Removing the soul from a living being is easy…

There is a cabal of powerful mages, well-nigh Godwalker level with a serious beef with the sleepers. Don’t ask where I heard it, God rest his soul, but I heard they’ve got a ritual that can make any inanimate object self-aware with the intelligence and perceptive abilities necessary to give ’em a self to be aware of. That’s not the scary part, the scary part is at least one of them is far enough gone to use this ritual indiscriminately. You think the walls having ears is bads, wait’ll they have voting rights.