The Trinity FAQ, version 2.1

List maintained by Steven Otte
By Steven Otte and Rick Jones

Updated 18.07.99

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Note: For the benefit of players and people who just purchased the game, spoiler information has been moved to the bottom of the FAQ. When you see something that says Spoiler!, clicking it will take you to the Spoiler section. If you don't want to have some of the big surprises in the adventure series spoiled for you, don't read that section.

What is Trinity?

• Trinity is a science-fiction role-playing game of the near future from White Wolf Games. Most player characters are "psions," mentally gifted humans who use their psionic abilities to defend humanity from a variety of threats: bloodthirsty aliens, evil mutants and earth-bound conspiracies. It is a science fiction game world complete with many science fiction staples: teleporting jumpships allowing interstellar travel, at least 4 alien races, psionics, mutants, biotechnology and much, much more.

  Didn't it used to be called something else?

• Trinity was formerly known as Æon, named for the benevolent organization that many player characters work for in the game. Viacom (owner of MTV) threatened a lawsuit, however, saying the name was too close to their trademarked property "Æon Flux," even though role-playing games and TV series are completely different types of properties. While some minds think White Wolf could have won the case on those grounds, it would have meant delaying production until the court case had been resolved (and losing a lot of money), so the game's name was changed.

  When and where is Trinity set?

• Trinity is set in Earth's near future -- the year 2120, to be precise. With the help of the psions, humanity has colonized nearly all the planets of our solar system, as well as five other star systems and one nebula. Earth itself is quite different from the one we know; the former United States is a fascist dictatorship, Europe is an anarchic wasteland, and the oceans are populated with floating and undersea cities.

  You mean this isn't the WoD? And it isn't even Gothic/Punk!

• Trinity is not the World of Darkness in the future. There are no werewolves, vampires, wraiths, mages or fae lurking in the shadows, nor were there ever. The "future history" that leads humanity to the events of 2120 has some definite historical differences that preclude it from being the future of the World of Darkness. The mood of the Trinityverse -- encapsulated by the words "Hope, Sacrifice, Unity" -- is not as dark as the WoD, either.

  Can I do a Trinity/WOD crossover?

• You can do whatever you want. The White Wolf Game Police will not hunt you down. Various folks on the 'Net are experimenting with using psions in the World of Darkness and using World of Darkness creatures in Trinity. There's plenty going on in the Trinityverse without them, though.

  What's changed from the Storyteller system?

• The major change from Storyteller is the way dice are handled. All rolls are difficulty 7. Only one success is required. If the Storyteller judges a task is more difficult than usual, she can require more successes. Furthermore, rolled "1"s do not subtract from successes; they merely determine how severe a Botch is if no successes are rolled.
  There are other differences as well:
  
  • Abilities are now grouped under specific Attributes.
  • Instead of Normal and Aggravated, the two kinds of damage are Bashing and Lethal. Bashing damage is recovered quickly and can be soaked. Lethal damage is more severe, and generally cannot be soaked without armor.
  • Soak -- whether a character's normal Soak or from armor -- subtracts from the attacker's damage die pool, not from the damage levels rolled. A successful attack will always roll at least 1 die of damage, even if the target's Soak exceeds the damage die pool.
  • Demeanor has been replaced with Allegiance. Allegiance not only gives the player insights into his character's beliefs and core values, but gives the character a starting set of Abilities that reflect her background and basic training.
  • Initiative is the sum of your character's Dex+Wits+1d10, not a Wits+Alertness roll.
  • There are actual vehicle combat rules.

  How do the Lethal/Bashing health levels work?

• Attacks are classified as Lethal or Bashing; which is which is pretty straightforward. Fists, clubs, barstools, falling, vehicle crashes and the like are Bashing; knives, guns, lasers, Aberrant claws and so on are lethal. A character has 7 Health Levels, just as in the regular Storyteller system; both kinds of damage are tracked on the same scale. When a character takes Bashing damage, the box on the character sheet is marked off with a slash; Lethal damage is marked with an X. If a character who already has Bashing damage takes Lethal damage, an extra slash changes the Bashing level to a Lethal X, and the Bashing damage is moved another level down the chart. When a character reaches Incapacitated from Bashing damage, he's unconscious, and another level of damage -- whether Bashing or Lethal -- will kill him. Some players and storytellers have complained that this rule makes combat too deadly, and have proposed a house rule that Bashing damage inflicted after unconsciousness transforms a level of Bashing to Lethal; the character wouldn't die until all Health Level boxes have been X'd out. As with any WW game, the golden rule is paramount: If it doesn't work for your game, throw it out.

  Can characters soak Lethal damage in this game?

• Normally, no. Armor is the only means of soaking Lethal damage; armor is rated in terms of Bashing and Lethal soak levels. If you plan to run a less deadly, more "cinematic" series, though, there are optional rules allowing characters to soak some Lethal damage (you'll find them on page 241 of the main book). Of course, Aberrants break all the rules... most of them probably have Lethal soak levels.

  What are the psionic aptitudes?

• There are eight psionic aptitudes known to humans: Biokinesis (shapeshifting and body control), Clairsentience, Electrokinesis, Psychokinesis (encompassing pyrokinesis, cryokinesis and telekinesis), Quantakinesis, Telepathy, Teleportation and Vitakinesis (physical and mental healing and wounding). Two of these, Quantakinesis and Teleportation, are lost to humanity, along with the orders that practiced them.

  What are the orders? How are they related to the Æon Trinity?

• The orders are organizations associated with the psions. Most psions work for one of the orders, or the Æon Trinity itself. The Æon Trinity, a worldwide philanthropic and political-action organization, helped organize the orders and wields a lot of influence with them, but does not control them directly. There used to be eight orders; currently, there are six. Spoiler!. Only one actually calls itself an Order, but the word has come to be used as a generic term. Each is a different type of organization, and is associated with a different psionic aptitude. The current orders are:
  • The Aesculapian Order (a.k.a. Docs, Rexs, Vitakinetics): A nonprofit public-health and safety organization, similar to the Red Cross, based in Basel, Switzerland. Aptitude: Vitakinesis.
  • The Interplanetary School for Research & Advancement, or ISRA (a.k.a. Seers, Clears or Eyes): A freeform, vaguely religious university based on Luna; kind of a cross between a seminary and a commune. Aptitude: Clairsentience.
  • The Legions (a.k.a. Psychokinetics, Legionnaires, PKs or War Dogs): An Australian military order, with support, mercenary and space-defense divisions, and regional defense divisions in Australia, North America and Europe. Aptitude: Psychokinesis.
  • The Ministry of Psionic Affairs (a.k.a. telepaths, teeps): A bureau of the Chinese government. Aptitude: Telepathy.
  • Nova Forca de Nacionales (New National Force) (a.k.a. Norca, biokinetics or shifters): A semi-legitimized criminal cartel based in South America. Aptitude: Biokinesis.
  • Orgotek (a.k.a. electrokinetics, Eks, Orgotechs or teks): A North America-based megacorporation, preeminent worldwide in the fields of biotechnology, computers and spaceships.

  What about the other Orders you mentioned?

• The Chitra Bhanu, an India-based scientific research foundation, was the smallest of the orders, with only a few hundred members. The quantakinetics were revealed to be in league with the Aberrants, and they were hunted down by the other orders and were either killed or arrested (and then executed). Their Prometheus Chamber was reported to have been destroyed. There are occasional reports of fugitive Chibs hiding out in the North American blight zone, in Antarctica, or on the outer planets, though.
• Following the Aberrant assault of the space-station Esperanza, which sent the station crashing out of orbit onto the heart of France, all the members of the Africa-based Upeo wa Macho vanished, along with their Prometheus Chamber. Their aptitude was teleportation. Spoiler!

  Can a character have a different Aptitude than the one of the Order they belong to? In other words, do all telepaths work for the Ministry, and are all Ministry agents telepaths?

• No, and no. To address the first question, some of the orders have agreements that allow them to "swap" psions; if the Legions recruit a fellow who has a strong latent tendency for electrokinesis, they will contact Orgotek and promise to "dunk" one of the corporation's latent PKs in their Prometheus Tank later in exchange for activating their guy in Electrokinesis. Psions are (more or less, depending on the order's policies) free to leave their order and go to work for another, for the Æon Trinity, or for themselves. The Trinity also wields enough leverage to ask the orders to activate latent psions for them now and then. Secondly, psions are extremely rare. Most of the people who work for the orders are normal people -- doctors, nurses and orderlies working for the Aesculapians, Orgotek technicians, salesmen and factory workers, ISRAn teachers and researchers, and so on.

  Then why aren't there any Orgotek quantakinetics, or ISRA teleporters, for example?

• Bolade Atwan, the Upeo Wa Macho proxy, was very possessive of her jumpers. No teleporters ever worked directly for the Trinity or any other orders. What's more, when the Esperanza crashed, it's reported that all teleporters everywhere, even those on the distant colonies, said something along the lines of "Whoops, gotta go" and vanished. When they did, their Prometheus Chamber went too, so we won't be seeing any more of them. As for the Chibs, it's conceivable that some of the orders may have concealed a "quark" or two among their ranks, but for the most part, they were all turned in and offed. And their tank was reportedly destroyed, so there will be no more of them, either. Both aptitudes require such a high level of latency that Auxiliary Modes in these aptitudes are unheard of. Spoiler!

  Will there be more orders and aptitudes coming out in the future, like the Bloodlines or Crafts in the other WW games?

• Trinity creator Andrew Bates has said, paraphrased, "Not while there is breath in my frame." The origins of the proxies and the Prometheus Chambers kind of precludes that. There may well be other player groups, but they won't be Psi Orders. Spoiler!

  Who are the proxies? Where did they (and the Prometheus Chambers) come from?

• The proxies are both the leaders and the "parents" of their orders, as well as the most powerful psions on earth. In 2103, back when they were all just regular people, each of them answered a mental call and gathered in a secret meeting on Luna, where they were triggered in their respective psionic aptitudes and given the Prometheus chambers that let them create more psions. The best speculation of Æon researchers is that the agency that did this -- which the proxies have only obliquely referred to as their "benefactors" -- was either a covert human group, an unrevealed alien race, or the proxies themselves projecting backwards in time. Spoiler!
  The individual proxies are:
  
  • The Aesculpian Order: Dr Matthieu Zweidler
  • Chitra Bhanu (lost order): S.K. Bhurano (deceased?)
  • Interplanetary School for Research and Advancement: Otha Herzog
  • The Legions: General Solveig Larssen
  • Minstry of Psionic Affairs: Rebecca Bue Li
  • Nova Forca de Nacionales (Norca): Giuseppe del Fuego
  • Orgotek: Alex Cassel
  • Upeo Wa Macho (lost order): Bolade Atwan (missing in action)

  How does the Prometheus Process work?

• The process has been revealed only a little at a time. Here's what we do know: each Order has and controls only one Prometheus Chamber; each Chamber can only activate a psion in its specific Aptitude; a psion "dunked" in a tank will come out with that tank's Aptitude, regardless of any inherent latent tendencies (though strong latent tendencies may be responsible for Auxilary Modes); a tank can only activate one psion at a time; and the process takes about an hour (coincidentally, about the same amount of time as it takes to format bioware), but there is a varying period of disorientation afterward during which the psion's mind acclimates to and learns to control his new powers. Now, what the Prometheus Process actually does to activate a psion -- whether the process works chemically, genetically, noetically, nanotechnilogically, somethingelseally or some combination of the above -- has not been clearly revealed. It's been said that even noetic scientists in the game world don't understand it all that well. It's just another one of those mysteries.

  Can a psion go through the Prometheus Process twice? What happens?

• In a word, "sploot." You're dead. Nobody can go through the process twice, not even in the same chamber.

  Can a person become a psion any other way, without going through the Prometheus Process?

• The utterly unsatisfying answer: Sort of. The game makes mentions of psychomorphs, a.k.a. "proto-psions," people who spontaneously manifest low-level psionic abilities. As of yet, though, there have been no rules released about how to build or run proto-psion characters. (This info is said to be coming in the Trinity Player's Guide, along with a more free-form method of aptitude use.) And before you ask, it's not been revealed what happens to proto-psions who try to go through the Prometheus Process.

  What's the difference between a Psion and an Aberrant?

• Psions manipulate Psi energy, Aberrants use Taint.

  OK, smarty, then what's the difference between Psi and Taint?

• A psion uses subquantum forces, powered by the recently discovered "psion particle," through as yet unrevealed means, to manipulate the fundamental particles and forces of the universe. The Mazarin-Rashoud Node in the brain of Aberrants allows them to manipulate the strong and weak inter-nuclear forces, using a type of radiation known as "taint." They are completely different sources of powers. Really. They mean it. They're not kidding.

  From a post to the Trinity mailing list by game creator Andrew Bates:

  "Taint is supposedly what causes the development of the Mazarin-Rashoud node; has interacted with the Midwest ecology in a different way to twist and sterilize much of the region; has combined with and broken down some peoples' genetic structure as with D. Frankly, scientists are unsure exactly what the taint is -- and whether Aberrants spread it, or it creates Aberrants (or both!). And they've had a century to puzzle at it. (The fact that it seems somehow opposed to psi -- an energy source said to permeate everything in the universe -- is very significant. But scientists aren't yet certain what, exactly, it means. They're a very frustrated bunch right now.)

  Do I have to play a psion? Could I play a normal/alien/Aberrant?

• The game is designed around playing psions, but there is a sidebar for creating highly skilled normal characters. There are not rules for playing aliens, though they may come in the future. If you want to play an Aberrant, rules for that are contained in the game of the same name, though it's not provided for within the Trinity setting.

  What aliens are in the game? Do they have psions/jump tech/other paranormal powers?

• So far, there are at least four alien races:
  
  • The Qin: The Qin are meter long slugs that walk around in biotech humanoid bodies so as not to freak the mundanes. They are generally friendly to humanity. They are experts with biotechnology, though they do not possess FTL/jump tech. Humanity met them, and gave them rides on our ships. They do possess low-level telepathic powers.
  • The Chromatics: They first appeared attacking a human mining colony in the Crab Nebula. They did not used to have FTL/jump technology, though it appears they were recently given a jump ship by some outside agency. They are masters of "photokinesis," able to manipulate light in amazing ways.
  • The Coalition: Some time ago, ISRA clairsentients detected a "space ark" travelling at near-light-speeds toward Earth. The jumpship sent to meet it returned and was heavily classified, but the rumors regarding the interaction are quite sinister. The Coalition is made up of an unknown number of different alien races, three of which the humans have dubbed "Envoys," "Spinals" and "Sasqs."
  • A fourth alien race is revealed in the Darkness Reavealed adventure series. Spoiler!
  
  

  What do you get if you put an alien, like a Qin, through the Prometheus Process?

• A really nasty mess inside the Prometheus Tank. Oh, and a really nasty visit from the Qin Ambassador. Aliens can't become psions. Some of them can become Aberrants, though... heh heh heh...

  Why are there so few extrasolar colonies, and why are the ones we have so far away?

• Humanity only had a couple of years with the Upeo Wa Macho's jumpships to set up colonies before they mysteriously disappeared. Since then, humanity has just finished developing jumpships that do not depend on the Upeo's psionic abilities, and just reestablished contact with the colonies.
  It has not yet officially been established why the colonies are where they are. A commonly expressed opinion is that, since the colonies were located by psi powers, and transported to via psi powers, those locations are somehow psionically "interesting." Another theory, one that's picking up adherents, is that humanity was "pointed" toward them by the Benefactors.

  The Æon Trinity can't really be that squeaky-clean, it must be a huge conspiracy factory, right?

• On the one hand, this is not the World of Darkness. The Trinity developer, Andrew Bates, has been pretty emphatic that, in general, Æon is working for the betterment of humanity. However, it is not a monolithic organization, and there may be members who are not as "good" as the others. It also is a large organization and, in general, large organization with lots of power are not to be 100 percent trusted.

  What happened to Europe and the U.S.? Who are the new world powers?

• The U.S. was the favored stomping ground of the Aberrants and is scrabbling to return to the glory days of the 20th century. In the wake of Aberrant attacks that sank the state of Florida, crashed the OpNet (successor to the Internet) and laid waste to the nation's food-growing heartland, the government was slowly and subtly taken over by fascistic elements from within. Europe also suffered from Aberrant attacks and the OpNet crash, and had a bigass space-station dropped on it from orbit, turning much of France into a smoking hole.
  The new world powers are: Brazil, due to the strength of their natural resources and cultural dominance; China, which was the only real superpower to weather the Aberrant Wars well; and Australia, which absorbed a lot of the regugees from America and Europe and is the home of Big Media.

  What's culture like in the Trinity future?

• As there are different cultures in the present, there are different cultures in the future. The life of an everyday person in Australia (the new entertainment captial of the world) and an everyday person on the Moon are completely different.
  Some of the more notable features of 2120 culture include: a fascination with Luna and the Qin; low-gee or zero-gee sports; a resurgence in interest in spiritual matters, including "anima," the principle that spirits inhabit everything; the pervasiveness of computers and satisfactory-intelligence computer agents; holovid (3-D) entertainment; bioware chic; and "bang" music, strident electronic successor to rock 'n' roll. (Subsets include ambient/atmospheric Anima bang and Middle Eastern-influenced Muezzin bang.)

  What's bioware? Do you have to be a psion to use it?

• Bioware is organic technology -- tools, machines and vehicles that are grown, not built. Ordinary people can use some bioapps (pieces of bioware -- short for "bioware applications"), though they are much more limited in what, and how much, they can use due to the way psionic energy powers bioware. Psions can have bioware "formatted" to their DNA, allowing them to access more features and exert more control of bioware. Some bioapps work only when formatted.

  What's the bonus for formatting a biotech weapon?

• +2 Accuracy, +1 Damage. It's in the weapons chart, under the "FT" entry.

  How does this vehicle weapon/armor adds stuff work?

• Vehicle weaponry is defined as Xd10 [Y] L. When a vehicle weapon fires upon a person, it automatically does Y health levels, plus however many derived from the Xd10 damage roll. Vehicle armor is defined as X [Y]. If a normal weapon is fired at a vehicle, X and Y are both subtracted from the damage dice, and unlike normal armor, if the damage is less than zero, no damage roll is made. Vehicles firing at vehicles ignore the adds altogether.

  How come different size spaceships all have the same number of damage levels?

• The armor scale is supposed to represent the size and durability of a spaceship, not the Health Levels; it's harder to do those 7 levels damage to a bigger ship, after all. This is one of several glitches in the vehicle combat rules that Andrew Bates said would have been ironed out if there was time; there are especially problems in compatibility between the main book and the Technology Manual. There is the "Vehicles as Extras" sidebar in the main book and optional rules in the Tech Manual for giving certain kinds of ships more or fewer Health Levels if you don't like how the system works.

  How come kick maneuvers suck?

  Since extra to-hit-roll successes add on to damage dice (up to a limit of 5 extra dice), the +1 to-hit difficulty of a kick offsets its one damage die advantage over a punch. Unless you roll exactly 7 successes to hit, a kick will do the same damage as a regular punch, but hit less often. Some say it could be deliberate to reflect how bad a maneuver a kick is for those not trained in martial arts; others say it's a simple math oversight that ought to have been corrected by now. Either way, the solution commonly suggested by the game's writers is that charcters with martial training be allowed to add +4 or even +5 damage dice for a martial kick, at Storyteller's discretion, but that normals ought to be stuck with the wimpy basic kick maneuver.

  Why aren't there warp engines/transporters/spaceship shields/hand phasers/other StarTrekky crap?

• Short answer: Because this isn't the Star Trek RPG. It's also not the Babylon 5 RPG, the Star Wars RPG or the Lensman RPG. The technology that works in Trinity was decided upon for reasons, primarily because the creators wanted to put the emphasis of the game on individual characters and their psionic powers, not ubertech. If you had transporters, who would need the Upeo?

  Are there sentient AI computers or androids?

• There are "Satisfactory Intelligences" in Trinity. While not fully human in computing power, these "SI" agents are getting closer and closer. There are also robots, though they are generally not built to look identical to humans. It's generally considered a bad thing to have completely human-appearing robots, but the Japanese -- who are big into hardtech but have a near-pathological dislike of biotech -- have a few.

  Is there other Trinity stuff besides the role-playing game?

• Trinity was conceived from the start not just as a role-playing game, but an entertainment property that can be expanded into many fields: other games, TV series, movies, novels, comic books and more. The first spinoff, Trinity: Battleground, White Wolf's first miniatures-combat game, was released in August 1998. Aberrant, the second role-playing game set in the Æoniverse, came out in July 1999. A third game, covering the pulp-era of the Æon Society's founding days, is tentatively scheduled for some time in 2000. There are also T-shirts, dice, pins and such; plans for a series of novels by acclaimed sci-fi writer George Alec Effinger (author of the story at the beginning of the main rulebook) were shelved, but may yet happen. What else will come remains to be seen.

  What Trinity materials are planned for release in the next few years?

• The upcoming Trinity releases are tracked on the unofficial White Wolf Coming Attractions FAQ, which is also occasionally posted to the White Wolf Usenet newsgroups. For official information, check out White Wolf's own site.

  What are some sources for more info on Trinity?

• The official source is White Wolf's Trinity site. There is also a growing number of independent Trinity Web sites; right now you're reading the biggest one of them, AeonSociety.org, a super-site for all Æoniverse games. We maintain our own list of Trinity links. Chris Hill compiles Worldnet, a very extensive list of Trinity sites.

  Trinity gamers and Storytellers sometimes post messages to several White Wolf-oriented Usenet newsgroups, alt.games.white-wolf and rec.games.frp.storyteller.
  One of the best sources of Trinity information is the unofficial Trinity mailing list; to subscribe, or read the discussion without subscribing, visit the list's Web site. White Wolf maintains its own Trinity mailing list; it's been buggy in the past, though.

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  The Spoiler Stuff

  Who are the Benefactors?

• The Darkness Revealed adventure series revealed the existence of the Doyen, an interstellar race of protoplasmic balls of psionic energy. Being composed of living psionic energy, they were quite alarmed by humanity's propensity for erupting into Aberrants who would go around spreading Taint everywhere. There are at least three Doyen points of view on the subject of humans: those who want to wipe us all out, those who want to quarantine us as best they can in our corner of the galaxy, and those who want to prevent us from becoming Aberrants by turning the genetic code that causes the Mazarin-Rashoud Node into something else entirely. This is the faction that won the day, and gave the Proxies the Prometheus Chambers. Not only are Psions handy cannon f-- uh, that is, allies against the Aberrants the Doyen fear, but humans activated in Psi can't become Aberrants later. Two birds with one stone.

  What the Proxies don't know is that the chambers not only activate psionic potential in a latent human, they also lock the new psion into a restricted framework of psionic powers, unlike the Doyen, who can manifest multiple techniques with facility. Trinity developer Andrew Bates has said that when the Proxies discover that the Aptitude/Mode structure of psionics is an artificial restriction, "they will be royally pissed."

  So what are the other Doyen up to?

• Short answer: No good. Some of them discovered the Chromatics and gave them biotechnology, spaceships, and the means to capture and control psion teleporters, forcing them to jump their spaceships to where they could attack humans: Karroo first, and later, Earth.

  Aha! So that's what happened to the Upeo wa Macho!

• Well, not quite. Some of them were captured and forced into servitude by the Chromatics, but not all. Read on.

  OK, what really happened to the Lost Orders?

• Remember the Doyen and how they can manifest multiple psionic abilities at high levels? Well, there's one little trick that they can't do: Quantakinesis, the psionic ability to manipulate the strong and weak forces of atoms. Remember who else does that? Uh-huh. Aberrants. Unlike the other psi orders, the Chitra Bhanu were a Doyen experiment. Their Proxy, S.K. Bhurano, was from the start possessed by a Doyen (they can do that, sliding their protoplasmic selves between a human's cells). When the Doyen were satisfied with the results of their experiment -- that Quantakinesis is in fact a dangerous thing to Doyen -- they shut the project down, using their telepathy to plant suspicion in the other Proxies' minds, and finally planting "evidence" that the Chibs were in cahoots with the Aberrants. The other Orders swooped in and wiped them out. (A few were stashed away by the Norça and perhaps Orgotek, along with a few critical components of the Chibs' chamber, though.)

• The Upeo Wa Macho were humanity's only link to the extrasolar colonies. Already somewhat unbalanced by the Doyens' mental meddlings in the Chitra Bhanu affair, the Proxies started to get suspicious of the teleporters, who were intensely loyal to their Proxy, Bolade Atwan, and would never leave the Upeo to join up with anyone else. Worried that the power of life and death over the colonies was too important to leave to one group that had its own agenda, the other Proxies began to come up with their own, Chromatic-like plan to enslave the Upeo. Atwan learned something was up, and fearing a Chib-like purge, began to implement a scheme of her own, an evacuation planned in case of mass Aberrant attack. The eventual assembly of the Legion, Orgotek and other troops for an assault on the Upeo's headquarters was noticed by two entities: Atwan, who set the evacuation into motion, and The Colony, an immensely powerful Aberrant faction leader, who feared the troops converging on the teleporters' home meant an imminent attack on the Aberrants' interstellar hideouts. The Colony sent its minions to distract the psions by shoving the Esperanza station out of orbit. The other Orders pleaded with Atwan to save the station, or at least teleport their people there so they could fight off the Aberrants. But Atwan, knowing the troops were moving, thought Esperanza was a trick to get her to delay her flight, refused to help, and took her Order and Chamber to Ruan's World, a hospitable alien planet the order had discovered in earlier wanderings. Esperanza smashed France, and the rest is history.

  That's really evil. They were really going to enslave the teleporters?

• Yes, they had pretty much talked themselves into it, with arguments about "the good of humanity" and the like. To their minds, it wasn't slavery, more like eminent domain -- if the overwhelming good of the majority requires something the only source refuses to give, the majority is within its rights to take it. Besides, Atwan had just revealed to the other proxies the existence of the planet Eden, ruled by benevolent, sane, non-tainted Aberrants. The proxies were worried Atwan was leading the teleporters down the Chib path, and couldn't let that happen. Whether the proxies were in their right minds or not during this process isn't clear; Doyen meddling has been rumored.

  But you said that teleporters have been seen since then. Wouldn't they have found out that the Esperanza really did crash, and come back?

• While in exile, a few of them did slip away -- with or without Atwan's consent -- to come to the aid of the far colonies when absolutely needed, especially at Karroo, an African colony. But, fearing capture -- Atwan knew her people were disappearing, she just didn't know it was to the Chromatics -- she absolutely forbade jumping to Earth. Anyone who tried was hunted down and "broken" -- their powers were stripped from them. This only had to happen a few times before the teleporters stopped trying. Since then, the other psi orders discovered the location of the Chromatic homeworld and joined forces to invade and free the captive teleporters there. This act of good faith led Atwan to allow her people to return to Earth again, though the order remains headquartered on Ruan's World. (These events are covered in Ascent Into Light, the third of the Darkness Revealed adventures, and Invasion, the first of the Alien Encounter series. Information on Ruan's World, the Upeo wa Macho order, and the teleportation aptitude are contained in the supplement Stellar Frontiers.)

  I guess the shit hit the fan then.

• You bet. Upon their return to Earth, the Star-Crossed -- the group of teleporters that disagreed in the first place with the decision to leave -- formally split from the Upeo. Cowed by her misjudgment in the Esperanza crash, Atwan is reversing her former once-an-Upeo, always-an-Upeo attitude and letting them go. The developer has also revealed that the Star-Crossed will return to the Upeo's African headquarters, where they will join up with the soon-to-be-founded Eigth Legion and disaffected groups from other orders to found an eighth psion group. This group will not have a Prometheus Tank or a Proxy, so whether or not they can properly be called a Psionic Order is a matter for future debate.

  Speaking of the Upeo and Karroo... who are those "friends" that helped them wipe out the Chromatic fleet that was about to paste the station? Doyen?

• Nope. Aberrants. Honestly. Well, they don't call themselves Aberrants; the M-R Node-enhanced inhabitants of planet Eden call themselves by the pre-Aberrant War term, "Novas." They run sort of a benevolent dictatorship over several thousands of normal humans who left with them during the exodus. They're remarkably low on Taint for such powerful beings, and also remarkably sane. Remember, it was mentioning these sane, nice Aberrants to the other Proxies that ultimately led to the whole Upeo enslavement-Esperanza crash-Upeo evacuation fiasco.

  So what's next for the Trinityverse?

• Process 418. That's clairsentient proxy Otha Herzog's codename for the vision of doom that he sees coming around 2122 -- beyond which neither he nor other Clairs can see Earth. Coincidentally, that's about the same time as the Coalition space ark should be reaching Earth orbit. Beyond that, we'll just have to wait and see...