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The Aggregation Ritual: Key Concepts

Core Process

The Aggregation is the Blackthorn Institute's ultimate goal - a sophisticated metaphysical procedure to create human vessels with demonic powers while maintaining human consciousness and will. The process involves three distinct phases:

  1. Vessel Preparation - Preparing a human body through specific sigils, rituals, and modifications to house demonic essence
  2. Consciousness Extraction - Removing and preserving the human consciousness separately
  3. Integration - Filling the empty vessel with aggregated demonic essence, then returning the human consciousness under controlled conditions

Blackwood's Role

Judge Blackwood prepared himself to be the first successful vessel:

  • He spent years carving protective and preparatory sigils into his own body
  • His suicide was deliberate and meticulously planned - a necessary first step to create an empty vessel
  • His body remains preserved at a Blackthorn facility, awaiting the completion of the ritual
  • The ritual itself has NOT YET OCCURRED - his body is prepared but the integration has not been performed

Failed Attempts and The Hollow Men

Previous attempts at creating human-demon hybrids failed because:

  • Researchers attempted to integrate demonic essence while the human consciousness was still present
  • The human consciousness resisted the foreign essence, creating conflict within the vessel
  • This resulted in "Hollow Men" - partially filled vessels where neither consciousness is fully in control
  • Hollow Men are neither fully human nor properly demonic - existing in a horrific liminal state

Characteristics of Hollow Men:

  • Fluid physiology that moves unnaturally
  • Disproportionate anatomy with limbs too long and wrongly jointed
  • Facial features that never settle into fixed positions
  • Completely black eyes that seem to absorb light
  • Ability to distort reality in their vicinity (accelerated decay, temperature drops)
  • Can pass through impossibly small spaces by redistributing their mass

The Blackthorn Innovation

The Blackthorn Institute's key breakthrough was the three-phase approach:

  • Remove human consciousness before attempting to fill the vessel with demonic essence
  • Store the consciousness safely elsewhere (method still unclear)
  • Only return the consciousness after the vessel has been properly prepared and filled
  • This theoretically allows for complete integration without creating Hollow Men

Technical Elements

The process requires:

  • A network of extraction facilities positioned at "thin places" along ley lines
  • Cell 7B at St. Catherine's Hospital as the central node in this network
  • Specialized binding technology to contain extracted essences
  • A precise ritual involving specific timing and metaphysical conditions

Current Status

  • Blackwood's body is prepared but the ritual is not complete
  • The Blackthorn Institute is likely gathering the necessary demonic essence for the integration
  • Dr. Victoria Reid appears connected to the project, with mysterious references to someone named Eleanor Crane
  • Counter-binding protocols have been discovered that could potentially disrupt the entire network