Richard Anderson writes about IRIS, an imperial psionic secret service.
I've never heard anything about this organisation. Where did you get this?
Is it "official"? What else can you tell me about it?
He also writes:
> As for the Solomani, official word says that the Solomani hate them just as
> much as the Imperials...
>
And from Metlay:
> Hans Rancke-Madsen has questioned my authority (ALWAYS a bad idea |-> )
> on the matter of psionic hatred in the Solomani Sphere; due to the relative
> remoteness of the Sphere from the Zhodani, he asks, is it not reasonable
> to assume that the psionic hatred established by the backfiring Psycho-
> history project would not have taken root there?
>
> To which I reply: *BZZZT* Wrong. Sorry, Hans; the Traveller literature
> states (PRECISELY where, I'm not sure, but my best guess is Alien Module
> Six) that the propaganda leading to the Psionics Supressions went into
> full swing all over the Imperium, including the Autonomous District,
But why? We're talking about a _massive_ experiment here. The
cost must have been huge, not to mention the number of trained
psyco-historians that must have been needed to control the
experiment (all right, they _didn't_ control it). As I recall
the Autonomous District was very much left to itself at the
time. It would not have been nessessary to include them in the
experiment, since the District's influence on The Core were
negligible at the time. Wasting resources on it seems foolish.
Yet they did. Why?
> nearly two centuries before the fracturing of the territory.
Are you saying that all the Solomani Sphere were once a part of the 3rd
Imperium? I have the impression that a part of it never came under the
sway of The Sunburst.
> The Solomani are
> Imperial in their tastes and prejudices in that respect; you won't see
> many psionic shield helmets in the Rim, but the people there hate psis as
> much as anyone else. See also "Prison Planet" for an example of how psis
> are treated by the locals.
>
But dosen't that strike you as odd? If fear of the Zhodani were
a significant factor in this process there _should_ have been a
marked difference between the two ends of the Imperium. Since
there _isn't_ any difference, one can conclude... what? I don't
know, but I find it intriguing.
Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
[email removed]