The Psionic Suppressions

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

This is a continuation of a thought I had in the "New GT Supplements" topic in this forum.

So, has anyone given serious thought to/about the Psionic Suppressions in Imperial history? I'd think that it would be a setting or era just rife with adventure opportunities, both pro- and anti- psionic.

We understand that 'evil happens when good men sleep' (note: if anyone can cite the original source for that quote, I'd be grateful). We know from our own experiences in the 20th Century that much harm can be done by good, well-meaning individuals who, whether through fatigue, indoctrination, or training, fail to stop and think of the morality of their orders. So how would that drama play out in a significantly more fascist 3I than the Golden Age mature Imperium we have all come to know? How did the process actually happen that a significant (if not completely reliable) tool was cast away by the Imperial powers that be?

In all of the Traveller stuff I have, I think that there is only one adventure that specifically deals with the Suppressions. And that was in an issue of Traveller's Digest or MegaTraveller Journal.

Thoughts?

 

[Arthur Denger]

Originally posted by Ganidiirsi O'Flynn:
'evil happens when good men sleep' (note: if anyone can cite the original source for that quote, I'd be grateful).

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

"This is probably the most quoted statement attributed to [Edmund] Burke, and an extraordinary number of variants of it exist, but all without any definite original source. These very extensively used "quotations" may be based on a paraphrase of some of Burke's ideas, but he is not known to have ever declared them in such a manner in any of his writings. It may have been adapted from these lines of Burke's in his 'Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents'" — from Wikiquote

What he actually wrote was:

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
— Edmund Burke

I personally find his words both more eloquent and more apt than the abridged, paraphrased versions.

 

[sgbrown]

Originally posted by Ganidiirsi O'Flynn:
-clip- How did the process actually happen that a significant (if not completely reliable) tool was cast away by the Imperial powers that be?

-clip-

Thoughts?

Perhaps Psi use was covertly controlled and not thrown away (similar to B5 - but MUCH more hidden and underground.) I've seen that postulated more than a few times.

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

Well, we know that there are two Imperial Research Stations/Psionic Institutes (Terra and Wypoc) that are involved in psionic research and that the do turn out psions trained for Naval Intelligence and the various Security apparatus.

What I'm thinking of is a campaign where your team is composed of latent, barely trained psionics trying to escape a cruel and/or corrupt system. For that matter, a well meaning investigating team trying to hunt down a psionic criminal who really does know their next move before they make it...

 

[sgbrown]

Originally posted by Ganidiirsi O'Flynn:
Well, we know that there are two Imperial Research Stations/Psionic Institutes (Terra and Wypoc) that are involved in psionic research and that the do turn out psions trained for Naval Intelligence and the various Security apparatus.

What I'm thinking of is a campaign where your team is composed of latent, barely trained psionics trying to escape a cruel and/or corrupt system. For that matter, a well meaning investigating team trying to hunt down a psionic criminal who really does know their next move before they make it...

How about the team trying to hunt down a psionic "criminal" who turns out to be an innocent fleeing from a cruel/corrupt system? Even if the over all 3I is good IYTU, the covert nature of the psi corps means that it good be very bad even if the gov't itself is basically good. And no super power likes having its state secrets or dirty laundry aired - the psi corps may be both.

 

[clementk]

T4's Psionic Institutes and the GT pdf provide some glimpses into what might be. IIRC there was a possible followup for the GT one (might be in the works) but I don't think it would go into this period.

A good candidate for an e23 product and in addition a great idea for either Knights & Knaves Alehouse's Decemeber adventure contest or the one ending in June of 2007.

Personally I think it'd play out like B5's psi wars (can't recall the exact name right now) writ large but I view psionics with an Alfred Bester (the author)/B5 lens.

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

As with so many other aspects of the Third Imperium; 11,000 worlds, 11,000 different kinds of psionic suppressions.

Horrific, hapless, genocidal, goofy, medical, moronic, every adjective you can think of, all the rest you forgot to think of, they all can be used to describe the Psionic Suppressions across 11,000 invididual worlds.

Some thoughts from canonical descriptions:

- The CT punishments for being detected as a psion range from the horrific; lobotomy and lynching, to the 'merely' uncomfortable; imprisonment and deportation.

- The Imperium itself experiments with psionics; see Research Station Gamma.

- The Imperium quietly nullified most of the Psionic Suppression orders after the hysteria died down.

- Prison Planet features prisoners locked up for being psions. While they're at the bottom of everyone's totem pole, they aren't killed out of hand either.

- Psionic units in Imperial service were either disbanded or hunted down and destroyed or both. See the multi-part Psionic Knights adventure in DGP's magazine.

- It has been suggested that the 'wizards' and 'witches' of the Imperium's truly low-tech societies (those worlds with both a low TL and a Red Zone or other interdict) are actually psions. Maybe even the descendents of refugee psions from the non-interdicted worlds around them?

- In the TNE era, the Regency rather quickly brings psionics back into the mainstream. People may feel uneasy with it, but no one is being lynched either. That suggests there is a large underground psionic community, that the psionic community with its rules and mores didn't need to be built from scratch. The RC does much the same with a far smaller population.

I'd suggest that after the initial surge of hysteria died down and in areas removed from the epicenter of such hysteria, that psionics and psions are pretty much a given in any large society. Society will pretend they don't exist, society won't want to know about what they do and how they do it, but when society needs those abilities they're okay to be used.

To borrow a phrase from a similarly ugly epoch in human history, psions are fine as long as they don't get to "uppity".


Have fun,
Bill

 

[kafka47]

IMTU, the psionic suppressions were nothing more than a smokescreen to provide the ideological justification to limit the Zhodani expansion (although, the Zhodani were hardly on the move). It is a mixed era of show trials, false incriminations, hidden conspiracies and betrayals at the highest levels. Essentially, the whole incident was a masterful manipulation by Vilani nobles to finally rid themselves of the dissidents who had long populated the Rim provinces and the using the fear of the unknown possessed by the Solomani nobles to construct a powerful moral panic which grips the Imperium to this day.

I ran it as a series of one shots, whereby, a Noble uses the PsiCops, the Imperium's anti-psionic taskforce to advance her career by routing out psi-sympathizers when it turns out her own daughter is psionic. She turns her in to win favour. The daughter and the psiCops turn rogue flee toward friendlier space only to find the Consulate not all that it was cracked up to be start a coven in the backwoods of an Imperial world that would eventually become Wypoc.

I also did a little of the backstory as a one shot for the DGP adventure Psionic Knights.

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

While I wouldn't want to get *too* wrapped up in the Babylon 5 experience, I agree that several aspects would apply. Given that the 3I is MUCH larger than the universe of B5 at least in terms of population and maturity of colonies, never mind the diversivification of human cultures, I'm not to sure how far to take the example. Probably to the subsector level, and most assuredly not beyond the sector level.

Another account we could look at is the Deryni novels by Kathryn Kurtz. In these fantasy novels, there is an offshoot of humanity, called the deryni, that manifest powers beyond those of a 'normal' human. When political and ecclesiastic authorities declare the deryni anathema, the pogroms begin. Mayhem ensues thereafter.

That might be another face of the Supressions.

 

[alanb]

I spent a bit of time thinking about the Suppressions a couple of years ago. I didn't come up with very much, except for realising the importance of a single word: SuSAG.

SuSAG was almost destroyed during the suppressions. SuSAG was one of the great powers of the Imperium before the suppressions. Could these facts be connected?

The Zhodani thing would also have been a factor, of course. It would have been a sufficient reason for a wave of panic in its own right. But wouldn't an internal power struggle within the Imperium - a Cultural Revolution of sorts - be more fun?

Basically what I am suggesting is: SuSAG and its allies were becoming "too powerful". Therefore, its enemies whipped up anti-Psionic hysteria in order to destroy it. SuSAG, no doubt, retaliated in one form or another. The resulting power struggle would have had the potential to tear the Imperium apart.

Ultimately, of course, the ability to frame up the SuSAG faction as Zhodani stooges and so on would have ensured their defeat. But the Imperial government would have eventually felt the need to clamp down on the mayhem...

 

[kafka47]

If I were to rewrite my scenario (which who knows I might), SuSAG is the Halliburton & Enron of the OTU. Intimately connected with the top levers of power but maintaining a respectful distance. Every citizen knows that Megacorps are in bed with the nobility but the extent of how much is only known to a few. Given their scale, Megacorps themselves act with differing objectives than even the Board of Directors would be aware of.

An alliance SuSAG would form basis for a Noble House's aspirations to go to Court but this would be blocked a traditional Vilani rival. Hence forming the basis for SuSAG's departure from the Imperium to conduct R&D.

SuSAG's execs would also form a vested interest in the supressions, as they could market a drug, that would supress psions...but in fact, enhance the psi potential. SuSAG would turn the patients over to the Navy for their organic computer program...dovetailing nicely with the organic computers debate (during the Supressions). The Navy trains a few, kills many more, in the course of experiments, quite a significant number escape not really knowing what happened to them (think of River from Serenity) forming mad cults and hooking up with fellow wierdos (think 12 Monkeys) continuing the experiments that the Navy subjected them to believing that they are going to form a Third Column when the Revolution finally happens. All the time actually feeding new recruits to IN experiments, as Research Stations located across the Imperium routinely issue a recall signal (again, think Serentiy) to bring the cattle home for different experiments. As cannon makes it quite clear that the Institutes were once flourishing entities but simply went underground (think X-Men). The daughter of the above mentioned noble gains insight into this by volunteering for the program only to discover the magnitude of the betrayal and deceit, vows to create something new and appeals to the Emperor. The Emperor creates the psionic knight order whose real purpose is to curve but not halt SuSAG's "excesses".

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

SuSAG, according to (I think) issue 17 of JTAS, suffered two profound hits in the 800-1000 period.

Firstly, the Psionic Suppressions. SuSAG was (and for that matter still is, covertly) the major supplier of psionic drugs in Imperial space. These accounted for almost 15% of SuSAG's total sales in the 700's, and so when the Edict of Suppression was put into effect all stocks of these very expensive, difficult to manufacture drugs were confiscated and destroyed. Imperial governmental personnel with a chemical background were to supervise the facilities as they changed to other, far less profitable products. These sales were only partially made up by expanding sales of anagathics drugs.

The second problem for SuSAG during this period was the revelation that the conglomerate was responsable for virtually all Battlefield Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical agents used in the armed forces of the 3I. In one noted incident in the 3rd Frontier War, an outpost planet's atmosphere was ripped away from it's world due to a nuclear explosion caused, in part, by poorly handled SuSAG materials. (I think it's Ganulph/Pax Rulin/Trojan Reach from Adv. 4 "Leviathan")

As it currently stands, in 1115, SuSAG is stuck with a reputation fully as tainted as Dow Chemical and the Greater Donets Basin Hero Power Collective (aka the guys that ran Chernobyl). However, because they are continually funding research and pay their employees handsomely, SuSAG still draws much of the best and the brightest of chemical and material engineers from every Domain of the Imperium.

Cuz most pure theorists don't care who signs the research grant...

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by Ganidiirsi O'Flynn:
The second problem for SuSAG during this period was the revelation that the conglomerate was responsable for virtually all Battlefield Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical agents used in the armed forces of the 3I.

Even nastier than I remembered then. No wonder their enemies tried to wipe them out!

If you recall, their original owners were described as "paranoid"...

Actually, "paranoid" covers a lot of ground. It could mean they were considered to be crazy, or it could be a euphemism for them all being a bunch of psionics and/or people surrounded by psionics. It would certainly make for interesting family gatherings.