Silence the Sane Mind

Dementation 4

Ancillae of nearly every clan fer the Malkavians, and with good reason. This ability, for instance, allows a Malkavian to suppress another's conscious, sane mind for as long as a month. One common application is to confuse the target by suppressing the higher mind's ability to make sense of the world. Doing so makes the target little more than a pliable automation. The victim can do simple tasks, but she is prone to follow simple orders from anyone who states them forcefully enough. when the victim returns to her senses, she does not remember what she did under its influence. A sort of gray fog descends over her memory, obscuring nearly everything about that period.

While confused, the victim cannot remember many details about herself or her life. She wanders confusedly and has no sense of time passing - only the Rotschreck caused by the rising sun forces her to safety, and that often fails to protect her. The victim of Silence the Sane Mind rarely remembers the identity of her assailant, making it very difficult for a survivor of this ability to exact vengeance single-handedly. A confused character seems very much like a village idiot: He can answer direct questions, but he has little initiative and is unlikely to act without being ordered or shoved around.

Befuddlement is not the only possible effect of this power: Cruel Malkavians may use it to enrage their targets, driving them into a frenzy; or cripple them with fear, bringing about not the terrified flight of Rotschreck but rather a sobbing collapse into catatonia. In such cases, the character still has a general absence of mind, as seen for the confusion aspect of the ability.

System: Make eye contact and engage in simple conversation with the victim. Activating this power takes one full turn and a Manipulation + Intimidation roll (resisted by the target's Perception + Self-Control/Instinct). A botch on this roll causes the Malkavian to enter the desired state for his target for a duration determined by the Storyteller. A failure renders the target immune to the character's Dementation powers for the rest of the scene. Success causes the target to enter the confused state for a duration listed as follows:

Successes	Duration
1 success	1 turn
2	1 hour
3	1 night
4	1 week
5	1 month

A victim afflicted with fury immediately enters a state akin to frenzy - though many of those Cainites who have been so targeted say that their Beasts are not truly unleashed in the way that a true frenzy does. The fury this power creates lasts just for one full day, unlike the confusion option. A victim driven to catatonia collapses and is not able to take any useful action for a full day.