| From: | "J.D. Falk" <jdfalk@****.CAIS.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | [REPOST] PSI: Origins |
| Date: | Sat, 23 Jul 1994 21:43:44 -0400 |
useful negative feedback so that this draft can be immediately improved.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 1994 14:32:01 -0400
From: Jai Tao <jdfalk@****.CAIS.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list SHADOWRN <SHADOWRN@*****.NIC.SURFNET.NL>
Subject: PSI: Origins
On Tue, 12 Jul 1994, Robert A. Hayden forwarded Tim Skirvin's writings:
> Also, how are Psi's going to be introduced? Another concept, or is
> it going to be just grafted on, and assumed to always exist? The latter
> is just too far against how SRun already works...I'd assume that, instead,
> they were always just casting spells in a slightly different ways. Maybe
> it could just be another discipline, like hermetic or shamanic, for that
> matter...
HISTORY OF PSIONICS IN THE SIXTH WORLD (draft)
By 2050, thermaturgical scientists had finally finished proving
that magic exists according to laws which conventional scientists did not
totally understand. Though this was considered a major breakthrough and
received a lot of media coverage, it still did not answer the underlying
question of how magic _acutally_ works to the satisfaction of the largely
mundane (non-magical) general scientific community.
At this point, a small number of papers were released which
showed something even more confusing. While testing large numbers of
people who had proven themselves to be magically active, researchers at
MIT&T had discovered that not all "mages" used the same -- or even
similar -- methods to acheive similar effects.
Much of this could be explained by the differences between
hermetic and shamanic practices, so they removed all shamanic mages from
the test group and tried again. And again. And again.
After some time, it was found that the majority of the so-called
hermetic mages worked according to well-known and mostly understood
formulae, gathering their energy from the Astral plane. But some neither
followed these formulae _or_ used Astral energy. As if that wasn't
enough of a surprise, it was found that the more powerful of this type
could access and travel through Astral space just like any other mage!
Through continued research, a new magic-like discipline was
discovered, which is called Psionics becuase the energy seems to come
mainly from the persons' own mind. There are very few people, human or
metahuman, with Psionic abilities -- though some of the figures may be
attributed to general ignorance of the differences between Hermetic magic
and Psionic abilities, it is generally thought that the development of
Psionics is unrelated to The Awakening, and has actually been an ongoing
process throughout the history of mankind.
