Malignite Masters
The Malignite Masters were a group of scientists bent on world domination who were able to mind-control people, and recurring villains in "the game". The Malignite Masters controlled people through a complex machine that emitted a signal that was transmitted and boosted via a black mineral called malignite. People in the presence of active/charged malignite had blank expressions and organised themselves into regimented rows, waiting to receive instructions from the machine.
The concept of a black mineral called "malignite" that can project a signal from a mind-control device, and the concept of an occult group planning to use such a mineral and machine to take over the world, were taken from Robert C. O'Brien's The Silver Crown (1968). This was a children's science fiction book that reviewer E.C. Myers said "straddled the line between fantasy and science fiction". In The Silver Crown, the mind control machine itself is quasi-sapient and is even controlling the so-called 'king' and the other apparently autonomous villains, using them to spread its own control rather than letting itself be used by them, and this idea may have bled through to "the game".