The Care and Feeding of Demons

[Neal]

I have an open question for this forum, but first, here's my situation...

My first two sessions of DitV featured active cults, so I've established a precedent in my game: it's somewhere toward the heavy-supernatural end of Vincent's spectrum, though still capable (I hope) of supporting standard Western scenarios.

The first session, I had a cult whose leader was a mousy, quiet man who'd become a veritable Marquis de Sade under the influence of corrupt worship and dabbling with sorcery.  When he invited a demon to invest one of his cultists, I portrayed the possessed man as a brutal, thuggish, nigh-unstoppable force.  I gave him toadlike Manifestations and equipped him with a sickle.  The portrayal was designed to call up images of raw physical brutality, and it seemed to work.  The Powers I gave to the possessed man were Viciousness and Ferocity.

In the second session, there were two cults, one and elder cult, and another formed of apprentices just learning their craft, but still capable of sorcery.  In that session, I portrayed the possessed as seductive and wily.  Their powers were Preservation and Cunning, and I tried to play those to the hilt, using innuendo and suggestion as attacks.  When the first possessed girl was exorcised, I described the force within her escaping.  Then the players discovered that the demon had merely moved on to the second girl, who showed the same Manifestations.  It was clear tot he players that this was one demon, inhabiting more than one host.

So, what I've done, I guess, is to personalize at least one, possibly two demons, and to link them to the kinds of Sin that invites them into a town: brutality in the first case, and narcissistic lust in the second.  This is going to cause my players to expect similar treatment of demons in the future.

Now, my open question: How have you treated demons, the possessed, Manifestations, and Powers in your own games?  If you've taken a course similar to mine, I'd like to hear what worked and what didn't work for you.  If you've taken a different course, what was it and how did it work?

A follow-up question: For those who treat the whole "Demons Attack" thing as an elaborate visitation of bad luck, how do you deal with Sorcery and Possession?  Do you include it in your games at all?  And how does the spiritual/supernatural undertone of your games work, if the demons are just bad luck?  I ask because my suspicion is that the "bad luck" approach strains credibility even more than a game with overt demonism.  Is this the case?  Do you have a hard time sweeping the diabolic under the rug?  Or is that an issue at all in your games?

Oh, and if anyone wants to describe some Manifestations they were really proud of (or were really impressed by), feel free.