Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

You could add automatic functions to reproduce soem of the effects of psi in the consulate.

Something like the Neural Verifier from UT would be about right. Zhodani territory is a place where no one lies in court or commits crimes of fraud. That's one of the deliberate amibiguities about it that makes it more than a place run by a psionic gestapo.

Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

A more interesting model would be the Comprise, from Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers. Obviously the model for the Borg. Much more interesting is the character Winter (I think - been a long time since I read the book).

Where the Comprise was all of humanity on Earth linked in a hive mind, the light speed limit of communication did not allow it to leave the planet. Winter appeared to be an 'agent' of Earth - a group mind of several individuals in communication with the overall mind but not a part of it.

The aristocracy could be such group-mind beings. Maybe vast hive-minds are not tenable, but group-minds of several dozen, at most, individuals work. Not everyone has to be in a group mind, (its expensive? takes extensive training? is dangerious?), so proles have human-normal minds, and while they don't have their minds 'read', the nobility is smarter, faster, stronger than they are.
Intedants are those proles which are receiving training to enter the nobility. They learn to control their emotions, have been cleared of any psycological problems, etc. Like monks or some type of zen initiate.
The 'nobles' are group minds that replace members as the individuals age and die. The basic 'personality' survives centuries, with only gradual change as the components are replaced.

Then again - this isn't the Zho and I really don't see a need to replace them :)

Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

Implantable FTL communicators are a bit setting-breaking. No what I was thinking of was that commoners would have a baseline implant that could be used by them to access the net, but could also be used to monitor their activity, location, physical health, and emotions and incapacitate them as needed. Meanwhile the soldiers have massive and blatantly intimidating body replacement and the upper classes are chic would-be transhumanists with glowing LEDs just so you'll know they're upper-class. Although possibly, the planetary AIs are the ones really in charge. Or maybe upper classes graduate to having their brains added to a ruling immortal collective intelligence of networked brains that stand-in for true AI...

Even if you went full on Hive mind, it would be more interesting for different planets of the of the confederation to have distinct and different personalities. The Borg are fundamentally boring in their own right after all. That's why they were rewritten with every appearance.

Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

Why do we need the Zhos to have a psi-like ability at all? If we're looking for "Zhos without Psi", then make it actually be without anything like psi too.

I think you can have an very effective 'bad guy' (and one that is much less morally ambiguous than the current Zhos) through extensive, invasive brainwashing and monitoring and ruthless 'efficiency' - combine Nazi Germany, North Korea and the worst elements of the Chinese and the USSR systems and add a dash of The Prisoner and 1984. Keep the Thought Police around (and they don't actually have to be psychic) and the population will stay cowed - Fear and paranoia has proven rather effective historically in "keeping the proles in line" without magic powers.

Plus it gives you opportunities for Resistance, guerilla warfare and memetic countermeasures too. It makes the Zhodani much darker than they are currently, but if you really want them to be the bad guy of the setting then why not go the whole hog?

OK, you lose the invisible teleporting commandos or whatever, but let's face it, those are game-breakingly stupid anyway.

Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

The reason I suggested creepy cyborgs was for contrast with the Empire, which certainly has the technology for such things but apparently not the social environment.

Apart from that the Zhos need to be a credible threat. A smaller state that expends most of it's energies on crushing it's own people doesn't qualify.

Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

I wouldn't say that they're really a 'credible threat' as they are at the moment - all that's happened are the odd border skirmish and a few worlds swapping hands, which is no big deal really. They're more a 'bogeyman' for the Imperials - they're more feared because they use their psi and for how their society works than because they're an actual military threat.

Besides, a state can grow quite large despite spending a lot of energy crushing its own people. See Nazi Germany, China, and the USSR for examples.

Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

As a good source to steal ideas for this from, see CJ Cherryh's Cyteen, Cyteen: Regenesis, Serpent's Reach and other Union/Alliance stories featuring the azi. Union may not be quite as dark as above, but they easily could be, and probably most people in the Alliance think they are.

Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

Makes sense to me.

Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

I am not sure that I see the society you describe as being plausible on the physical scale of the Zhodani Consulate. Not in a universe where interstellar communications and travel works the way it does in default Traveller rules.
I just don't see how such tight control could possibly be maintained.
I could buy a single world, a system, maybe even a pocket empire. Anything bigger and I would expect rebellions and economic collapse to rip it apart in short order.


Of course, maybe the Consulate is falling apart?

Re: Zhodani without Psi
 

I like it.

If you add or play up a religious humanist element in the Imperium (IMO, a good way to explain the rejection of certain technologies, or restrictions placed on them), you get a nice ideological contrast.

Maybe add bootleg Zho computers, illegal cyberclinics, and so on to replace psi powers and the Psionics Institutes?