How do the Hexed work?

Forged in the Dark Band of Blades
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Breaker has two types of Line Troops, the Hexed and the Burned. The Hexed are described thusly:

Hexed: Breaker and her Shadow Witch acolytes carve sigils into flesh that can dominate the minds of victims, breaking their soul down directly without killing their bodies first. While under the supervision of one of her Shadow Witches, a Hexed can pass a casual inspection as a normal person. With these in her arsenal, even the most docile of villages can be converted into a threat.

My questions are:

Are the Hexed undead? A Hexed’s mind is “dominated” which makes it sound like they’re still alive or thinking, just controlled, but “breaking their soul down directly without killing their bodies first” is ambiguous. Is the body still alive, or is it now undead because the soul has been broken down? What about the Transformed who start out as Hexed?

It says that Hexed need supervision to appear as a normal person, what are they like without supervision? One of the Infamous Hexed is Elia the Passing Curse who seems to be a sophisticated stealthy operator.

What do you guys think?

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Hexed are alive. They aren’t really thinking though. The book describes Hexed who are unsupervised (so without a Shadow Witch or something similar relatively nearby) as “dull and unfocused unless provoked”. (top of page 198 in the line troops section).

You can extrapolate from that as you need.

Elia is Infamous for a reason. She isn’t like the other Hexed.

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