Psion (Saga of the Skolian Empire)
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Psion is a term describing people with empathic and in some cases telepathic abilities, in the Saga of the Skolian Empire books by Catherine Asaro.
Psions can detect emotions, and even individual thoughts depending on the strength of the psion and the proximity of those around them. The stronger the psions, the more they project and are affected by the thoughts of others.
They are also susceptible to the emotional suffering of people who are near them, and can suffer emotional scars from other psions who project their pain naturally. To survive the ongoing emotional attacks, psions are trained to put up barriers around their minds, both to protect themselves from unwelcomed feelings and thoughts and to prevent projecting onto others.
There are several hundred genes that result in psionic abilities. The more such genes a psion possesses, the stronger psionic abilities he/she manifests. A bigger concentration of these genes in a person's genome may however lead to severe abnormalities and deformities in any children produced. As a result, the stronger the psion parent, the more likely it is that a child will be either deformed or most often never born, the fetus dying in the early stages of pregnancy. This is why psions are very rare. Their genes are recessive, and survive genetically by producing strong pheromones that draw psions together.
[edit] KAB rating
The term KAB Rating stands for Kyle Afferent Body Rating, sometimes shortened to Kyle Rating. It refers to the strength of a psion's empathic and telepathic abilities and is measured on a scale from 0 to 10. The rating is inversely based on how many people it would take to find an individual with a given mental strength.
Most humans rate between 0 to 2 on this logarithmic scale (no empathic or telepathic abilities). A three or higher indicates an empath; a six denotes a telepath.
A psion with a Kyle Rating of 6 would statistically only be found once in a population the size of 10 to the 6th power (about one per metropolitan area, or one per thinly populated world). As another example, a full telepath is usually a psion with a Kyle Rating of 10, and would only be found in a population the size of 10 to the 10th power (about one per fully populated world, or one per moderately populated star system).
There is also a group of psions who have a rating too high to be measured numerically. Those are called Rhon. They are extremely rare and to be born Rhon a child must get the full set of psion genes from both parents. In practice, the term Rhon refers to members of Ruby Dynasty, the ruling family of Skolian Empire, as Rhon not related to them are not known. Only the Rhon psions have sufficient Kyle Rating to interface with the ancient Ruby psiberspace portals known as Locks. In exceptional cases Rhon can even receive emotions over big distances (even through space), mostly when they are closely related to the sender.
[edit] Kyle organs
The Kyle Afferent Body (KAB) and Kyle Efferent Body (KEB) are microscopic, nano-sized organs in the brain of a psion responsible for natural interpersonal electromagnetic communications, aka telepathy and empathy. Structures called paras receive signals from the KAB and translate them into thoughts, and transmit thoughts to others using the KEB.
