Indoctrination

Indoctrination was the term for the brainwashing effect that the Reapers and their technology exerted on organic beings. A signal or energy field surrounding a Reaper subtly influenced the mind of any organic within range, and it was first reported to Commander Shepard by farmers on Eden Prime, who described a horrible noise emanating from Sovereign as it descended. Even a Reaper's interior served the purpose; Matriarch Benezia observed that the strange angles of Sovereign's chambers left a visitor uncertain of themselves. The effect extended to Reaper artifacts as well, one of which, brought aboard the freighter MSV Cornucopia, brainwashed its crew.

Mechanism and effect#

The precise mechanics were poorly understood, but it was believed that a Reaper generated an electromagnetic field, waves of infrasound and ultrasound, or both, stimulating areas of the victim's brain and limbic system. The result varied with the Reaper's intent: a victim might suffer headaches and hallucinations, feel watched or paranoid, or come to regard the Reaper with superstitious awe. In time the Reaper could use the victim's body to amplify its signal, which manifested as voices within the mind. The asari neuroscientist Rana Thanoptis, who studied the effect on Virmire, described it as a subtle whisper one could not ignore, compelling actions without reason, until after days or a week of exposure the subject simply obeyed and became a mindless servant.

The mental damage was severe and permanent. Only minds of immense strength could resist, and even then only briefly. Matriarch Benezia preserved a haven in her mind free of Sovereign's control, but at the cost of being trapped within herself, watching in horror as she carried out atrocities; mortally injured on Noveria, she refused Shepard's help and chose to die, saying she was no longer herself and never would be again.

Control against usefulness#

Saren Arterius discovered through his own research that there was a balance between control and usefulness: the more thoroughly Sovereign dominated a person, the less capable that person became. Saren reasoned that by making himself an indispensable resource, needed to find the Conduit, he could earn a reprieve from full indoctrination and keep his mind his own. This balance ultimately contributed to Sovereign's undoing. When Shepard told Saren he had been indoctrinated without realizing it, his resolve faltered, and to keep him loyal Sovereign deepened its control with cybernetic implants. After Saren died, Sovereign took direct control of those implants to reanimate his corpse, but the energy this demanded left the Reaper off balance, its shields failing once the avatar was destroyed, so that the Alliance fleet could finish it. The rest of the Reapers did not share this flaw, as Harbinger showed in seizing direct control of individual Collectors.

A handful of beings resisted entirely. The last rachni queen proved immune or highly resistant, so that when the Reapers forced her to breed an army for them they had to restrain her physically. The asari Shiala fully escaped indoctrination's grip, but only because the Thorian's control supplanted Sovereign's, a circumstance unlikely ever to repeat.

Similar phenomena#

Several other forms of control resembled indoctrination. Thorian enthrallment, exerted through spores, used pain as reinforcement rather than eroding the psyche, which meant a disciplined mind could resist it more easily, and it ceased the moment the Thorian died, where Reaper indoctrination lingered after the masters had gone. The geth heretics were given a Reaper virus that subtly altered their low-level processes to simulate indoctrination among geth who refused to worship the Reapers, and in 2186 the main geth, desperate against the quarians, willingly submitted to a broadcast Reaper code that made them vastly more capable but subservient.

Cerberus pursued its own version. Salvaging technology from the Collector Base, it created Reaper-grade neural implants that enhanced human physiology at the cost of indoctrinating the subject and leaving them husk-like, used in a process called integration to produce loyal soldiers. The Illusive Man believed that by replicating the Reaper signal he could use the Crucible to seize control of the Reapers, and on his orders Henry Lawson transformed refugees into husks at Sanctuary on Horizon, succeeding in replicating the signal for local control before the Reapers learned of it and attacked. The Illusive Man finally had himself modified with Reaper nanotechnology, gaining the power to control Shepard and David Anderson briefly on the Citadel, only to be revealed as wholly indoctrinated himself.

Origin in Leviathan enthrallment#

The Leviathans had exerted control over organic species by directing faster-than-light pulses through their many opalescent artifacts scattered across the galaxy, communicating, controlling, and observing through them. Unlike Reaper indoctrination, this enthrallment caused no long-term mental damage beyond a loss of memory of the event; miners on Mahavid were enthralled for a decade without realizing any time had passed. The Leviathan that Commander Shepard confronted noted that this enthrallment had been the very basis from which Reaper indoctrination was derived.