Duck Tape & A Hose

Duck Tape & A Hose  Technical  Proficiency [Grace]  200 hours    Requires: Telepathy I    Double learning difficulty    Psionic

They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. That's not true, you can force it to drink with duck tape & a hose. What do they know, and who are 'they' anyway? With all forms of mental coercion, the same is said: nothing can make someone think something. Neither torture nor telepathy is foolproof in this regard. The former is grand for eventually getting someone to behave a certain way, but there is no way to ensure that they actually came around to your way of thinking. The latter can actually implant a thought in someone's mind, but cannot make them dwell upon it. A truly dedicated--or easily distracted & stupid--subject can allow a given thought to pass over them and through them, whether you are employing psychological torture, physical abuse, deep telepathic embedding, or even a 72 hour non-stop Tomb Raider movie marathon. With Duck Tape & A Hose you can go against the conventional wisdom and actually force someone to think a certain thought. By winning a contest of this skill versus their Willpower, Wits, or an appropriate psionic or mental defence skill (defender's choice) you can mandate that your victim's mind dwell upon a single subject. This thought can be a single sentence-type factoid, a simple image, or a single subject. The subject (if this option is chosen) can be as broad or narrow as the attacking mind mage desires; the victim's mind will think whatever they want about that topic, but must continue to dwell upon it. If this attack is successful there is no escaping thinking about--whatever--and in order to think of something else (simultaneously, not in lieu of) you must make a Wits check to think about both things at once. You can lead a horse to water and you can make it think.