Coyns/secret

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Coyns are used in the Droyne casting ceremony, which is among the best known and most important of all Droyne rituals. Researchers were long baffled by the apparently random draw of coyns, under the direction of a leader and several drones, which ended in the choice of a caste for an immature individual. Recent research, though, has proven that the coyns that are drawn are used as focuses for concentration. The leader and drones use psionics to open the young Droyne’s mind and awaken the appropriate genetic programming latent within its makeup. It has even been suggested that the draw of the caste coyn is not so random as it may appear to outsiders and that it may be selected by clairvoyance or telekinesis to match the potential discovered while probing the young candidate’s mind.

Periodically, the coyns are also consulted in a ceremony which determines whether or not an individual can continue to serve his commune. The coyns are believed to reveal the future of an individual -- a task or voyage, a battle, and so forth -- and they are hence ritually consulted on a variety of matters. What has been frequently dismissed as "random fortunetelling" has proven to be surprisingly accurate in many instances. This has been explained as everything from coincidence to luck to some form of precognitive ability, but the truth remains unknown even to the Droyne. Certainly they believe strongly in the validity of their rituals; the coyns dictate not only life, but death as well, for in most circumstances the failure of an individual to pass the favorable scrutiny of the coyns in a Ceremony of Continuation leads to a self-willed voluntary death, using psionic self-awareness to painlessly turn off both the body and the mind.

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