I have teleported another batch of subjects into my laboratory for the beginning of memory trials. I found a small settlement of around a hundred and took every individual from it. They are subsistence farmers providing no benefit to Viirad besides a pool from which to get conscripts. I see this town also has a zebra family, and a griffon who appears to have married into a pony family. This is quite displeasing. For any real science to occur, I would desire a set of subjects of the same race. The messiness of this societal structure will not do. I will make a note to begin a racial segregation program.

For now, it will have to do. My studies on the soul suggest they are similar across species, so at least this experiment should be unaffected. As for the children of this village, there is no point to experimenting on those under the age of 10. Their minds are not yet developed, and I can’t even communicate with them well enough to get good data. Everycreature approximately above that age should be a good subject. I will teleport the children back.

How quaint. It appears one of them recognizes what is going on and is informing the others of the story of one of my previous test subjects. Good to see some news is finally propagating. It appears this has cowed half of them while galvanizing the other half. The parents of the foals they just saw being teleported away seem especially angry. I wonder how best to handle this. I believe this village did already get passed by my purge so they likely know who I am. In that case, the reason for their outbursts is likely not due to a lack of knowledge, but an overabundance of bravado or some sense of agency.

One especially irate mother is shouting at the top of her lungs. She will make as good of an example as any of the others. I’ll pick a particularly poignant form of death for the others to see as I can afford to lose one subject today. I have a gun here, but perhaps this fire siphon will be more dramatic. I should probably use something that demonstrates my magical prowess. I use my levitation to grip the mare’s body and begin to crunch it into a sphere of flesh. There is a transition of her yelling to a scream of terror before she suddenly achieves brain death. A silence emerges from the rest of them as I drop the newly-created sphere of flesh and fur on the ground. I made sure to keep the skin mostly intact and just fuse along the creases to prevent bleeding - I can’t stand the mess. The others in her cell seem especially horrified.

With the creatures pacified, I am ready to begin, but another interesting phenomenon has appeared. The one who told the others they were going to be used as test subjects is lying prostrate at the door of her cell begging for mercy. Interestingly, she is also promising undying loyalty and everything she has. Now she claims her daughter is already conscripted in my army. Telepathy informs me that she is speaking the truth of her daughter, but I sense that her other promises are just motivated by self-preservation and that she will likely stray in a week or so.

It does raise an interesting question though. As my influence grows, I will likely soon begin to find those loyal to me in these batches of test subjects. Should I return their freedom as a reward for their service or is being my test subject the highest reward there is? Regardless of the philosophical answer to the question, the practical matter remains that I want to keep those loyal to me alive so that they may serve me longer. These experiments carry a high risk of death or permanent injury, and thus it would be better to guarantee a set of the less useful. I should speak to Aethelflaed about organizing a pool of subjects I can draw from to experiment on.

Subject 1: Unicorn female

I shall begin with the standard necromantic template of the soul that only keeps the basic intelligence of a creature active. I follow the standard necromantic protocol for identifying the soul and can now begin reconstruction. The pattern for the reconstruction outlined in the book is slightly different from alteration, but I can deduce the differences and proceed. This spell outlines adding obedience by interrupting the soul recreation and adding a set pattern. I can adapt this part of the spell by simply changing the existing pattern to the set pattern in the book.

The alteration is complete. From the outside, the unicorn appears unchanged, but is now just looking ahead rather blankly. This is becoming a recurring theme, and not a desirable one. There is no need to run a full set of tests. I just need to get an idea of what effect the spell has had so I can begin tweaking it to my liking.

As a seer by trade, telepathy is one of my specialties. I begin to scan the pony’s mind to see what remains as I also command it with my standard command to walk in a circle. As expected, she begins to obey. The other ponies in her cell give her space as they look on silently. One begins to cry.

With my scan complete, I note that the pony’s experiential memories have been erased. I ask it for when it was married, and it gives no answer while merely staring ahead. I expected as much given the behavior of Silver Star’s servants. The lack of personality also matches. Next, I hand her a paper of 2-digit multiplication problems and ask her to solve it. She is unable - writing seemingly random numbers as solutions. Interestingly, she recognizes the answer should be written under the horizontal line and the separate nature of each problem but lacks the faculties to do the math. I seem to have recreated the standard undead skeleton, just from a living creature rather than a corpse.

Subject 2: Pegasus male

This one appears to be the husband of subject 1 based on his crying and muttering of a name I can only assume was the name of subject 1. This time, I am curious as to how much I can erase. I will not add the obedience pattern, and I will just set every mental value to 0 rather than just most of it. This should give me a good understanding of what is stored in memory and what isn’t. If it isn’t affected by this test, it isn’t related to memory.

Immediately, he collapses. This puts motor skills as under the purview of memory which is interesting to me as walking is not a taught skill and can be done by anydeer immediately upon exiting the womb. His heart, I sense, is still beating, but he does not appear to be breathing. The next thing I notice is the smell as he soils himself. A look in his eyes shows he is not blinking. I believe he is alive, but for how long remains to be seen.

On second inspection, it does seem like there is some breath coming out of his nose, just very faintly. Also, he just blinked. I suspect the delay must be caused by some reflex after his eyes have dried out. To test another reflex, I attempt to initiate the patellar reflex by striking the knee with my levitation, which succeeds in triggering the jerk response.

A perusal of his mind reveals absolutely nothing. My telepathy can usually detect memories, thoughts, and emotion, but I find nothing intelligible. I predict there is actually thought going on, but without a knowledge of language or logic, it is indistinguishable from nothing. Perhaps he will be like a newborn foal and slowly learn everything again.

Subject 3: Earth pony male

The effect I achieved on the pegasus has me curious about just how far I can push soul alteration. I have successfully erased the mind, but what effects could I have on the body? It will also be interesting to see if the soul maps to specific body systems as a scientist would divide the body or if it follows its own model.

I focus on the physical aspects of the soul, but without any understanding of the landscape beyond the skeleton pattern described in the necromancy book, I am mostly working blindly. To satisfy my curiosity, I add a random perturbation to the soul’s landscape in an arbitrary location. Nothing appears to change outwardly. Was this part of the soul linked to an internal structure or something with only long-term consequences?

I suppose there is no point in exercising restraint if I just want to see what happens. I cordon off a large part of the physical part of the soul and destroy it. Results this time are immediate. It seems a large part of his body is now dead. Interestingly, it doesn’t follow any pattern I can tell. His back right leg is discolored, and as he stumbles, it tears cleanly off except for a thin sliver of still living skin. I also notice significant patches of discoloration distributed randomly across the body. It appears he is experiencing weakness, as he is leaning on the side of the bars of his cell, slowly falling. At first, he screamed but is now apparently choking and coughing up blood. Blood is, unfortunately, beginning to flow freely over the floor. The other ponies in the cell appear to be moving away from the pool of blood and him. Optimistically, I will assess this is their desire to not interfere with my experiment as to avoid becoming a flesh sphere instead of mere disgust.

Watching him die was quite fun. I should try this on another one.

Subject 4: Earth pony female

After another attempt, I was unable to locate a part or pattern in the soul strongly correlated with a physical body part or system. In theory, if I did this enough, I probably could, but this is ultimately a diversion from my true task. I have developed some respect for the necromancers who must have worked very hard to find the pattern in the soul matching the skeleton. Subject 4 lies dying on the ground like subject 3.

Subject 5: Unicorn male

Back to matters of the mind. In fiction, the most common form of amnesia is where memories of events and friends are lost, but skills and intelligence remain. Sometimes, this can also change personality. I would like to try an alteration of just these memories, as a creature with no experiences could be easily manipulable.

To execute this process, I will keep most of the process the same as with subject 1, but I will attempt to keep the intelligence of subject 5 intact while erasing memories of events and those they know. I begin with the same necromantic sequence as prior, but I attempt to paint a thinner brushstroke over the pony’s soul. I also opt not to add the obedience pattern.

Upon completion of the spell, the unicorn begins expressing the dead eyes that have become far too common. Did I carve too deep? Upon a telepathic scan, it appears his memories have become rather blank. His thoughts are also rather generic. If a personality is like the grooves on a record, his is totally smooth. This is confirmed when I ask him for his name, and he answers with a simple “I don’t know”. His emotional response is also surprisingly muted. Perhaps I removed his knowledge that not knowing one’s name is bad.

I give him the same math problems I gave the first unicorn. He takes the pencil in his levitation and successfully begins multiplying. At least I didn’t remove all of his skills. I release him to his cellmates to see their reactions. His family is apparently distraught and trying to tell him who he is. He recognizes their sadness but is unsure of why. His thoughts and actions also reflect a very accepting state where he is taking in the information from those around him without question.

It seems I have created one of Leopold’s clockwork automatons, just in organic flesh. I could probably make this pony move a gun from one line to another in a factory all day and convince him it was the greatest job in the world with just a few words. Good to find a spell that may have a niche.

This is good progress, but I need more experience determining which parts of the soul correlate to which parts of the mind so I may fine tune my alteration.

Subject 6: Earth pony female

I did not cut out the parts that I hoped to. I was attempting to erase just the personality, but it seems I’ve erased skills and experiential memories.

Subject 7: Unicorn female

This shows promise. I was able to erase just the personality while leaving most all else intact. Her family was quite unsettled to see this doppelganger replicate everything she was originally able to do with almost no emotion.

These cells which once held the collective townscreatures of a settlement are now a collection of incompetents ranging from totally braindead to almost normal. Quite a productive evening if I do say so myself. I have refined the soul alteration of memory erasure such that I can erase exactly what I want to do. However, erasing memories of the same type is easier than erasing some from one type and some from another. Based on how these types break down, I believe I can contribute a soul-focused model of the information in memory to the field of experimental psychology.

I would divide memories into 2 main categories: declarative and nondeclarative. Within these 2 main groups are multiple subgroups. Declarative memory houses experiential or episodic memories and semantic data. This means that erasing the memory of a house is similar to erasing the memory of buying that house. The information of what the house is is semantic information while buying it is episodic. Similarly, knowledge in the form of facts is all semantic. Knowhow and facts are easy to erase all together. All declarative memories are easier to erase with each other than with nondeclarative memories.

Nondeclarative memories are memories that cannot be explained with logic. This includes skills which are procedural, like how to jump, use levitation, or fly. Procedural memories are easier to erase together than with other nondeclarative memories like personality. However, it is then easier to erase personality and procedural skills together than, say, personality and a declarative memory.

With this model of the structure of memory in mind, I believe the spell I wish to create should limit its effects to be within a single domain as to make the spell easier to cast. If necessary, no more than 10% of the effect should be from an opposing type of memory. A spell that alters only declarative memories or only nondeclarative memories will be easier to cast and require less mana and mental energy, but I am not yet sure if it will be possible to achieve the results I want with just one or the other. This 10% limit should suffice to prevent the spell from becoming too complex to scale.

What to do with these invalids? I could just kill them and take their lands, but it isn’t as if their lands have that much value. Besides, then I’d have to send ponies to manage it. I also don’t want them to have to be cared for and then be a drain on Viirad. I’ll just let the invisible hand take care of them. The relatively functional ones should be able to take care of themselves and the foals for enough time for a merchant to show up. I’m sure they will be able to make use of the dumb labor. The market will decide which are too dumb to work and they’ll die off soon enough. With a thought, I teleport them back. While this has been fun, it has also been tiring. Exploring each individual mind has taken some effort after a long day of work. However, I will sleep well knowing the progress that has been gained today and dream of my perfect order.

Author's Note

Did you know that declarative and nondeclarative memory was only distinguished in the 70s? I guess Viira is Tulving now.