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Lore question- 4FW/Zhodani/Ine Givar

Bureau P

"If you make psionics criminal, only criminals will have psionics."​

The talk about court psionics gave me an idea for a campaign. The place is a world rife with anti-psionic sentiment among the general population. The PCs are agents of a secret law enforcement agency tasked with tracking down and apprehending psionic criminals. The secrecy is partly to avoid panicking the population with tales of psionic criminals, but mostly because it recruits, trains and employs psionics to help in its task.


Hans
 
Mongoose has several psi-detector equipments to find Teep activity and to test potential. Scanning with such finds teeps.

As to brainwashed that's trouble because all POW's would need be monitored by MOJ forever. Even simple "Zho's are your friends" programming or "Never Escape" would be easily implanted in every POW and last quite awhile.


Most Military Intell is unrelated to espionage and directly related to decoding enemy communications and learning the enemy order of battle. INI does espionage and counter-espionage but always tilted towards what's good for the IN 1st and 3rdI 2nd.

Scout intel is both counter and external. Co-ordinated through the DD Office ex-Scouts tell of all they see and meet and runs the active agents. Scout Security is official police of Imperium and are not bound by extrality, S-3 is their strike arm/SWAT as needed. MOJ works with Scouts. MOJ Agents lean more towards police/FBI types. There has never been mention (to my knowledge) of an explicit MI-5/MI-6 type organizations.
 
IBIS as opposed to IRIS AFAIK was something from the older White Dwarf mags.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, and I probably am on this count. :D

Uh, no...

IBIS was introduced in an early copy of "The Dragon" magazine. I think number 37. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The cover had a young boy pointing towards Russki(?) soldiers lighting a cigarette to armed snowmen.

Riik
 
Uh, no...

IBIS was introduced in an early copy of "The Dragon" magazine. I think number 37. Correct me if I'm wrong.

You're wrong. Dragon 35, page 7. Note that pages 7-11 are variant rules for Traveller.

And IBIS is massively majorly munchkin-from-hell.

Heck, in term 2, automatic skills are given "Combat Rifleman-2, Pistol-2,
Jack of all Trades-1 and Dagger-1 as service skills."

Yes, that's 6 levels of skill in 1 term, before the ones you get to roll.
 
I sit corrected (in front of my computer). Issue 35. I knew it was one of the thirties issue...

So, where does IBIS compare to IRIS in the OTU?

Or does it?

Riik
 
I sit corrected (in front of my computer). Issue 35. I knew it was one of the thirties issue...

So, where does IBIS compare to IRIS in the OTU?

Or does it?

Riik

IBIS isn't in canon. Purely a variant. It's Bond in Traveller.

IRIS in canon is exceeding it's authority.... and may just be an administrative investigations agency, like the US GAO. Or it may be a totally non-extant agency cobbled up by functionaries. Canon is unclear.
 
While this is wandering from the OP (apologies), I have never cared for the "of course, the Imperium has its own sekrit psionics capabilities" line. It sounds as reasonable to me as, "naturally the Vatican is obliged to maintain its own elite corps of Satanists..." To me, Imperial anti-psionicism is more interesting as a bedrock cultural value, not a technical hiccup they need to work around to compete with their neighbors.

I'd love to read more about the Ine Givar. I had the impression from CT canon that they were pretty much the Weathermen in SF drag, but wonder how much that's changed since those days.
 
While this is wandering from the OP (apologies), I have never cared for the "of course, the Imperium has its own sekrit psionics capabilities" line. It sounds as reasonable to me as, "naturally the Vatican is obliged to maintain its own elite corps of Satanists..."
The 3I canonically maintains two Psionics Institutes. Do with that what you might, the OTU 3I has its own psionics. Some of them work for INI.
 
While this is wandering from the OP (apologies), I have never cared for the "of course, the Imperium has its own sekrit psionics capabilities" line. It sounds as reasonable to me as, "naturally the Vatican is obliged to maintain its own elite corps of Satanists..." To me, Imperial anti-psionicism is more interesting as a bedrock cultural value, not a technical hiccup they need to work around to compete with their neighbors.

To me it IS 'of course'. Powerful people have always flouted bedrock cultural values by protecting useful or amusing members of persecuted minorities, and I can't imagine any intelligence or counterintelligence service that wouldn't be willing to ignore bedrock cultural values if that meant getting psionic adepts working for them.


Hans
 
Aramis - I wasn't contesting its canonicity, just stating my dislike for it. Perhaps if I knew of some Cold War era CIA-run think tanks based on & dedicated to Maoist theory, I'd swallow it better.

Hans - IMTU -- as in RW -- "value" and "usefulness" are not objective properties, but aspects of cultures.
 
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Your point eludes me.

If the servants of the Imperium understand psionics as antithetical to Imperial values and corrosive to human morality and mentality, they may not 'of course' regard it as a useful and necessary technique to add to their repertoire. That's all.

To steer this back towards the Ine Givar a bit -- and away from the discussion of the Psionics Suppressions I feel a craving for -- my understanding is that they are supported (in some way) by the Zhodani Consulate, but that they're not themselves pro-psionic or even pro-Zhodani, but simply opposed to the Imperial form of government. It's curious that they've never (to the best of my knowledge) been presented in a positive light, but consistently as Black Hats. No suggestion that they're the Rebellion to the Empire, for example ;)
 
Aramis - I wasn't contesting its canonicity, just stating my dislike for it. Perhaps if I knew of some Cold War era CIA-run think tanks based on & dedicated to Maoist theory, I'd swallow it better.

Hans - IMTU -- as in RW -- "value" and "usefulness" are not objective properties, but aspects of cultures.

I know of a couple. One was at Berzerkly in the late 60's early 70's... (UC Berkeley). The students pulled into that mess also got into other things... Some experiments of that type work (US Army OpFor) others don't (CIA funded Maoist Think Tanks)... because of the nature of the constraints. Mostly the fact that the Russians and Chinese didn't actually follow their little red books.
 
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