Conviction Chapter 9 [Spoilers]

[Tuga555]

There is other thing that's been bothering me, how intelligent are really the trees? Fel has been dropping hints about that I think, like the placing of the trees, Each CIBM has "one tree".
In my opinion the trees are intelligent and psyonic(precog, clairvoyance etc) but utterly "alien". That is one the reasons that they "moved" to karis to help the karines defend against andromeda.
They need the shaman to interface with the rest of the "fast biological universe" and act as a "biogenic circuit", an intelligent biological amplifier for the shamans powers allowing them to reach intergalactic distances, able to "listen" to "voices" in the edge of the galaxy or to block the entire solar system (karis) from clairvoyance.
Sorry about my english

[SYED]

We saw a shaman is a able to remove a piece of wood from the tree to make an object, could they place something in the tree if necessary, say some very special crystals? It might make it easier for at least generations to become shaman. Just as the crystals allow them to interact with technology, they also allow for them to allow access to shamanism.

[SoronelHaetir]

More on topic about precognitive ability driving Faey insane, from book six:

Some rare few Faey were telekinetic as well, a scant few had some empathic capability, and a tiny, tiny number of rather unlucky Faey had demonstrated precognitive ability that had then driven them insane,

[SYED]

What exactly is empathy? While it might be rare, I wonder if any generations have any potential. The current units for the house only boost telepathy and telekinesis, can systems be designed to boost empathy or even precognition? While precognition could potentially drive you mad, could you survive with just a touch?
Historically, those that go mad get sent to institutions, for telepaths, I wonder if there was a clerical order that took in and cared for those driven mad by precognition. They might have developed methods to deal with this ability at least temporily.

Cybi has artificial telekinesis, so I wonder about empathy and precognition? Imagine how that would cause trouble.

[kyli]

I believe empathy is the ability to have poeple around u feel specific emotions or something like that. It says somewhere that the ability is pretty common among the colonists. The old Grand Master of the nine colonies was an empathic.

[SoronelHaetir]

Both to project emotion and to sense emotion off others (Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation was an example of the latter).

[SYED]

We know there are beings immune or blank to telepathy, does this extend to empathy? That would be a powerful advantage for telepaths to have, the ability to affect those usually immune to their gifts.

[Belgarion213]

Projective Empathy is both very useful...and almost as horrifying as some of the stuff the Faey Mind Benders can get up to.

Honestly, I would like some information on how these 'extra-talents' pop up. At the moment they seem like natural gifts (aka one is born an Empath, one is born a precog, one is born a Telekinetic) but I wonder if it would be possible to train to widen ones ability to do stuff with their Talent

I don't think that that all or even most Generations would become Shaman, however I think it would be interesting to focus a bit on Jason, if he ever got the free time actually following through with the Shaman's offer to teach him if only to learn more on how they Peri see the universe...also, the Tree's being aware makes sense.

[SoronelHaetir]

I get the sense that the ability has to be there but it also has to be trained, and that there may well be lots of folks with untrained ability. For example Shya trying to unlock telekenetic potential.

Actually, that brings up something else I have been thinking about, okay the Faey come (back?) to Earth in the form of the Karinne diaspora; yet the human descendants of those Faey lose the training for those telepathic abilities at some point (only for it to be rediscovered during the subjugation). Why did those presumably telepathic parents quit teaching their children? And it should be more than the fact that Generations without medical support tend to die early from cancers because there were plenty of non-Generation Faey who mixed into the human population.

[SYED]

Apparently breeding with humans did not affect the power of the telepathic talent, what if it simply made it needed exposure to active talent to develop and mature?
If empathy and precognition needs to be pushed awake. Similar to how Jason had no telekinesis iuntil he was forced to demonstrate in the empress office moving her the ring. the other talents might need similar pushing, and the fact precogs go mad make it less desirable to attempt.

[Belgarion213]

I'm fairly sure it was pointed out in Subjugation that yes, the reason none of the Faey descendants had talent until the Faey turned up was because there was nobody there to jolt them awake as opposed to the Imperium where everybody is telepathically communicating and there's a lot of drive to express as early as possible.

[SYED]

Some races had to make their own telepaths, so if the talent had to be nudged awake, how did they nudge their newly produced talented individuals.

[SoronelHaetir]

I'm fairly sure it was pointed out in Subjugation that yes, the reason none of the Faey descendants had talent until the Faey turned up was because there was nobody there to jolt them awake as opposed to the Imperium where everybody is telepathically communicating and there's a lot of drive to express as early as possible.

Except there were Faey present on Earth (the ancestors of the human telepaths at the time of the subjugation). At some point the chain of teaching was broken, I am curious about why that happened. I would be amazed if it were the Karinne refugees failing to teach their own children, telepathy was simply so integral to their entire lifestyle. I would suspect that telepathy was simply so part and parcel of their lifestyle that even if they did not directly teach their children that a fair number of those children would have been sensitive enough to express just from being around adults who were communicating telepathically.

[SYED]

I remember a post saying how the karrine settlement was wiped out by a plague, leaving only children. I think that in most cases telepathy appears in teenagers, so those kids gifts were still asleep. I think the whole young kids expressing we are seeing on Karis is due to the faey and human breeding a as well as exposure to the talent.