Dementation

Dementation is the signature Discipline of the Gandor clan, which allows them to transfer their madness onto others.

Passion
The vampire stirs his victim’s emotions, either heightening them to a fevered pitch or blunting them until the target is completely desensitized. The KIndred may not choose which emotion is affected; she may only amplify or dull emotions already present in the target. In this way, a vampire can inflame mild irritation into quivering rage or atrophy true love into casual interest.

The Haunting
The vampire manipulates the sensory centers of his victim’s brain, flooding the victim’s senses with visions, sounds, scents, or feelings that aren’t really there. The images, regardless of the sense to which they appeal, are only fleeting “glimpses,” barely perceptible to the victim. The vampire using Dementation cannot control what the victim perceives, but may choose which sense is affected. The “haunting” effects occur mainly when the victim is alone, and mostly at night. They may take the form of the subject’s repressed fears, guilty memories, or anything else that is appropriate to the situation. The effects are never pleasant or unobtrusive, however. The victim may well feel as if she is going mad, or as if the world is.

Eyes of Chaos
This peculiar power allows the vampire to take advantage of the fleeting clarity hidden in insanity. She may scrutinize the “patterns” of a person’s soul, the convolutions of a vampire’s inner nature, or even random events in nature itself. The Kindred with this power can discern the most well-hidden psychoses, or gain insight into a person’s true self. Gandor with this power often have (or claim to have) knowledge of the moves and countermoves of the Great Game, or the patterns of fate.

Voice of Madness
By merely addressing his victims aloud, the Kindred can drive targets into fits of blind rage or fear, forcing them to abandon reason and higher thought. Victims are plagued by hallucinations of their subconscious demons, and try to flee or destroy their hidden shames. Tragedy almost always follows in the wake of this power’s use, though offending Gandor often claim that they were merely encouraging people to act “according to their natures.” Unfortunately for the vampire concerned, he runs a very real risk of falling prey to his own voice’s power

Total Insanity
The vampire coaxes the madness from the deepest recesses of her target’s mind, focusing it into an overwhelming wave of insanity. This power has driven countless victims, vampire and mortal alike, to unfortunate ends. However, it is possible, if the effect fails, that the same effect may be inflicted on the user instead.

Lingering Malaise
While lesser Dementation powers allow a vampire to inflict temporary (though often long-lasting) madness upon a victim, elders of the Clan have developed the ability to infect the minds of their victims with permanent maladies. Lingering Malaise causes permanent psychological shifts within the victim, making him, as one Legrue elder remarked, “an honorary Lunatic.” The user must spend several minutes describing the derangement they wish to inflict, before engaging in a contest of wills, where they attempt to permanently alter the victim's mind.

Shattered Mirror
Although Dementation’s low-level effects are primarily to initiate or promote insanity rather than to create it spontaneously, some of its more potent manifestations are not as subtle. The wielder of this fearsome power can transfer her own deranged mindset into the psyche of a hapless victim, spreading her own brand of insanity like a virus.

Restructure
The elder with this fearsome power has the ability to twist his victims’ psyches at their most basic levels, warping their very beings. The subject of Restructure retains her memories, but her outlook on life changes completely, as if she has undergone a sudden epiphany or religious conversion. This effect goes much deeper than the implantation of a derangement; it actually performs a complete rewrite of the victim’s personality.

Personal Scourge
Similar to the Auspex power of Psychic Assault, this fearsome ability allows the elder to turn the very strength of her victim’s mind against him, inflicting physical harm with the power of his own will. Victims of this self-powered attack spontaneously erupt in lacerations and bruises, spraying blood in every direction and howling in agony. Those who have observed such an attack with Auspex note that the victim’s aura swirls with violent psychosis and erupts outward in writhing appendages — a sight that can make even the most jaded Nergali quail.

Lunatic Eruption
This fearsome ability is only known to have been applied a few times in recorded Kindred history, most spectacularly during the final nights of the last battle of Carthage. It is effectively a psychic nuclear bomb, used to incite every intelligent being within several miles (kilometers) into an orgy of bloodlust and rage. It is suspected that the Gandor have used the threat of this power as a bargaining chip in several key negotiations.