Advanced

The recruits are physically, mentally and spiritually ready to enter the final stages of training. Advanced training is possibly the most important section, where Pentex decides who endures fomorization and who stays human.

The penultimate challenge for the recruits is to face down a werewolf. Trainers use captured Garou for this experience. Corporate indoctrination paints the Black Spiral Dancers as company allies — exposing new First Team members to Delerium from their allies could have disastrous consequences in the field.

Pentex would prefer to blood recruits by killing the werewolf — ideally as slowly and painfully as possible — but the company can’t doesn’t have enough captives to dispose of that easily. Instead, the recruits usually settle for wounding and crippling the beast with whatever weapons and equipment they prefer, stopping the torture just short of killing the Garou. The recruits then discuss what they learned under guidance by instructors while the werewolf is dragged back to its cage to heal and wait for the next round of experiments, or the next wave of recruits.

The final stage of ‘training’ — before everyone graduates one way or another — is possession. The constant psychological and sociological tests identify which trainees are most likely to survive Bane possession. More importantly, the test results predict the recruits’ likelihood to thrive in ways that result in a manageable fomor. Pentex has plenty of experience with powerful fomori that can destroy and defile without restraint, but the company wants servants who respond to commands and make good corporate choices in the field. Pentex has invested vast sums of money to train the recruits and will use mindless drones or rampaging berserkers, but these are never as profitable as dependable First Team members.

Despite decades of research, pharmaceutical assistance and the best corruption experts money can buy, Bane possession is still as much art as science. The constant exposure to spiritually-degrading drugs swings the odds in Pentex’s favor but results are never guaranteed. The Human Resources Department generates cost/benefit spreadsheets with the required number of fomori from each training group and the First Team trainers organize the trainees in predicted order of success. The trainers expose them to possession until they fulfil HR’s ‘order’. The trainers usually add a couple extra if they can, to insure against any pre-graduation fatalities.

Possession takes place in specially-prepared rooms that resemble a cross between a dentist’s surgery and a dark altar. Only the most spiritually-dead people — like the recruits — miss the room’s aura of dread and despair. Dim lights create ominous shadows in the room’s corners. Individuals making the mistake of staring too long into these pools of darkness get the feeling something is looking back at them.

Technicians buckle the recruit into the chair and connect them to a variety of monitors. They insert catheters into the victim’s arms and neck and attach lines to remote dispensers filled with faintly glowing, proprietary blends of Magadon’s cutting-edge chemicals, designed to reduce resistance. The technicians anoint the recruit’s skin with a mix of ground fomor bone, blood and toxic waste. Finally, the recruit drinks a foul tasting concoction and the personnel leave the room to monitor through a one-way mirror.

Banes are rarely cooperative and the room is warded against escape. The foul drink binds a slumbering spirit that wakes within the host, usually angry and hungry. It knows its purpose and has agreed to the binding for the chance to permanently possess a human — even so, Banes are selfish, treacherous things and Pentex knows they can’t be trusted to keep their word. The Bane senses the wards that remind it of its obligations. If the Bane wants to leave, it needs to take the host offered to it.

Bane possession rarely takes more than a few minutes but Pentex standard procedure ensures the recruit remains in the room at least an hour. The technicians know the signs of success and prepare to release the new fomori. One of the dispensers holds powerful tranquilizers and technicians know from experience to ensure the new creation is well and truly unconscious before releasing it.