Yesterday was, of course, Star Wars Day. I couldn't think of anything useful to commemorate it, so I didn't mention it (though Weird Animal With Merch Potential is actually a very Star Wars thing now that I think about it).

James Davis Nicoll said something that made me think, though:

Inspired by a Space Wizard discussion elsewhere: Space wizard cultists but instead of one sanctioned cult and one forbidden cult, there are hundreds of space wizard cults, each of whom is convinced they have the best space wizardry. So they're continually fighting to see whose is better. I imagine the Space Emperor's antipathy is due to the disruption causes by incessant space wizard cultist fights.

The Zhdez are my Space Wizards, and I've been spending more time contemplating their economy and society and whatnot, and less time contemplating their space wizard cults.

I don't think they'd have incessant space wizard cultist fights; they're too pacifist for that (probably? now that I think about it, just as there are Zhdez-like Terrans, there should probably be Terran-like Zhdez). But rivalries between schools of psionic thought? Certainly.

The thing about Zhdez schools of thought is that they're kind of literal: non-psionic humans tend to "go along to get along" with a majority opinion (sometimes diametrically opposed to their original opinions), psionic ones absolutely swim in schools, of thought. (ba-dum-tiss)

It's less martial-arts battles than debate, persuasion, gift-giving - the Zhdez are experts in soft power. And it isn't strictly about Space Wizardry: consensus needs built on things like "do we yield this planet to the Terrans, or not? How much violence are we willing to use to defend it?"

By nature, space wizard cults would be regional (since they're dependent on personal influences though usually not a cult of personality), and star-traveling space wizards would tend not to be part of a particular cult (though they'll usually have a cult-of-origin, and a large enough starship crew might be its own cult though I think crewmembers tend not to be very wizardly).

Anyway, in the replies James adds:

Nooooooo, this is a completely unrelated idea that happens to look exactly like all the Hong Kong kung fu movies I watched in the 1990s.

so I might have to look into xianxia for inspiration... though I think the emphasis on battling it out might make it a less-than-useful genre.