take to find an individual with a given mental strength. Most humans rate between 0 and 2 on this scale, which denotes absent or marginal empathic and telepathic abilities. A three or higher indicates an empath; a six denotes a telepath. There is also a group of psions who have a rating too high to be measured numerically. Those are called "Rhon". They are extremely rare and to be born Rhon a child must get the full set of psion genes from both parents. In practice, the term Rhon refers to members of Ruby Dynasty, the ruling family of Skolian Empire, as Rhon not related to them are not known. The Rhon project The Rhon project was instigated to genetically engineer extremely powerful psions. The project was led by the prominent geneticist Hezahr Rhon. The initial project of Dr. Rhon was actually undertaken to prevent the suffering of psions by attempting to modify their brains so they wouldn't receive the pain of others. The attempt took a nightmarish turn for worse, spawning a race of human beings whose Kyle organs are hardwired to interpret pain signals from normal telepaths as orgasmic pleasure called "transcendence". When he realized what his creations were, Dr. Rhon wanted to destroy them, but they murdered him first and destroyed his work. As a result, there arose a race of people known as Aristos whose members are the ultimate anti-empaths, sadists utterly devoid of compassion save for a very few characters (Corbal Xir, Calliope Muze, and Tarquine Iquar) who have undergone surgery to remove their ability for transcendence. The Aristo nature is characterized not only by their cruelty but also by power-hunger and sense of superiority. Their leader Eube Qox, founded the Eubian Concord and his descendants presently rule it. Due to their need for transcendence, Aristos started to breed psions, using them as pleasure slaves, so called providers. Their main goal was to produce an extremely strong psion, who could serve them as an ultimate provider, because the stronger a provider's psionic abilities, the stronger pain signals he produces while tortured and the greater pleasure an Aristo experiences. The first actual Rhon psions were a pair of siblings meant to be bred to each other to found a pre-eminent line of providers. They were created from genetic samples of long dead members of the once so powerful Ruby Empire's ruling caste, who were known for