Projekt STURM

Projekt STURM (STudie von Unheimlichen ReinigungsMethoden, 'Study of Unusual Methods of Purification') was the codename for a series of secretive and highly illegal human experimentation programmes conducted throughout the 1940s in the Pentapolitan city of Jendaburg, Hendalarsk. The aim of the experiments, undertaken by that city's Fifteenth Directorate (15. Abteilung), shifted over time. The programme was initially intended as a highly speculative investigation into the potential of psionic warfare, but after these experiments proved futile from mid-1943 onwards the project was repurposed as an investigation into the use of various drugs and techniques to weaken subjects' resistance to interrogation. This latter effort was far more successful, but the programme's exposure in 1947 caused outcry across Hendalarsk and beyond which resulted in its closure and the (official) dissolution of the Fifteenth Directorate. The project has been the subject of many conspiracy theories in Hendalarsk since its exposure, and has become a part of popular folklore. Allegations persist - but have never been proven - that the research was undertaken at the behest of one or more parties in the contemporaneous Second Great War.