[Sorcerer] Contacting/Summoning Object Demons

[The Dragon Master]

How does this play out?

It's fairly easy to picture the other kinds of demons being contacted and summoned, but how does this play out with object demons?

As an example: Blek'ruth, Possessor Demon, color- upon being called Blek'ruth appears as a swirling vortex surrounding the Sorcerer. As compared with: Bulc'nath, Object Demon, color- a demon bound into a gun long ago. But how does the contacting play out? What about Summoning? Would contacting be related to the lore roll to recognize Bulc'nath as an object demon? Or is it more a matter of getting Bulc'naths attention?

I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around this one, and I know that if I don't get it straight in my head on of the players of my one-shot will attempt just this.

[The Dragon Master]

I was wondering through other pages and found, I think, what I was looking for in this post. I've only gotten into the first part of the second post, but I already am seeing what I was looking for. I'm going to keep reading it, but I think that is what I'm looking for. Apparently my Search-Fu is weak at 7 in the morning.

[The Dragon Master]

Turned out not to be quite what I was looking for, but I still think I gleaned some useful information from it. More importantly, I think I figured out the main disconnect relates to the difference between the stages. So let's take the Bulc'nath example and see if I have it straight.

Bulc'nath: Object Demon, Handgun, Need: To be quenched in blood, Desire: Corruption

Contacting: This is where you first communitcate with the demon, creating a relationship. It might be thought of as a phone call to establish, well, contact.

In this case: Darrell is wandering through an antique store. Across the room he spots an antique revolver. The way the light shines on the still bright chrome draws him in, and for a moment, his heart flutters.


Summoning: If Contacting is a telephone call, then Summoning the first face-to-face meeting.

In this case: Darrel walks over to the glass enclosure in which Bulc'nath lay. A successful lore roll tells him this is something special. He must have it. The proprietor says he doesn't know how that particular gun got there, but it is most certianly not for sale.


Binding: Seems like this is where you prove to the demon that you can meet it's Need.

Perhaps Darrell waits till the proprietor leaves and punches through the glass to grab the gun and run. Perhaps he pulls out his blade and kills the proprietor, grasping Bulc'nath in his blood covered hands. Either way he leaves with the gun.

I'm still trying to figure out the others (how do you punish a gun? how do you banish a ring?) but will post my interperetation later today. In the meantime, am I hitting the mark? Am I even on the same continent as the mark?

[The Dragon Master]

For this next bit, let's try LoTR, and The One Ring.

Punishing: The only thing I can think to compare this to is an argument. At the end of which, if you won, the demon grudgingly accepts your stance. Though I can't figure out a visual/scene to demonstrate it with an object demon.


Banishing: This is the ultimate in rejection. The Sorcerer, who brought the Demon to our realm against the will of Reality itself, is saying that the Demon has no place here.

In this Case: After a rollercoaster ride, including a glimpse of just how far he can fall, and how much he has to loose if he does, Darrel decides to get rid of Bulc'nath. He tries to thow it away, or to give it away, but it always finds it's way back. Determined to be rid of it, he takes a hammer and starts beating it to pieces. But the battle isn't really in the smashing of it. It is in his conscious descision to destroy Bulc'nath, and in the internal battle (perhaps increased by a power or two of Bulc'naths) to do so.
LoTR: Frodo takes the ring to the Mountain of Doom, and fights the whole way over whether there's a better way. All of this might be seen as a ___ which provides him with bonus dice to the actual banishing. The heat of the Volcano isn't enough to destroy the ring. It is the conflict in the Volcano where Frodo fights against it's influence on him and decides the world is better if this thing doesn't exist that allows for it's destruction. (yes, I'm taking some liberties here to make the point).

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I think you are in fact in the same ballpark of confusion as Hans was in the thread you referenced, but not in the exact same way. Unfortunately, there seem to be layers of confusion involved, so I will proceed in steps.

1. The first issue that's tangling you up is the relattionship between an Object, which is a demon Type, and whether the demon has been Summoned. In your Bulc'nath example, you are presenting a contradictory case: the demon has already been Summoned, and yet you're talking about performing a Contact and a Summoning. This is nonsensical; Contacts and Summons are only performed on demons which are not Summoned - or to be more literal, which do not (yet) (or any more) exist. To be clear: Contacting does not telephone an existing demon across space. It establishes communication with an un-Summoned, arguably non-existent demon.

2. That example also uses some problematic language: the idea that the demon was Summoned and Bound into the form of a gun. That is perfectly OK as far as it goes, but it represents a derived, interpretive application of the game-mechanics. It would be just as perfectly OK to say that the demon was a gun to start with, no "Bound into" required, which is another derived, interpretive application of the game-mechanics. In other words, such applications are necessary to play Sorcerer, but choosing one of them does have consequences for details and uses of sorcery later. My thinking is that you, in using that phrase, have traveled down a path of imagination already, but are still under the impression that you're talking about the fundamental mechanics.

We should stop there for just a minute. I'm still working with your first post. (It's very hard to deal with someone who posts, thinks about it, posts again, thinks about it, et cetera, especially when a couple of wrong turns are taken on the way.) Is it clear that your example goes away, and all the confusion with it, when you recognize that Summoning brings Bulc'nath into existence? And if you did find Bulc'nath in the shop, years after it was originally Summoned, that you would not have to Contact or Summon it at all, but could proceed directly to Binding if desired?

Now I'll go on to your second post and, well, it's all a mess based on that misunderstanding. Darrell doesn't have to Contact and Summon the demon at all. It's sitting right there in front of him. Nor, if he was across the city or across the world and tried to "phone" it using Contact, would it work. Contact will only function if the demon is not sitting in the shop, or in fact sitting anywhere at all. It would either never have been Summoned, or had been Summoned in the past but also Banished. That's what Contact is for.

Since you were not, in your terms, in the same continent as the mark, forget all that stuff you wrote about the Ring. Let's work through this bit about Contacting and Summoning first.

Everyone else: I know you are just itching to talk about the Charnel Gods demons and the AI spaceships and stuff like that. Please do not. It will cause horrible problems. Those concepts are handled by derived rules introduced in Sorcerer & Sword, and for the love of God, just hold your water until this material, the core material, has been processed fully first.

Best, Ron

[The Dragon Master]

Let's start with what I understand after reading your post. I do get (though I didn't while writing the example) that if Bulc'nath can be seen, and said to exist, that he has already been contacted and summoned. I also get that I was, as you suspected, creating a definition for sorcery (and probably demons as well) and trying to use that to understand the mechanics as a whole, which would have tripped me up when I attempted to apply them to another definition for sorcery. I had it in my head that I was just creating an example, a metaphor, rather than a definition of "how sorcery works". So for now I'll set aside examples (on my end) till it clicks for me.

...

You know what, I was going to add to this post my "newly acquired understanding" of contacting and summoning, but I think I'll skip that for now. As I try to put them into words I find that it's a little like trying to catch air. It's right there in front of me, but no matter how I go at it, I can't quite get my fingers around it.

[Ron Edwards]

Excellent! I know my post was really didactic and forceful, and I appreciate you working with me on it.

Regarding the last bit, h'mm, I think it's easier than you're making it.

The beginning of every demon's story is that the demon (whether gun, monster, smiling not-quite-normal person, or whatever) isn't here. It doesn't exist.

My character, Darrell, Contacts it. Then he Summons it. Now it exists, and is subject to Binding, Containing, Punishing, and Banishing. If it's Bound, it exists "even more," and can be killed dead, rather than merely Banished when physically destroyed.

On the other hand, if Darrell finds it (meaning the demon, not just a gun) in the gun shop, then it already exists, having been Summoned by someone else long ago. He now decides whether he wants to Bind, Contain, Punish, or Banish it, or whatever he wants, kiss it, hit with a hammer, whatever.

Either one is a perfectly good back-story for a beginning Sorcerer character, by the way. The character may have Summoned the thing, or he may have encountered it, it's up to the player.

Best, Ron

[The Dragon Master]

That works for backstory, but the biggest part I'm wrestling with (I think) is how it works out in play. In the systems I'm used to the imagery, and the meaning of it, are straight forward, and you just roll dice. Light some incense and play Abba while chanting and the succeses rolled tell you the level of air elemental you've summoned type of thing. I think if I can wrap my head around the "meaning" of each step I might be able to get the imagery in my mind, and gain a better insight into it (sort of a yak-shaving approach, I know).

So let's try.

Contacting: This one is hardest for me to "get", but here's what I'm thinking now. It isn't communicating wth the demon, it's expanding the Sorcerers mind beyond normal experience, to accept the possibility of a specific impossible-thing existing. Though this acceptence doesn't make the thing any less impossible.
Am I there so far?

Visual: He is meditating or whatever his equivilant is, and sees this demon, or at least what it represents, in his minds eye. Does that sound close?


Summoning: This one is a bit easier, though the imagery with an object demon (and I suppose other "physical" demons as well) eludes me. Summoning is the sorcerer bringing this impossible thing into existence by sheer force of will.
Perhaps the Demons Power that Will is being rolled against represents the Universes rejection of it. Or is that last line slipping into setting detail again?

Visual: We experience the summoning ritual (whatever it may be in that setting) and then the gun (to use the Belc'nath demon as an example, setting asside the examples I used him in earlier) simply is there with him. Setting aside imagery that would be setting specific, or rely on the definition of sorcery, the physical demon doesn't exist until it does, but doesn't Appear either (as that suggests it appears from somewhere).
Perhaps an outside observer (without Lore) would, after the ritual, believe the gun was there all along... Or am I confusing myself again? Is defining the Outsiders view of the Summoning stepping into setting detail? Or even something that shouldn't be worried about except to see what happens in a given scene to create the best drama/comedy/whatever-your-going-for?

I'll stop there for now till I get some confirmation. And feel free to stop me at a specific line if I seem to be getting it up to that point. I'm fairly good at compartmentalizing information in that fashion... though if you think that method would confuse others who find this thread then I'll understand that too.

[Ron Edwards]

You have it! With a couple of provisos that are not rules-consequential:

1. The Contact can have visual or other effects beyond the sorcerer's mind. Perhaps a swirly hole appears in the air, perhaps a voice booms out apparently from nowhere, whatever. But you're basically right; it's a one-on-one thing between this sorcerer and the Thing which does not exist.

2. The appearance of the demon prior to and during Summoning is entirely up in the air. In some applications, demons appear in one form only, from initial Contact onwards. In others, the un-Summoned form might be amorphous or abstract, then coalesce into its Type and individual features upon being Summoned. This is one of those customized look-and-feel things for a given group and given game.

Best, Ron

[The Dragon Master]

Okay, then let's move on.

Binding: Let's see if I have this one straight. It still seems to me that this one is based on proving to the demon that you can meet it's need. Is that accurate? If so, then I think my binding example works, with some minor alterations.

Visual: Setting aside the color of Sorcery in the setting, Darrel summons Bulc'nath. To keep some of the original imagery, perhaps he does summon him in the store. Bulc'nath wasn't there before this act, but it is now. He attempts to rob the store with Bulc'nath, but since he hasn't bound Bulc'nath yet, he can't command it. Having tried to hold up the store, and finding that Bulc'nath is "empty" he uses it as a club, pistol-whips the clerk (thus meeting Bulc'naths Need), and leaves "gun" in hand.

Naturally this isn't the only possible visual, but would that work? Or does the binding have to be a more... I almost want to say intimate, but don't see how to get more intimate than that with an entity of violence (comment specific to Bulc'nath and others with it's Need). How close am I here?

Banishing: I'll try to simplify here, to get down to the basics. The initial binding strength is used here, because it represents the "anchor" of the Demon to Existence. If the Demon has the advantage, then it gets the dice, it controls its anchor. If the Sorcerer has the advantage, the he gets the dice, he controls the anchor (or maybe is the anchor). Am I good so far?
Will faces off against Power because that is the battle being enacted, "Can the Sorcerer through exercise of Will alone, overcome the Power of the Demon, to bend it to his will?" being the question this roll answers (perhaps that question is answered every time the sorcerer makes such an attempt, every binding, every banishing, every command). Am I still on the trail?

Visual: (Insert Sorcerous mumbo-jumbo-color here). Depending on in-game color, perhaps the ritual involves him yelling at Bulc'nath, perhaps it is a simple confrontation like in "The Labirynth", perhaps the "gun" disappears afterwords, or perhaps it is still there as a gun minus it's power and tell-tales. but all of that is color and I think I'm getting closer to a grasp here of what each ritual means in terms of in-game cause/effect.

Punishment: (Reads the second paragraph I typed for Banishment). Hmm, this seems the same, only with a different end-goal. Instead of removing the Demon from existence, the Sorcerer is trying to make it more pliable to his Will. Good so far?

Visual: Again, this is mostly in-game color, but the key is that it is an attempt to apply penalty dice to the Demons actions, which can both help, and hinder the Sorcerer.

How am I doing to this point?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

The trouble is, we're doing this all backwards. I don't know anything about the look and feel of sorcery and demons in the hypothetical game we're talking about. I don't know the descriptor for Lore for the hypothetical character, or how it's expressed in the fiction of play. I especially don't know whether we're talking about the back-story of a beginning character, or an event during play, in which case it'd be good to know what the character's current or former demon is like. Given that information, all of your questions can be answered in a quick instant. Without it, I'm reduced to "if ... and ... but ... if ... then" multi-branched and monologuing answers.

That said ...

Binding: Let's see if I have this one straight. It still seems to me that this one is based on proving to the demon that you can meet it's need. Is that accurate?

I don't think "prove" is the right verb. I think "demonstrate" or "commit" are better. Basically, it's formalizing a relationship. One individual feels he or she (it) cannot be real without the other's commitment to a real relationship. The other promises or demonstrates that commitment in some way which works. Of course, this is a horrible and fucked-up way to begin any kind of relationship, and it automatically creates a power imbalance. Either the needy one has the power because he or she (it) always holds sway with the "I'll die without you" card, or the providing-need one has the power because he or she can always withhold it. That's what the die roll is for. Remember, Binding always works. The question is, who is the subordinated partner.

Visual: Setting aside the color of Sorcery in the setting, Darrel summons Bulc'nath. To keep some of the original imagery, perhaps he does summon him in the store. Bulc'nath wasn't there before this act, but it is now. He attempts to rob the store with Bulc'nath, but since he hasn't bound Bulc'nath yet, he can't command it. Having tried to hold up the store, and finding that Bulc'nath is "empty" he uses it as a club, pistol-whips the clerk (thus meeting Bulc'naths Need), and leaves "gun" in hand.

Whoa, have to stop you - there are some inaccuracies about the rules. First, any sorcerer can command any demon to do things; it has nothing to do with Binding (except for the bonus dice involved). So in this case, the character can certainly use the gun to hold up the store and the gun could certainly use or confer its abilities depending on how they are defined, as a way to Bind it.

Naturally this isn't the only possible visual, but would that work? Or does the binding have to be a more... I almost want to say intimate, but don't see how to get more intimate than that with an entity of violence (comment specific to Bulc'nath and others with it's Need). How close am I here?

You're dead on target, but you can also open your imagination to any number of other possibilities. Buy the gun and take it out to the gulley, and use it to fire bullets into the portrait of the person you hate, saying his name each time, and ending with the demon's name. Drip some of your blood down the barrel. Set up a little shrine and burn incense around the gun. Whatever, as long as it fits the look & feel of sorcery in this particular game, and (typically although not required) as it suits the various descriptors of the character. This is also why any primary score (Stamina, Will, Lore) is available to be used for Binding. My first two examples in this paragraph go with Stamina and the third goes with Lore.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that sorcerers in the fiction always improvise and make up their sorcery. I'm saying that your particular group and game has set upon some standards for these things. In practice, the pre-game chat establishes some fundamentals, and those fundamentals undergo dramatic enrichening by the players as they make up their characters and describe how they Bound their demons.

One more thing: how explicitly the Need is referenced during Binding is totally up for grabs. It could be entirely unmentioned, just as I might imagine a neurotic real-world couple never mentioning or acknowledging sex in the complex dance of establishing their commitment to a relationship together. Or it could be absolutely explicit, like some kind of pre-nuptial contract or whatever. The thing is, just as in the reality of relationships, the Need as a problem is present no matter what: either it's never stated and always present in a high-pressure way, or it's explicitly acknowledged but somehow intractable to attempts to formalize and control it.

Banishing: I'll try to simplify here, to get down to the basics. The initial binding strength is used here, because it represents the "anchor" of the Demon to Existence. If the Demon has the advantage, then it gets the dice, it controls its anchor. If the Sorcerer has the advantage, the he gets the dice, he controls the anchor (or maybe is the anchor). Am I good so far?

The Binding strength is indeed the demon's anchor to existence, expressed as that imbalance of power I mentioned above. It factors into Banishing as something to be overcome.

Will faces off against Power because that is the battle being enacted, "Can the Sorcerer through exercise of Will alone, overcome the Power of the Demon, to bend it to his will?" being the question this roll answers (perhaps that question is answered every time the sorcerer makes such an attempt, every binding, every banishing, every command). Am I still on the trail?

Wait, we're talking about Banishing, right? I'm getting confused by what you're asking or saying. If you are talking about Banishing, then "bend it to his will" is inaccurate. Banishing doesn't give a fuck what the demon wants - it just removes it from existence.

Visual: (Insert Sorcerous mumbo-jumbo-color here). Depending on in-game color, perhaps the ritual involves him yelling at Bulc'nath, perhaps it is a simple confrontation like in "The Labirynth", perhaps the "gun" disappears afterwords, or perhaps it is still there as a gun minus it's power and tell-tales. but all of that is color and I think I'm getting closer to a grasp here of what each ritual means in terms of in-game cause/effect.

Ummm ... yes. I'm getting the idea that this isn't question-and-answer any longer, but me watching a stream of consciousness in action. So I'll wait and see what the next exchange brings us.

Punishment: (Reads the second paragraph I typed for Banishment). Hmm, this seems the same, only with a different end-goal. Instead of removing the Demon from existence, the Sorcerer is trying to make it more pliable to his Will. Good so far?

Off-base here, in a common mis-reading. Punishment affects Power, not Will. The demon is still armed with every ounce of Will it ever had, and if it thinks the sorcerer has Punished it wrongfully, it will be very pissed off. What Punishing does is weaken it. What I've seen in play is for sorcerers to Punish their Bound demons a tiny bit (remember, no roll is necessary) as a warning regarding egregious over-stepping on the demon's part, and for sorcerers to Punish other demons (which does require a roll) as an attack tactic.

Okay, I think I'm still with you, although it got a little bit like riding a mental bucking bronco for a minute there. Thoughts, comments?

Best, Ron

[The Dragon Master]

Just got done with CopperCon. Still Digesting this post, but I'll reply soon.

[The Dragon Master]

Part of the problem (as mentioned in your first paragraph) is that of definitions of Lore/Sorcery/etc. It may well be that the way I'm trying to come at this from is an akward (or maybe impossible) way to do so. I haven't GMed/Played-in a Sorcerer game before. I haven't even had the opportunity to see one in action (no one in my area plays it). And I've been given a chance to run a one-shot tomorrow. Reading through the book I found some points I couldn't work my mind around (big surprise right?) due to not being able to "see" what is happening.  I'm coming at this the way I am hoping to get a handle on how these rituals are supposed to work out in play, regardless of color, so that when I run it I will know how to describe what is happening regardless of in-game color... may have just hit on something there, but I'll come back to it. I'm trying to nail down what the mechanics say about what is actually happening, when the ritual is performed. I'm looking for what I often describe as the "inclusive-exclusive definition", a thing which includes everything that is x while excluding everything that isn't x (almost a zen koan in and of itself). At this point though I doubt I have enough time to achieve that goal short of epiphany.

Describe... This may be a part where I'm missing something. Does the GM describe the ritual? Or does the Player describe it and then roll the dice? This could be one point where I'm confusing myself needlessly. I have it in my head that I as GM describe the ritual being performed, based on the demon being summoned, and I don't seem to recall anywhere that mode of play is described in the text.

I'm going to re-read the book before game tomorrow and hopefully that will straighten out any misconceptions. But I won't have time to post again before the game. I'll post again afterwards (which may well mean saturday) to post my reworked thoughts on those I figure out later.

All of that said, I do feel like this discussion is helping me wrap my head around it better.

Click.
And it just hit me what the answer to my initial question is. The original question was "What does punishing/banishing an object or other physical demon look like/how does it work?". The answer is "What does sorcery look like?". If sorcery is mumbling of words of power, then punishing is mumbling words of power. If sorcery is a physical contest with the demon (think of the biblical story where Jacob wrestles with the angel), then punishing may well be hitting Bulc'nath against the nearest wall.

Click.
Another one slipped into gear. What each one "means", and how the mechanics relate to the in-game fiction, depends on the "color" applied to sorcery. Hmmm. More to mull over.

If I seen to be a little all over the place, it's because this has been being written over the last 5 hours during downtime at work, then get's a quick preview before being posted, so some is written down when I have 10 minutes to just focus on it, and some is pieced together from notes I make when I only have time for a couple key words (whose meaning is often forgotten by the time I get back around to it, unfortunately).

I'll still post later since there are some things I'm having trouble getting my head around. But I'll mull over the book, and what is here on the board, and what happens at game in the meantime. And thank you again Ron for helping me "get" this.

[Ron Edwards]

I think you're getting to all the right conceptual places. It's also good to consider that there are two meaningful levels of "what sorcery looks like:" (1) for the whole game and its basic setting-context, and (2) for a particular player-character. After all, the overall take on sorcery might be mainly about physical violence, and if there's a sorcerer who instead whispers love-poems instead, that takes on significance of its own. A character's descriptors for Lore and often Will play into the dynamic possibilities between (1) and (2).

Regarding who-says-what, the rule is that the GM can never say what the player-character feels, does, or says, or rather, not authoritatively. I might, when GMing, say "So you bite off the teddy bear's head," or, "When you spin around in this floor level sweeping kick," but it is always phrased with a spoken or an unspoken "... right?" that permits the player to have the real authority. The same goes in reverse for all NPCs.

Therefore, aside from I-say-but-you-really-say, the player describes his or her sorcerer character's actions, including the actions of rituals.

I'm looking forward to reading about the game! My big advice: don't try to wrap it all up into a classic adventure, or "get the team together," or any such thinking. Play the Kickers damned hard and really enjoy playing those demons. At most, place player-characters and NPCs into one another's scenes as you feel like it with no obligation for them actually to interact.

Best, Ron

[The Dragon Master]

Haven't forgotten this. Ran the session last Friday (well, sort of but we'll get to that). I made a quick write-up, and have a few questions based on how things worked out (unrelated to this post). I'm planning to do an Actual Play thread in a day or so when I have time to enter it.