Can the Aspects control the minds of their hosts?

Okay, I want that question put to rest once and for all. If a Red involved with writing the lore would take a look at this, and finally answer it, I will die happy.

So, I do not like the Targon Lore as of it's current state, and as Zoe is going to drop any day now I figure I might as well try to get an answer for this, do the aspects of Targon have a mental influence over their hosts.

As evidence for this, I would like to present the once kind defender of Targon and the once tragic figure of . Before I go into detail on their cases, I would like to point out that Pantheon does not help the aspect's cases. However, I would ask that we keep him out of this discussion, as they are clearly not a normal aspect/host pairing.

I will start with Diana first, because she presents the most evidence for my case. Firstly, unless I am mistaken, almost all of the events in Diana's life had the influence of her aspect. Her parents were led to Targon by mysterious dreams and as Diana was born her mother died, and by the time the Solari had found little baby Diana, her father had died as well. After having an argument with her elders later in her life, she was sent to clean the library, where a mysterious book was waiting for her. Now, how the now more Zealous Solari failed to burn this book, and why they decided to keep it, is a mystery....

after reading this book, she saw an old woman who needed her help to climb Mount Targon. Although fearful with her upbringing telling her it would both take more than a night and, more importantly that only 'the worthy' may ascend it's peak, she did so. However once she reached the top;

> She searched for her companion, but the woman was nowhere to be seen - only the bearskin cloak mantling Diana's shoulders suggested she had existed at all. Looking into the light, Diana saw the promise of the emptiness within her being filled, of acceptance and the chance to be part of something greater than she could ever imagine. This was what Diana had sought all her life without truly knowing it, and fresh vitality flowed through her limbs as she rose to her feet. She took a hesitant step towards the incredible vista, her resolve growing stronger with every breath.

It is at this point that she joins with her aspect;

> The light surged and Diana screamed as it poured into her, a union with something vast and inhuman, impossibly ancient and powerful. The sensation was painful, but also joyous - a moment or an eternity that was both revelatory and hallucinatory. When the light faded, the sense of loss was an ache like nothing she had known before.

I find the language here is interesting; the light promises her something that's she has always wanted. To be accepted and to be important. This is were the aspect joins with her, and while it is described as painful, at the same time she wishes for the sensation back when it fades. At this point, her aspect is with her, and she has all the powers that comes with that. hold on to the lights promises for later, I promise I'll bring it up.

She finds her sword and armor nearby, and a portrait depicting a gold and silver warrior host battling the hordes of the void (and most likely becoming lunch given what lives in the void). However, when she touches her armor, she has an interesting vision. The aspect, it seems, can share memories with it's host. Of course, it also seemed to take control of Diana, as it apparently didn't trust her to put on the armor. Which is odd, as he biography stated before she had touched it "She could turn away from this destiny or choose to embrace it. " but apparently just touching the thing out of curiosity counts as a yes.

So, after having two religious experiences, she is found by Leona and taken to trail. She told the Solari elders and their attack dog what had happened and what she had learned. When they called her a heretic, she suddenly got very angry, and because the Solari didn't disarm her before hand (Side note, why had they not disarmed her?) she butchered them. Now, Diana didn't seem like much of the murdering type before, and yet she managed to kill the religious leaders and (strangely enough) knocked out Leona.

She didn't want to kill them, in fact the way she reacts to that is to be horrified at what she had done. Now, Original Diana had a very good reason for killing them; they had tortured her and where about to execute her, so it felt more like just retribution, even if Diana had become a monster herself in the process. I believe the implication is that her aspect encouraged her to do it, or that it took her over to do it itself. Neither paints it in a positive light.

"Diana saw the promise of the emptiness within her being filled, of acceptance and the chance to be part of something greater than she could ever imagine." The moon aspect promised her that, but because it made contact with Diana, she has murdered religious leaders (To be fair, they were going to murder her, but at the same time we aren't sure if Diana couldn't have just left without harming anyone given her power set) and is now a fugitive. So much for that.

Leona is a much simpler case, but it is also a bit more circumstantial I will admit. Leona was prepared to kill Diana as she soon as the Solari gave her the order. When she escaped, Leona was filled with fury, and managed to climb Targon fuelled by zealous rage. However, once she reached the top:

> There, sitting on a rock at the top of the mountain was the same golden-skinned boy whose life she had spared as a child. Behind him, the sky burned with blazing light, a borealis of impossible colors and the suggestion of a majestic city of gold and silver. In its fluted towers and glittering minarets, Leona saw how the Solari temple echoed its magnificence and fell to her knees in rapture.

I have to wonder if this Golden city is actually real, or if this is just her aspect showing her what she wants to see. I mean, you'd think Diana's lore would comment on how the architecture is similar to the temple she grew up in.

> The golden-skinned boy spoke to her in the old Rakkor tongue, telling her he had been waiting for her to follow him since that day, and that he hoped she wasn't too late. He held out his hand and offered to show her miracles and to know the minds of gods.

> Leona had never turned from anything in her life. She took the boy's hand as he smiled and led her into the light. A column of searing illumination stabbed down from the heavens and engulfed Leona. She felt an awesome presence filling her limbs with terrifying power and forgotten knowledge from the earliest epochs of the world. Her armor and weapons burned to ash in the cosmic fire and were in turn reborn as ornate warplate, a shield of sunlight wrought in gold and a sword of chained dawnlight.

> The warrior who came down the mountain looked the same as the one who had climbed it, but inside Leona was much changed. She still had her memories and thoughts, was still master of her own flesh, but a sliver of something vast and inhuman had chosen her to be its mortal vessel. It gifted her with incredible powers and awful knowledge that haunted her eyes and weighed heavily upon her soul; knowledge she could only ever share with one person. Now, more than ever, Leona knew she had to find Diana.

I show you the last three paragraphs because this is the point I get suspicious of the 'sun' aspect. it offers her ancient knowledge, but first appeals to an old memory (as, after all, Leona 'spared' him when they had first met) while showing her a city that shows like her home. While the lore states that she's still herself, she also has ancient knowledge, horrible, horrible knowledge that could only be shared by the woman that, as far as Leona knew, murdered the Solari elders to escape her death by heresy. It seems that after having the sun aspect join with her, she's oddly forgiving of Diana.

I wonder if the 'sun' and 'moon' aspects new of the others plans, and if they always cooperated like this.

Taric is the odd man out here, but I still think the aspect had preyed upon his morals and such to drive him up the mountain; it tells him "truths Taric has known his entire life." and Taric accepted the personal quest to save the world from the Void (and, again, will probably end up as lunch in the process.). I at first thought that the aspect had found a way to control much of taric's life, but Jaren corrected me, and hopefully he, or another, will help uys awnser this question.

I have no information on Zoe, but she may be an interesting one. I don't intend to buy or play her, but she may be the only aspect that I can't say has creepy mind control stuff going one, so she has that going for her.

Anyways, what do you guys think about this; Am I right, or Am I seeing problems that aren't there. Thank you for reading this.