Bay 12 Games Forum

Name: Dulacnuec Jones of the Tenth Circle
Description: Dulacnuec has round, silvery eyes and neck-long silky black hair carefully cut to an even length. He has cream-colored skin, a high forehead, a fairly muscular build, and dresses mainly in cobalt blue. His hands each have a tattoo on the palm, a different symbol for each hand, as well as more decorative tattoos in black, green, and gold running along his inner arms. His left eye has been replaced with a cybernetic one, custom-made to look more like a silvery gemstone than a normal eye. His bearing reminds one of a great cat.
Biography: Dulacnuec keeps his history hidden. He has only let assorted details be known about his past to most of his organization, many of which are contradictory. This much is known for certain: He is older than he looks. A few decades ago, he either revealed, discovered, or created psionics, a method to do the evidently impossible. Some say it is magic, others the power of the mind, others stage magic, and still others quote Clarke's Third Law. (They are human-descended, after all.) He created the Circles shortly thereafter, starting with only a handful but moving up to the eleven circles and hundreds of thousands of members it has today. Dulacnuec seems to have connections with major corporations, aside from those offered by his members, as well as with various other high-ranking officials; he only uses them sparingly, however. Finally, Dulacnuec has a flair for the dramatic and the deceptive; it is this which has caused the most doubt about his psionics.

Organisation name: The Circles of Psionics
Description: A group of eleven circles, total. Dulacnuec is the sole Tenth Level Psionist; there are seven Ninth Level psionists; around 30 8th level; ~150 7th level; almost a thousand 6th level; ~4,000 5th level; ~16,000 4th level; ~50,000 3rd level; ~150,000 2nd level; ~350,000 1st level; and ~700,000 0th level psionists, for a total membership of about a one and a quarter million. As suggested by the name, they practice Dulacnuec's psionics. Each Level a member enters teaches him/her new powers. While the first few levels can't do much more than minor mental tricks and a bit of what impatient malcontents in the Circles call "stage magic," the higher-level members can produce more impressive effects, such as weaponized pyrokinesis or detailed mind-reading. Supposedly, the 8th circle and above begins learning precognition. The Circles are fairly weak, and therefore remain secret.
     -Economical power: Fairly minimal, but the Circles' ranks include members of the Boards of Directors of major technological corporations as well as many other important figures, and Dulacnuec has an almost magical eye for finance, so they have access to a rather larger amount of power and money than their numbers would suggest.
     -Military power: Again, minimal. Some lower-grade officers are members of the Circles, but they don't do much to aid the Circles so they retain their jobs, making their input typically negligible. They also have access to a fair amount of powerful technology from various corporate contacts (who got insurance money--win-win), and of course their psionics, but overall they're pretty weal.
     -Popularity: Negligible--few people even know of the Circles' existence, and many who do dismiss it as an urban legend. Those who know the truth are divided about 35-15-50 into "Hate-Like-Meh."

Because every space elf race needs space-magic, right? Even if it's by a fraud.
(Incidentally, while I'd prefer that psionics actually work, one part technology to two parts showmanship works, too. Whatever the "truth," it's probably best that it's kept secret from other players. Just because.)
(Oh, and if we're out of slots for major characters or a million is a more significant proportion of the population than I had though, just make Dulacnuec a solitary psion.)