Kaz'shardra Aske's Research Journal

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!THIS A WORK IN PROGRESS!!!!!!!!!!!

Going to be fixing it, adding the personal entries, etc... just don't have time to finish it all at once

This is the annual edition for the Gnomish year 2010 for a personal research journal originally published in the Verloghokbol Tower Library of the Violet Order of the Skull. From here it is reprinted in its entirety in strange corners of Negaria: the Elysian Temple of Angadar, the cellar stacks of the Mikona Library, the Tower of the Mind, and even a lonely bookshelf at Sedera Yerak'Le'Yeritath in Le'Or T'Nanshi.

In places one would go to seek power, this will appear. And even in a few places where one would not.

Entry 1 - On Psychic Vampirism

by Kaz'shardra Aske Jan. 17, 2010

I dislike my shadow very much. It is weak and mostly useless. But I may have found a gloriously excellent use for it after all.

During my readings on the ways of Metapsionics and my observations of experienced psions harvesting latent psychic power using the Psionic Residue manifest, I recalled my mentor Sephira in a moment of frustration. Without going into too much detail about the situation, An'kin Sephira had run low on psychic power and bade me use a transfer crystal to deliver some of my own to her. It was a curious manifest, and one that I decided to look into in more detail.

Masters in the field of Metapsionics, called Savants, are keenly attuned to the ebb and flow of psychic energy. Not only can they harvest small amounts of power from their surroundings, but they can draw it in more focused manners as well. Aside from Psionic Residue, the most common Metapsionic manifest is called Receptacle, wherein psychic energy is stored inside a gem for later use. Receptacle has its ups and downs, certainly - it works well when one is swimming in gold and can afford pure (and expensive) crystals. But when the gems run out, so too does the psion.

I searched for other potential foci for psychic energy, and read accounts of living creatures being a viable source of energy. Naturally, beginning psions will look to the self first, manifesting the power called Cannibalize to literally sap one's own life force for psychic energy in the most pure and honest "mind over matter" feat that exists in the entire discipline. But one can also look without. Of friends, allies and minions, the Psychic Drain feat taps energy at the cost of dampening body and soul. Naturally, the people that I travel with - mighty warriors and senior mages - would be quite reluctant to grant this to me, even in a pinch. (To say nothing of Brongar and Torok, who would likely send me to the gallows for imposing upon their most precious souls.)

Ah, but there is my shadow. A self-perpetuating creation that knows no pain, no misery, and can't really say "no" at all. This is better than a zero-sum equation, really: if my theory is correct, my shadow can provide quite for me a fountain of latent psychic energy from its own manifest. Brilliant!

Of course, I cannot possibly stop there. Once I've learned to harvest psychic power from a willing shadow, then there's no reason why I can't take it from a foe as well, wrenching body and soul from all who would draw against me. And with a bit of preparation, the net cost to my own soul will be zero!

Now to find a good way to dispose of all the psychic power I am about to reap. Perhaps I could manifest clones who can fling arcane fireballs all day by proxy. Maybe I can keep my Acceleration active for hours instead of seconds. Or perhaps I can find a way to Disintegrate things on a whim. Ah, but there's this Life Draining manifest that I read about - maybe there's something to that as well.

The possibilities are as endless as the streams of psyche that surround us all. In time, I will master its ebb and flow, harvesting what I will in order to master this art.