Orichalcum Universe: New Psionic/Psychic/Supernatural Phenomena and Skills...

[Johnny1A.2]

PSYCHOPHYSICUS continued...

Active psionic skills work for a psychophysicus mostly as they do for a normal psion using Biopsionic Power. The big differences are raw strength, and the extra efficiency when these skills are self-directed.

EXAMPLE 2: Elaine has built up her current Power to 18. She decides to use her Life Extension skill on herself. She knows Life Extension at skill 16.

This works largely as described in GURPS 3e Psionics, but as a psychophysicus she gets a bonus when using her power on herself, equal to (Power/10), rounding up. So at current Power 18, she gets a +2 bonus on self-directed us. This bonus applies to both Power and skill. With increasing age, additional penalties apply in my world, but Elaine is only 35 and so there is as yet no penalty for age.

Life Extension requires a roll vs. (Power + Skill-10). So it is (current Power (18) + skill (16) -10) or 24. But she gets a +2 bonus on both Power and Skill, so 24 becomes 28!

She must roll under 28(!) or else she does not age that year. Except on a Critical Failure, she remains biologically 35 for another year.

Where being a psychophysicus helps enormously with this skill is that as she gets chronologically older, her high Power means that the time penalties are canceled out for much longer than with a normal psion.

EXAMPLE 2a: Now Elaine is chronologically 250, and biologically about 40. Her current Power is 22, her Life Extension skill is 18, and her age gives her a -8 penalty on the roll.

So, her current power is 22 with a +2 bonus, her skill is 18 with a +2 bonus, so it is 24+20-10 or 34. She has to beat a 34 on the roll to avoid aging. Odds are in her favor...

Even if the roll does fail, she still gets her usual HT rolls to avoid aging decline, and she rolls against her augmented HT, not her basic HT.

Thus it's not unusual for psychophysicus psions to live for a very long time, if they learn Life Extension. They are not immortal, of course, the negative penalties keep accumulating with time, so eventually even a psychophysicus will be overwhelmed. This could easily take 1000 years or more, though.

In my world, Life Extension can be used on others, at a -6 penalty to skill and -2 to Power. A psychophysicus using Life Extension on others does not get that double +2 bonuses. So...

EXAMPLE 2b: Elaine at 250 also wants to extend the life of her best friend Tanya. Tanya is 50, so there is no chronological penalty yet.

So Elaine rolls vs her current Power-2 (giving 20) and skill-6 (giving 12). Thus, to suspend aging for a year in Tanya, she must make a roll against 20+12-10 or 22. Odds are still in her favor.

It is harder to extend the lives of others, the time penalties are harder to overcome, but a psychophysicus is still far better at it than ordinary psions using the same skill, due to raw power. (Remember that most normal human psions will have a maximum Biopsionic Power somewhere between 5 and 10.)

Even when the time penalties get high, the psychophysicus can often overcome it.

EXAMPLE 2c: Elaine at 250. Having suspended aging in Tanya, now she wants to use it on Brandon, her older brother, who is 260. His 'time penalty' is -6. So to suspend aging for a year in Brandon, she needs to make a roll against current (Power -2 (20) + skill-6 (12) -10 -6), or (20+12-10-6) or 16. She will still probably succeed.

A psychophysicus can be a good friend or sibling to have...

To be continued...

[Johnny1A.2]

PSYCHOPHYSICUS continued...

Though there are advantages to being a psychophysicus, there is no escaping the fact that there are some very definite downsides.

To begin, the most obvious such downside is the lack of diversity of power and ability. The vast majority of psions, if one Power is awakened, can with time and effort master all six basic Powers, and the skills associated with them. The strength associated with each Power may and usually does vary, but all are available and potentially useable.

A psychophysicus, by nature, is limited only to one psionic Power: Biopsionics. Antipsi, ESP, Psychokinesis, Telepathy, and Teleportation are all entirely impossible to a psychophysicus. They are immensely strong in their one Power, but that Power is all they do or can possess.

Another downside is that even the 'passive' psionic abilities common to almost everyone are much more limited in a psychophysicus. A psychophysicus has a natural Mind Shield, just like everyone else, but the lack of Telepathy Power means that it is limited in strength to 1/2 their Will passively, or it can be increased to that of Will-1 with conscious effort. It can go no higher.

(There are some other mental defenses that are not in themselves psionic that can be learned by a psychophysicus, however.)

EXAMPLE 3: Elaine has an IQ of 10 and 2 levels of Strong Will, so her Will is 12. That means her passive, 'always on' natural Mind Shield has an effective Power of 6. That is better than nothing, but not as strong as even the typical passive Mind Shield of an average person.

With a conscious effort (requiring a use of the Concentrate maneuver), she can raise its Power to 11, but this requires a new Concentrate maneuver each turn to maintain the higher strength.

To make matters worse, most people generate a natural Antipsi aura that provides a certain amount of protection from close-range psi action. A psychophysicus does not.

A psychophysicus can not take part in any form of psionic gestalt. (There are technical reasons for this that are not relevant to the immediate discussion at hand.) Thus a psychophysicus can not add his or her Power to the pool of a gestalt, or draw from such a pool.

The raw power and highly idiosyncratic nature of that power makes a psychophysicus very 'visible' to some forms of psychic detection and scanning, including Sense/Read Aura and Psi Sense, among others.

Another disadvantage of being a psychophysicus is social. The enormous strength of their Power, especially their healing and life extension abilities, make them very tempting prizes to be controlled. In many settings, a psychophysicus would be very wise to keep his or her powers well hidden.

[Johnny1A.2]

FLUX CHANNELS/'LEY LINES'...

In the Orichalcum Universe, the people who claim that there is a supernatural aspect to the supposed 'lines' of ancient sites identified by Alfred Watkins in the 1920s are right...sort of, anyway. At least, it might be more accurate to say that they are not entirely wrong. Just mostly.

In the Orichalcum Universe, a few of the 'lines' Watkins identified actually do correspond to something real. Most of them do not, in part because he never had any clear definition of what constituted an 'ancient site'. Likewise, the people who think the builders of the old stone circles and monuments and burial mounds were consciously following 'supernatural' lines are also mostly wrong. What they are right about is that the lines do exist, and some ancient sites were placed where they were due to side-effects of that, or subconscious influences, or second- or third-hand influences by people who did know something about the effects.

What the ley-lines are, in the OU, are places on the surface of the Earth (as well as some some but mostly definitely not all other worlds) along which the Flux 'concentrates', becomes more accessible, more potent, more detectable. A fluxon can make contact with, and use of, the Flux more easily along a ley-line, and the dangers of such activity are increased, as well. [1]

The presence of a ley-line has almost no observable effects to a non-psion, most of the time, and even most psions require special skills to detect them. There are a few indicators that can reveal the presence of a ley-line to one who knows what to look for, but these indicators are very subtle and easy to miss, even for one who knows about them.

Ley-lines run in straight paths across the surface of the Earth, and in fact are one aspect of a more complex Flux phenomenon. The entire planet Earth can be looked at as a Flux-empowered structure, and great 'loops' of intensified Flux activity rise from the core of the planet, loop outward and fall back toward the core once again. This could be envisioned as being analogous to magnetic field lines, but the analogy should not be pressed too far. There are, for example, no concentrated 'poles' at a planetary scale.

Where a given 'loop' emerges from the surface, and dives back in again at another location, ley-anchor-points exist. Ley-lines connect the anchor-points of each loop, each individual ley-line connects such a Flux-loop to itself along the surface of the Earth. Most such 'loops' emerge only a modest distance above the surface before plunging back, these create relatively short ley-lines.

Large loops have wide separations between their emergence and return points, and the corresponding ley-lines are thus longer (and usually stronger) than those associated with the small loops.

The shortest ley-lines may be no more than a few kilometers long, the longest on Earth extend for thousands of kilometers. In all cases, the width of the ley-lines run between six and ten meters, though some of their effects can extend somewhat further to either side of the ley-line proper.

All known ley-lines cross at least one other ley-line. This links the various ley-lines on the surface into a single, planet-spanning network. When the 'Flux loops' are considered as part of the same system, which they are, the entire system can be seen as a single structure permeating the Earth, from the central core of the planet out to a distance of some thousands of kilometers above the surface, rotating in synchronization with the planet.

The lines run across both land and sea, and their 'vertical' area of effect is somewhat greater, both above and below, than the 'lateral' area. Thus, a ley-line on the seafloor can sometimes have effects on the surface at surprising depths, for example, or a ley-line running through a mountain-range can have effects both at the surface and in underground caves as well.

All ley lines start and finish in 'anchor points', where a Flux-loop passes through the surface, and because of that fact the intensity of the Flux effects are somewhat greater at the 'ends' of a ley-line, and considerably greater at places along the length where two or more ley-lines cross each other.

The 'nexus points' where ley-lines cross are especially potent areas of Flux activity, and the more lines cross at a given point, the more marked the effects usually become. Because areas where multiple ley-lines are close together naturally have more cross-points, this means that the strongest nexus-points tend to be found along with clusters of lesser nexus points.

To Be Continued...


[1] For more about the nature and details of the Flux, see here: Orichalcum Universe: The Basics

[Johnny1A.2]

FLUX CHANNELS/'Ley Lines' continued...

Though the ley-lines (and their associated phenomena) form a single planet-wide network, the intensity of activity within that network varies enormously from place to place. Though a given ley-line (or Flux channel, some prefer to call them) might be, for example, five hundred kilometers long, the intensity of activity along most of it might be only marginally higher than the background Flux level. The ley-line is still there, still detectable with the right personal abilities or instrumentation, but the effects are negligible along most of the length. Only a few stretches of the length might be especially active at a given time, giving the illusion that the world-wide network is broken up into separate isolated and independent small lines.

Only if someone mapped these active stretches, and noticed that they lined up on the map over a longer distance, might they suspect the truth of the matter.

Even a nexus-point can be 'dormant' in this sense, its effects muted or absent, though even a 'dormant' nexus-point will be more detectable than a dormant stretch of a single ley-line. For a fluxon hoping to make use of a ley-line, or a nexus-point, however, the presence of the dormant areas is of only intellectual interest, since there is little that most fluxons can do with such areas. [1]

Which parts of the network are active, and which dormant, can and does change over long periods of time, and with special circumstances. As a rule, on Earth, the changes occur over centuries, on the scale of an individual lifetime, the network is fairly stable. Sometimes, unusual situations can cause dormant areas to briefly activate, then go dormant again after a short time, or cause a normally active area of the web to fall into temporary dormancy. Very, very occasionally, lasting changes in the active and dormant regions occur, usually unfolding over decades.

In order for the ley-network to change fundamentally, for the actual location of ley-lines and nexus-points to change, the entire global system has to alter, since it is a single interrelated and interconnected whole. One particular ley-line does not suddenly change position, the entire system changes, or stays the same. Changes to the global system at that basic level usually unfold at a pace so slow as to be undetectable on human scales. Like continental drift, or the erosion of mountains, such changes are effectively imperceptible...most of the time. Once in a while, a sudden global catastrophe or major even on that scale can produce such changes on a short time scale, however. [2]

In game terms, a dormant stretch of ley-line or a dormant nexus-point can be treated as if it were any other ordinary place, except in very unusual circumstances. An active length of ley-line should be treated as having Flux Rating of +1 (usually).

(See here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=70111 for an explanation of Flux Rating.)

The end points of a ley-line, the 'anchor' points where the master-loop of Flux activity cross the surface, will always be active, and usually have a Flux Rating of +2. The 'spot' will be relatively small, however, no more than thirty to fifty meters wide, and the +2 Flux Rating will be available only at the precise center, a spot perhaps two meters across. The rest of this zone will have a Flux Rating of +1 under ordinary circumstances.

A ley-line nexus-point formed by the intersection of two or three ley-lines should be treated as having a Flux Rating of +3. Four to five ley-lines should be treated as having a Flux Rating of +3 or +4. Five to six ley-lines at a nexus should produce a +4 or +5 Flux Rating.

A nexus-point with seven or more intersecting ley-lines is a rare thing, and might easily have a Flux Rating of +5 to +6. A nexus with nine or ten lines, could display a Flux Rating of +7 or +8, but such nexuses are vanishingly rare, and often legendary even among people ignorant of their nature.

Any ley-line nexus-point with have a center and a surrounding penumbra, much like a ley-anchor point but larger. In the central 'umbra' region of the nexus-point, which will usually be eight to twelve meters across (tending larger with more ley-lines), the higher Flux Rating will prevail. In the penumbra around it (usually about thirty to fifty meters wide) the lower Flux Rating will be prevalent most of the time.

Thus, a massive seven-line nexus-point might be fifty meters wide, with a Flux Rating of +6, with a twelve-meter wide area at the center where the Flux Rating will be +7. The exception would be the small, two or three line nexus-points, which will lack a central core and usually be have a simple +3 Flux Rating through the entire area of the nexus point.

A tiny handful of super-scale nexus-points exist around the world where this is yet another, innermost zone of even higher Flux Rating, usually a zone no more than a meter across at the very center of the inner area. These super-nexus-points are vanishingly rare, there are probably fewer than a dozen in the world, possibly no more than ten.

To be continued...

[1] As with most general rules, exceptions do exist.

[2] The downfall of Atlantis, for example, made some substantial changes to some parts of the global ley-system. The impact of the Dinosaur Killer completed rearranged it.

[Johnny1A.2]

FLUX CHANNELS/'LEY LINES' continued...

The ley-lines and ley-nexuses as described above have other, more complex properties as well. To begin with, a fluxon with the proper knowledge and skills can make use of the nexus-points to make his or her Flux work easier when creating Flux Manifestations. [1]

In order to do so, a fluxon must have an additional Flux skill besides the basic two. This skill is Ley Alignment.

The exact behavior of a given ley-line nexus will have its unique quirks and properties, though some broad common trends exist. One trait common to the large majority of ley-line nexus points is that the concentrated Flux activity there 'surges' on a cyclic or semi-cyclic basis, making Flux-action by a skilled fluxon easier, or more potent, at such times. Common times for such surges are dawn and dusk, or natural noon and midnight (meaning the midpoint of the daylight or night period, not necessarily the clock time, though they will usually be close). Other common cycles involve annual surges, or surges based on local conditions. Some nexus-points surge when Earth reaches perihelion or aphelion. A few appear to be semi-random. Some of those are give the appearance of randomness are actually following very obscure or unknown but still regular cycles. A few nexus-points even appear to follow cycles influenced by human thinking and action.

In game terms, when a ley-nexus 'surges', a fluxon effectively gains Flux Points to spend on the various skill rolls associated with Flux use. The fluxon must be within the nexus area to gain any advantage, even a few meters outside and the 'extra' Flux Points are not available. Exactly how many Flux Points can be gained is highly dependent on the particular nexus and the particular details of its governing cycle, as well as on the particular fluxon. The surges provide Flux Points in two ways: a multiplier to the current Flux Points of a particular fluxon, and a wave of 'additional' Flux Points available for use.

The multiplier effect is common to most nexus-points, and has a down side: if the current total of Flux Points is negative, for whatever reason, that effect will multiply that negative number and the associated penalties.

How long a surge lasts is also highly dependent on the particular nexus, and the particular cycle. Some surges may last only minutes, others may go on for hours or even (rarely) days. Some surges come in clusters of small surges, others in a single intense, passing burst of activity.

More than one fluxon can make use of a single nexus-point during a surge, if the nature of the surge is such as to permit it (more about this in a moment), and if their intended activities are not such as to interfere with each other at the critical times.

Ley Alignment skill enables a fluxon to analyze and sometimes predict these activity surges, either to make use of them, or avoid the associated risks that come with them. These risks are non-trivial, and are the natural accompaniment of the opportunity presented by intense Flux activity.

The key skill to making use of ley-nexuses is Ley Alignment.

LEY ALIGNMENT: Mental, VH prerequisites: Flux Awareness 23, Flux Mastery 21 This skill enables a fluxon to sense the state of a ley-line nexus (active or dormant), assess its overall power level (Flux Rating), and determine any 'special' conditions that apply to the use of it, as well as the cyclical or other considerations that apply to when it can be best used.

The best way to illustrate how this works is by example.

To be continued...

[1] For a description of these see: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=70111)

[Johnny1A.2]

FLUX CHANNELS/'LEY LINES' continued...

Let us consider the case of a fluxon and a ley-line nexus-point somewhere on a remote corner of a plain. The nexus-point is the site of the crossing of six ley-lines, and is currently active, as are the ley-lines extending off for a distance of several kilometers.

EXAMPLE 1: Adaronades , the Atlantean master fluxon, is contemplating making use of our hypothetical nexus-point to produce a complex and 'expensive' Flux-effect. He has Flux Awareness 30 and Flux Master 28, and 100 Flux Points. He also knows Ley Alignment at 15. (Unlike the other two Flux skills, Ley Alignment works more or less as normal for GURPS skills, with the usual diminishing return at high levels).

Adaronades knows that the nexus-point exists, and where it is. We can assume that he has already tracked it down, identified the precise location, and the directions of the crossing ley-lines. Now he must use Ley Alignment to assess the nature, power, and pattern of the nexus-point.

This requires that he spend a minimum of one hour at the nexus-point, analyzing its nature and pattern. Someone watching this process would merely see a man either pacing around the site, or sitting calmly, the process is mental, with little or no associated physical activity. However, the mental concentration necessary is total, any serious distraction requires that he start the hour over again.

One hour is minimum, but he can gain extra knowledge by spending more time, in game terms equal to a +1 bonus on the roll for every hour spent, up to six. Any interruption requires that that particular hour of concentration be started over, or else that he must be content with the previous completed hours, and move on to the next stage.

Since his Ley Alignment skill is already high, Adaronades contents himself with three hours of analysis. This gives him an additional +2 on the skill roll, which is done normally. The roll is 7, he made the roll by 10. For every number by which the roll was made, the GM should give the player one piece of useful, accurate information about the nexus-point.

The GM informs his player that the nexus-point is about seventy meters wide, with an inner umbra ten meters across. The GM also tells the player that the site has an outer Flux Rating of +4 and an FR of +5 at the inner core. That is two pieces of information. Since he did so well on the Ley Alignment skill roll, there are eight more to come.

The GM tells the player that the nexus-point is 'neutral', meaning it works equally well for most uses, that it follows a daily and annual cycle, surging at dawn and dusk, and at aphelion and perihelion. The GM tells the player that the dawn and dusk surges consist of 500 Flux Points, and last one minute each, and that the aphelion and perihelion surges last for 24 hours (from natural midnight to natural midnight) and provide an additional 1000 Flux Points on top of the regular dawn and dusk surges. Adaronades' player also learn that his own personal Flux Points will double at dawn and dusk, during the surge, and double on the day of aphelion/perihelion (meaning they quadruple at dawn and dusk on those days).

That is a lot of information. Adaronades started with a high skill level in Ley Alignment and got a good roll, most of the time it will be less than that. Repeat efforts can work to gain more data, but take up time and suffer Repeat Attempt penalties if attempted the same day as the first attempt.

For our purposes, though, let us consider what all that means for our character. Adaronades has 100 Flux Points currently, which is pretty good positive territory. During that one-minute surge at dawn (meaning the moment the Sun first breaks above the horizon), his 'native' Flux Points will double to 200, and there will be an additional 500 Flux Points available for him to use. Both of these require that he be standing in the umbra, the inner core, of the nexus-point, an area of ground about ten meters wide.

Something Adaronades did not learn, but which is true, is that if he is in the outer part of the nexus-point, there is no 'extra' 500 Flux Points, all he gets at the dawn or dusk surge is the doubling of his native Flux Points. He might guess that to be the case (it is a common feature of nexus-points), but he does not know it.

So if Adaronades is in the right place (the central area of the nexus-point) at the right time (about a one minute period at the first break of dawn or the last visible solar disk of dusk), his available Flux Points go from 100 to 700!

That is a major increase in power. It will enable him to do things by himself that would 'normally' require a large group of fluxons. It does, however, require precise timing. If something keeps him distracted or unable to act during that one-minute period, he is out of luck, at least until the next dawn or dusk. The surge rises rapidly and fades rapidly.

Note that the multiplier effect, as noted upthread, can be a problem. If for some reason Adaronades had a current negative Flux Point total, then that negative number would multiply, and with it the mandatory penalty. He could still use the nexus-point, and it might well make sense to do so, but it would not work as well.

Suppose, for ex, that instead of a current 'native' +100, his current native Flux Point total happened to be -75. During the surge period, that would double to -150. If he was in the inner area at the right time, though, he could still make use of the 'extra' Flux Points, but instead of 700 Flux Points, this time he would have access to only +350, because that double negative total would reduce the benefit.

If his negative total was high enough, it could reach the point that any attempt to use the nexus-point would be nothing but danger. If, for ex, he had a -300 native Flux Point total (which is pretty awful, but by no means impossible), it would double to -600 during the dawn/dusk surge. Even with the extra +500, the total would be -100, which means any attempt to use the Flux is nearly certain to end in disaster, disaster amplified by the presence at the nexus-point where the Flux is stronger.

Another important point: there is a key difference between the multiplier points and the 'extra' points. More than one fluxon can use the same nexus point at the same time, as long as they are all using their 'multiplied' points and doing things that don't actually interfere with each other. But only one fluxon, or group of fluxons engaged in one working, can use the 'extra' Flux Points. The 500 'free' Flux Points are not shareable. If two or more fluxons or groups try to tap them at once, the results can range from 'nothing at all' to 'catastrophic' depending on the details.

Perhaps Adaronades needs to bring some armed backup with him...just in case an argument about priority arises with another fluxon.

To be continued...

[Johnny1A.2]

FLUX CHANNELS/'LEY LINES' continued...

This particular nexus-point is fairly straightforward in its cycle and nature. Some are very complex, some have peculiar quirks. A few traits do run through almost all ley-nexuses, however. When they surge, they almost all produce the 'multiplier' effect, in which the native, current Flux Point total of the characters is multiplied by some integer number, for better or worse (keeping in mind that a multiplied negative is a larger negative). Most, but not all, provide a certain amount of 'additional' Flux Points, separate of the multiplier effect, but how large this effect is, and the conditions that may be attached to it, vary enormously from nexus to nexus.

There are some nexus-points that surge so rarely that they can be mistaken for a dormant nexus, and a few that do not so much 'surge' as constantly bubble with activity, often these are the ones that provide only a multiplier and no 'extra' Flux Points.

Though each nexus has its unique traits, those in a given region tend to show more similarity to each other than not, especially those nexus-points connected by a single ley-line. Exceptions do exist, however.

In our previous example, Adaronades learned that there will be a surge at dawn, and at dusk. He waits for dawn, making the necessary preparations to use the surge when it comes. Preparing for a complex Flux working can be involved and time consuming, and timing it everything. He had to have it all together and ready, because the moment the arc of the Sun appears above the eastern horizon, the surge will begin.

When the time comes, if he has everything right, he will have 700 Flux Points to spend on the effort, for one minute. This means that if somebody wants to stop him, they need only keep him occupied during that one-minute period to force him to wait until dusk to try again.

EXAMPLE 2: Let us assume that it is close enough to aphelion that Adaronades decides he can wait that long for the extra benefits. He waits, and when that day comes, the aphelion surge that he learned about in his analysis of the nexus begins.

Through this 24 hours period, starting at the natural midpoint of the night, his personal current Flux Points are doubled, to 200.

If he feels that to be enough, he can use any point throughout that 24 hour period to carry out his plans. However, he also knows that during those dawn and dusk surges, the combined effect will double his Flux Points again, to 400, plus there will be an extra 1000 Flux Points available for us, in addition to the normal 500 dawn/dusk provides here.

So if he is willing to time it that closely, he can potentially tap into a total of 1900 Flux Points for a Manifestation, at dawn and dusk on the day of aphelion. In the hands of a skilled, experienced master fluxon, that is enough to produce awesome effects, or catastrophic results if a mistake is made. Normally, only a very large group of fluxons, impracticably large usually, could even hope to harness half that much Flux-influence. Here, one person can do it...if he can avoid blowing himself up in the process.

(Note that this is a fairly powerful nexus, most of them are less potent, but a few are even more powerful.)

What happens if two or more fluxons or groups of fluxons are competing for control of one nexus surge? Well, usually it does not happen. The time and effort necessary to set up a major working usually mean that one faction or the other will have established physical control of the site simply in order to make their effort, only under unusual circumstances would a direct struggle for control of the effect arise.

(The moreso because fluxons would usually be cautious enough about the potential side-effects to want to avoid the whole risk.) Still, human beings being human beings, it can and does happen.

EXAMPLE 3: Three fluxons are ready to use the dawn surge at the same time, none will back down and none can physically force the others out.
Before any of them can do anything with the 'extra' Flux Points, one must establish control of the surge.

All three roll vs. their Ley Alignment skill. Whoever makes the roll by the most controls the surge of 'extra' Flux Points.

Adaronades makes it by 12, better than the 9 and 7 the other two get. But now he has only 45 seconds left to carry out his plans before the surge ends and the opportunity passes. Also, the fact that he controls the surge does not mean one or both of the others can not try to prevent him from using by any other convenient means, such as shooting him, keeping him too distracted to complete his Flux working, or anything else that might work.

Also, this sort of contest for control tends to 'irritate' the local Flux, meaning that though Adaronades now has the extra 500 Flux Points, he will likely have to 'spend' more of them to achieve his goals than would have otherwise been the case. Also, the 'intensity' of any negative, bad results are likely to rise as well. Exactly how bad these effects are depends on many variables.

Of course, the other fluxons could try again to take control of the surge from Adaronades again, at normal repeat attempt penalties (every additional attempt during a given surge period counts as a repeat attempt) but this would burn up another 15 seconds, succeed or fail...and this sort of back and forth struggle for control really tends to raise the risk of catastrophic side effects. It is something fluxons rarely risk.

Rarely, of course, is not the same as never. Also, this means that long-duration surges are more likely to see this behavior, since there is more time available for the winner to try to use what he has won.

To make use of a nexus-point, usually the fluxon in question must be able to physically stand within or occupy within the nexus area. This can be complicated if a nexus-point is underwater, or otherwise difficult to access. The zone of action of a ley-line or a nexus-point is greater 'above and below', so sometimes it might be possible for a fluxon to be in a boat and use a nexus-point at the bottom of a lake, or something along those lines. Likewise, in theory one might hove above a nexus-point in a helicopter and make use of it, if the altitude/depth was no more than, say, maybe a hundred meters. In the latter case, however, the helicopter would have to hold position very precisely, at just the proper time, to make it work.

Only in very special cases, or with very special preparation, though, could most fluxons hope to make use of a nexus-point that happened to be on the ocean floor, however, or buried under a deep glacier.

To Be Continued...

[Johnny1A.2]

FLUX CHANNELS/'LEY LINES' continued...

Though most humans lack any Flux skills whatever, the Flux can and does influence people subconsciously, and vice versa. One side-effect of this process is that people often are either subconsciously drawn toward, or repelled by, ley-lines and nexus-points. This is dependent both on the individual psychology of the person, and the quirks and nature of the particular nexus-points. (Ley lines as such are more uniform in their effect.)

On an individual level, this can result in a person being 'uncomfortable' in a specific place or area without any idea why. Or it can draw a person toward a place and that person will, again, have no conscious idea of the reason for the appeal, or why they feel 'comfortable' in a place. (Other psychological effects can overwhelm this in either case, of course.)

Collectively, over time, this can result in certain nexus-points being heavily built up or otherwise utilized or marked. The nexus-points that draw people often end up, over generations, being the site of famous or 'interesting' structures. The nexus-points that repel can result in a place that ought by logic or reason to be heavily inhabited being empty or strangely underused.

For example, a repulsive nexus might result in a neighborhood of a major city tending to turn, over and over, into slums or areas of urban decay, no matter what steps are taken to counter it. A rural area around such a nexus-point might be empty, even if the land is rich or there are natural resources that might logically result in the presence of a town.

Note also that the same nexus might attract members of one society or culture, and repel another, for reasons of the way their subconscious minds work. This can have interesting long-term effects as well.

The pattern to the global ley-line grid is extremely complex, but there is a correlation between the ley-lines and other natural phenomena, though not a consistent one. A disproportionate number of ley-lines intersect near volcanoes, for example. Yet many famous volcanic massifs are far from any ley-line. There are no defined 'poles' to the ley-grid, but both of the major magnetic poles are the site of multiple nexus-points.

As one would expect from geography, the majority of all ley-lines and ley-nexuses are on the ocean floor, simply because that is the majority of the surface of the planet. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is thick with nexus-points, and the most powerful single nexus-point on the planet is at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, on a wide stretch of abyssal plain under many kilometers of water. Still, per square kilometer ley-activity is more common on the land.

Certain forms of ‘supernatural’ phenomena are closely associated with the proximity of ley-lines, and even more especially with the proximity of nexus-points. This is too complex to cover at this point, however.

To be continued…

[Johnny1A.2]

ADDENDUM/MODIFICATION to NEW PSIONIC SKILL: PK BLAST...

The PK Blast skill, described here: PK BLAST

should be modified. At the time I conceived it, I was assuming fewer high-power psions in my world that would later be the case, which leaves this skill too powerful. Therefore, the formula for its blast power should be:

DAMAGE= [1d per every 2 levels of PK Power (round down) up to Power 10, at which point efficiency starts to fall, add 1d at Power 15 and another 1d at Power 20, above which this skill ceases to be efficient and the effects level off].

Thus the damage range table becomes:

Power 2: 1 to 6
Power 4: 2 to 12
Power 6: 3 to 18
Power 8: 4 to 24
Power 10: 5 to 30
Power 15: 6 to 36
Power 20: 7 to 42

The same change to the formula applies to the option of pyrokinetic damage with PK Blast.

[Johnny1A.2]

SENSE ORICHALCUM

Sense Oricahlcum is a psionic skill based on ESP Power.

Any ESPer can sense the presence of pure orichalcum if it is immediately close to their physical self. Even if the ESP talent is latent, they will be able to tell pure orichalcum from the almost visually identical copper at a glance, without knowing what the difference might be, as long as it is within that range.

Any ESPer can sense pure orichalcum in amounts greater than one milligram at a distance equal to ESP Power in meters.

Some ESPers can learn a special psi skill, Sense Orichalcum, which enables them to detect and locate even relatively impure orichalcum at much greater distances.

SENSE ORICHALCUM (M/VH, prerequisites ESP Power 1, Clairsentience 15 OR Clairvoyance 17, special)

Not every ESPer is able to learn this skill. For obscure reasons, it seems to 'blocked' to certain minds. In fact, the majority of ESPers prove unable to master this skill.

In GURPS Modified 3e terms, for any ESPer seeking to learn Sense Orichalcum, roll 3d. On a '3', the ESPer can potentially learn Sense Orichalcum. Even for these individuals, however, it is a difficult skill, which is why is it M/VH, unlike most psionic skills.

Sense Orichalcum is useful because it has far greater range than most ESPer skills, and because it can be far more precise than most such skills. The range of Sense Orichalcum is equal to the one hundred times the ESP Power in meters. On a critical success, the range doubles. This levels off above Power twenty. (Of course few psions ever approach Power 20 ESP anyway.)

On a failure, the skill produces no useful data. On a critical failure, it creates a false positive.

To use Sense Orichalcum, a properly-skilled ESPer must spend the usual one turn of concentration. On a successful roll, the ESPer will detect any concentration of orichalcum within his or her range in three dimensions. The skill works through almost any material (a handful of exceptions exist). The ESPer will sense any concentration of orichalcum that is at least 10% pure and within his or her range, and has a mass of five grams or more. For every point by which the roll is succeeded, reduce the sensible mass by dividing by that number. (That is, if the roll succeeds by 5, divide 5 grams by 5, the ESPer senses any orichalcum concentration of 1 grams or more). Round down.

When a bit of orichalcum is detected, the ESPer can determine the exact location in three dimensions by the degree of success. A success on the roll by 1 gives direction. A success by 2 gives direction and distance within one/tenth of the ESPer range (using this skill). Each successive higher success cuts that in half. That is, a success by 3 narrows distance down to 1/20 of range, by 4 cuts it to 1/40 of range. A critical success gives exact distance and direction.

Once a specific piece of orichalcum is located, the ESPer can make a second roll to determine how big it is. The GM should get more specific about the mass as the success roll improves. A critical success gives the exact mass within a few grams, a failure gives no data, a critical failure means the answer is radically wrong.

EXAMPLE 1: Kylie is an orichalcum prospector with Power 5 ESP and who knows Sense Orichalcum at skill 15. Power 5 means she has a range with th is specific skill of 500 meters, or 1000 meters on a critical success.

Kylie suspects there is orichalcum in the rocks upon which she stands. Her players rolls against skill 15 and gets an 11. Success by four. Kylie senses a lump of orichalcum, in the rock below her and to her right. She has the direction, and since she succeeded by 4, she gets the distance within 1/80 of her range. (Each point of success doubles the accuracy of 1/10 of range.)

One eightieth of 500 meters is a bit over six meters. So now she knows the direction of the orichalcum lump, and its distance from her to about six meters.

The lump must be at least be at least twelve grams, because with a success by '4', her minimum sensible mass is 5/4 or 1 grams. But how much more than that?

Now she rolls against the skill again to determine mass. This time she gets a 14, a success by 1. That is not very good, so the GM tells her it is somewhere between one gram and a kilogram. She could try again, with the usual penalties for repeat attempts, to get a better fix on the mass. She does, and at some Fatigue cost she succeeds by 3. Now the GM tells her that it is at least five grams but no more than twenty.

This skill can penetrate most materials, but pure gold, or pure copper, between the psion and the orichalcum, will strongly interfere with its use. Any technology that interferes with ESP will interfere with this skill especially well, because it is so delicate. Psychonulls are very effective at interfering as well, double all interference penalties from a psychonull when used against this skill.