Empathic communication

I had a delicious idea on the way to work this morning: A natural empath is able to link minds with other people, and discoveres that he is able to do the same with animals. Tries it with his cat, and is able to communicate through mental imagry, as they don't share a language. This leeads to him being assigned to a group to get into a secure area (Big Bad is holding hostages or something) and he's able to meld with the guard dogs and communicate with them using this visual imagry why they're on the property and the dogs basically leave them alone so they can accomplish the rescue.

I'm sure this has been done before. Any good examples of it? Any ideas on how to illustrate it happening?

I have no idea if I'll even use this, also.

Why visual imagery? You'd think that a dog views things mainly in terms of smell.

Ah, good point - their olfactory sense is highly acute compared to their sight. So yeah, makes sense.

As for an olfactory illustration Memories are highly linked to olfactory senses at least in humans, So I would Imagine that it's something like getting a whiff of one's own BO then imagining images of safety and belonging toward the dog, on the other hand IIRC even guard dogs are susceptible to a steak according to myth-busters so thinking stake over there would probably suffice.

Not really sure about the rest of it though.

Probably have to have some sort of magic or something to prevent having to make up some technobabble reason why it works. Maybe a force-user would be able to do something like that. Just a random thought that interested me.

I'll smell something and it will trigger the wierdest memories from two decades ago, or even further back.

Force-users can indeed do stuff like that, I've seen Jacen Solo do it before. With bugs, no less. For that matter, in The Truce at Bakura Luke Skywalker does it to parasites that are attacking his body, making them leave him alone.

There's also a Donald J. Sobol (yes, that Donald J. Sobol) novel called The Amazing Power of Ashur Fine, in which he seems to be able to communicate with animals but if I recall it's never shown explicitly how. Still, it's pulled off pretty well, especially considering it's a young adult book, so I figured I'd mention it in case you want to go the vagueness route.

Oh, gah, that's right, I had totally forgotten about the EU stuff....! 'Scuze me, I'll go be stupid off in a quiet corner now.

edited 3rd Nov '10 1:12:51 PM by pvtnum11

It's really interesting that you posted this because I had the exact same idea for my current novel (tho I recently dumped the idea for something different). Anyway, the way I had approched it was, animals are driven by instinct, however there are some animals (like cats and dogs) that are able to read human emotion on some level. And so, your character would make an empathic link (to a cat lets say) and then think of what it is you want the cat to do and portray images to it based on the task. Now there are some concepts that an animal will never understand, unless it's intelligent, such as paying for items. A cat will never understand the process of paying for goods, however you can send images of giving a merchant money and bringing a loaf of bread back home. It's actually a very workable idea as long as you stay within the realm of what your specific animal would understand. Giving animals intelect also helps.

This sounds like a fun idea. I might try to do something with this later on myself!