Psionics System

                Ever since I saw Star Wars in the theater, the Force has always been an ability I wished I could have. Who wouldn’t like to be able to move things with their mind or convince the “weak minded” that “these weren’t the droids you’re looking for”? Toward the end of high school, Dungeons and Dragons became a fascination, which exposed me to a systematic world of psionics.

                That first edition D&D rule set was cool and all, but it didn’t quite fit what I thought it should be. Over the years, there have been different rule sets (and I’ve looked at a lot of them), progression and abilities characters could obtain, but they didn’t feel organic to me. The abilities felt like they were all isolated powers a character could have with no real rhyme or reason. So, in the back of my mind, I wanted to create my own system.

                In The Paladin Awakens, there were two types of psionic individuals: Psylams and Psionicists. The Psylams (short for “psychic bedlam”) can’t learn their abilities. They experience a “psylamic episode”, which can be quite painful, where the brain cuts new pathways to open up a new ability, or multiple abilities, in Eric’s case. These new abilities are “random” in that they can build on existing abilities or be an ability which is outside their normal progression. Normally, these people would have only 1-3 abilities. Eric is an exception to this rule with over a dozen.

                Psionicists learn their abilities through a logical progression which builds on the previous. A baseline Psionicist will have root telepathic, macro telekinetic and psychometabolic (mind over body) abilities. They can communicate with others telepathically, fight and defend themselves telepathically, lift and throw small objects telekinetically and “order” their body to heal faster than normal. As the character becomes more experienced, they can learn new abilities from the telepathic, telekinetic and psychometabolic lines of abilities.

Each of these new lines will have a power progression that cannot be skipped like the Psylams can. Once the character has reached a certain threshold of abilities, new lines, such as micro-kinetics and quantum-kinetics, will become available. This allows the character to choose the path of abilities they want to specialize in. There would be more paths and abilities that no one character could progress in all the possible lines of abilities.

Many of the characters in my book are Psylams, but there are a few “low-level” Psionicists. Eric’s world hasn’t developed a systematic way to train psionic individuals how to progress with their abilities. It’s all a slow learning process. After the God’s Paladin trilogy is completed, I hope to delve into how this training would come to pass in Eric’s world.

I hope you enjoyed this tidbit of info about psionics. I’m not sure what’s happening next month. I seem to have lost my list of newsletter articles, so now I have to think about them again. :D

Website Update

Completed:

1.      Reading List page

In the works:

2.      Eric’s world timeline

3.      Canthany system

4.      Psionics System

And many more.

The Paladin Awakens Progress Report

I am up to chapter 23 with the ACFW Scribes critique group. My plan to be completed by the end of April is likely in vain. I have taken a course on how to write a query letter for agents which opened my eyes to what is needed and will consume more time. There are other classes and an online conference I’m attending in March which will take more time. My timeline for completing the critiquing process will be in May now.