Rating System (Term)

Every Channel and Donor/Companion is given a ratings in the Tecton. This is also called Proficiency Rating
For channels (Sime) this relates to the channel's amount of selyn held in the secondary Selyn system, Capacity, and their draw speed, and sensitivity.
See: QN, QN-1, QN-2 , QN-3
For Donors/Comanions (Gen) this relates to their selyn production rate and selyn draw speed tolerance, and barrier level they can control.
See: TN, TN-1, TN-2, TN-3 and Levels
For Gens who donate selyn but do not serve transfer to channels, the ratings relate to the amount of selyn that can be gleaned by a channel. Each level represents the depth of layers the channel accesses to harvest selyn from the Gen.
See: GN, GN-1, GN-2, GN-3
RenSimes (those simes who ar not channels) have a single rating and that is RN
Also see: Four Plus
How these ratings came about
During Rimon Farris's lifetime (First Channel, Channel's Destiny), they identified channels and corresponding Donors who were markedly different from Rimon. These were Second Order channels and Donors, but were not termed that. Everyone who wasn't Rimon was something "else." And there was no Third Order known to exist (though Abel Verrit was a Third Order channel and nobody ever knew that). Gradually, some of the Seconds Qualified First, but were never in the same category as a Farris. Later, in The Farris Channel, they figured out that if they discarded all the data on the Farrises, everything else about channeling that they had codified made sense. Farrises are "something else."
Finally, in Zelerod's Doom, Klyd Farris (descendant of Rimon Farris) discovers that the odd "Delicate Simes" are actually channels, just very different from the working channels in Householdings. And there are a lot of them, enough to make Risa Tigue's scheme for the Tecton taking over selyn distribution to juncts feasible.
The Third Order channels and Donors have access only to the most shallow level of selyn storage, the top layer of selyn in a body. They are called Thirds not because they are inferior in any way -- but because they were the third to be identified.
Category:Terms