Annara or Traditional Keleni Communion

Keleni traditionalists call Annara the pure form of Communion, the one that Keleni practiced in the past and still practice today. This may or may not be true; evidence suggests that the ancestral form of Communion gave rise to both Annara and True Communion, and that each has a piece of the original.

Annara, the Kelen word for “Communion,” (or more accurately, total unity of all things, or a sense of transcendence gained from feeling connected to all things), focuses more strictly on the natural telepathy of the Keleni people. It cultivates unity through telepathy and connection with one’s ancestors, and trains the Keleni in empathy for all beings, Alien or Keleni, sapient or animal. It also cultivates the ancient tradition of prophecy that traces its lineage back to the dawn of the Keleni faith-philosophy.

Unlike True Communion, Annara retains traditional Communion trappings, such as “folk healer” exorcisms and esoteric medicine. They also often learn Religious Rituals to better serve their community. Dogmatic traditionalists may teach their followers to fight with the resonance staff, and ancient Keleni weapon, but many also teach the force sword.

The intent focus on Keleni matters means that followers often learn a great deal about the language, history and culture of the Keleni. It also means that the religion attracts religious fanatics and xenophobic traditionalists. Many practitioners of True Communion hold Annara in awe, seeing it as the “lost half” of Communion secrets, but non-Keleni often find it difficult to win the trust of a Keleni master well enough to learn the style.



Required Skills: Esoteric Healing, Hidden Lore (Communion), Meditation, Philosophy (True Communion), Savoir-Faire (Dojo),Religious Ritual,

Required Psychic Skills: Telereceive

Additional Psychic Skills: Ancestral Recall, Aura Reading, Cure, Emotion Sense, Mind Shield, Telescan, Telesend

Techniques: Communion (Meditation), Introspection (Meditation), Penance (Meditation), Symbolic Lore (Bound Princess, Righteous Crusader, Exiled Master; Philosophy).

Psionic Techniques: Animalism (Emotion Sense), Expansion (Mind Shield), Full Communion (Telesend), Omniscan (Telescan), Multiplicity (Telerecieve), Secret Trait (Moral Intuition, True Investiture, Virtue), Send Senses (Telesend), Universal (Telerecieve, Telesend)

Secret Miracle: True Prophecy

Secret Psionic Techniques: Acausal Comm (Telerecieve or Telesend)

Secret Traits: Moral Intuition, True Investiture, Virtues (Asceticism, Charity or Justice)

Perks: Avatar, Daily Meditation, Deep Study, I Know What You Mean, Inner Mastery, Honest Face, Patience of Job, Ping, Rewards of Faith, Secret Miracle (True Prophecy), Secret Trait (Moral Intuition, True Investiture, Virtue), Synchronize, Technique Mastery (Introspection)

Optional Advantages: Clerical Investment, Devotion, Intuition, Language (Kelen), Mind Link (Telepathy -10%), Protected Power (Telepathy -10%), Telepathy Talent, Trained by a Master, True Communion, Weapon Master (Staff or Force Sword)

Optional Disadvantages: Charitable, Code of Honor (Virtue), Disciplines of Faith (Asceticism or Mysticism), Fanaticism (True Communion), Intolerance (Non-Keleni), Selfless, Sense of Duty (Keleni),

Removable Disadvantages: As True Communion;

Optional Skills: Connoisseur (Relics), Exorcism, Force Sword, Fortune Telling (Dreaming), Hidden Lore (Places of Power), History (True Communion or Keleni), Law (Keleni), Staff, Teaching

New Traits

Moral Intuition 12/27

True Communion teaches that true moral understanding comes not from without, but from within. Followers of True Communion learn to cultivate their moral intuition and, by listening to their moral instincts, intuitively know what choice is right. At level 1, when faced with a moral conundrum they may roll IQ to know what choice is the worst choice; at level 2, they may roll to uncover what is the best choice. In both cases, the character may roll Philosophy or Introspection (Meditation) to know why.

Statistics: Intuition (Aspect, Moral -20%) [12]; level 2 adds Inspired +100% for [27]

True Investiture 10/level

The character gains a bonus to all True Communion reaction rolls equal to his True Investiture level; this is cumulative with any Path Reputation he might have. A character may not take more than 4 levels of True Investiture without GM permission.

Statistics: Power Investiture (True Communion)

New Perks

Daily Meditation: The character always meditates if possible; thus the GM never has to ask if he has fulfilled his disciplines of faith; Furthermore, if the group does not explicitly track how much meditation a character practices during down time, assume that the character always starts with 3d6 more meditation points at the beginning of a new adventure than the GM normally offers to players who meditate.

Inner Mastery: Characters may substitute Meditation for any Will-based skill for Psionic Extra-Effort rolls.

Rewards of Faith: This is a leveled perk (maximum suggested value is 3). The GM can in form a player that he has a vision, a dream, or feels an urging or an instinct that he must do something, like a subtle Command from Communion. If the player willingly does as Communion requests, the GM may reward the player. This may be an impulse buy point or 2d6 “meditation” fatigue that he may use on Psionic Powers. This perk is effectively “Option: GM may reward players for good roleplay,” and the GM is encouraged to pick a standard reward: an impulse buy point is standard, but GMs who feel this might be unbalancing may choose instead to offer the bonus fatigue as the standard reward.

New Techniques

Communion

Hard

Default: Meditation;

Prerequisite: Meditation; May not exceed Meditation+4.

The character may attempt to gain a deeper connection with Communion. This allows him a +1 to petition rolls or, if done for 8 hours, grants him one point of Meditative Energy Reserves (If he has Communion; he may not use this benefit if he has Dark Communion or Broken Communion).

Deep Trance

Hard

Default: Meditation-4;

Prerequisite: Meditation; May not exceed Meditation.

The character meditates deeply for one hour and enters a trance. This trance either offers the same bonuses as Autohypnosis or +1 to all Psi skills plus an additional bonus equal to 1/3 of his margin of success, to a maximum of +5. He gains +4 for sensory deprivation, +2 for the Body Discipline perk, and may use Religious Ritual as a complementary roll.

Heuristics

Hard

Default: Philosophy -6;

Prerequisite: Illuminated and Philosophy; May not exceed Philosophy.

See Powers: the Weird page 6. Characters with Communion may only learn Heuristics for supernatural (e.g. related to psionic powers or Communion) or moral truths unless they are Illuminated.

Introspection

Average

Default: Meditation;

Prerequisite: Meditation; May not exceed Meditation.

This core skill of Meditation works as the basic book describes it: The character may roll meditation to gain moral (rather than practical) insight into what he should be doing.



Penance

Hard

Default: Meditation;

Prerequisite: Meditation; May not exceed Meditation+4.

The character may attempt to make amends for wrongs he has done. This typically requires 8 hours of meditation and upon success, the character may roll Meditation. On a success, he may either remove one point of corruption (either from Dark or Broken Communion), or attempt to regain Communion after violating one of its sins.

New Miracles

True Prophecy

Minimum Reaction: Very Good

Learned Prerequisite: True Communion 10

Learned Prayer Cost: 12

After spending five minutes meditating (they may claim the +1 for long meditation), the character receives a vision. The vision can contain any information the GM wishes and often is extremely exhaustive and informative, and may cover topics in the future or past, far away or nearby, often several at once and may impact a wide variety of characters, or entire nations, in scope. The imagery may or may not be symbolic, and the GM’s discretion; if so, the character may roll Philosophy (True Communion) to correctly interpret the imagery. The impact of the vision is such that it can temporarily throw the prophet into seizures: roll HT upon completion of the vision; failure causes seizures for one minute per margin of failure.

When the vision of True Prophecy comes into conflict with another form of precognition, it always wins. Against another character with True Prophecy, roll a quick contest of Philosophy.

Statistics: Precognition (Active Only -60%; Backlash, Resistible, Seizure -50%, Cosmic, no Die roll +100%; Cosmic, unlimited scope +50%; Cosmic, distant future or past +50%; Divine -10%; Reduced Fatigue Cost 2 +40%, Reduced Time, 5 minutes, +20%) [60]