient being distinct from another? And does this distinctness create obligations on the part of others?
This is one area of inquiry where noetic science actually provides more answers than questions. Every individual has a unique noetic signature which retains clearly recognizable features from shortly after conception to death. It changes substantially with the development of sensory and cognitive capability. Medical trauma and psychological shifts both alter it substantially. But the overall framework endures, and remains recognizable to anyone capable of perceiving it. (Noetic record-keeping is rapidly reducing the number of "John Doe" cases involving unidentified corpses, amnesia victims and others who've lost their sense of self.)
Opinionated researchers like to claim that the fact of individually unique noetic templates proves something — in nearly every case, conveniently enough, it's supposed to prove whatever they already believe. For believers in a Western religion such as Christianity or paganism, for instance, the noetic template is a tangible manifestation of the soul. For a Buddhist researcher, it may be one page in the akashic record. For a staunch materialist, it's simply itself, a distinct pattern that carries no implications of a deeper truth.
Nor does the fact of noetic identity settle issues of rights. Demonstrably, people can do terrible things to others' noetic templates. Some telepaths are amoral ravagers, and the universe doesn't stop them. It's at least possible that the reluctance many telepaths feel to fundamentally alter another's identity is simply squeamishness that conditioning could overcome. Indeed, many outsiders regard the Ministry's training as precisely such a program of moral desensitization, even as the Ministry regards it as a program to develop the courage and endurance necessary to protect the moral interests of society as a whole.
In short, people tend to bring their existing outlook to bear and find support for what they already believe, and when they change, it's seldom a matter of being convinced by objective facts. Rhetoric remains crucial in shaping people's convictions.
Many of the new techniques presented here come from the Ministry's research efforts — both in the laboratory and in the field, developed by field agents under the press of circumstances. Accordingly, there's an emphasis on social harmony and policing. The more advanced techniques remain Ministry secrets, while the one- and two-dot techniques are available to outside telepaths who are affiliated with organizations which maintain relatively good relations with the Ministry. As always, espionage and counter-espionage keep technique thieves and those who try to stop them busy.
A telepathic character may buy one of the following techniques instead of one at the equivalent level listed in Trinity, at the same cost in starting dots, bonus points or experience points. But she must acquire the standard, primary technique of her current level before advancing to the next dot up, because existing training systems build on the standard techniques. (In time this may change, and characters affiliated with cutting-edge research groups may, at Storyteller discretion, not need to abide by this restriction.) More advanced techniques depend on the perceptions and concepts associated with lower-ranked techniques.
Training in any technique takes time, from a few days for one-dot techniques up to a month or more of intensive study for five-dot techniques. Storytellers shouldn't be capricious or abusive about this, but it's appropriate to remind players that their characters are making a significant effort. In many cases, the search for appropriate and willing instructors and the time spent with fellow students can provide story ideas of their own.
It's entirely appropriate for players and Storytellers to come up with ideas for other new techniques. Keep in mind a few basic principles while experimenting:
• Many techniques are flexible. See if what you want is actually covered already as one manifestation of an existing technique.
• Don't go overboard on power levels. In general, one-dot techniques provide information and very simple, limited effects, with power rising gradually. If a new one-dot technique does more damage than existing four-dot techniques, it's unbalanced.
• As the psion era progresses, the boundaries between aptitudes blur. But fundamental distinctions do remain. Not everything you might like to do necessarily fits within any one aptitude, or any one mode within it.
Pure Thought: The telepath enters a state in which a single thought and emotion dominate all others within his mind. Ordinary background and subconscious mental noise fades out. The thought and emotion are something the telepath really does think and feel, even if they're only part of his overall state of mind; they can't be wholly irrelevant to his actual mindset of the moment.
System: Spend 1 Psi and concentrate for one action. (This counts as one full action for purposes of splitting dice pools, if the psion really wants to try something else in the same turn.) For the rest of the scene, all efforts to probe the psion's mind and get anything but the Pure Thought-created dominant state of mind suffer a difficulty penalty equal to half the psion's Psi score, rounded up. Efforts to probe the psion's psyche by non-psionic means like Rapport suffer a penalty equal to the psion's full Psi score.
Empathy deals with what people feel, believe, hope and fear. This aptitude has no direct effect on people's rational analysis or deliberate choicesÉthough it can affect reason and cognition by upsetting (or enhancing!) their ability to think clearly. The Ministry rigidly polices the teaching of the techniques below that let the telepath manipulate others' behavior, making them available only after extensive psychological study and review of the telepath's career to date. Inevitably some mistakes happen, but on the whole the Ministry gives such power only to those who've proven themselves capable of wielding it responsibly.
• The Music of the City: The telepath senses the degree of discord or harmony among the other people in the immediate vicinity. He can't tell, via this technique alone, what the prevailing emotions actually are, only how much disagreement there is. A lynch mob in the throes of lethal passion registers to the Music of the City as consistent and harmonious, while a workshop voting on whether to unionize and a church whose congregation is deeply split on a matter of doctrine or practice both "sound" contentious and jangly.
If there is only one other mind in the area, or none at all, the Music is monotonic or altogether absent. A telepath stranded in unfamiliar circumstances can therefore use this technique to check whether he's alone.
System: Spend 1 Psi and roll. One success lets the telepath sense the degree of dissonance within three meters; each additional success doubles the range. The Music remains "audible" for (Psi) turns, plus an additional turn for each point the telepath spends.
Telepaths with three or more dots in Empathy automatically get some sense of the emotions carried on the Music. The details depend on the telepath's individual aesthetic preferences, but destructive emotions always "sound" unpleasant, while happy ones "sound" good. This technique never fully substitutes for Sense Emotion, but can provide a good sense of the general ambience.
•• Sense Aspiration: The telepath concentrates on a nearby target and picks up his sense of whether he is fulfilling his capabilities, or making progress toward his goals even if not there yet, or off on a wrong track, stuck in a dead end or otherwise just not there. The telepath cannot tell whether the target is correct, only what the target's own conviction is.
System: Spend 1 Psi and roll. A single success provides a broad, crude sense of the target's sense of self-fulfillment. Each additional success adds some additional information: a sense of progress or failure now compared with the past on two successes, a sense of lofty or mundane aspirations on three successes, and increasingly detailed insight into the target's actual goals and self-appraisal on four and five successes. Keep in mind that this technique does not provide any insight into the target's degree of self-deception, and a telepath who takes everything learned via Sense Aspiration as gospel may be setting herself up for trouble later.
••• The Air of Authority: The telepath picks up the prevailing expectations in bystanders' minds as to what trustworthy authority is like. He does not learn precisely who they regard as legitimate authorities, the contents of their leaders' views or anything else of the sort, only the behavioral cues that tell these people "this is a leader to trust and obey." He can then act on those cues or not, as he chooses. Note that the telepath doesn't sense what would actually be in bystanders' best interests, only what they're inclined to follow.
System: Spend 1 Psi and roll. Each success adds +1 to the telepath's Command and Intimidation rolls for the rest of the scene. If, in the course of the scene, the makeup of the immediate population changes enough that different standards of leadership prevail — because a lot of people arrived or left, or the telepath moved — make a Psi roll to reattune to the new consensus. The first such reattunement roll costs no Psi, but if the situation changes again, the second and ensuing reattunements each cost an additional Psi (1 Psi for the second, 2 Psi for the third, etc.).
•••• The Well of Feeling: The telepath extends an emotional damper throughout the vicinity, "draining off" a particular chosen emotion — hope, fear, lust, greed, or something else comparably fundamental. While the Well remains open, those within range cannot feel a particular emotion without unusual effort, and may not realize that anything external interferes even so. Those who leave the area (or who are still there when the Well closes) regain the ability to feel the chosen emotion normally, though their emotional state must shift to it naturally: even though its absence was induced artificially, the emotion really is gone from their psyches, not waiting to rebound immediately.
System: Spend 2 Psi and roll. The Well drains off the specified emotion from everyone within attunement range (see Trinity, p. 192), and lasts for ten minutes per success. (The telepath can choose to close the Well earlier, if she wants.) Anyone with a strong subconscious drive or external provocation to feel the drained-off emotion must roll Willpower or Psi, whichever is higher. A single success lets him feel the drained-off emotion for one turn. Getting as many or more successes than on the Well of Feeling roll breaks the effect on that individual altogether, and leaves the individual aware of something artificially blocking his emotions.
••••• The Orchestrator of the City: The telepath focuses on a particular subject — a person, place, idea, thing, etc. — and then reaches into the emotions of those in the area. Without conscious effort or decision, people within range who sympathize with or otherwise support the subject gather around one designated point of attraction, while those who reject or dislike it gather at another. The more intense an individual's feelings, the more strongly they're drawn to one or another of the attractors.
System: Spend 3 Psi and 1 Willpower and roll. If successful, the orchestration affects all within attunement range, and lasts for ten minutes, plus ten minutes per additional success. The points of sympathetic and hostile attraction can be anywhere within range, and the telepath can move either or both at up to normal walking speed without additional concentration. (At the cost of one full turn's concentration, he can move either or both anywhere else in range immediately).
People responding to the orchestration will not put themselves in immediate danger — they won't walk into fires or off cliffs, for instance — but they do proceed with determined persistence past mundane obstacles. Once at the point of attraction, or as close as they can get, they act as if they'd naturally gathered in support of or opposition to the subject. That is, the telepath has just created two mobs, or at least potential mobs. Ministry telepaths generally use this technique only when in teams, with other telepaths on hand to control and study the gatherings.
Individuals who make an Awareness roll with as many or more successes than on the Orchestrator roll are aware of feeling a particular compulsion to go somewhere, and may make a Willpower roll to avoid acting on it. A single success suffices in most cases, though an individual with especially strong passions on the subject makes the roll at +1 difficulty or more, at Storyteller discretion. The telepath may spend 1 Psi and 1 Willpower and make a second roll to disperse the crowd, any time before the effect wears off. If this second roll succeeds, affected people aren't aware of anything artificial having happened to them. Otherwise, they do realize that they've been manipulated once the effect ends.
This aptitude deals with information and its movement among minds. Where Empathy focuses on emotions, Mindshare deals in data — specific, quantifiable facts (even if the fact is "this is wrong information which I wish you to accept as true"). The Ministry restricts even the low-dot techniques of this aptitude, regarding them as unsuitable use for any mind which does not submit to the most rigorous standards of ethical scrutiny and intellectual integrity.
• Inspiration: The telepath focuses on a subject (not herself) and passing a jolt of confidence, courage or sheer persistence — some manifestation of the will to persist because the goal is worth overcoming a present trouble.
System: Spend 1 Psi and roll. The subject receives one free Willpower to spend by the end of the scene, after which it's lost. Every two additional successes and another dot. The subject must be within line of sight, and is aware of receiving an external boost alongside the sense of rightness in his chosen path.
•• Synchronicity: The telepath picks a particular idea or insight, and spreads it through the area. Everyone within range arrives at the idea through apparently natural means, either as the apparently logical outcome of a chain of reasoning or as a bolt from the blue that nonetheless feels natural and appropriate.
System: Spend 1 Psi and roll. If successful, the telepath affects everyone within two meters; the range doubles with each additional success. Those affected pick up on the idea by the end of the scene. The idea may contain the equivalent of up to one simple sentence's worth of information per two levels of Mindshare the telepath knows, rounded up. Thus a telepath who knows one or two levels of Mindshare could spread the idea that "the Ministry is the most honest organization in the Chinese government," while someone with three or four levels could add "the Æon Society means well for the people of China" and someone with five levels could go beyond that to suggest "we ought to grant the Autonomous Regions more independence".
If a target has some very strong bias against the concept, she may make a Willpower roll. One success weakens the idea down to something that occurs but seems clearly wrong and inappropriate; getting as many or more successes than on the Synchronicity roll allows the target to realize that someone's trying to implant something into her mind.
••• Shared Perceptions: The telepath and a chosen subject gain full access to each others' sensory experience of the surrounding world. It takes some effort to shift from one person's sensorium to the other, more to try selecting some senses from one participant and some from the other, and still more to let both sets of senses send signals and try to separate them in the mind.
System: Spend 1 Psi, plus another per additional subject, and roll. Unwilling targets may make a Willpower roll to resist, and fend off the sharing if they get more successes than the telepath did with the Shared Perceptions roll. Make an Awareness roll to shift perceptions from one participant's body to another, at +1 difficulty to exclude one particular sense or +2 difficulty to pick and choose specific senses. Allowing sensory input to overlap does not require an Awareness roll, but it's distracting — anyone trying this suffers a difficulty penalty of (6 - Psi) to all rolls involving interaction with the outside world.
Shared Perceptions do not include thoughts, feelings or other mental phenomena, only the sensory data coming in to the mind. The effect lasts for one scene, or earlier if the telepath chooses to end it sooner. Other subjects may make a Willpower roll to cut themselves loose prematurely, and can do so with as many or more successes than on the Shared Perception roll.
•••• Mental Landscape: The telepath and one or more subjects stop perceiving the outside world and experience a noetic environment reflecting their thoughts and feelings.
System: Spend 2 Psi, plus 1 Psi per additional person to include in the emerging mindscape, and roll. If successful, the psion creates a mindscape as described in "Mental Landscapes," below. Unwilling subjects may make a Willpower roll to resist inclusion, and need as many or more successes than the psion got on the Mental Landscape roll. The mindscape lasts for the rest of the scene; participants may make a Willpower roll to drop out earlier, and need as many or more successes than on the initial roll.
••••• The Library of Babel: The telepath and chosen subjects merge their knowledge at a subconscious level — they can all draw on each other's training and experience to perform abilities at the highest competence enjoyed by anyone in the gestalt. This does not provide conscious access to memories, only a sense of what must be done to accomplish a particular task.
System: Spend 2 Psi and 1 Willpower, and roll. One subject per success is included along with the telepath in the resulting gestalt. For the rest of scene, as long as the participants stay within attunement range, they all perform as if they had the highest ability rating of anyone involved. The telepath automatically knows who's contributing the knowledge for a particular feat; others may make a Psi roll to do so. A botched roll drawing on someone else's knowledge disconnects that individual from the gestalt.
Many Telepathy techniques involve the use of sight. However, there are blind telepaths, and also sighted telepaths who prefer to work through other senses. Any technique normally requiring sight can be modified to work through sound, smell, touch and even taste. This last option is rarest, for the very simple reason that licking subjects is often not a useful or desirable approach. Ranges depend on the sense in question. Sound carries over distances comparable to line of sight, smell about half that, and the other senses require direct contact.
A telepath can choose to learn techniques based on any sense the first time around, but in practice it's disorienting to rely on two or more senses on a regular basis. A telepath whose techniques depend on more more than one sense for input risks psionic dysfunction (see below) at the fourth dot of a mode rather than the fifth. Once a telepath learns a technique based on one sense, adapting it to another requires half the experience points required to learn it originally, rounded up.
When people think of telepathy gone bad, they generally think of Psychbending. This aptitudes focuses on the direct manipulation of others, and has nearly unlimited potential for abuse. All the Ministry's usual security measures apply with extra force to Psychbending research and development, and the Ministry reserves the right to use any means necessary to prevent the aptitude's abuse by others. Even the most closely scrutinized telepaths activated for other orders seldom get a chance to learn these techniques.
• Passion Recognition: The telepath examines a subject's noetic pattern in search of points of compulsion. Depending on the individual, these may be addictions, overwhelming psychological drives or other matters where the individual's reason cannot readily override the urge.
System: Spend 1 Psi and roll. Each success identifies a particular driving urge within the subject, who must be within the telepath's line of sight.
•• Calming the Torrent: The telepath weakens the subject's passions and drives, rendering her susceptible to command. Affected individuals are markedly calm and placid, even when acting alertly and promptly in the face of danger.
System: Spent 1 Psi and roll. Each success reduces the target's temporary Willpower by 1 for the rest of the scene. The telepath must be able to make eye contact (or comparable direct engagement with another sense, as described in "In The Empire of the Senses" above). Targets reduced to 0 Willpower this way do not suffer the compulsion to act in accordance with their Nature so as to regain Willpower. Instead, they remain especially open to suggestion from others.
••• The Good Citizen: This technique combines several specific commands into a single package, the result of years of experiment both in the lab and in the field. In theory it could be modified to allow for a different set of commands, but so far none of the thieves who've grabbed the crucial data on this technique have managed to do so. The Good Citizen transforms its subject into just that — a good citizen, by the standards of the New Chinese Empire and the Ministry of Psionic Affairs. The subject is obedient to authorities, dutiful in family obligations, and devoted to virtue, freedom and responsibility as Bue Li promotes them (see "Bue Li's Agenda" on p. XX).
System: Spend 2 Psi and make a resisted roll of Psi against the target's Willpower. If the telepath achieves one success, the target becomes slightly inclined toward the bundle of virtues. Two successes make the target seriously inclined toward them; she must make a Willpower roll to act contrary to them. Each additional success thereafter adds +1 to the difficulty of this roll, to a maximum of +5. The changes are permanent, though the subject may later come to a changed outlook through normal means.
•••• Psychic Community: This technique lets a telepath affect a whole target population at once. Whatever the majority view is on any topic becomes everyone's view: the consensus imposes itself on individual dissent. Only the strongest-willed individuals can resist this.
System: Spend 2 Psi and 1 Willpower and roll. If successful, the Psychic Community effect works on everyone within attunement range. Individuals whose current Willpower is less than or equal to the number of success automatically join the consensus, losing any minority opinions they may have. Individuals with higher Willpower must make a Willpower roll to resist, and need as many or more successes than on the Psychic Community roll.
The consensus ebbs and flows as people move in and out of range; the telepath can freeze it any time before the end of the scene, at which point everyone's mind settles into agreement. The changes themselves become innate — the consensus view doesn't wear off, though individuals can again change their minds naturally, through normal processes of social interaction and personal decision-making.
Each additional Psi spent lets the telepath introduce one simple sentence's worth of outlook into the consensus, which prevails among all affected individuals just as if it were a majority view.
••••• The Receptive Soul: This technique breaks down some of the noetic structures that support individual psychic identity, allowing the telepath to use the subject as a "vessel." If the psychic bridge-building succeeds, the telepath can at any time take full control of the subject as long as the subject is within attunement range. The degree of control can vary, at the telepath's whim, from slight nudges up to full-blown "possession." Bue Li uses this technique with extremely precise control to move from one mental host to another.
System: Spend 3 Psi and 1 Willpower and make a resisted roll against the target's Willpower (if the target resists), or a regular Psi roll (if the target cooperates). If successful, this technique builds a lasting connection between telepath and subject. Unfortunately, there's usually a great deal of collateral damage. The subject's temporary Willpower and Psi both fall to 0, and must rebuild normally. In addition, the subject's permanent Willpower and Psi both fall to 1, plus one per additional success on the Receptive Soul roll up to their usual maximums. Psions capable of using this technique usually apply it in an extended roll, precisely to avoid blasting the subject's capacity for psi and determination to smithereens.
The connection between psyches lasts for 1 week, doubled for each additional success on the roll. While it's in effect, telepath is constantly aware in a low-keyed way of how the subject feels, and can at any time spend one action to shift awareness into the target's senses. With one turn of concentration, the telepath can take control at any desired duration and intensity, from issuing a single command to drawing on all the subject's memories and abilities. In this state of full engagement, the subject also receives fragments of the telepath's thoughts and feelings — see the description of Chung Fengyi on p. XX for an example.
The environment of the mind is a strange, often unsettling place, even for experienced telepaths. The rules of physical reality don't apply. Here, belief and determination rule.
When entering in a mental landscape, or mindscape, each individual gains a pool of psyche points, equal to Psi + the sum of her mental attributes + her single highest attribute in one of the other categories (physical or social). The player should divide these points among states of minds, assigning a general category and a focus to each. Among Ministry agents, states like Conviction (supremacy of the Chinese system), Ambition (status within the Ministry) and Love (favored individual) are common. A psychopathic killer might have Envy (others' happiness) and Lust (the process of murder), along with other traits. The category should be broad-ranging, like those that techniques like Sense Emotion and Well of Feeling work on, while the focus should be fairly clear-cut and specific, suitable for inclusion as a one-sentence idea for Mindshare transmission.
There's no limit on how highly rated any single state can be. Obsessive narrowness has its advantages as well as its drawbacks. Few sane people have very many states above 5 dots, however. It's also possible to keep some psyche points in reserve for specific tasks later.
Mental states substitute for attributes while in the mindscape. A character with a strong Conviction pertaining to justice would use that Conviction + Intimidation as a dice pool, while a character trying to persuade another to give up opposition to a government plan would use Conviction or Ambition + Rapport. If the character lacks any particularly relevant mental state, as determined by the Storyteller in consultation with the player, he must roll the ability alone, or may not even be able to attempt the feat at all. This is the tradeoff between a few very strong mental states and more, weaker ones.
Example: Ministry agent Xun Lu creates a mindscape within which to examine captured serial killer Choming An. Xun has Psi 4, Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3 and Dexterity 4, and therefore has 17 psyche points to spend. Choming has Psi 1, Perception 3, Intelligence 2, Wits 4, and Charisma 3, and therefore has 13 psyche points.
Xun's dominant states include Duty (Ministry), Love (China), Respect (Parents), Friendship (Teammates) and Enthusiasm (Hiking). Xun's player assigns 3 points to each and keeps 2 in reserve.
Choming's dominant states are simpler: Envy (Powerful People), Lust (Freshly Dead Bodies) and Hatred (Mortality). The ST assigns 5 points to Envy (Powerful People) and 4 points to each of the others, with nothing left in reserve.
At the moment of creation, the mindscape is always a featureless twilight plane. Each mental state lets the character define one feature of the mindscape, and it emerges with an intensity equal to the character's rating in that state. Changing a feature requires an extended Psi roll. First the changer must accumulate enough successes to match the feature's intensity. Each success after that lets the changer raise or lower the feature's intensity by 1, or modify it somewhat.
The feature can be part of the foreground, or part of the environment. If it interacts with the characters in some way, it's considered to have a dice pool equal to the strength of the mental state someone used to create it, and to have the same number of health levels, evenly divided among Bruised, Hurt and Wounded. (Extra levels left over after division become Bruised levels.)
The initiator of the mindscape goes first, with others acting in order from highest-rated mental state down to whoever has the lowest rating in his most intense state.
Example: Xun acts first. Knowing that Choming prefers nighttime for his awful crimes, Xun makes it a sunny day. He adds the sound of Xun's family in happy conversation somewhere in the distance, the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing as decorated for some formal occasion, a crowd of contented mandarins in procession and a glider soaring overhead, towing a banner listing the major neo-Confucian virtues. Each of these phenomena has a strength of 3.
Choming uses his five-dot envy to blot out the sky behind dense, dark rainclouds. Since his 5-dot state is stonger than the 3-dot state Xun used to create the sky, he actually makes it a dark twilight verging on full night. He sends constant earthquakes throughout the area, and summons forth a lava monster to slaughter the mandarins. He hopes their screams will drown out his family's voices, but he can't do anything about that directly.
Once the landscape's defined, the participants in the mindscape can go to work on it and each other. As noted above, their mental states substitute for regular attributes.
It's also possible to attack directly, with the intent of transformation. This requires rolls of Psi plus a mental state allowing for creative action. When the attacker accumulates as many successes as the strength rating of the target feature, he gains control of it and can manipulate it within the general framework of its nature. Xun could make the clouds clear rapidly, or summon a gentle rain, or even call down a tornado, but could not make them disappear instantly or turn them into a forest in the sky. The attacker can press on for more successes, and with twice as many successes as the target's strength, total control ensues. With eight successes, Xun could do anything at all with the clouds, from banishing them to pulling them down into the hectoring form of Choming's ex-wife.
Each participant can voluntarily let one of her features dissipate and apply the mental state used to create it to making a new feature next turn. It's also possible to create new features, by "attacking" a chosen part of the mindscape. The empty space has the equivalent of a 3-dot rating in not being anything in particular yet, which the would-be creator must overcome as usual. Upon accumulating six successes, the creator can define a new feature. Raising or lowering the new feature's strength by one requires an additional two successes.
Unassigned psyche points can:
• Heal damage, at two health levels per psyche point.
• Add to the strength of one of the character's mental states for one turn, at one level of state strength per psyche point.
• Assist in the creation of new features, at two successes per psyche point.
Participants can also choose to convert Willpower into psyche points, each dot of Willpower becoming one psyche points. These cannot be regained until the mindscape ends.
Participants can create weapons and armor. Each counts as a distinct feature, adding soak (in the case of armor) or automatic levels of damage (in the case of weapons), at one level per point of state strength. Otherwise combat proceeds with unarmed combat maneuvers.
Vehicles, animals and other modes of movement (like flying carpets, whirlwinds, etc.) appar with whatever performance specifications the creator desires. The mindscape is infinite, and going beyond the last defined feature merely means entering an endless expanse of undefined gray void. Vehicles created after the first can perform as well as the first no matter what their appearance or form; adding additional capabilities requires a separate act of creation or modification. In all cases, the rolls for handling the vehicle are its creating strength + Pilot or whatever the relevant ability is.
Example: Choming lets the earthquakes dissipate and summons up a strength 4 dream of a biotech fighter spaceship, dripping with venom and zooming away at faster-than-light speeds. Now that Choming has established FTL as part of the environment, Xun let the sunny day (hidden now, anyway) dissipate and create a strength 3 20th century prop airplane which can nonetheless fly at FTL speeds. In combat, Xun's player rolls (3 + Pilot) dice, while the ST rolls (4 + Pilot) for Choming.
Anyone reduced to Incapacitated level in the mindscape passes out. His features lose one strength rating, and any control he's exerting stops, leaving features to act as last commanded. Anyone reduced to death in the mindscape enters a coma state and must recover in accordance with regular healing rates. An attacker who reduces another mindscape participant to Incapacitated has the option of binding the loser into the mindscape. The victim must then make a Willpower roll to regain external consciousness; this roll can be attempted once per day (by outside time) and requires as many or more success than the strength of the state of the binder used to defeat the victim.
The mindscape usually lasts for one scene. Time passes normally unless someone dedicates some psyche points to modifying it: each point of state strength allows the character to double or halve the flow of time inside the mindscape. It's therefore possible to use mindscapes for confrontations that pass very rapidly in external terms, and to create mental prisons.
Example: After subduing the lava monster, and a series of other distractions, Xun confronts Choming directly, and renders him incapacitated in a series of attacks using Duty + Martial Arts against Choming's Envy + Brawl. Xun wraps strips of the mindscape around Choming, binding him there. Choming will now spend some time imprisoned in his own mindÉand it will feel much longer, because Xun lets the family noise dissipate. This frees three psyche points, which he uses to speed the flow of time: x2 for the first point, x4 for the second, then x8 for the third. Every minute in the world at large feels like eight to Choming, once he regains consciousness. The exhausted telepath then leaves the scene.
Telepathy is one thing — the aptitude — not three separate things strung together without any real, fundamental connection. The three-fold division of modes does reflect an actual division within the aptitude's potential, but it's also partly a matter of tradition and practice, the evolved pedagogic conventions of the Ministry and other telepaths as well as a scientific reality. The modes must work together if the telepath wants to preserve psychic stability.
Psions who lose track of the unity within the aptitude and concentrate too exclusively on one of the modes develop psychological and behavior abnormalities. Specifically a telepath with one mode at five dots and both of the other modes at one dots enters a state of psionic dysfunction. Less intense forms of the abnormalities described below appear in telepaths with one mode at four dots and the others at one dot each, or with one mode at four or five dots and one of the others at one dot but they don't really become crippling until the dominant mode reaches five dots and both of the others stay at one dot.
The dysfunction remains in effect until the telepath adds two more levels to the other modes, either one level each or two levels in one of them. The dysfunction then fades rapidly, within a few days. The memory remains vivid, of course, and many formerly dysfunctional telepaths need counseling to regain lost confidence.
• Empathic Dysfunction: A character overly focused on Empathy becomes hyper-sensitive to the feelings of others, and in particular to their feelings about him. He becomes euphoric when convinced that others in the area approve of him, despondent when suspecting they disapprove, and in either case goes to great extremes to find out what they think and to try to make them think well of him. Semi-conscious abuses of his powers usually follows. When by himself, he's prone to wild mood swings, often repeatedly within a few minutes, and usually (though not always) feels driven to seek out the company of others. As soon as others notice this frenzy, the character suffers a +2 difficulty penalty to all social interactions, and even before they notice, must make a Willpower roll to resist the urge to forcibly alter others' unfavorable opinions of him.
• Mindsharing Dysfunction: A character overly focused on Mindshare becomes obsessed with the knowledge in others' heads. She tends to favor direct mental communication over verbal or other physical channels, regarding anything but thought itself as imprecise and unreliable. She's driven to seek out others' secrets, to find out what others are doing and what their motives are. She's also highly susceptible to adopting the strong opinions of others as her own, particularly when she lacks strong preexisting convictions on the subject. She must make a Willpower roll each scene to restrain the urge to probe others' minds by telepathic means, and another Willpower roll on each instance when an opportunity to snoop in private documents or other evidence arises. She's also at +2 difficulty to resist efforts at persuasion and intimidation unless she has a very strong view on a topic.
• Psychbending Dysfunction: A character overly focused on Psychbending becomes obsessed with control, eager to control others and thoroughly paranoid about whether others are trying to control him. Any use of Telepathy in his vicinity makes him suspect a plot to manipulate him, and in turn he uses his own powers almost casually to try to keep others subservient to him. He sees all interactions in behavioristic terms, regarding people as complex automata generating fixed output in response to specified input. Intuitive and otherwise non-rational motives confuse him and make him suspect an unseen plot. He suffers a +2 difficulty penalty on all relevant social interactions, and must make a Willpower roll each scene to avoid trying to force — by both psionic and neutral means — everyone around him to follow his orders.
The Ministry has a particularly organized program for dealing with psionic dysfunction. Any member who shows clear signs of dysfunction is immediately removed from active duty and kept under close watch at an isolated facility. Instructors attempt to persuade the member of her imbalance and the need to redress it, and offer crash training to help the dysfunctional regain balance as quickly as possible. Individuals who resist suasion are subject to coercive treatment if the Ministry regards them or their work as particularly important — the Ministry simply can't afford to let talent telepaths go to waste for the sake of essentially petty obsessions.
At the end of the period covered by this book, it's half a year after the calamitous failure of a Norçan experiment in Venezuela. The magnitude of the ensuing noetic disruptions has become clear to all psions, but details as to what precisely is happening and why are hard to come by.
As noted at the start of this chapter, you are not under any obligation to use everything that appears in a Trinity supplement just because we printed it. If you would prefer to keep the interesting cool bits of the Venezuelan Phenomenon and disregard the complications, you can. If you want to change the complications, you can. If you have a different idea for Process 418 already in mind and don't think this fits with that, stick with your idea. If you want to remove the mechanical consequences but preserve the feel of events described here for narrative purposes, do so.
Future Trinity books will refer to the Phenomenon and its manifestations, but they will indicate clearly what parts owe their existence to the noetic disturbance and consequences described here, so that you can continue to pick and choose what seems to suit your series.
The Venezuelan Phenomenon is a self-feeding turbulence in the noetic medium. It's not the first of its kind.
Doctor Sir Calvin Hammersmith created such a disturbance in 1922, and its echoes swept the world for several years. (See Adventure for a far more detailed treatment of that episode's consequences.) Noetic — and quantum — power infused not just people, but plants and animals, and even portions of the landscape. The world changed dramatically in some areas, in ways that were difficult to explain at the time. Was the Earth always actually hollow? Did the forces unleashed by Dr. Hammersmith open connections to alternate universes? Was it something else? By the time anyone had even the rudiments of a comprehensive theory, much of the excess power was draining away, leaving behind less than sufficient evidence to study.
Dr. Michael Donighal, who'd begun calling himself Divis Mal sometime in the latter half of the twentieth century, deliberately created a more powerful quantum disturbance in 1998. The so-called Galatea Incident was not an accident at all, but the result of careful planning and years of preparation on the part of Donighal and his allies. Unlike the Hammersmith incident, the 1998 disturbance was concentrated almost exclusively in the quantum medium. Dr. Donighal had apparently learned enough about Hammersmith's work through various channels, including studies of Donighal's own growing power, to concentrate on producing a more limited range of effects. Thus there was no boom in the population of psions to correspond to the sudden increase in the ranks of novas.
(Unlike Dr. Hammersmith, Dr. Donighal didn't rely on machinery to create his disturbance. He built up the power to do it in himself, with assistance from others in the still-secret Teragen movement. Instruments helped Donighal look for auspicious moments in the quantum medium, but the work itself was an act of sheer nova-class will.)
Where the Hammersmith event took a few years to wind down, Donighal's effect lasted for decades. Some scholars of the Trinity era speculate that he and/or others renewed it from time to time; at this point it's impossible to say for sure, since nobody in a position to discuss workings of Teragen inner councils remains both alive and available for examination in the 2120s.
Until August 3rd, 2122, this was all largely a matter of historical interest.
The noetic medium is, somewhat metaphorically, expanding and contracting unpredictably. Normally there's a straightforward connection between noetic "distances" and physical ones. Even when, as with attunement and various techniques, there are links based on emotional closeness, prior contact, and other factors apart from physical distance, these relationships normally remain constant. They change according to fairly well-known rules, when they change at all.
At least they used to.
Now things "move around" in their noetic relationships. An object that's "close" one moment may be very "far" the next. This problem is worst for the practitioners of long-range aptitudes like Clairsentience and Teleportation. For a brief period in August, 2122, any effect reaching more than a few hundred kilometers or a few days in time simply wouldn't work at all. Only as the year wore on did a new pattern to things begin to emerge, allowing techniques to function over longer spans.
It's unclear how long the disruption unleashed in Venezuela will last. It might clear up in months, or years, or decades — so far clairsentient vision of the future remains hazy. Indeed, in the latter part of 2122, most clairsentients feel very uncomfortable indeed. They're losing their connections to the past, with contact with any period before August becoming harder and harder. As the world moves into a new noetic space, the "moat" created by the August accident deepens and widens. Sometime early in 2123, based on the evidence so far, it'll become essentially impossible to reach back before the accident.
ISRAn analysts put the pieces together in the last few months of 2122, realizing that the reason they couldn't see the Earth's future from before the accident is this continuing noetic flux. The Earth itself will not, apparently, actually be destroyed or removed. It's just in a very different psionic context. Speculation about the "person" who may be part of what ISRA records refer to as Process 418 continues, with a great many competing theories. Pai Del Fuego is a popular candidate, with Dr. Hammersmith a close second. The pool of other candidates spreads out from there to include just about everyone of conceivable relevance along with probably mythical figures like the Antichrist.
First the good news: the chaos is manageable. By the end of the year, psions have figured out the particular mental quirks needed to analyse the noetic situation of the moment and respond accordingly. It takes some practice to get the hang of this — in game mechanics, a total of 10 successes for each technique, accumulated in one or more attempts at using it. A botch destroys the successes accumulated so far, and forces starting over. Once the psion has practicing using a technique in light of the extra awareness required, the new mental discipline becomes semi-conscious, then subconscious. In addition, anyone learning new techniques after about October, 2122, automatically gets instruction in this, so that they start off ready for us.
Until then, there's a bunch of fumbling around. During the transitional period, roll an extra die with each attempt at psi use. A 1 on this disturbance die cancels out two successes, and a 2 or 3 cancels out one success. On the other end, a 9 adds one success, and a 10 adds two successes. Unexpectedly potent success is almost as common in the months right after the accident as unexpectedly nasty failure. Psions can spend additional Psi to buffer against this effect: 1 point for 1-2 dot techniques, 2 points for 3-4 dot techniques, or 3 points for 5-dot techniques, and the disturbance die doesn't affect the roll. It also prevents successes from the ensuing roll from adding to the total for learning purposes described above, since it's using brute force to overcome the problem rather than gaining insight about how to work with the new situation.
Some psions are working to develop "wild" versions of existing techniques, monitoring the noetic medium for exploitable surges. This is an optional rule intended specifically for use with the freeform system presented in the Trinity Player's Guide.
Learning the wild version of a mode requires the same dots, bonus points, or experience point cost as acquiring an auxiliary mode. The psion may, upon completing this training and practice, use any technique within that mode in a somewhat more powerful but uncontrolled form, in addition to regular usages.
For +1 difficulty, the psion may designate two categories of result which each get +1 bonus success. The Storyteller randomly chooses or picks a third category which suffers a -1 success penaltyÉafter the player allocates successes among the various result categories.
For +2 difficulty, the psion may enhance three categories of result with an additional success each. The Storyteller randomly chooses or picks two categories to suffer a -1 success penalty, again doing so after the player allocates successes.
The Storyteller shouldn't apply the penalty to categories the player's chosen to enhance.
The astute reader will notice that some of the "aberrants" in Terra Verde and this book don't seem much like the twisted freaks normally presented in Trinity supplements. That's because they are not in fact aberrants in the sense that any psion would mean by the term. They are other products of the noetic disturbance — paramorphs as well as psions and novas, in Æon Society terminology, or stalwarts, daredevils and mesmerists in the categories identified by Dr. Donighal in the 1920s.
If players and Storytellers would like to use Adventure as a resource for post-Venezuelan Phenomenon games in the Trinity era, they can. The rules for knacks mesh smoothly with the rules for psi powers, and Inspiration is a weird thing for noetic scholars to try to figure out. It's also possible to simulate the general idea without actually using the other game's rules. See the rules for Nihonjin Superiors, on p. XX, as guidelines. In essence, these are artificially created daredevils, with higher-than-usual attributes. Drop the starting attributes down to the normal Trinity levels and keep the rest of the process, and you've got a good approximation of the Adventure category.
Groups who've been waiting for a good opportunity to use Aberrant as a Trinity resource need wait no longer. Build the new breed of nova with 15 nova points and a starting Taint of 1, and an initial limit of 2 dots in Mega-Attributes. (They can develop normally in the course of play.)
The shockwave unleashed in Venezuela is continuing to propagate through nearby space, at many times the speed of light. In due season the world will find out what consequences it has for forces outside the solar system, but that's a story for another time.
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