That "lobotomy implant" thing would irritate me. If the ref told me that my character was going to have one of those, I'd tear up my character sheet and tell them to go wipe their heiny with it, then roll up another psion, without the loyalty implant.
And by "roll up," I just mean copy all the stats down to a new character sheet and ignore the whole going through five or six terms first.
The loyalty implant might lead to an adventure trying to get it removed.
That's a slave's yoke. The slave would know that nothing stops their master from switching their brains off permanently the instant they cease to be of use to them.I'd talked about this in earlier discussions.
My logic was IF the Imperium was going to have 'authorized psions', the latent psionic paranoia would insist on measured to assure that psion's loyalty. They're an INI field agent and know quite a bit of the dirt on the dark side of the Imperial Sunburst, after all. Many other authors have talked about suicide implants in Traveller intelligence agents before and this isn't that much different.
The annual reset at a naval base give the INI a chance to debrief the psion and what they've seen and encountered. THAT is no different than an IISS Detached Duty Scout.
Last thing: the psion is told before they are trained as a psion about the implant and its consequences. They're also told that psionic training entails a full 20 year commitment to serve in the Imperial forces. The potential psion is given a free and informed choice: take the training and the detail to INI and everything that entails OR they can have a highly skilled lobotomy that renders them non-psionic. By 'highly skilled' I mean that the surgeon would have to 'not roll a 2' on the Medical check.
Well, I understand your point of view given our previous discussions. However I'm balancing out other opinions that advocated the murder of the psion after their term of service was up. There were people implying that someone who'd been trained at Station Wypoc or the Psi Institute on Terra was some kind of 'sanctioned psionic criminal'.That's a slave's yoke. The slave would know that nothing stops their master from switching their brains off permanently the instant they cease to be of use to them.
Loyalty chips cannot be subverted and does not doubt. The timer is not susceptible to either oratory or rhetoric. The implant surgery is performed at TL 15 and it is difficult to find some back alley 'ripperdoc' with both the skills and the facilities to remove the chip without extraordinary danger to the patient. And again, all this is spelled out in detail to the candidate.