Psionic class lore

[astreoth]

parcel the spellblaze did way more to the demon world than just cause a famine. according to the lore from the jewler quest in the far east forget the exact name. their god is literally the only reason their still is a demon world entire continents of the place are being destroyed, millions of demons are drowning in lava, constant earth quakes as urh'rok tries to hold back the coming explosion that is the entire planet it is nothing short of apocalyptic. dunno if thats ongoing or just what was happening when the fearscape was sent out.

also I'm not sure the demons are really using vim based magic aside from the forge giant and champion of urh'rok demons which seem to be their holy guys most of their abilities seem to be more racial like taking advantage of their own biology wretchlings use poisonous gases that their bodies give off same with the shadow demons and the dollegs or whatever the bulwark demons are named using their own bulkiness. honestly I don't think demons really use vim much and don't really remember one ever using blight and I think vim is only used for calling on the power of urh'rok and he may only be demanding it from residents of eyal who call on his power like corruptors and the upcoming demonologist class.

yeah the only power sources I think their using are their own biology and holy power from their god it may just be that they can't use any of their usual magic or nature powers in eyal, or that holy and racial powers are all they developed, or heck maybe the demon world was peaceful place where demons lived carefree joyous lives sustained by the shadowflame of their loving god until sudden apocalypse and they packed up as many of them as they could on the fearscape whether warrior or civilian and sent them off in a desperate bid for vengance and or the very survival of their race(s). I dunno.

also this topic is not discussing how the f*** psionics work nearly enough are we off track or are we out of ideas that more or less haven't already been said?

[Doctornull]

Psionic demons should exist but I'd say that psionic tendancies are mostly seen in archaic and unintelligent forms, which reflect a shared ancestry with early horrors in an era of no sun, different elemental distributions, and possibly no local planets at all.

Demons are aliens from another planet. One specific planet. This is detailed in the in-game lore.

Horrors are something(s) completely different.

I can't tell if you hate the lore of ToME or if you just haven't read it.

we have no evidence for any antipathy towards magic in Demon society,

We do have champions of Urh'Rok who get Spell Feedback, an anti-magic prodigy.

parcel the spellblaze did way more to the demon world than just cause a famine. according to the lore from the jewler quest in the far east forget the exact name. their god is literally the only reason their still is a demon world entire continents of the place are being destroyed

That quest talks about the Sher'Tul doing some attempted planet-busting, nothing to do with the Spellblaze at all.

The Spellblaze just cracked the ancient planetary shield around Eyal.

[astreoth]

astreoth wrote:
parcel the spellblaze did way more to the demon world than just cause a famine. according to the lore from the jewler quest in the far east forget the exact name. their god is literally the only reason their still is a demon world entire continents of the place are being destroyed

That quest talks about the Sher'Tul doing some attempted planet-busting, nothing to do with the Spellblaze at all.

The Spellblaze just cracked the ancient planetary shield around Eyal.

dude darkGod has confirmed the sher'tul have faster than light ships in this thread so if the sher'tul did decide to completely destroy the demons planet they'd have probably checked to make sure they finished the job and then finished it.

seriously the sher'tul wiped out all of eyals gods they are far too powerful of a race to do this shitty of a job if they intentionally wanted to destroy the demons. and the demons know the blast came from eyal therefore the spellblaze being the only other thing with that much power to come from eyal must be the culprit.

now can we please move on from demons and go back to psionics.

[HousePet]

I don't think there is a lack of lore about psionic powers.
There is a lack of lore about people using psionic powers, how the Way came to be, and where some of those Afflicted type things come from, like Kyless's book and whatever happened to Ben Cruthdar.

[astreoth]

yeah psionics has some lore in the classes themselves, artifacts, and quests like ben cruthdar and killing kyless. but psionics doesn't have any historical mention now the same can be said of wilders and that is at least partially justified by psionics rarity and magics overwhelming popularity until the spellblaze.

but psionics also has the problem of no in game explanation of how they work, and from what we know from the talent descriptions it doesn't seem like psionics draws on eyal unlike magic and nature gifts. which overall adds up to psionics being fundamentally different from nature gifts, combat techniques, and all of the different kinds of magic while having no explanation of how they work.

and you have to get the explanation on wild gifts from anglowen as a side note in explaining magic I mean seriously in game wilders have to go to to the city of magic to learn how wild gifts work can't get that from zigur which including the thaloren city are the only two places with wilders.

seriously somebody just put a pamphlet called natures weapons or something in zigurs library

[HousePet]

Well there isn't much lore on how most abilities work.

[astreoth]

yeah there isn't, their is only two pieces of lore on how these abilities work (spellblaze chronicles, not humility lecture in anglowen) that only directly covers arcane magic and nature gifts, the arcane magic bit shows enough of the underlying how of magic in general that combined with other lore you can get a pretty good idea of how the other schools of magic work in most cases.

arcane mages tap eyals lay lines for power therefore you can assume that other magics are based on taping ley lines and for the most that seems right
chronomancy works by taping and manipulating temporal threads,
defilers tap the invasive new thread blight,
celestials tap the threads of space to draw the power of the sun and moon,
and even wilders work by drawing power from eyal.

this doesn't really hold for demonic powers which seem to be more urh'rok demands a blood sacrifice for his power than anything else and I'm not even gonna pretend to have any idea on the topic of souls. but yeah we can get some understanding of most things in game based on in game lore and we could use more lore on a lot of these but with psionics we really only have the classes talent descriptions for how they work.

[Lubaf]

Well, one approach is to have the Psionic classes be completely new, and mostly unknown. (The D&D 4E approach)

As far as the world at large is concerned, the four paths of Psionics each their own, bizarre, thing.

The Solipsists are men who have slept in the Dogroth Caldera, and come out changed. (Note that the strange fumes the place is known for start after the player starts adventuring.)
The Mindslayers are based on a set of Yeek training methods that somehow leaked from their island, possibly by an accident caused by a Yeek adventurer (or perhaps intentionally; hard to say with the Yeeks).
The Doomed are an old phenomenon, - back to before the Spellblaze, as many who would traffic in magic make mistakes in their approach.
The Cursed are a new phenomenon, with a definite proximate cause - back less then 30 years ago. (The book is not required at this point, as the Curse appears to be a mental infection of some kind that at this point is spreading naturally.)

None of these people are directly connected, as far as the scholars of the world are concerned. Solipsists and Mindslayers are rare enough that its highly unlikely for anyone at this point to have met both, never mind one meeting the other. While the Doomed and Cursed are obviously related in some way, they are also both have wildly differing causes.

As far as Zigur's concerned, none of the four are magical because none of the four trigger their antimagic senses.

All of this could be written up in a book titled "Three Strange New Phenomena and One Old One", which is based on second-hand accounts of all four.

Does that do it for ya?

Thanks
Luc "That's Your Fanwank For Today" French

[astreoth]

even considering how sure I am that psionics isn't a new thing your approach seems by far the most accurate for how the people of maj'eyal probably view psionics.

[Grey]

Psionics is meant to be very rare and poorly understood. Even the halflings never properly realised that the yeeks had psionic abilities. To have a text in the game explaining how it works doesn't fit well with the world. It would be like having a text explaining chronomancy.

Some powers are available to the player because that's good for the game, but they're not meant to be widely known and described in the lore.

This is a great thread though :)

[darkgod]

Hum but once they did (find out about the yeeks) I'm sure the halflings with their rigorous minds would have done some experiments to try to understand

[Sradac]

OOh! Ooh! I know what they did! They wanted to learn more about how the yeeks do these strange mental tricks, what it felt like to use them, how powerful it really was, etc.

Soooo....What better way for a Halfling to learn about how the Yeek mind works, than by POSSESSING ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[astreoth]

yeah I'm aware of the intent regarding psionics rarity and how much their understood but honestly the common man in eyal knows squat about how any of the power sources work and if that lecture in anglowen is to be belived even those who use them have no idea what their doing a lot of the time.

but that doesn't mean their aren't people who know something about what the power sources are and how they work like zemekkys, archmage tarelion, and theirs plenty of references to sunwall scholars who probably have textbooks on celestial magic laying around.

so yeah not saying psionics should be something everyone knows about but their is definitely lore room for a bit of info on the subject hidden in some remote corner of eyal like in a ruin from a time and place when psionics was more common like before the yeeks enslavement, from the notes of a yeek/yeach adventurer regarding some weird psionic activity in a dungeon, a pamphlet from zigur explaining what these people are and why mana clash doesn't work on them.

edited below:
and a text on chronomancy would make sense inside point zero. know that the guy from anglowen who makes the return portal used a combination of zemekky's notes and the traitors work.
so by the time zemekkys has founded point zero sloppy notes on portal making could advance to textbooks on the subject even if their just a collection of zemekkys research note.
heck if eyal ever invents a printing press then the chronomancers probably have one so it honestly seems to make more sense for their to be texts on the subject than not.
course their is the argument of not wanting to accidentally let such texts fall into the wrong hands but still that would probably end at putting restrictions on taking the books out of point zero.

and for more on sunwall scholars the gem of the moon quest clearly mentions an astronomer investigating the fallen rock thing and the new star that is the fearscape as well as military concerns about the possible weaponizing of both.
and from that other set of lore about going to the eastern historical society to find the historical accounts on the origin of the sunwall its quite clear the sunwall has a lot of academics and a vested interest in the advancement of celestial magic.
so it wouldn't be too surprising for their to be a few texts on celestial magic almost seems like their should be <wink,wink,nudge,nudge>.

as for the defiler branch of magic yeah they all crazy the orcs seem the least evil and most sane users of defiler magic(again this is in relation to other users of defiler magic) as well as the oldest and most organized school of it unlike the upstart rahloren and the various scattered cults.
so yeah if anyone has a text on the subject its probably the orcs and most of their culture has been destroyed so yeah unlike the other three major branches of magic which already have or likely should have texts on them this is the only one I concede it may not really make much sense for their to be a text on it or at least one that isn't the nonsensical ravings of a mad man.