[Psi/Space] Irar, the Jewel in the British Crown

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Inky

Hmm. I'm not sure how utopian/light-hearted this setting was expected to be. The laws adopted by the Earth nations might well say that, but it sounds a little utopian for that to be necessarily how it works in practice.

At the risk of getting close to real-life politics, if it went anything like normal mental health services, in practice it might be psychotronic suppressors straight away, thus getting the immediate risk out of the way, and training some time, maybe, in theory, with a waiting list several years long. (Especially if the Conservative Party were still in government at the time). Though maybe if the UK was striking it really rich due to the alien technology, they might be this lavish!

The UK has the advantage of both having a lot of money coming in, and the Conservatives not realizing how little the Irari care about most government policies, and thus trying to put their best faces on for the aliens. They don't really figure it out to a meaningful degree until a later election has them out of power for a while.

Originally Posted by Inky

This might be useful for plots - it would provide an excuse for a character to have Uncontrollable psi abilities and have been unable to get training yet and thus be able to use them only by disabling her suppressor at the risk of Uncontrollable happening. (Not sure off-hand how you'd stat an ability that can be either off or Uncontrollable).
It also seems likely that both governments (e.g. military) and private companies would run schemes where they'd provide private training for free to psis who signed up to work for them - again providing plot.

The less expensive sorts of suppressor (and thus the kind that you're most likely to get from most governments) do not have the ability to completely suppress the ability, only to stop it from going off outside the user's control (this is also why the CPD didn't just try using one on Conner Elias, above - along with not being able to get a court order for it). Damaged, poorly-tuned, or poorly-made ones might also provide a small skill penalty, make the ability Unreliable, or add some other limitation, but this is less common than the device itself getting a worse Malf number, and thus not always working. Damage to the device also has a small chance of setting off the Uncontrollable ability, even if the wearer does not notice the damage and is not under stress. (EDIT: The more narrowly-specialized a device is, the cheaper it tends to be, and 'Mitigator for one limitation on one ability, and must be attuned to the user in order to work right' is really quite specialized.)

The kind that shuts down specific abilities completely is expensive enough that you're much less likely to see it outside of prisons and eventually specialized police vehicles.

Originally Posted by Inky

The USA providing free anything seems even less likely on the face of it :-D But they might splash out for this if they really wanted more psis - especially since the UK has access to better psychotronics than them so the USA might be in danger of getting left behind on psis.

Exactly. Enlightened self-interest can be very effective, if the people in power are smart enough to acknowledge that concept.

Originally Posted by Inky

In a more utopian scenario where the training genuinely is readily available to anyone who needs it, if a PC wanted their character to have Uncontrollable abilities (e.g. for reasons of cheap) they might just be a novice psi who'd only just started lessons.

Yes. Alternatively, they might be from some place that doesn't have the budget to provide decent suppressors.

Originally Posted by Inky

Copied here for convenience:

Well - ouch. Yes, it sounds like there'd certainly be trouble if any government tried to use that in general, especially if there was any attempt to give it to under-18s. What did you mean by "abstract thinking", specifically? Imagination? Generalising from specific things? Or something else?

Good question that I'm not 100% sure of the answer to. 'Abstract thinking' was mentioned in relation to other psi drugs in the book, and it made sense to use it here, as Reminder was inspired by that drug (Mind Hype, I think). I'm sure the author knew what was meant, though.

Originally Posted by johndallman

If these can be incorporated into smartphones, lots of people who don't need them will nonetheless carry them. The street-credibility appeal of "I have dangerously uncontrollable psi powers" among young men will be huge.

Originally Posted by Inky

I hadn't thought of this, this is hilarious :-D and sounds like something that might happen. Possibly even more so if it is a collar or wristband or something more obvious and distinctive than a smartphone. And heavy metal bands might wear fake psi-suppressors on stage for shock value.

They can't be incorporated into most smartphones at TL8^, TL9^, or TL(6+3)^, and are usually meant to be recognizable, so that can happen. Unfortunately, them being recognizable, kind of cool-looking to humans, and moderately expensive if you're not getting it free (and it did not take long for the same sorts of people who make smartphone casemods to realize that there was a market in blinging them up, or making blingy fakes) means that muggers with poor risk-reward analysis - which would be most of them - started trying to mug people for their suppressors, fake or real. Being mugged is a rather stressful situation, exactly the sort of thing that sets off Uncontrollable abilities for which the suppressor has been removed...

[Prince Charon]

Thinking of adding this to the article:
All this took time to implement, of course, and even as late as 2023, some legislatures were still arguing about what to do and how to do it. Often, laws were passed only after some incident or incidents got too much attention.

[Prince Charon]

Made some edits to the article based on feedback.

BTW, what other posts about this setting would you like to see? Any suggestions for other 'Psionics and the Law' articles, for example?

[Prince Charon]

Adventure Seed: Warbot? Thar Bot!

You are part of a group giving compassionate aid (what a humans-only setting might call 'humanitarian aid') on Gormel, when you are informed that some kids accidentally reactivated an old warbot, which is now wandering around attacking anything that moves (and is longer than roughly 18 inches in any dimension) - including plants that sway in the wind too much. This is a problem because its meandering path is taking it closer and closer to a grove of fruit trees that a local settlement has been cultivating, which serve as their secondary food crop and main cash crop. Also near that is the settlement, and the hospital the Irari set up. Your party are sent to stop the warbot before it gets there, and in addition, your superiors want you to capture it for study.

(Crunchwise, the robot has the 'Absolute' version of Berserk, and has effectively IQ 6, but it's running on damaged backup computers, and was probably smarter and better programmed during the war. Why does it attack anything above SM -4? Because that was the size of the smallest combat machines the enemy was believed to have when the robot was designed. The actual template for the warbot depends a lot on the game the GM is running, both in terms of point-level, and in terms of the PCs' combat and other capabilities.)


Thoughts?

[Prince Charon]

Sorry it took so long.

Psionics and the Law: Ergokinesis

Cyberpsi
Most cyberpsi-related crimes fall under existing laws, or updated laws against existing computer crimes. However, Black ICE (whether psychotronic or a psi ability) has more legal problems: in a lot of countries the effect must not cross jurisdictions (especially national borders, which can be an issue if the effect passes through several nations with different laws on the matter), and in most it is either completely illegal or only allowed to the government. On Irar, setting up Black ICE to kill someone and getting caught without anyone dying is Attempted Murder, and succeeding in killing someone with it is a higher level of Premeditated Murder (the literal translation is more like 'elaborately planned murder,' which is distinct from just 'planned murder'). The laws in the UK are functionally the same, but other countries, even those where Black ICE is generally illegal, vary widely. The question of national borders is also not yet settled in most cases, apart from those that have new or amended treaties that specifically include it, or include similar effects. That said, the laws as written in most English-speaking nations and many others hold that a Black ICE effect from outside their national borders must not cross them - it's just that these laws have yet to be tested by trials, as of 2023.

Electrokinesis, Magnetokinesis, and Photokinesis
Generally, these fall under existing laws with at most new precedents, e.g. Confuse is mostly treated as a relatively non-violent form of assault (in the absence of damaging techniques, when not used with consent, or for self-defence). Exceptions exist, but tend to be rare powers that resemble telepathic abilities in effect (mostly using the electrochemical nature of the brain, and just as vulnerable to a P-Web shield as Confuse is), and if necessary will be listed with the abilities they resemble. To the Irari, such abilities are often considered part of Cyberpsi, where they place that in its own category. Hologram is a special case, since illusions in general create new legal problems, there will need to be a separate entry for Illusions of various types.


Thoughts?