Lore and Legends of the Dezzyverse

Psionic Potential Among Sentients

In Traveller, there are mechanics for characters to realize Psionic Abilities. As a phenomenon, Psionics are widespread in charted space. It’s pretty safe to deduce that unless psionic abilities are specifically defined as being absent with a given species, at least some portion of the population has psionic potential. Still, with the exception of the Ancients (who are not around in the setting), the Droyne (who are what the surviving Ancients became over the last 300,000 years), and the Zhodani (who the Ancients kept as “pets” the longest, do we see a pattern?), Psionics are rare.

Because Psionics are rare, they’re often misunderstood by society at large, and feared. We’ll get further into this later on, but except for the Zhodani Consulate, and a handful of minor pocket empires, Psionics are actively suppressed in most every polity in Charted space.

Mechanically, during character creation, it is very rare for a player to make a character with these abilities. In Traveller, the events necessary that gives the player an option to develop their character’s Psionic Potential are rare enough, that most often, the dice are “massaged” to make it practical to develop a psionic character. Because of this, Psionics are often ignored in most Traveller campaigns, except in instances when it is in the hands of the antagonists.

The other factor that works against the wider popularity with Psionics is how relatively weak they start, and how long it takes for them to develop into reliable, powerful abilities. As mentioned, just getting Psionics is difficult in the first place. When a player does get an opportunity to add Psionics to their character, they have to pursue their character’s training through character generation. Otherwise the character’s abilities are often not worth the resources needed to use them.

Psionic Mechanics

To use a character’s Psionic abilities, the character needs to spend time to activate an ability. This can be somewhat complicated and variable, Psionic abilities count as a Significant action so long as it takes less than six seconds to activate. If it takes more than six seconds, the ability will take multiple combat rounds, counted in multiples of six seconds (a psionic ability that takes 1d6 x 10 seconds will take 4 combat rounds if only a 2 is rolled (20 seconds / 6 seconds per round = 3 rounds + 2 seconds, activating on the 4th combat round), spend a resource (the Psionic points cost) and make a Psionic skill roll. During play, this combines to making a player commit a lot of effort into using their character’s Psionic powers without any guarantee of success. If the attempt fails, the player has essentially wasted up to several rounds, their psionic resources and added the natural disappointment of failing a skill check.

Compared to simply making a mundane attack or performing a simple skill check, Psionics are inefficient and suboptimal options. Worse, the Player is losing a lot of spotlight just to do attempt a single act while other characters enjoy multiple combat rounds of attempts to take the spotlight.

Psionics in the Traveller Universe are Secondary.

Psionic characters, even Zhodani, aren’t “Jedi Knights”, they don’t walk into firefights with a lazer sword and deflect incoming fire back into the enemy. They don’t tear capital ships out of orbit, crush armored vehicles or see the future unfold like a movie. Traveller isn’t that sort of environment and Psionics aren’t a stand-in for “spellcaster class”.

This means Psionic characters need to cultivate some non-psionic skills to function in the game as a well-rounded character. Psionics, because they use a Psionics Skill Check, often at high Difficulties, are unreliable. Most abilities are best used outside of combat situations, either as pre-combat buffs, or as out-of combat abilities. Taking 1d6 x 10 seconds out of combat to activate an ability is much less intrusive than 5 rounds in combat for a trick that will likely fail half-the-time.

Fortunately, this applies to NPCs and Antagonists as well, even the dreaded Zhodani Thought Police aren’t face-melting, teleporting bogeymen who can kill with little more than a thought. Even the most powerful psionic antagonist with a dose of Special Psi Drug on board, has a limited number of Psionic Strength Points. Even with a high Psionic skill, they still need to make an activation roll most of the time. The time requirements don’t change. Attack abilities like Assault still only affect one person at a time, and Teleportation is still limited by elevation and distance.

Even the guy in Black Zhodani Noble Battle Dress with a TL 16 Psi Blade (an elegant weapon from a more civilized age) isn’t the same as our favorite Dark Lord of the Sith (though, Citizens of the Imperium stats up a convincing facsimile of that dude). Even a Psionic Master so equipped will be in a whole world of ouch once shot with a PGHP-13 and the attacker rolls a 5 on the DD Dice (that’s 50 points of damage, enough to burn through the Armor Value of 27 and still have 23 points of damage incoming into the Dark Lord’s tender fleshy bits.

Psionics Institutes and the Hard Times

Ever since the Psionics Suppressions of 800 – 820 3i, the Psionics Institutes of the Third Imperium had been forced underground, hiding in the High Population worlds where the volume and speed of life served to mask the Institutes’ various cells. The biggest threat to the Institutes during the period following the Psionics Suppressions have been the Third, Fourth and Fifth Frontier Wars against the Zhodani Consulate.

The inevitable propaganda that comes with war, even war at the edge of Empire vilifies “the enemy” and their strengths. In the case of the Zhodani, this strength was Psionics. The same strategies to defend against insurrection and espionage from the Zhodani Consulate proved effective against uncovering the cells of the Psionics Institutes. Worse, for the Institutes, war propaganda spreads much further than the theater of conflict and a century of wars against the Zhodani rooted anti-psionic worries deep in the Imperial bureaucracy.

At the outbreak of the Rebellion War, only six years after the armistice that ended the Fifth Frontier War, many of the earliest conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of Emperor Strephon orbited around “mind control”. Zhodani plots, secret societies of telepaths, Dulinor himself being a secret psionic master, the “psionic illuminati”, and the list goes on. All of these theories enflame paranoia and fear against anyone who demonstrates, or are accused of demonstrating psionic abilities. Only the relative chaos of the Rebellion War prevented a second Psionics Suppression under Emperor Lucan (though, in the core of Lucan’s faction, the paranoid Emperor pursued endless programs of oppression of any number of perceived enemies and traitors).

By the beginning of the Hard Times in 1125 3i, The Black War period had both created swathes of territory beyond the reach of a faction’s core, and decimated the High Population worlds where the Psionics Institutes had endured for so long. The Institutes and the communities they educated were caught between witch-hunts by majority populations traumatized by war and the sudden freedom to operate more openly than they were allowed to for centuries. The result was a patchwork of disconnected psionic communities isolated on islands of civilization.

Some of these communities enjoyed a mutually beneficial arrangement with the non-psionic population, a symbiotic relationship where the gifts of the mind often meant the difference between which side of the survival margin the world would fall. Other communities succumbed to paranoia and fear, driving out anyone suspected of psionic ability or training like witches from antiquity, complete with inquisitions and executions. Yet other communities found themselves vulnerable to the predations of psionically empowered tyrants who used their gifts to elevate themselves into a psionic dictatorship. Like most of the worlds suffering through the Hard Times, each new system presented new problems and opportunities for Travellers.