Chime

Chime’s Story

Chime was an advanced student in psionics who was on a school outing on an undeveloped planet when the entire tour group was Taken. At least, that is what she believes, although she was unable to telepathically reach any of her classmates or instructors after being Taken. She spent several months surviving by using her telepathic gifts to communicate before she was found by Duncan who recognized her Taken status. Because of her association with Nigel and her desire to further help him, she concentrated on manifesting the teleportation and dimensional travel psychic disciplines, which allowed her to return to her planet of origin but only for a brief period, because although she was born there, her home was now in the world of the Taken with her friends.

She added a much-needed ability to the overall team: the ability to travel quickly through the use of her teleportational skills.

Her use-name is “Chime”, which is short for her psychic signature of “sight of crystal wind-chimes, sound of crystal chimes ringing in the breeze, feeling of warm spring breeze on the skin, scent of new plants on the wind”.

She is what is called a “Star-Elf”, a race of primarily human descent, genetically enhanced for psychic abilities.

She was in the final years of her compulsory training, having just decided on her future career. After an examination of her potentials and genetic characteristics, she selected the profession of Mindhealer, as her highest potentials were in Telepathy and Empathy.

She did not lead a sheltered life: her people expect that their students will find employment off-world, so they want every one to be prepared. She has been off-world many times, and has seen the effects of pirate raids and attacks on her home planet, if not personally, at least through the telempathic news system of her world.

She was on a school field trip on a Class‑C Protected World (no intelligent life, protected ecosystem) with her instructors and the rest of her class, when they were caught in a Storm. When it was over, she was alone, with no idea where her instructors or the rest of her class had gone. She’s not even sure that they were brought with her by the Storm, although she has noticed several faint attempts to contact her, but, even though her strong familiarity with her classmates should render distance immaterial, she has not been able to contact them or locate them.

Character Personality

Chime is a normal teenaged member of her society: stable, inquisitive, empathic, fun-loving. Coming to this world, Chime has endured many challenges, the primary ones being that she has been cut off from her world and from her friends and teachers. Everything that was purely theoretical before is quite real now.

Character Equipment

All-terrain clothing: robes, boots, belt. All are of a light but extremely durable cloth that looks like fine silvery mesh, with small sapphire jewel accents. (Think Altaira’s costume from Forbidden Planet.) The cloth is self-repairing, waterproof, insulated, surprisingly warm (traps body heat) and impervious to dirt or stains. All of the clothing can be folded into a very small space: when the jacket is not worn it is folded away in one of the pouches on her carry-all.

Bracelet: A silvery metal bracelet holding a Sensing Crystal (5). This bracelet also contains her Identity Crystal (below).

Identity Crystal: A small, flat circular crystal which has her identity, genetic coding, medical history, education, account status, credit history and other important information encoded within it. (Essentially, this is a small memory crystal, except it can also be read by special devices designed for that purpose.) It can be removed from the bracelet at will if necessary.

Memory Crystals x5 (instruction manuals on psychic disciplines x3, personal diary, book of ti-shaara performances). Rectangular crystals, roughly the size of a palm and about a 12″ thick. Each is labelled in gold characters in Galactic 5 script, except for the diary.

Necklace (Recovery Crystal)

Headband (Storage Crystal [Telepathy] (5))

Ring: Psychic Beacon Crystal (It is currently set by the person of the senior of her instructors to track their students.) She wears this on the index finger of her left hand.

Personal Defense Weapon: This is a wide bracelet, set with long, slender faintly-glowing blue crystals along its surface. It can deliver a focused blast of psychic energy, doing 2d6 subdual damage up to 30′ and 1d6 subdual damage out to 60′. It can also be set (requiring a move-equivalent action) to do 1d6 regular damage, with a range increment of 30′. This is a Ranged Touch attack. The weapon has a capacity for 10 shots; it can be recharged at a rate of 1 shot per 10 minutes of meditation. Because of it is controlled mentally, the weapon has the implicit feats Point Blank Shot (but does not receive the damage bonus) and Precise Shot. The weapon can be removed but the latch is only controlled psychically by the wearer, although that can be overridden by special equipment: when commanded, the metal will part automatically, otherwise, there is no discernible break in the surface.

Personal Defense Shield: A wide bracelet set with  long, slender faintly-glowing blue crystals along its surface. It is controlled psychically and requires a move-equivalent action to activate. This is the same as the inertial field belt from the Psionics Handbook. It is essentially a psionic mage armor/bracers of armor +4.

Grooming Wand: This item can become a hair brush, comb, toothbrush, etc. Made of a psychically-sensitive material, the forms are set during manufacture and cannot be changed. Can only be used by a character with psychic abilities.

Farseer: A small pair of binoculars: lenses are psychically-reactive crystals. Range is 10x to 1000x. Can only be used by a character with psychic abilities. Kept in a pouch on her belt.

Carry-all: Basically a large, shoulder-slung pouch, made of the same material as her clothing, but of a more durable type of material form. It contains a collapsible tent (of the same material as her clothing), food bars, a canteen of water, a change of clothes and a personal medical kit.

Personal Medical Kit: Contains a “kela-ta” (simple medical analyzer, it automatically diagnoses diseases and other injuries and recommend treatment, can summon assistance by radio), broad-spectrum antibiotics and other simple drugs, material for splints, bandages, etc. The medical analyzer and drugs are designed for her race and can have unpredictable effects on members of other races.

All of the metallic equipment is of a “silvery metal”. This is actually a psychically-sensitive metallic crystalline alloy.

Racial Abilities

Low-light vision
Racial Bonus: +2 to Listen, Search and Spot
Racial Bonus: +2 bonus to Mental Contact and Psychic Shield.
Immune to sleep effects
+2 bonus against enchantment effects
+2 DEX, ‑2 CON
Automatic languages: Galactic Common, Galactic 5
Bonus Languages: Galactic 4, Galactic 1, Galactic 6
Favored Class: Psychic
Feat: Defensive Martial Arts
Feat: Weapon Proficiency: Personal Defense Weapon
Natural Psychic: the Star-Elf race is naturally psychic (they were bred for it) and so receive the Psychic Ability and Telepathy feats at first level.
Psychic Talent: Star-Elves have four bonus skill points at character creation and one bonus skill point per additional level, usable only to acquire or improve psychic skills.
Untrained Skills: Star-Elves can use the following psychic skills untrained: Empathy, Mental Contact, Psychic Sense and Psychic Shield.

Racial Background

The “Star Elves” race is of genetically engineered human descent, engineered for psychic abilities using DNA recovered from a long-dead alien species. They were created with an equal eye to aesthetics as they were to practical matters, including improved vision and hearing and reduced need for sleep. Other minor improvements on the base form were an improved resistance to disease, including tooth decay, and elimination of body odor. Their native language is Galactic 5.

Instead of getting the several Weapon Proficiency Feats of the fantasy race, “Star Elves” are taught a form of “soft” martial arts that helps focus the mind and improve the connection between mind and body, giving them the Feat: Defensive Martial Arts. They are also proficient with the Personal Defense Weapon. Note: this race is inherently peaceful and do not even have the Simple Weapons Proficiency. Another change is that Intimidate is not a class skill for them: the +2 bonus for the Feat: Sensitive is applied to the skill Gather Information, instead.

Their home planet is slightly smaller than Earth, with slightly lesser gravity, which accounts for their unusual height (for an elf) and their low strength and reduced stamina under normal gravity.

Cultural Background

The “Star Elves” place a great amount of emphasis on social conformity and coöperation, but they also prize independence, initiative and free will. They are culturally advanced and revere talented performers as highly as any other     The culture enjoys a wide variety of games and amusements. Games based on telepathy, telekinesis and precognition are officially discouraged but unofficially tolerated by instructors who expect their charges to have to deal with the universe as a whole.

Universe Background

The current date is GCY (Galactic Common Year) 3,271. That marks the date of the foundation of the current Galactic Commonwealth, which united the Human Confederation, the Hantor Conglomerate, the Karn, the Varbillians, and several other, lesser races, which included the last two survivors of the previous Commonwealth. At that time, the Galactic Commonwealth included only about 30% of the Galactic spiral arm, but has grown to cover 18% of the entire galaxy.

Approximately 250 years before the founding, human explorers discovered the wreckage of a N’Lassi psi-ship in the asteroid belt. The N’Lassi, a humanoid race resembling the “Star Elves” (or, more exactly, the other way around) were an advanced race with strong psychic abilities. They had visited Earth several times and were responsible for many legends of gods and demons in human pre-history. They were wiped out through an engineered psychic virus approximately 3,000 years before the discovery.

The discovery of the psi-ship and its still-functional but depleted psi-crystals made humanity aware of other intelligent life in the galaxy. At that time, the galaxy was emerging from its most recent period of barbarism, the result of the war that wiped out the N’Lassi and their opponents, the X’chi’t’l, a hive-mind insectiod race.

When the psi-ship was examined, one woman out of the many dozens of researchers (not to mention the hundreds and thousands of other people who had contact with it) discovered a strange ability to move objects by simply thinking at them whenever she was in contact with the crystal. Further exhaustive research revealed that 0.000000001% of the human population possessed similar powers: strangely enough, the population with the highest percentage were people of Irish or Welch descent. N’Lassi genetic material had entered the human genome sequence, probably through inter-marriage, and lay dormant until awakened. This discovery and the ability to re-create the psi-ship psi-crystals engendered a period of social unrest and revolution, a period lasting a half-century that is now called the Psi Wars.

The technology of this universe is very advanced: galactic government and commerce, FTL communication and travel, advanced medical and genetic manipulation, etc. (According to GURPS, this would be about TL 12.) They make strong use of psionics: spacecraft often use teleporation (groups of three or more psychics working in concert, often aided by large storage crystals and amplifiers) to travel between star systems, telepaths and psychic healers are common medical personnel, police often use precogs and clairvoyants to track criminals, etc. Despite that, only a very small percentage (but, given the large population of the Galactic Commonwealth, still a sizeable number) of people have psionic abilities.

Warfare and crime are still factors, even in this advanced society, as there are external and internal menaces to be reckoned with.

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