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The metal is an interstitial alloy used in the production of Dark Anchors, infused with soul gem fragments and trace other components I have no wish of knowing. By way of a soul magic ritual, Sondivel shapes it into malleable bands, affixed on wrists or ankles. Like weakening the barrier between Nirn and Oblivion, it weakens the will of the wearer, bending them to the whims of the subjugator. His thoughts become their commands, their desires, saving him from the deep unpleasantness of ordering around miserable slaves or automatons or mindless husks.
In theory. The "Reformer" hasn't got this process fully working just yet.
ATTUNEMENT
Under successful attunement, subjects enter a twilight realm of consciousness. They are fully themselves, lucid, able to speak their minds when prompted. Only they cannot act without permission from the subjugator, the "Reformer," as he's taken to calling himself.
When released from his attunement, the lost memories flood back like a dam breaking in a river. It is a deeply unpleasant process, resulting in a state like illness after a night of bad drinking, proportionate to the amount of time the subject remains attuned. It's one of the bigger hurdles Sondivel will encounter in his endeavor to brand attunement as something people will undergo willingly for payment for months or years at a time.
Another problem is that as a subjugator, his resonance is threaded through all significant pieces of tyranite calx. He wants to implement this practice on a massive scale, but I'm hard-pressed to understand how attunement of multiple subjugators will even be possible. He says this is a problem we don't need to worry about until much further on.
The final problem is that the attunement process cannot happen without a significant source of power behind it. A soul's amount of power to bend one soul to another's bidding. This will not save the lives from bondage that he thinks it will, and in fact has already claimed the lives of most of his slaves. I told him it was unsustainable, even sullying myself to approach it from a standpoint of frugality, but knowing as much did nothing to slow his efforts.
I cannot believe I ever thought him different from his contemporaries.
DE-ATTUNEMENT
I have developed a process to safely detach the attuned from Sondivel's control. All it took was a rudimentary understanding of both soul magic and the resonance in tyranite calx. It is difficult to describe the actions I take in such a realm of consciousness, but: using myself as a conduit between the attuned and a fragment of the metal, I can slip undetected into the resonance and safely untether the soul-bond of the attuned. As a conduit, their life essence spindles through me like ink in a funnel, passing in a mere fraction of the time. Memories flash by as if they were my own. The things I see, feel—the highs and lows of these brief lives in bondage—nothing is a more potent reminder of why I must do what I do.
The process can take hours, but Sondivel, with his concentrations focused elsewhere, usually does not feel it.
As many as I save, I will never forget Sharp, or how I let him down. My friend most in need of saving. Where other de-attunements are as painless as cutting one's hair, Sharp's was akin to me ripping it out by the root. Azura knows what damage I caused in my haste to set him free.
If I could only find him, I think a piece of him may still remain resonant within tyranite calx.
Even if he may not remember me, or the last of his egg-kin taken and perished so young, or his deek-nujei that cared for him so, I hope with all my heart that he lives free and at peace for the rest of his days.