Hey there, everyone. I've made these two previous lore deep-dives for those that want to read them, about Dragons versus Giants and Vecna versus the Raven Queen earlier in this subreddit. In the last one, I promised that the next lore deep-dive would be about Psionics, Spellcasting, and the conflicts/rivalries between the two, and, well, here it is! Let's get started!

The Origin of Psionics in D&D History

To start out, I want to briefly cover the origins of psionics in the history of D&D, because it's fairly important to some of the themes that we'll be covering later on.

The first appearance of Psionics in D&D came in the Eldritch Wizardry book (which I discussed in my Vecna versus the Raven Queen deep-dive as being the first place that we saw Vecna. Suffice it to say, this book is really important to D&D historically), which also included psionic monsters such as the Mind Flayers, Intellect Devourers, and even Thought Eaters (those psionic astral platypuses that eat thoughts). It wasn't a huge part of D&D at the time, but it slowly grew more and more important, especially during AD&D 2e, when Dark Sun was released.

Dark Sun is quite different from most other settings, most notably due to the fact that regular spellcasting on Dark Sun tends to be destructive and harms the world around it, called "Defiling". There is a different type of "Preserving" magic, which does not harm the land. Due to the fact that magic destroyed the ecosystem of Athas (the world of Dark Sun), the more common type of supernatural powers on Athas are Psionics, most commonly used by Thri-Kreen, Athasian Gith, and other races with inherent bends towards psionic powers, but on Dark Sun, anyone can get a "Wild Talent" for gaining psionic powers (basically the equivalent of the Telepathic/Telekinetic feats from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything). Dark Sun became super popular, probably because it was so different from the core assumptions of the base game, and is now the most notable world in all of D&D where Psionics is a big deal.

It was somewhere around this time that Psionics got tied to Aberrations; creatures from the Far Realm that invade the Material Plane and other realms and have extreme mind powers. This likely was inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos, a

..are sharing a compartment on a train as it winds its way through the Alps. Every now and then the train passes through a tunnel, during which time the compartment is plunged into complete darkness. On one such occasion, a ringing slap is heard and as the train passes back into daylight, the Frenchman is rubbing his sore, red cheek.

The brunette thinks 'I bet that dirty Frenchman fondled the blonde and she struck the pervert.'

The blonde thinks 'I bet that filthy Frenchman was looking to grope me in the dark, mistook the dowdy brunette for me and she slapped the beast.'

The Frenchman thinks 'I bet that perfidious Englishman touched up the blonde in the dark and she slapped me by mistake.'

The Englishman thinks 'I can't wait for another tunnel so I can slap that French twat again.'

Bruh all girls are cute. Can we just agree and move on?

English isn't my first language so excuse mistakes. So I'm writing my book and I'm about done with the second draft and I've let multiple people read my drafts, mostly strangers, and few close friends. I've gotten great feedback on everything. But a common theme is they were shocked to find most, well alot of my characters are black. I like anime and bleach in a particular is a big inspiration. And in bleach there's alot of black characters with cool different coloured hair styles. From purple to red. So I didn't think this was out of the norm. To give a little bit of context.

My story is a isekai. Aka The main character is a dude with silver hair that stands out and he gets sent into this video game and has to fight their way out. I definitely make reference to his silver hair multiple times in the story. For example, "A sliver dread falls to my face, heavy with sweat. My legs shake like a newborn learning how to walk. And I want so badly to go to sleep. Any respite from the thrashing I was receiving." But multiple people were shocked when I mentioned the protagonists dark skin later in the novel. Mostly the American readers but even people from my country.

He meets characters who look like people he knows irl and has to unravel the mystery of the game. That's the basic premise. It's in first person so mentioning dark skin doesn't really matter because in the irl world in the city protagonist is from, everyone looks like him and isn't big deal to the protagonist so I only point it out if it's relevant and I point out people who look different like white people because protagonist would definitely make note of them in character.

There's other characters who when first introduced I say things like "She was a blonde woman who reminded me of--no way she's a dead ringer for Akuada!" or "I saw Anwulichukwu's eyes, they became hearts when she look at the mysterious stranger. Tall dark, dark and handsome, not my type but I can see what she sees." or cthe doppelganger looked like a digital version of Ezichi, brunette and with a permanent scowl. She was a top army defense contractor so maybe the scowl came with the job."

I feel like I shouldn't have to say everyone had coco or chocolate skin as if it is remarkable or as if my protagonist never has seen it before. The story gives enough contextual to assume everyone is black unless stated otherwise because I tell them otherwise. Example, "The hunter was a crazy high level, he had eyes that were like daggers,

I am not sure about the date but I guess it should be around 2000s. The language of the show is English.

I remember nerdy brunette had curly hair and she was wearing glasses.

The only scene I remember is: Nerdy brunette had shower with a boy together. It didn't show the shower scene after bathroom door was closed. But after the scene she had gossip with her bestfriend and blonde girl was really surprised. Nerdy girl jokingly said something like: we got cleaned pretty good.

LOL I know that isn't much but I was in love with the brunette when I was a little kid. So that is a mystery for me waiting to be solved for a long time.