Psychomimetic Operations
Harvard belongs to the Throne. While other mages raided the university for only research, the Seers of the Throne recognized the school’s potential early on and took the long, slow path to control it. Starting with the Greek letter societies, they eventually took hold of the university through donors, prominent alumni and a few vulnerable faculty.
Then LSD appeared. It had the potential to hide mind-altering magic from the effects of Sleeper Disbelief, and in some cases even replace it. Science could mold the drug into the perfect tool, or turn it into a vice to be avoided. Through CIA-sponsored professors, the Seers of the Throne had the drug classified it as “psychomimetic,” capable of creating a psychotic state. Researchers like Timothy Leary preferred to call it a “psychedelic” and believed it could greatly enhance psychotherapy, but also entertained the possibility that the drug could be used to reach “mystical” states of consciousness.
In the 1960s, Harvard was on the forefront of LSD research. But Dr. Leary’s apparent rebelliousness was something of a double blind. Despite his ties to the growing counterculture, he later served as an FBI informant, providing information about radicals like the Weather Underground in hopes of negotiating his release from jail. Mages with both authoritarian and anti-establishment leanings were highly suspicious of Leary and his agenda. Instead of suborning him, they fought over the meaning of his work. In particular, Libertines wanted to promote psychedelics as a self-initiation tool to bypass the hierarchical training of the other orders. The Seers of the Throne wanted to ensure that LSD and its successors were thought of as nothing more than a quick path to insanity. Other mages took positions between those extremes.
This is not to say that the Seers of the Throne had no use for artificial “madness.” They exploited Harvard LSD research to spur on further experiments (including their own alchemical enhancements) through the CIA’s MK-ULTRA project. They developed a whole range of drugs designed to incapacitate enemies and control minds. The most sophisticated concealed Seers’ spells from subjects’ perceptions, protecting mages from Paradoxes. Byproducts like the combat hallucinogen BZ were passed on to the US government in exchange for classified access.
In 1977, the Seer pylon known as Psychomimetic Operations became Harvard’s dominant occult clique under the cover of a classified campus research group. After floating through FBI and CIA hands, the operation is currently funded by the Department of Homeland Security. Similarly, membership has changed over the years thanks to a series of duels and assassinations. Seers struggle to acquire membership and its benefits: government funding, and the run of the university and the group’s secret archives. Psychomimetic Operations pretends to study the threat of psychoactive drugs as a terrorist weapon and even sends reports to the federal government, but its primary mission is to explore and manipulate the human mind. If its researchers can delve even deeper to twist the substance of the soul, they might develop magic capable of manipulating the Quiescence and tainting the Awakening itself.
Even though the pylon is the preeminent magical presence on campus, the Seers of the Throne — and perhaps the Exarchs above them — rarely infiltrate an organization with just one layer of conspiracy. And that might indicate the presence of the Asylum, a group rumored to exist “above” Psychomimetic Operations.
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