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From: Peter H. Brenton [email removed]
> I remembered a series of novels by Anne McCafferty (which have
>nothing to do with Dragons) about psionic interstellar transport.
>One novel was called "The Rowan" and all of them were quite good.
>The psionic travel was accomplished by a stationary psion who used
>some kind of energy turbine (mechanical!) to give her or him enough
>energy to "hurl" vessels between stars.
The term "hurl" is a close description, what the psion does is use
both telekinesis AND teleportation to throw the "cargo" toward their
destination. Most of the time it is only half way. They get an
energy boost by mentally tapping the 'field' of the 'generators' (the
electromagnetic field energy is uniquely compatible with human
bio-elctrical energy, thereby convertible by the psion into psionic
energy)
>I seem to recall that it was necessary for there to be a psion at the
>other end of the journey to "catch" the vessel.
the "hurled" ships and cargo pods being pushed as far as the first
psion could push it, was then pulled by the catcher insystem.
> Of course if there is no psion at the other end then the vessel has
> no way of returning!
> One way of introducing such a culture would be for RCES scavengers
> to find a "driveless" ship crashed on an abandoned planet.
One minor point, the manned ships had some form of _insystem_ drive.
those ships 'hurled' past the range of nearest Psion had to use the
insystem drive to get back in range in order to be 'picked up' and
returned to base.
one other point is, in that world all children are tested to see what
"talents" they posses and at what level. the combined results are given
a number. This becomes their 'T rating'. The hurlers are T1's. They
posses at least 3 talents (telepathy,telekinesis, and teleportation)
and a very high mental strength (even in traveller that combination is
very very rare), and they go down from there to those with the barest
"trainable" talents receiving a "T10" rating.
My players have enjoyed their encounter with a culture like this (but
that was MT date 185-1116). They have yet to reestablish contact
(Current MT/T:TNE date 010-1201)
Thomas Potter ([email removed])