DESCRIPTION: A bed of soft wool with leather straps to hold every joint of the body still, over which is suspended a curious apparatus. The apparatus menaces with glass needles, pointed downward at the bed. The whole thing is built in the Bauhaus style, with curved metal rails to suspend the apparatus and lots of cubes growing like geometric tumors from other cubes.
The apparatus includes a slot for punchcards from a Dehomag tabulating machine - a primitive electromechanical computer of the 1920s.
The apparatus includes a slot for punchcards from a Dehomag tabulating machine - a primitive electromechanical computer of the 1920s.
POWER: Major
EFFECT: The initiate lays face down on the bed and is immobilized by the operator with the leather straps. The operator inserts a punched card into the slot on the apparatus, corresponding to the desired effect on the initiate.
When the operator rotates the hand crank attached to the metal rails, the apparatus descends onto the back of the initiate. The glass needles pierce the initiate’s back, raising blisters and draining blood and pus. The pain is indescribable, inflicting a Helplessness 5 shock. Fleeing or fighting is useless unless the initiate has the superhuman strength necessary to rip the straps.
- If the initiate has any meat in their digestive system, the machine juices them like an orange and kills them.
- If they ate a vegetarian diet, the machine replaces one of their passions with a new one encoded on the punchcard inserted by the operator. This inflicts a rank 9 Helplessness shock.
WHAT YOU HEAR
The machine gets its name from Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish, founder of the Mazdaznan movement. Born Ernst Otto Haenisch, the cult-leader was allegedly inspired to found his Zoroastrian revival movement in Iran, where the secrets of Zarathustra were revealed to him. He opened lodges in the United States, Switzerland and Germany, preaching fitness, meditation and the primacy of the white race (but also that Christ and therefore the Jews were Aryans). His disciples laughed and smiled constantly. They ate only vegetables when they were not fasting. They believed their purification rituals gave them telepathy and supernatural sexual powers.
The Mazdaznan movement was riven with scandal. Wherever Ha’nish went, accusations of child sexual abuse followed. At least a dozen wealthy celebrities died under his care from fasting, bloodletting or secondary infections inflicted by his needle machines. Still more suffered nervous breakdowns or committed suicide. Though many of his temples were shuttered by the authorities, Ha’nish never faced any consequences for his actions, changing names and hopping countries one step ahead of his pursuers. He died in 1936 in Los Angeles at the age of eighty.
Mazdaznan still has a handful of adherents in the present day, in the United States and in Germany (where Nazi attempts to suppress it gave it the cachet of a persecuted minority religion). Mazdaznan principles were also strongly influential in the Bauhaus art school through Ha’nish’s pupil Johannes Itten, who initiated several of his students into the cult.
The Mazdaznan movement was riven with scandal. Wherever Ha’nish went, accusations of child sexual abuse followed. At least a dozen wealthy celebrities died under his care from fasting, bloodletting or secondary infections inflicted by his needle machines. Still more suffered nervous breakdowns or committed suicide. Though many of his temples were shuttered by the authorities, Ha’nish never faced any consequences for his actions, changing names and hopping countries one step ahead of his pursuers. He died in 1936 in Los Angeles at the age of eighty.
Mazdaznan still has a handful of adherents in the present day, in the United States and in Germany (where Nazi attempts to suppress it gave it the cachet of a persecuted minority religion). Mazdaznan principles were also strongly influential in the Bauhaus art school through Ha’nish’s pupil Johannes Itten, who initiated several of his students into the cult.
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