Brainwashing
I have saved the notion of so-called "Brainwashing"
for next-to-last because, unlike the other methods I have spoken
of thus far, it cannot be done without the use of our Arcanos,
as well as that of the Mnemoi. As such the most contact that
you will have with it, at this stage of your service to the Cabal,
is to aid an older, more experienced member in shepherding the
end result to fruition.
However, just so you are aware: it is well
within our means to take a Wraith and completely rewrite his
memories and desires, to the point where very little of the original
personality yet remains, and what little remains is ours to control.
It is, of course, quite possible to implant small, simple instructions
into others, but this is something entirely different, much more
time-consuming and much more dangerous.
But you might well wonder how many officials,
Guildwraiths, Renegades and others are not quite what they seem.
Some times it is not enough to impersonate another, or merely
play with another's desires. Some times we must have a person
who is completely of our making in a particular role, waiting
for the right moment to embark on a course of action that they
have no choice but to fulfill, and no regrets whatsoever for
doing it.
Of course, once their role is fulfilled,
such a person is spent and useless. And this tends to be one
reason to avoid such a thing. It is very costly to spend all
that time and effort for such a thing. It is much better to have
a Client or Mark that you can use time and again.
But if Desire commands it thus, then thus
is must be...
("I remember running
into one such individual, long ago, when I was just a Journeyman.
Needless to say, none of us had any idea that this one Hierarchy
official was ours. Then, one day, we were ordered to have our
Clients all change sides, steal everything they had access to
and gave it to the Renegades. The Necropolis burned, Stygia sent
troops to quell the disorder and punish the officials who'd been
so lax as to allow this to happen. By the time they left, the
official in question was an Overlord, and quite clearly the power
behind the Anacreon's throne.
("It was then that my
Master let me in on the joke. I was quite amused. And
now I am the Grand Master, and my Master is long since-gone,
and yet the straw man is still the power behind the throne..."
- Grand Master Lucinda Ximenes)
The Manchurian
Legionnaire
Yes, this is true:
a combination of Intimation and Mnemosynis can be used to "rewrite"
a Wraith, and the Solicitors have done it before. It is
not commonly done due to the complexity of the process, as well
as the time needed to pull it off, but if the Cabal thinks that
someone needs to be remade from scratch, they can - and will
- do it.
No system is provided for
this: Storytellers are free and clear to either figure it out
on their own, or else leave it as something that happens that
player characters have no business knowing how to do.
However, STs might want to
keep the following considerations in mind:
* In order to rewrite a Wraith,
you have to delete and add on large portions of "history"
to the wraith's memory. This is a process that only the Mnemoi
are well-versed in doing, and for all their claims to have gotten
the secrets from that Guild, the Solicitors don't know everything
there is to know about it. So what happens when the Wraith starts
remembering things that "never happened"...?
* Passions and Fetters need
not have a lot to do with one another, but often times they do.
A Wraith must have Fetters to remain in the Shadowlands, and
must tend them in order to avoid Harrowings. A rewritten Wraith
might start to wonder why it is he's looking after a baseball
field in Des Moines if he was "born and raised" in
New York City, and has Passions revolving around it. (This can
be shortcut by rewriting wraiths with no Fetters left, but it
limits their range of action)
* And then there is the Shadow.
While Intimation Arts can - and must - be used on them while
totally rewriting a Wraith, the "mind" of a Shadow
is a tricky thing to get ahold of. Ideally, the Shadow is reformed
to the point where its destructive impulses are tempered somewhat,
just so it doesn't do too good of a job destroying the Wraith
before the Wraith can do the task it was rewritten for. But when
has dealing with a Shadow ever gone according to the ideal?
So, it goes without saying
that rewriting the Shadow will at least be somewhat flawed, which
leads one to wonder what the Shadow might do when it realizes
what's happened. Some Shadows might really resent having their
own, personal paths to Oblivion redone by those shiny-eyed bastards,
and try their best to shake the Wraith back to 'reality.' Others
might just roll with the punches and try to turn the situation
to their advantage, realizing that engineering a huge personality
crisis could shortcut the route to nonexistance by more than
a few years.
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