Mock Mind

Since the Melissadae’s re-awakening, they have taken care to hide themselves, and their hives. Some Melissidae have learned how to create a false “mask” personality, which they can bestow upon their diligent drones.

Cost: 2 Vitae
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Empathy + Dominate
Action: Instant

Successful activation of this power enables the Melissid to imbue a drone with an entirely fake but wholly convincing personality, constructed from lingering fragments of identity subsumed by the hive-mind.

Dramatic failure causes the personality created to take hold of the drone so strongly that, on the moment of its first activation, the personality becomes the drone’s real personality. If this happens, the drone, believing himself always to have been this new person, won’t actually know what’s happened to him and cannot be returned to the hive-mind. A drone to whom this happens can be very dangerous. He might realize that huge chunks of his history are missing and begin to investigate. More likely, he suffers a psychotic episode and becomes an immediate and significant liability.

This false personality can, once installed, be activated or de-activated with a telepathic cue from the drone’s queen or from another Melissid with this power attached to the hive (such as one of the queen’s childer). When activated, the drone’s Social and Mental Attributes and Skills return to the levels they held before his induction into the hive-mind.

The mask personality fools mortals, but has no aura; attempts at telepathic scanning using Auspex or similar powers find that beneath the surface, there is literally nothing.