The Mountain Witches of Pachinki and the Siphoning of the Mind

Pachinki is the fantastical notebook of Tzipora, in all her loneliness and thunderous imagination, shared with you all to enjoy. She’s so far constructed Pachinki posts about gem children, palace henchmen, sinister earth magics, the Palace Gods, and teeth regents.

From Tzipora’s notebook:

[A Guide to Magic, Chapter 2: The Witch]

The witches of Pachinki are an interesting affair — many books have been dedicated to their research after discovery, yet so little is known about them. They are almost universally misandrists, which is understandable considering their present illegality and persecution in the subcontinents of Zen and Domos. They serve only themselves and individuals they happen to like, and spend most of their lives exploring the canyon between the chaos of nature’s fundamental frequencies and the power of human magic.

They are rumoured to be able to split their own minds. Using old spells long since lost to ordinary people in Zen, they are able to siphon their mental faculties into a trusted object — usually a precious gem, and relegate essential functions of the brain to it. For example, a witch might siphon a tenth of her mental ability into a necklace, which then pushes out whatever consciousness exists within then carries on a witch’s essential functions — respiration, blood circulation and pain are just a few of unconscious functions a witch might do away with.

Why would they do such a thing? Well, it is known to all people who have ever attempted magics that powerful spells force great stress on the mind. In fact, the more thorough the subsumption of the mind towards the spell, the better the results. By dispensing with her bodily functions, a witch is able to dedicate almost all of her mental power towards the task at hand, and since a brain operating without vital functions is a very stressed brain indeed, she can become extraordinarily powerful as a result.

Such magical efforts make perfect sense for people of power — government workers, or traditional sorcerers — but witches are far more interested exploration and discovery than they are power and conquest. So again — why would they do such a thing?

Only recently has a possible answer to this question arisen. It is disarmingly straightforward — witches are outcasts, and usually very lonely people. By siphoning enough of their own mind into a creature or pet, they replace the pet with a functioning copy of themselves. They are consequently able to make friends at will.

Such a process is incredibly dangerous — although only a fraction of brainpower is required to make a functioning consciousness, they are in essence duplicating a human mind. To transplant a consciousness of human intuition into, say, a raven, requires powerful psychophysical drugs and gems of a correct frequency to stop a collapse of the mind (and subsequently render ten percent or so of the witch’s brain ability permanently nonfunctioning). Even upon a successful schism, her summoned consciousness is hardly a raven — it is an anthropomorphic creature, of human mind and animal body.

Another fact of the witch, which may interest the reader, is that they do not decompose upon death. They are ordinary people in life, but ancient magic the likes of which is unobservable and unknowable keeps their body, intact or otherwise, totally preserved (though thoroughly dead). In kingdoms where witchcraft is a crime, you can find “witch towers” filled with the fresh, undead body parts of executed witches that will long outlive the grisly silos themselves…