Among the most surreal of the known blood alchemy
Solutions, this power allows the character to construct
memories in his own mind, and then transmit them
through this Solution. Compared to the Dominate power
this Solution depends on, the effects are incredibly gross
and unrefined, but nonetheless useless.
To create the Solution, the character first goes about
inventing a memory in his own mind by imagining encounters
and conversations, recalling fragments of his own
real memories and using other memory tricks. The character
does not fool himself with this false memory, but
the best mental forgers create recollections so exacting
that they hate to part with them. The action required to
create a memory is similar to that used in The Forgetful
Mind, but it is not penalized by the subject’s Resolve (because
there is no subject yet, when the memory is created).
The character performs an extended Intelligence
+ Expression + Dominate action to construct the memory,
with each roll representing five minutes of mental manipulation.
The successes accumulated are used just as
the collective successes of The Forgetful Mind, but the
character can make twice as many rolls as he has dots in
Spoiling when writing a memory for the Solution.
Once the memory is ready, the character can distill it
into his Vitae. Doing so requires an instant Intelligence +
Expression + Dominate activation roll. The successes on
this roll do not add to the memory’s successes. Instead, these
successes determine the threshold for success on the subject’s
contested action to resist the forged memory. When the
Solution is created, the vampire loses his invented memory’s
place in his mind. Most blood alchemists that know this
power claim they can “remember the memory,” but it is a
vague and incomplete recollection.
Unlike subjects of The Forgetful Mind, the drinkers
of a Liquid Memory lose none of their own. Instead, they
strangely incorporate the new memory into an “available
space” in their own mind. A false memory depicting
an nighttime encounter with a stranger might be
rationalized as having happened when the subject was
actually asleep (“I, uh, I guess I got up and went for a
walk that night. There was this…person…”) Wise
memory writers design memories to be easily incorporated
into the holes of a subject’s day.
If the subject succeeds on the contested action to a
resist a memory, he is not free of it but knows full well
that it is not his own. In time, the memory may fade,
but it cannot simply be forgotten. Some subjects believe
they’ve hallucinated or suffered some sort of trauma, but those who know things about the World of Darkness
might go looking for a supernatural explanation first.
