"With just a whisper, they're all ears…"
Of all the Vigors produced by Fink MFG, Possession was unique, not only for its unusually specific usages, comparatively limited sales and unorthodox source, but for the simple fact that out of all Fink's product line, it truly embodied the spirit of Columbia: domineering, manipulative, and intrinsically destructive.
It was among the last of the Vigors to be concocted and the last to arrive on the open market: initially, it was only used by the engineers of Columbia for commanding less-than-pliable machinery, easily bypassing the hours of recalibrations that such actions would normally have required. However, when Fink discovered a means of further stabilizing the Tears within the fluid, he unearthed its capacity to control other human beings for short periods of time, swiftly bringing the Vigor to the attention of the Columbian military.
Over the course of its tenure among the army, Possession was adopted by commanding officers, double-agents and saboteurs for use in front-line combat: Vox Populi were often too busy attempting to suppress their mind-warped comrades to fend off the Founders, and the more reluctant soldiers found their bodies marching into battle against their will. Likewise, on the rare occasion that the early Vox were able to rewire Columbian automata for use in combat, Possession-users were able to easily turn the tide in their favour.
Suicides were common among the human victims, but not always guaranteed: though the psychological side-effects usually included chronic depression and a sense of cognitive dissonance second only to Tear Sickness in sheer potency, self-destruction usually only occurred in those who'd betrayed their deepest beliefs over the course of their time under the influence (killing their friends, serving the False Shepherd, etc). Nonetheless, these suicides were numerous enough to make Possession a celebrated instrument of propaganda in several of Columbia's iterations: during a special sermon delivered to Columbia's military, Comstock claimed that Possession gave them the means to "cure" the Vox Populi of their delusional ideals and show them the error of their ways; the suicides were simply the end result of the remorse that the rebels would feel upon realizing the magnitude of the atrocities they had committed against "God's natural order."
In some particularly bloodthirsty timelines, it was common for the Founders to film the effects of Possession on Vox POWs and broadcast the results to public cinemas, especially if the interrogators could convince the mind-warped victims to recant and beg forgiveness for their sins before the suicide instinct kicked in. Many of the Founders hoped that Daisy Fitzroy herself could be given the same treatment when they finally captured her, but the rebel leader eluded their grasp time and again, and in the end the plan was discarded as the Vox began gaining ground.
Outside the military, however, Possession saw limited civilian use even by Vigor standards: initially, the prospect of taming stubborn machinery drew great interest from those who actually had to deal with technology on a daily basis, and the lack of Tear-induced deformities made it attractive to casual users; indeed, the occasional manifestations of tiny ethereal maidens and tongues of heatless flame almost made Possession a success in its own right, with savvy executives marketing it as "The Gentlest of Vigors."
However, Fink's misguided ad campaign presenting the Vigor as a "love potion" quickly soured the product's reputation, and only ended up drawing customers from a very small and particularly hateful segment of the populace. Given the prudishness of Columbian society and Comstock's religious conservatism, advertisements featuring eligible bachelors surrounded by harems of Possession-enthralled bathing beauties were met with a lukewarm reception at best; at worst, moral crusaders like Saltonstall were calling for it to be pulled from the market. As such, it was used only behind closed doors, especially by those intending to use the Vigor as a date-rape drug: appropriately enough, Possession had its heyday in the dimly-lit booths of the Good Time Club, where Fink and his lieutenants regularly used the Vigor to coerce dancers and waitresses into acts too depraved even by the club's normal standards.
Given its fringe usage, the long-term side-effects of Possession were not widely known except in a handful of Columbia's iterations: unlike more powerful Vigors such as Murder Of Crows and Shock Jockey, the comparatively high cost in dimensional salts kept it from being used on a regular basis, and even the true enthusiasts of the product preferred to use it only in times of celebration – which quickly became rare as the battles with the Vox grew more brutal. As such, the addiction and physical abnormalities caused by Possession remained unknown until well into Fitzroy's takeover, and the mental disturbances it induced never reached the public – in no small part due to the fact that its most widely-known users were already sociopaths. In the end, the long-term effects of the Vigor were only seen in the military elite who utilized it on the battlefield (see below).
Similarly, it took some time for the societal drawbacks of Possession to appear in the spotlight. It wasn't until Columbian authorities finally noticed the sudden rise in petty crime that they realized that Fink had once again inadvertently screwed over his own business: as Booker quickly discovered, Possession could be used to steal from Fink-branded automata like the vending machines and ticket collectors, and while it could have been possible to hardwire the mechanisms against such tampering – as was the case with the Handymen – Fink was too intent on refilling his coffers as quickly as possible to bother with the product recall such modifications would require. Naturally, the Vox Populi were able to exploit this vulnerability once they were able to obtain sufficient stocks of Possession, gradually using it to fuel their rise to power.
Towards the end, as Comstock and his lieutenants retreated to the safety of their gilded strongholds and the Vox Populi seized control of the streets they'd abandoned, Possession found a new and terrible use among the more hedonistic revolutionaries. By this stage, the idealism of the once-laudable Vox had been overwhelmed by their lust for revenge, and those Founders left behind in Emporia were the perfect scapegoats: those of them not simply killed on sight or tortured to death behind closed doors were herded into makeshift arenas: there, the terrified citizens were Possessed and forced to fight – or worse – for the amusement of the angry mob, every murder, degradation and suicide greeted with another peal of hysterical laughter – the violence and insanity at the heart of Columbia laid bare at last through the power of this most unique Vigor.
Like many inventions in Columbia's history, Possession's more militant users gradually formed an elite unit of empowered warriors and fanatics; unlike the Firemen and the Crows, however, the Possession-wielding Preachers of the Way were not widespread across all of Columbia's iterations, and most of my variants across the possibility space never encountered them at all. Generally speaking, these individuals only appeared in timelines where the dogma of the Founders took a turn for the violent, sometimes in response to the Vox gaining the upper hand earlier than before, sometimes as a result of a drastic spike in Comstock's religious mania.
They also made a brief appearance in the mainstream timelines during the reign of the Lamb, especially once my future self developed a taste for brainwashing techniques; in the end, however, these variants fell into obsolescence as my future counterpart lost interest in short-term control and had her researchers study means of permanent reconditioning. In the end, the mainstream Preachers were replaced by the Boys of Silence and their quiescent hordes of inmates, the threat of mental obliteration a thousand times more effective in controlling the citizenry than Possession's blunt puppetry, the virtual invincibility of the Boys of Silence trumping even the vistas of control demonstrated by the Preachers. In other, bloodier Columbias, however, the Preachers' heyday never ended.
The Preachers of the Way were unusual, even by Columbian standards. In contrast with the more commonplace elites, they weren't penitent criminals or civilian extremists in cooperation with the police, but militarized members of the city's clergy. With violent uprisings occurring throughout the city on a daily basis in these bloodier timelines, Comstock needed operatives who could act swiftly ad independently in times of crisis and serve as propaganda tools in times of peace – however brief they were; thus, priests were selected for this role, partly due to their experience with directing and addressing crowds but mostly due to the fact that they could be positioned throughout the city without drawing the kind of attention that military officers would usually attract.
Over the course of the recruitment period, Comstock was able to find perhaps a hundred clergymen brave enough to serve him on the battlefield and pious enough to partake of the "divine gift"; however, as the newly-empowered Preachers arrived on the battlefield, their ranks swelled with acolytes inspired by their victories against the Vox Populi, to the point that the simple church he'd given them simply couldn't contain the multitude. Soon, the Founders were forced to provide them with an entire cathedral built into the cellars of Comstock House; there, in chambers that would have dwarfed the Sistine Chapel, the newest and most unpleasant of all the city's brotherhoods went about their business under the guidance of their master, the Voice of the Prophet, indulging their addictions and ushering in even more recruits. By the end of Columbia's presence in the possibility space, timelines such as these had almost a thousand Preachers at work throughout the city.
These ascended priests were easily recognized by the lavish vestments and ostentatious pro-Founder iconography they wore, including ceremonial swords, golden keys, scrolls inscribed with pre-approved sermons, and amulets bearing Comstock's image. Like the Order of the Raven, they regarded their chosen Vigor with considerable reverence, often imbuing themselves with their first dose of Possession through elaborate baptismal rites, accepting all subsequent doses only from chalices and other sanctified vessels. Continuous exposure to the empowering serum turned their eyes luminous green and wreathed their hands in billowing emerald flames; the apparitions associated with Possession usage grew steadily larger, often hovering behind the Preachers for hours on end and sometimes even shaping themselves into halos, auras and other saintlike regalia. As these interdimensional manifestations became more powerful, gravity loosened its grip on the Preachers as the spectral power flowed through them: quite a few of these militant chaplains took to walking on water in order to impress the faithful, while others simply levitated high above the battlefield in pursuit of their targets.
Unknown to all but a select few, Possession users became more and more manipulative and psychopathic as time went on, their empathy for others gradually eroding as the Tear-impregnated fluid altered the structure of their brain: within a matter of weeks after their first dose, even the gentlest of the clergy would be willing to turn brother against brother for their own twisted amusement, willing to sacrifice those they'd once loved for the sake of their grotesque ambitions. Even the most devout faiths withered away in the face of the user's compulsive need to control and exploit – a lack of conscience that served them all-too-well in combat. Indeed, the only reason why the Preachers never turned their attention to unseating Comstock was out of fear – fear that he and Fink would be able to deprive them of the Vigor they were now addicted to; for similar reasons, none of the Preachers ever joined the Vox Populi, not even when Comstock's hypocrisies were laid bare and Fitzroy overwhelmed the factories. After all, Comstock House's Siphon was the only reliable source of Vigors left to them.
On the rare occasions that Booker and I encountered the Preachers in the field, things usually ended very badly: whole crowds of innocent civilians devolved into angry mobs at the simplest word of command from just one of the Vigor-crazed demagogues. Even the self-destructive zeal of the Founders' military and the vengeful ferocity of the Vox Populi's later warriors paled in comparison to the Possession-induced insanity commanded by the Preachers: in these unfortunate timelines, I witnessed a horde of filing clerks bring down a Vox Handyman by sheer force of numbers, observed senior citizens extinguish a house fire under the weight of their own corpses, saw children as young as five years old charging our flanks with unpinned grenades in their hands; once, I saw an entire family drink flasks of sulphuric acid, just to show their "devotion" to the Preacher that had bewitched them.
The masters of these mind-controlled fanatics made no distinction between Founders and Vox, combatant or civilian; either one was fair game to the twisted clergy. Indeed, Preachers enjoyed seizing control of civilians, especially if they were unwilling: in one particularly grisly encounter, I heard several of them chuckling over the sheer terror that "those Irish marionettes" felt while under the influence of Possession, and "all the fuss they made over their little lost brats"; as it turned out, a common practice among Preaches targeting Vox-aligned neighbourhoods was to target the wandering children first, forcing the adults to leave their fortified homes and attempt a rescue – only to end up getting enthralled as well. Even while off-duty, these priests would often be seen toying with the minds of their congregations for hours on end, forcing them to perform in elaborate dramas and epics for little more than brief diversion. And unfortunately, killing one of these demented evangelists usually wasn't enough to end his dominion over the minds of his congregation: more often than not, a mortally-wounded Preacher would simply issue a suicide command to his flock out of sheer spite, usually while laughing triumphantly at the dismayed expression on the faces of his enemies.
In those particular timelines, Booker and I usually attempted to mount an attack on the Preacher's base of operations following our journey through Emporia, hoping that we'd be able to find a means of ascending into Comstock House. At the time, we'd believed that the place would be almost empty of Preachers thanks to the ongoing Vox revolution; unfortunately, we were wrong: nine times out of ten, our attempted infiltration ended with Booker being Possessed and forced to hand me over to Comstock. On one particularly unfortunate iteration in which Comstock finally lost control of the Preachers, the Voice of the Prophet decided to cement their rebellion by forcing Booker to break my neck.
Few things are as unpleasant as having to hear your own spine snap in two, but even that paled in comparison to the rare occasions in more loyalist timelines, when Preachers decided to execute the False Shepard before handing me over. Of course, the Voice of the Prophet had no interest in sullying his hands, nor did any of his followers.
They made me do it.
Nine times out of ten, they were quick enough to stop me from killing myself.
On the tenth instance, they just let it happen.
As with most of the Vigors, the dimension from which the power of Possession was drawn remained a mystery to all but an extremely select few: only the Luteces managed to get a halfway decent look at where the Tears led, and they took its secrets to the grave – and beyond. Even the Preachers of the Way didn't have much interest in how ordinary tapwater was transmuted into their divine elixir, but I doubt that the knowledge would have stopped them drinking it.
In reality, the power was not a natural phenomenon in the world it was drawn from, nor was it a natural ability of one of its inhabitants: the power of Possession was, in fact, one of the inhabitants.
The apparition seen manifesting around those wielded the Vigor was not merely a random quirk of dimensional physics interacting with human tissues, nor was it a phantom of the wielder's imagination transmitted into semi-corporeal reality, but a living creature capable of travelling through even the microscopic Tears earthed within the Vigor fluid. This being never volunteered her true name, nor did the Luteces have any opportunity to ask it; in the end, they were forced to make do with a codename drawn from Robert's boyhood fascination from Greek mythology: Hecate, after the goddess of magic and entranceways.
During our long talks in the aftermath of Columbia's destruction, back in the days when I was still trying to find some means of living with myself, the Luteces told me of the world they had connected to in their formulation of their last Vigor, a place they called the Bleak Expanse: it was among the least earthly of the dimensions they'd reached out to, a gloomy and almost colourless realm dominated by opaque clouds of gas and withered, half-dead stars. No vegetation was visible in any of the terrains accessed, nor was there any solid ground, only dense banks of vapour as far as the eye could see. And in these rolling gas clouds, the inhabitants of this world endlessly flitted to and fro – and still do, to the best of my knowledge.
From what little the Luteces could see, these wraith-like beings were sentient enough to have developed a civilization of their own, though it was largely clan-based and often plunged into long periods of warfare in disputes over territory and ownership. They even possessed music, capable of producing a wide variety of captivating melodies that echoed endlessly across the rippling oceans of vapour; unfortunately, while Robert was recording one of these haunting arias for posterity, Hecate happened upon the Tear he had opened. The Luteces were quick to shut down their machinery and close the portal, but then the observer knew what to look for: when Possession was inadvertently created, Hecate attempted to enter through the microscopic Tears grounded in the water, only to be stymied by the grounding process – H2O proving too diffusive a medium to transmit herself through. But as test subjects started actually drinking the Vigor, Hecate found herself able to gain traction in our reality through the bodies of Possession wielders.
Information on Hecate herself is scarce, though the brief glimpses of her home life were enough to make the Luteces uncomfortable about her forays into our reality: the chieftain of the largest and the strongest of all the clans, she had made a name for herself as a demigoddess – a potency achieved by consuming the energies of her fallen enemies. With most of her people too terrified to oppose her for the time being, she looked upon the Tears into our end of the multiverse as a new source of amusement. Up until the day when she found herself in Columbia, Hecate had no idea that she possessed the ability to warp human minds and technology at will, and the discovery of a world that responded so readily to her touch fascinated her – just as the sight of organic bodies wracked with pain thrilled her. Thus, she consented to granting Possession wielders her services for the carnage it presented, dividing herself between thousands of portals so she could take in all the atrocities Columbia could display.
At first, users could only direct Hecate towards targets in much the same way that a rider would direct a horse; however, as time went on, users gained finer control over Possession, until eventually they ceased to command the ghostly figure haunting them and simply focused the powers of their own mind – or so they thought. In reality, the differences between weapon and wielder had become negligible, and the will of the individual had given way to a twisted symbiosis: at first simply altering the structure of their brains to make them think more like her, Hecate then began to form permanent conduits in their bodies, allowing them to use her powers directly even as it allowed her to inhabit their bodies on a more intimate basis. Needless to say, the Preachers of the Way were her vessels in our end of the probability space, at once serving their own interests and obeying her commands without even realizing it.
Fortunately, Hecate's ambitions were limited to short-term carnage, even in iterations of Columbia where she held secretly held sway over the entire city. Had Columbia ever succeeded in destroying the Sodom Below or bringing God's wrath to the other worlds of the multiverse, I've no doubt Hecate would have been happy enough to lend a hand to the Lamb's cause if it meant further chaos, even if the city were to one day attack her own dimension. Needless to say, the Luteces and I ultimately played our part in nipping this apocalypse in the bud; indeed, Hecate ended up playing an indirect role in our victory – likely never knowing who or what she was aiding.
Columbia Raffle and Fair did not offer free samples of Possession: even Fink wasn't deluded enough to think that a machine-controlling Vigor would not be immediately misused by the revellers, especially with tickets to the Raffle sold out and so many people eager to get in. However, the Luteces had ways around such restrictions, and even the pious citizens of Columbia weren't above accepting the occasional bribe: stealing a bottle of Possession from one of Fink's factories, they paid a salesgirl a hundred silver eagles to loiter outside the Possession exhibit and pretend to operate the film projector until Booker Dewitt arrived, whereupon she would take up her basket of "free samples" and provide him with his very first Vigor.
As I understand it, the glowing vaporous figure that Booker saw upon drinking the Vigor was Hecate's true form.
To date, I still don't know if Hecate ever realized what the Luteces were planning, or if she ever attempted to help or hinder their plans directly; likewise, I've no idea if she resents the Luteces and I for ending her fun.
All I know is that she's still out there.
Waiting.
A/N: Up next, Devil's Kiss!