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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 2780305" data-attributes="member: 926">Take some cues from Dune.  Mentats and Bene Geserit are good exmples of psionic subcultures/institutions.  The Butleria Jihad made development of human potential necessary to  replace computers, and many of the ideas from the books could be mined for what you are looking for.  All of the ideas you presented yourself are very good.  Self discipline would indeed be very important (you have to understand yourself pretty well in order to be able to project your willpower outside of your body)How prevalent do you want psionics to be?  Is it just going to replace magic and be no more common than magic is in a normal setting?   Or is it going to be deeply enmeshed in the society?  Psionic learning institutions would be somewhat different than wizardly schools.  There is an element of physicality necessary for psionics that the purely scholarly wizards dont need.  Bodily conditioning would be important, so Im thinking that psionic learning centers would end up looking much like the typical D&D monk monastary, though not isolated, just using the same type of theme.  Mental discipline and learning combined with excersize and physical improvement.Crystals would inded be important, and may even be used in architecture.  Imagine cathedral sized crystal buildings that act as cognizance crystals, holding vast resevoirs of psionic power usuable by the occupants!  Many of teh standard fantasy roles would have to change.  Instead of a court wizard, he king would have a court psion (mentat by another name <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)  Probably a Seer, using prescience and calculative abilities instead of magic to advise his king.  Elans, if you use them, could become a powerful noble cast of a psiocracy, immortal beings powered by thier own mental discipline. You hit religion perfectly.  For a further idea, in my campaign world I have a psionic culture roughly greco-roman based, where psionics was developed by philosophers during meditation, and seeking self perfection and Paltonic Truth became thier religion.  As another use for Elans , (I love Elans <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />) they could be holy figures of such a church, men who have altered thier bodies through thier psionic mastery to achieve immortality.  (I envision Elans as being created through a process of deep psionic training, not a pseudomagical ceremony)Imagine a psiotheocratic empire ruled by milennia old Elans, hehe.With the presence of psychic warrions, many of the roles filled by fighters (kights and such) could be filled, sometimes better, by psywars.  No reason psywars would be any less common than fighters if psionics are common enough.  One thing I never liked about the XPH is the stated lifestyle of psionic characters, living in communes and the like, with a definate x-men feel of being alienated because of thier powers.  Psionics isnt liek sorcery, where you need a bloodline of power.  Everyone has psionic potential and just has to learn to use it, akin to wizardry.  You just need the intelligence and discipline.  Wizards and sorcerers dont commonly form communes, why should psions?  Anyway, just some random ideas for you.</blockquote>

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