123 - Matryoshka Parasite

Unnatural Entity: Matryoshka Parasite

Magick can’t interfere with free will. It is an iron-clad law of the universe that personal autonomy is inviolate. You can walk all the way up to the line - at worst you can give people impulses and emotions that aren’t their own or puppet their flesh - but you absolutely cannot make them choose.

However creepy ritualists, willworkers and your would-be mesmerist types don’t tend to like taking “no” for an answer. In the case of adepts that’s essentially their whole deal, applied to the universe at large. Most Svengali wannabes thankfully flounder in getting far enough to exercise any magickal powers of mental domination and the few that do usually content themselves with off-brand “I can’t believe it’s not mind control” compromises. Only a tiny fraction of the tiny fraction who have enough juice to try it aren’t satisfied with that and are obsessive enough to never let up, which is where matryoshka parasites come from.

It’s not quite an unstoppable force versus an immovable object. The universal law of “your will ends where other people’s begins” still outweighs any amount of arcane puissance but repeatedly slinging juice at someone’s soul makes a mess. In the rare instances where someone is repeatedly subjected to magickal attempts to suborn their free will over a prolonged period it builds up as a sort of residue. If the frequency is too low or the intent is inconsistent the worst that will happen is that the attempts will discharge as unnatural phenomenon. If the attempts are both frequent and consistent (over years) the residue can instead take root inside of them. When the host is asleep or unconscious it comes out to play.

Matryoshka are about a foot and a half shorter and roughly 50-100 pounds lighter than their host (give or take), but physically identical in all other respects except for the tattoos. Unzippering the host from waist to mid-chest they emerge from the torso like Mary Poppins pulling a coat rack out of her bag (it’s posited this is an extradimensional effect, matryoshka don’t take up room inside of the host while inactive or show up in medical examination). This is where things can go a bit wrong: the matryoshka is a faithful copy of the original with the only differences being that a) it’s not human and, b) it has the violation it was intended to embody written into its mind and flesh. Imagine waking up one day and sleepily dragging yourself out of what turns out to be a much larger clone and finding some weirdo’s desire literally tattooed into you as your primary imperative. People have awoken to find their torso hanging open (this does no physical damage, it’s just really freaky) and their traumatised, inked-up mini-me weeping in the corner.

In the cases where that doesn’t happen the parasite has two goals: whatever is scrawled across its skin and to re-enter the host when it’s done. It has a maximum of three days to do the latter, losing a third of its wound threshold every sunrise until it climbs back inside and zips you back up. Most of them will try to get their business done quickly enough to return undetected, to the point that multiple excursions working towards a single goal are a thing. In the case of success if the imperative was a one-off then congratulations, the parasite dissolves on re-entry and you’re free to cope with the fallout. Otherwise a successful indulgence will buy you one to three months until it happens again.

You could kill it before it gets back inside of you. This isn't physically hard, matryoshka are small and relatively feeble, but can be harrowing. The consequence is that this leaves your chest permanent hanging open, which can be held shut with clothing but you probably won’t want to visit the beach ever again. Exorcising it through some magickal midwifery is also rumoured to be an option. There’s apparently a duo of powerfully built, middle-aged women with a set of stolen artifact forceps roaming about doing just this in between bopping people on the head for making them. The rumour also says that they don’t ask before acting and no one knows what they do with the parasites afterwards.

Matryoshka Parasite, Unrequited Mind Control Clone
Wound Threshold: 30.
Mimic 15-90%: The matryoshka has all of the host’s identities, abilities, relationships, shock gauges, knowledge and so on. The only exceptions are supernatural identities and that it cannot use obsessions or passions to flip/flop or reroll. It’s also at a -20% shift on physical actions that would be negatively impacted by its smaller size.