Dimitri Ivanov is a 21-year-old corporal of the 345th Regiment of the Soviet Motorized Force in Gary, the New World, who surrendered without a fight after a voice spoke inside his head. His first official report reads: “Non sono più io. Qualcuno parla nella mia testa” (“I am no longer myself. Someone is speaking in my head”).
History
An unmarried front-line soldier with no occult training, he was moved to the wooded line on the outskirts of Voljograd. One dawn he left the line with empty hands raised and walked, unordered, toward the enemy group: five adventurers with no uniforms. A voice was speaking to him from inside his head, not through his ears.
The voice was real. Arcane intelligences acted regularly on vulnerable subjects of the Terra axis, choosing them by proximity, fatigue and lack of occult training; Dimitri met all three. The voice handed him to the enemy as an informant, later able to give operational details on his regiment.
Afterward
He is prone to starts, does not answer to names, surrenders whenever someone aims at him, and spits outside the camp as a ritual gesture without knowing why. He never speaks of the voice again. His regiment’s service note, written by a commissar, reads: “Fit for fatigues. Possible psychic depersonalizations requiring observation.” A marginal gloss calls the phrase a euphemism for possession by an unclassified arcane entity.
Open questions
- The source of the voice is uncertain: Rudishva residues (Rudishva Intelligences), fragments of Akala filtered through undocumented time channels, or the lesser Beacon.