Scrapyard Station: Parasite Mind Control
May. 21st, 2023 02:51 amIf you’re not a Scholar, there’s no such thing as “willpower” when you’re facing a Parasite. For that matter, there’s no such thing as “you.” There’s only material for the Parasite to use as it wishes.
Scholars are the special ones here, their psychic powers acting as both shield and weapon against Parasite intrusion. The smallest of sapients, easily trampled underfoot, can fight gods and win. Other races have more passive protections, like the Nomads’ collective unconscious that sears intruders’ minds, or Builders’ slippery minds that immediately sever outside connections. But if you’re an unprotected human, a Parasite can open your mind like a book, and anything it doesn’t like, it can rewrite. There’s no phantom echo of lost memories, and no way to “bring back” a destroyed personality. Whatever the Parasite makes you, that’s what you are, as deeply as if you’d always been that way. And if it doesn’t want to bother rewriting, it can just render you down into biomass to build some other monster.
(You may recall that the Pure are immune to Parasite control. This is one of multiple reasons the Pure are lying to themselves when they say they’re the last true humans in the universe.)
Scholars are the special ones here, their psychic powers acting as both shield and weapon against Parasite intrusion. The smallest of sapients, easily trampled underfoot, can fight gods and win. Other races have more passive protections, like the Nomads’ collective unconscious that sears intruders’ minds, or Builders’ slippery minds that immediately sever outside connections. But if you’re an unprotected human, a Parasite can open your mind like a book, and anything it doesn’t like, it can rewrite. There’s no phantom echo of lost memories, and no way to “bring back” a destroyed personality. Whatever the Parasite makes you, that’s what you are, as deeply as if you’d always been that way. And if it doesn’t want to bother rewriting, it can just render you down into biomass to build some other monster.
(You may recall that the Pure are immune to Parasite control. This is one of multiple reasons the Pure are lying to themselves when they say they’re the last true humans in the universe.)